Brett Blair tells how the late Dr. Paul Quillian, the beloved pastor of First Methodist Church of Houston, Texas, saw (in his fifteen years of ministry) the church grow from 2500 to 6000—an effort that he called a labor of love. Not many knew that Dr. Quillian as a young man had little thought of ministry and was working in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, at a bottling plant when his minister paid him a call. His pastor started with the question, “How old are you?”

“Thirty.”

Quillian’s preacher then said, “When you stand finally before the Lord God, what will you tell him you did on earth—made red soda water?”

The young man snapped back, “And what is wrong with red soda water?”

Nothing—except you happen to be endowed with great talents and abilities which I cherish for God and the Christian ministry.”

Consequently, the young man went back to school and prepared for the preaching ministry. He itinerated in Arkansas. Finally he was called to the First Church in Houston. He became a wonderful leader for Christ because someone recognized the gifts and talents within him and took a few minutes out of the day to tell him so.²

Are you using your talents for the glory of God and the betterment of others? And do you know someone whose potential you see? Be sure that you tell them and be an encourager to them.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you for all the people who encouraged me when I needed it most. Please help me to use the gifts you have given me to serve you no matter how small or big that way may be. And help me to be an encourager to those who also need a word of encouragement whatever that word may need to be. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NIV).

2. Brett Blair, Sermon Illustrations, January 2000.

In a Reader’ Digest article, author Robert Fulghum tells about “an international chess competition many years ago in which a man named Frank Marshall made what is often called the most beautiful move ever made on a chessboard. Playing against an equally skilled Russian master, Marshall sacrificed his queen in an unthinkable move—a move to be made only in the most desperate of circumstances. But it turned out to be a brilliant move, so brilliant that the Russian conceded the game.

“When spectators recovered from the shock of Marshall’s unusual tactic, they showered the chessboard with money. Marshall had achieved victory in a rare and daring fashion. He had won by sacrificing the queen.”²

One of my life’s goals was to build my own home, which I did in South Australia quite a few years ago. It was high up at the top of the Adelaide hills overlooking the city and the ocean beyond. The view was magnificent. I built that house with the idea of living in it till the day I died. At the time my ministry was flourishing and there was no way I planned or wanted to leave the house I built or the work I started. But the “Hound of Heaven” kept bugging me … and bugging me … and bugging me through circumstances beyond my control. In exasperation I finally prayed, “Okay, God, you win. You can have my new home and my ministry and everything I have here. I’ll go anywhere in the world if you’ll just give me peace.”

I think God must have a sense of humor too because in my prayer I said, “But P.S. God, please don’t send me to Alaska because I hate the cold.”

Little did I know what lay ahead. As a result of what I thought was “sacrificing” my most prized earthly possession, God has blessed me far beyond all that I dreamed would ever be possible (not that it happened overnight). The ministry I believed God called me to has greatly expanded, and I am now living in, of all places, sunny, warm Southern California. It was no sacrifice!

I’ve learned through experience that you cannot out-give God.

If there’s something you are holding on to that is hindering you from becoming and doing what God wants you to be and do, consider it prayerfully and be willing to let go of it. As another has said, “Don’t sacrifice your future on the altar of the immediate.”

And as Jim Elliot, martyred missionary, said: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, if there is anything I am clinging to that is hindering my becoming and doing all that you envision for me to be and do, will you become ‘the Hound of Heaven’ in my life and show me what it is. And please give me the courage to let go of it to become all that you want me to be, and to do all that you would have me do. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Jesus in Matthew 6:33 (NIV).

2. Robert Fulghum, “Time to Sacrifice the Queen,” Reader’s Digest, August 1993, p. 136.

“Do you remember the Mercedes TV commercial a few years ago that showed a Mercedes crashing into a concrete wall during a safety test? An engineer in a white lab coat walks over after the crash and kneels down to examine the damage, which is minimal. A reporter then asks the engineer about Mercedes’ energy absorbing car body. After the engineer tells all about the unique design the reporter asks him why Mercedes doesn’t enforce their patent on the design, a design evidently copied by several other companies because of its success.

“The engineer then replied matter-of-factly, ‘Because some things in life are too important not to share.’ How true this is. There are many things in life that fall into this ‘too important not to share category.’ Advances in science, in medicine, in technology. But all of these pale in importance to that of sharing our faith.”²

As Billy Graham said, “I am convinced the greatest act of love we can ever perform for people is to tell them about God’s love for them in Christ.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, I come to you with all my fears, insecurities, and weaknesses but I’m available. Please use me today to be ‘as Christ’ to someone in need and help me in a loving way to share an appropriate word about you and my Christian faith. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Romans 10:15 (NKJV).

2. Rev. Steve Jackson, Sermon: “Come and See.”

NOTE: To have a vital role in God’s plan to reach the world with the saving gospel of Jesus Christ, please consider joining the People Power for Jesus group. See www.actsweb.org/people_power.

Alan Smith tells about a wrestler, Yussif, the Terrible Turk, “a 350-pound wrestling champion in Europe a couple of generations ago. After he won the European championship, he sailed to the United States to wrestle the American champion, whose name was Strangler Lewis—a little fellow by comparison who weighed just a shade over 200 pounds.

“Although he wasn’t very big, Strangler had a simple plan for defeating his opponents and it had never failed to work. He’d put his massive arm around the neck of his opponent and cut off the oxygen. Many an opponent had passed out in the ring with Strangler Lewis.

“The problem when he fought Yussif the Turk was that Yussif didn’t have a neck. His body went from his head to his massive shoulders. Lewis could never get his hold and it wasn’t long that the Turk flipped Lewis to the mat and pinned him. After winning the championship, the Turk demanded all five thousand dollars in gold. After he wrapped the championship belt around his vast waist, he stuffed the gold into the belt, and boarded the next ship back to Europe. He was a success! He had captured America’s glory and her gold!

“He set sail on the SS Bourgogne. Halfway across the Atlantic, a storm struck and the ship began to sink. Yussif went over the side with his gold still strapped around his body. The added weight was too much for the Turk and he sank like an anvil before they could get him into a lifeboat. He was never seen again.”²

“What a fool,” we say, but how many of us in reality (especially we in the West) spend so much of our lives investing in the pursuit of possessions and grasp onto them until our dying day?

As Jim Elliot said, “He is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep in order to gain that which he cannot lose.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, deliver me from the vain pursuit and grasping of material possessions, and help me to realize that my life does not consist in the abundance of things I possess, but in my love of, and in my service to you through serving others. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Luke 12:16-21 (NIV).

2. Contributed by Alan Smith, www.TFTD-online.com.

The story is told of a man who once bought a new radio, brought it home, and placed it on the refrigerator. He then plugged it in, turned it to WSM in Nashville (home of the Grand Ole Opry), and proceeded to do the most unusual thing. He pulled all the knobs off! He had already tuned in to all he ever wanted or expected to hear, and so he chose to limit his radio reception to one station.

“Most unusual,” we call it. But is it? Really? Many, if not most of us, if we will be honest, do the same thing in principle. Maybe not with our radio but we surely do with our life.

We all have what the communicators call selective exposure, selective attention, selective comprehension or perception, selective distortion, and selective retention. That is, people expose themselves only to messages they want to receive; hear only what they want to hear; perceive or see things the way they want to see them; twist and distort messages to match their preconceived perception of reality; and they remember only what they want to remember. Everything else is filtered or blocked out.

In other words, we hear, see, accept, remember, and apply only that which we want to hear, see, accept, remember and apply. Furthermore we believe only what we want to believe—and for many of us we choose to believe that which is convenient—regardless of its moral or lack of moral value. For instance, people accept abortion on face value because it is convenient. They accept abnormal, immoral sexuality because it, too, is convenient. And they reject God because, more often than not, they don’t want to change their lifestyle and be accountable, much more than for any intellectual reason.

As I’ve said before, if we don’t live the life we believe and know in our heart to be right, we will end up justifying and believing the life we live—a very dangerous, self-deceptive, and self-destructive path to follow.

God’s laws, all of them, are for our safety, protection, and survival. They are as universal as the law of gravity which holds the universe together. We can’t break the law of gravity. If we defy it, it will break us. Or rather, we will break ourselves trying to defy it. It’s the same with God’s moral laws. We can’t break them either. They, too, are universal. If we defy them, it isn’t God who will punish and break us, but rather we will punish and break ourselves trying to defy them. If we used our God-given intellectual reasoning we would understand this. But we don’t reason this way—we reason to find ways to justify what is most convenient for us at any given moment.

How soon we forget that “blessed is the nation [and individual] whose God is the Lord!” And as Jesus said, “Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember?”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, open my eyes and give me a listening, receptive heart so that I will see, hear, obey and live according to your words of eternal life….Thank you for your words of life and for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Jesus in Mark 8:18 (NIV).

Could you imagine what our society would be like in the West if we took away all the churches? And while I am tremendously thankful for all the good work that Christian churches have done—building schools, hospitals, homes for the aged, overseas missions and mission centers for the downtrodden, and numerous other social works—it would appear that, in the average U.S. church today, fewer than 10 percent of the people are doing 90 percent of the work.

Here’s the rub with many of today’s Christians, at least in the United States. As George Barna, well-known research specialist, calls it: “The Commitment Contradiction.”

Following is what Barna’s research found: “One reason why many evangelical churches across the nation are not growing is due to the image that non-Christian adults have of evangelical individuals [Christians]. In a nationwide survey released by the Barna Research Group of Ventura, California, among a representative sample of people who do not consider themselves to be Christian, the image of ‘evangelicals’ rated tenth out of eleven groups evaluated, beating out only prostitutes. Not good.

“Various studies conducted by Barna during 2002 … revealed that less than half of the people who describe themselves as Christian also described themselves as ‘absolutely committed to the Christian faith.’ Less than one out of every ten regular attendees of Christian churches give 10%—a tithe—or more of their income to their church.”²

Tragically, instead of giving God of our first-fruits, most of us who call ourselves Christian give God our leftovers. Giving through tithes and offerings is God’s way to finance his work on earth. If every Christian tithed their income and gave offerings—and invested these wisely in God’s work, God’s work would be done on earth. The hungry would be fed. The homeless would be sheltered. The cold would be clothed. Worldwide missions would flourish—and everyone in the world would be given the gospel.

Furthermore, the average church in America gives only 5% of its income to missions, spending 95% on itself. Certainly we need buildings but I struggle with multi-million dollar sanctuaries that are used only a few hours a week—a practice that very few—if any—secular business could justify.

As Barna also noted, “The persecution delivered by the [9-11] terrorist attacks has produced no increase in spiritual practices, such as attending worship services, reading the Bible, praying, or serving the needy. Giving levels actually decreased last year.”³

With terrorism on the increase throughout the world and the likelihood of it increasing even more, we Christians in America and the West need a Great Spiritual Awakening before it is too late. For eternal vigilance is still the price of freedom.

And while we know that the only hope for any kind of lasting peace in the world is by turning our lives over to the Prince of peace—the Lord Jesus Christ, unless we practice and live what we say we believe, we will not make any significant impact on the non-believing world. Furthermore, we will not stem the tide of evil and terrorism, and we will not help make our world a safer place in which to live for our children or our children’s children.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, may we Christians in the West and in the U.S. in particular stop taking our incredible freedoms for granted, and never forget that these were bought with a price—the blood of servicemen and women who gave their lives to protect us. And remind us again of how greatly you have blessed us because of the faith of so many of our founding fathers who put their trust in you and gave you reverence and honor. And may we repent of our sins, turn back to you, and become serious about our commitment to you and to our fellow man. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. James 1:22-24 (NIV).

2. Barna Research Online www.barna.org

3. Ibid.

Have you ever noticed that God doesn’t worry about being politically correct? Today’s politically “correct” society has all sorts of fancy watered down names for sin. We call a lie a fib (or “I misspoke”), adultery an affair, abortion a viable means of birth control, homosexuality an alternate lifestyle, etc., etc. But God doesn’t beat around the bush. Sin is sin is sin. To call poison by any other name would be deadly. To call sin by any other name is also deadly. If we do what we know is wrong, we sin. And if we know to do good, and don’t do it, we sin.

While I would disagree with a Buddhist monk on many issues, I totally agree with his statement when he said, “To know and not to do is not yet to know.”

To translate that into our Christian terminology it could be: “To believe and not to act is not yet to believe because I only truly believe that which motivates me to action.” Thus the Buddhist monk was right on when he said, “To know and not to do is not yet to know.”

If I say I am a follower of Christ and don’t do anything to help the poor, feed the hungry, care for the downtrodden in my community and in other parts of the world, nor support missions and those spreading the gospel, then I am not a follower of Jesus regardless of what I say I am. What I say is meaningless unless it is backed by my actions.

Every one of us can do something to be “as Christ” to somebody. Even if we are bedridden, we can still communicate Christ’s love to those who are ministering to us through a grateful and loving spirit, and we can pray for these nurses and doctors, and for those who are on the front line of action for Christ.

Thus, to know and not to do is not yet to know; or to believe and not to act is not yet to believe, for I only truly believe that which motivates me to action.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to be a ‘doer’ of your word and not just a ‘talker.’ And please help me always to be faithful in being ‘as Christ’ to every life I touch, ministering to people at their point of need and then communicating your love and the gospel message with those who are lost and need the Savior. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. James 4:17 (NIV).

I have two sons who are now grown. When they were little, every night I would hold them and rock them in my favorite rocking chair, tuck them into bed, and say their prayers with them. And then I would say positive affirmations to them such as, “I am so glad that God sent you to be a part of our family,” “I am so proud of you,” “I love you devotedly,” “You are very important to me,” and so on.

I would often whisper these positive affirmations in their ear while they were sleeping. I didn’t know if this ever had any influence on them or did any good, but I knew it wouldn’t hurt them.

I love to tell how, early one morning about 5AM, I slipped quietly into my youngest son’s bedroom through his open door. I was certain he was asleep—as he looked like an angel—so I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “O beloved of the Lord.” As quick as a flash he spun his head around and, looking upward, said in all sincerity, “Is that you, God!?”

I was totally taken aback, but when I regained my composure, I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “No, it’s not God, but he sent me to tell you that.”

On another occasion this same son was very upset with me and blurted out, “Why did you have me anyhow?”

As quick as a flash I replied, “Because you are a part of God’s eternal plan.”

And he is. And so are you. And so am I. And that’s why we are here on earth.

And as God wanted my son to know that he is loved by God, he wants you to know the same truth. No matter what you have ever done or have failed to do, God loves you totally, absolutely, and unconditionally. If you haven’t already done so, I trust and pray that you will realize this today!

For help to accept God’s love and forgiveness click on: www.actsweb.org/articles for the article, “How to Be Sure You’re a Real Christian—without having to be religious.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to see and remove any blocks in my life that may be stopping or hindering my being fully open to your love. Help me to accept your love and, in turn, communicate it to every life I touch. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

1. Jeremiah 31:3 (NIV).

Bruce D. Weaver of Newcomerstown, Ohio, shared the following experience: One summer evening, my wife and I drove to pick up our son from Vacation Bible School. The sky was growing dark and there was a storm watch in effect, but no rain was falling yet.

However, by the time we arrived home with our son, the wind was blowing fiercely and lightning bolts were coming down all around us. We hurried inside the house and began to shut windows. Within a few moments we were without electrical power. We tucked our son into bed, trying not to betray our concern regarding the severe weather conditions outside.

I stood beside a window on the west side of the house and looked at the sky, watching intently for a funnel cloud. Suddenly the telephone rang. It was our neighbor informing us that a “code red” had been issued for our area. He confirmed that that meant a tornado funnel cloud had been sighted close by. I asked him why the siren in our small town was not sounding. He informed me it was because of power outage. He further explained that he had heard on his police scanner instructions for everyone who could hear the scanner to call their neighbors to inform them of the “code red.” I was thankful for his concern and I was thankful that the funnel cloud sighted damaged neither my family nor anyone else in our area.

Later that evening, I thought about my neighbor’s concern for me and I reflected upon my concern, or lack thereof, for my neighbors. Certainly it is important to inform neighbors that a “code red” has been issued by the police, because a funnel cloud has been sighted in the area. But it is all the more important to inform neighbors that a “code red” has been issued by God, because in due time Jesus Christ will return.

God does not want anyone to be destroyed, so God has sounded a “code red,” but not everyone knows it has been sounded. Those of us who have been informed need to share the news with our neighbors that God’s judgment is certain and that, without accepting his full and free pardon, they will be doomed forever.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you for those who told me about your “code red” gospel message—how Jesus, your Son, died for my sins. Please use me to share your “code red” message to others and to join forces with those who are communicating your “code red” gospel message to people across the street and around the world. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

NOTE: To help spread God’s “code red” message around the world, please join with us as a People Power for Jesus partner. See https://learning.actsweb.org/people_power.php for more information and to sign in.

1. 2 Peter 3:9 (NIV).