GOLDEN WORDS
To Titus, my true son in our common faith: Grace and peace from God the
Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
Titus 1:4 NIV
Allow the full impact of grace to flow through your thoughts, your attitudes,
your responses, your words. Open the gates and let those good things stampede
freely across your tough day. You stand alongside and relax.
— Charles Swindoll
Daily Meditations by Pat Nordman
January 3
"Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of
sins" 1 Peter 4:8; "Love covers all wrongs" Proverbs 10:12b; "He who
covers over an offense promotes love..." Proverbs 17:9; "Love...keeps no records
of wrongs" 1 Corinthians 13:5.
Oh, let us engrave these verses on our hurting hearts! These are the verses that, with
God's help, can renew our commitment to God Himself, as well as to those who need and
deserve our cherishment. Love, in spite of how we feel about the who or the what or the
why...! What a monumental invitation into the very chambers and the character of the
Father. It also takes monumental courage, with emphasis on the mental, for it is
taking hold of the will to love, even as God loves, in spite of what has happened--and in
place of spite.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks to love is the records we keep of wrongs. Yesterday we
read that our precious God covers our sins. He asks us to forget the things--the sins,
ours and others--that are behind, and go on with His love and mercy. "God was in
Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against
them..." 2 Corinthians 5:19. Can't we do for others that which God does for us: write
wrongs in ashes? We keep a record of the "sins" which God has already put away
from Him, "as far as the east is from the west" (Psalm 103:12). Our heart is
blackened with the soot of another's trespasses and now and then we sweep up a bit of it
and rub our hands and minds in it, and then ask God for forgiveness for our
meanness--again. Instead, let us reconcile and wipe the record clean forever!
"[The orchid] covers the deformity with its own loveliness, absorbs all foul
exhalations and turns them into the perfume of its own sweet flowers. Charity is this
beautiful orchid, covering human frailty, clearing away harsh, suspicious, and cruel
slanders; breathing forth merciful judgments, compassionate sympathy." James
Neill
Pat Nordman ©
|
|
|
Excerpts from today's Spurgeon's Devotions |
|
Spurgeon's Morning for January 3 |
Spurgeon's Evening January 3 |
| "I will give thee for a covenant of the people." Isaiah 49:8
|
"The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." -Luke 3:4
|
Jesus Christ is himself the sum and substance of the covenant, and as one of its gifts. He is the property of every believer. Believer, canst thou estimate what thou hast gotten in Christ? "In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." |
The voice crying in the wilderness demanded a way for the Lord, a way prepared, and a way prepared in the wilderness. I would be attentive to the Master's proclamation, and give him a road into my heart, cast up by gracious operations, through the desert of my nature |
|
T |
The
Pressure of Time Have you felt the pressure of time this week? Time can be a massive pressure as we're talking about here, but I enjoyed the story this week of Porris Wittel, a dock worker in Gillingham, England. For 47 years--maybe you've had this experience--he hated his alarm clock. For 47 years, early, in the dark, every morning that thing jangled him awake. For 47 years he longed to ignore it, to shut it off. And for 47 years he submitted to the pressure of that time, that clock. But on the day of his retirement he got his revenge. He took his alarm clock to work and he flattened it in an eighty-ton hydraulic press. He said, "It was a lovely feeling." — Roger Thompson, "The Good News Is: The Bad News Is Wrong," Preaching Today, Tape No. 55. |
Today's' fact about Time and its measurement, a time quotation and a New Year Inspiration.
... DNA by Pat Nordman Isaiah 43:18,19a "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he
is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" 2 Corinthians 5:17
God tells us, "I will cover your iniquity. . .I will blot out your
transgressions. .
.Go, and sin no more." He asks us to forget the things–the sins–that we
have committed and go on with His love and mercy. We would wonder about the man who drops
a glass bottle on the sidewalk, then gets down and so carefully collects all the jagged
little pieces and then hugs them to his bosom until he bleeds. This is what we do when we
spurn God's forgiveness.
We have such a perverted and sinful tendency to concentrate on the bone and forget the
delicious meat of life. More Walking Through the Darkness Religion
News RealAudio format Happy
New Year Return to DM's HOME
January 3 Ge 7:1 - 9:29
Linked to Bible Gaitway TM
Today's Devotion
"Forget the former
things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am making a new thing!"
"Forgetting what lies behind" (Philippians 3:13): slanders; temptations; the
little and large faults of others; provocations that sear our sensitive nature; quarrels
that either we or they have started; and all the disagreeables of life. Let us reach
forward, as Paul tells us in the same verse, to what lies ahead and enjoy the agreeables
that God has in store for us today and tomorrow. We have such a perverted and sinful
tendency to concentrate on the bone and forget the delicious meat of life: family,
friends, coworkers with whom we can share a thought and a laugh. Let us blot out others'
transgressions and our disagreeables right now.
Every day is another chance and charge to become a new character. We have another
opportunity to change from Saul to Paul, from Jacob to Israel. Physically we do not
change, of course, but it is our motives, our principles and our habits which change.
Jesus gave us the pa-tern for our unique trans-figuration in His Sermon on the Mount and
in what He Himself was and is. His Word is His promise, "And this is what he promised
us–even eternal life" 1 John 2:25. Eternal life starts today.
Today's Religion News
From Goshen Web News Service
Feature Story
News Summary
World News
BaptistPress
Country Profiles
News Links
News Archives
All the Rest January 3
Today in History January 3
