Five-Fold Today - Prayers In the Schools - A Call To Commitment - A Joshua Generation - I Never Change - The Cross Day By Day - Precious Risk Takers
Prayers In the Schools
Darrell Scott
Since the dawn of creation there has been both good & evil in the hearts
of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of
violence. The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the
deaths of that heroic teacher, and the other eleven children who died must
not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.
The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out
in the field. The villain was not the club he used. Neither was it the
NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the
reason for the murder could only be found in Cain's heart. In the days
that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers
began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the
NRA…
I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy - it was
a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real
blame lies! Much of the blame lies here in this room. Much of the blame
lies behind the pointing fingers of the accusers themselves. I wrote a
poem that expresses my feelings best. This was written way before I knew I
would be speaking here today:
Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, soul, and
spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we
create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and reek
havoc. Spiritual influences were present within our educational systems
for most of our nation's history. Many of our major colleges began as
theological seminaries. This is a historical fact. What has happened to us
as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the
doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as
Columbine's tragedy occurs politicians immediately look for a scapegoat
such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that
contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties.
We do not need more restrictive laws. Eric and Dylan would not have been
stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who
spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within
our own hearts. Political posturing and restrictive legislation are not
the answers.
The young people of our nation hold the key. There is a spiritual
awakening taking place that will not be squelched! We do not need more
religion. We do not need more gaudy television evangelists spewing out
verbal religious garbage. We do not need more million dollar church
buildings built while people with basic needs are being ignored. We do
need a change of heart and a humble acknowledgment that this nation was
founded on the principle of simple trust in God!"
As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two
friends murdered before his very eyes, he did not hesitate to pray in
school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right! I challenge
every young person in America, and around the world, to realize that on
April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School prayer was brought back to our
schools.
Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain. Dare to
move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that
violates your God given right to communicate with Him. To those of you who
would point your finger at the NRA - I give to you a sincere challenge.
Dare to examine your own heart before casting the first stone! My
daughter's death will not be in vain! The young people of this country
will not allow that to happen!"
-----------------------
Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, a victim of the Columbine High
School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, was invited to address the House
Judiciary Committee's subcommittee. What he said to our national leaders
during this special session of Congress was painfully truthful. They were
not prepared for what he was to say, nor was it received well.
It needs to be heard by every parent, every teacher, every politician,
every sociologist, every psychologist, and every so-called expert! These
courageous words spoken by Darrell Scott are powerful, penetrating, and
deeply personal. There is no doubt that God sent this man as a voice
crying in the wilderness.
A Call To Commitment
Jane Jacobson
Be not concerned with the plight of many around you unless I speak to
you and send you for a purpose. They need to learn to hear what the
Spirit is saying. They have ears but have been walking in their own
ways. I will have you carry their burdens no longer. It is time for them
to come up to the higher places and make better choices and turn to Me
to know Me as Lord. They refuse to bend their knees although many are
saved. They listen to logic and philosophies not of Me. They ride on the
wind and are tossed as a ship on the sea with no rudder, or path to
follow.
I will open new doors for many to take the message of Christ to places
where it will be received. Wipe the dust from your feet as directed. As
Christ wept over Jerusalem because of the hardness of their hearts and
because they did not receive Him, you too will walk away from certain
situations and people who refuse to receive you or the word I send with
you. I will use you, and the Spirit will work in glory and power as your
energies and obedience are sent to those who have ears to hear...saved
and unsaved ones. Does not My word say to be hot or cold but not
luke-warm?...or I will spew you out of My mouth?
Exact timing is necessary. Empty yourselves of your will and desires and
let the Spirit of God fill you and direct you. None of you and All of
Him. You must walk in the Spirit of God to have victory! Do not operate
out of good ideas and the flesh for they would drain you and not have
the success you imagined. They may even hinder the work that I do.
Be encouraged for I have come to bring life, and more abundantly. This is
a new time. A resurrection. It is life that I come to bring. To refresh, to
change, to renew,to heal, to transform,to deliver, to save. Come out of
the old dead works and grave clothes and step out in New Life, the
resurrected Christ which is within you.
jjacobson13@sprint.ca
A Joshua Generation
Robin Bohlin
I am indeed raising up the "Joshua Generation." This is the generation
who will see my face and knows my ways. Storming the gates of hell and
restoring my kingdom is their role. With swords drawn and battle gear
on they are the dragon-slayers; defeating the evilness that prevails,
through purity and righteousness. Lo, I am consecrating them even now
and setting them apart from this perverse generation. They shall wave
the banner of courage and boldness; I will put on their heads a garland
of honor and strength. I commission them from this day hence to sound
the charge. And when you see them, My glory shall be around them as it
was with Moses as he descended the mountain. Prepare for the coming
days; commit to pray, strengthen and encourage these young warriors, for
great
is their role in My kingdom. The time has now come for the spirit of
Joshua to rise and conquer and to claim the promise land.
Joshua 1:6-7 "Be strong and courageous for you shall give this people
possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.
Only be strong and very courageous; be careful to do according to all
the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the
right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go."
Joshua 1:9 "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do
not tremble or be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever
you go."
rojo58@juno.com
I Never Change
Ras Robinson
Seek after Me during the busy times when you think you
cannot seek anything or anyone else. You will find Me there where I
have always been, deep in your heart where I will be forever. I never
change, have never broken a promise nor have I failed to be consistent
with Myself. Things around you may change but I never change for I am
true to Myself. You are the apple of My eye and the object of My
affection. It delights me when you come to Me for I love you and desire
to be with you. You have been listening to the enemy who tells you that
you are not important to Me, that I do not have time for you. But I say
to you that I have all eternity saved up for you and me to spend
intimate time together. Seek Me.
Mark 6:31
Fullness in Christ Church
The Cross Day By Day
L. E. Maxwell
The facts of Christian experience indicate that most believers wander
for some time in the wilderness of Romans 7, in the land of a mixed and
divided affection, before they enter into the life of victory in Christ.
The great apostle himself reveals the tragic breakdown of his own inner
life subsequent to his conversion, when he cries out in an
agony of despair, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from
the body of this death?" (Romans 7:24.) He then learned what he later
wrote in Romans 6:11: "Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto
sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." He came to see
that God's deliverance from that loathsome self-life is not through
resolution, but through reckoning on co-crucifixion with Jesus Christ.
Sooner or later most of us as believers awaken to a sense of our sinful
selfhood. We, too, would live for Christ. We hunger and thirst after
righteousness, but, alas, how tragically self-will thwarts the flow of
the living waters. The stream of our life is mixed and muddy. We fight and
pray and struggle. We redouble our resolutions. We see that we must
experience an inner crucifixion; that the Cross must be at the heart of our
Christian lives. We try to crucify
ourselves, but all to no avail. Self cannot, will not, crucify self.
Finally, in utter self-despair we sign our own death sentence, sinking
into our death-union with the Crucified. We let go and let God, yielding
ourselves in total self-surrender. Once and for all we take by faith the
position God gives us of death and resurrection with Christ.
To one who asked George Mueller the secret of his service, he replied:
"There was a day when I died" and, as he spoke, he bent lower, until he
almost touched the floor. Continuing, he added, "Died to George Mueller, his
opinions, preferences, tastes, and will; died to the world, its approval or
censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren or friends; and
since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God." Such is
the beginning of a life of Christian victory--but it is only a beginning.
This
death-position once taken must then be learned. The life of the Crucified
must be received moment by moment. There is the Cross once and for all, and
there is the "cross daily." It is a lifelong process. "If any man will come
after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me"
(Luke 9:23). This matter of the Cross once-for-all and the "cross daily" is
what Bishop Moule calls an "inexhaustible paradox: on one side, a true and
total self-denial; on the other, a daily need of self-crucifixion." We are
followers of the Crucified. We must surrender to Him once-for-all.
But there is also what has been called the "spread-out-surrender, a
surrender which covers our whole sphere of action and lasts all our
days." In remarking upon the "cross daily" Bishop Moule insists that it
is "without intermission, without holiday; now, today, this hour; and
then, tomorrow! And the daily "cross" something which is to be the
instrument of disgrace and execution . . . . And what will that
something be? Whatever gives occasion for ever deeper test of our
self-surrender . . . whatever exposes to shame and death the old aims,
and purposes, and plans, the old spirit of self and its life." New
occasions, fresh tests, difficult circumstances--all bring us up against
the question of the will of God, or the will of self. If we are hungry
to go on with the Lord, if we have an appetite whetted for reality at
any cost, then we will set our faces like a flint Cross-ward. Each of us
will find "his cross" in his daily pathway--waiting at his feet.
Providential circumstances bring us up against choices which cross self.
These will become the instruments of death to our own wills. The Bishop of
Durham sums up the daily cross as: "Some small trifle of daily routine; a
crossing of personal preference in very little things; accumulation of
duties, unexpected interruption, unwelcome distraction. Yesterday these things merely fretted you and,
internally at least, "upset" you. Today, on the contrary, you take them
up, and stretch your hands out upon them, and let them be the occasion
of deeper death for that old self. You take them up in loving,
worshiping acceptance. You carry them to Calvary in thankful submission.
And tomorrow you will do the same." Many times you have cried, "Anything
but that, Lord." You have feared it might come upon you. And there it
is, staring you in the face. To obey God will now occasion new pain and
shame and disgrace. But in the divine wisdom it will apply Calvary more
deeply to self. Take it up, therefore, stretch your hands out upon it,
and there make a fresh break with self.
When Christ shouldered His cross, He went forth to lay down His life. That
is what you will do as His follower. He means you to embrace this new test
as His instrument of
your own undoing. There you unlearn self and learn Christ. That
circumstance, when embraced, is your "cross." We must not think of our
cross as something compulsory or unavoidable such as misfortune, infirmity,
or calamity. Our cross is the voluntary embracing of a path which exposes
self to fresh denial, disgrace, and death, and which may actually cost us
our life. Has some
occasion caught the reader in a net of suspicion, slander, and
humiliation? Shrink not. "Expose yourself to the circumstances
of His choice." All things are subject to Christ, and all things work
together for good to those who love God. Take up this circumstance,
therefore, as your cross; shoulder it and go forth to lose your life.
The "world" knows only how to "take it on the chin." But we take it up,
embrace it as our cross, stretch out our hands upon it, and lay down our
lives. You may be handicapped in health. It is the one thing you cannot
get over. Now welcome your weakness, and take it up as the instrument of
a new death to old ambition and pride. Paul embraced the "thorn" even
though it was a "messenger of Satan" to buffet him. He learned: "When I
am weak, then am I strong." Have you been utterly misrepresented and
your good evil spoken of? The Saviour says: "Rejoice ye in that day, and
leap for joy." But, before you can rejoice, you must first stretch forth
your hands, and be nailed, as it were, to that very falsehood. A man of
God had embraced the pathway of reproach for Christ and had left a
modernistic church. He was maligned and falsely accused as being a
"holier-than-thou" kind of Christian. As he turned away, answering them
never a word, the Spirit of glory illuminated this truth: "If ye be
reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye." He was happy beyond
words. Thus it is that we learn to die daily, "always bearing about in
the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might
be made manifest in our body! (II Cor. 4:10).
Our lives must be poured again and again into the mold of the cross--"made
conformable unto His death." In his book, The Cross of Christ, F. J. Huegel
quotes from the Sunday School Times as follows: Dr. J. G. Fleming tells how,
in the days of the Boxer uprising in China, Boxers captured a mission school,
blocked all gates but one, placed a cross before it, and sent in word
that anyone who trampled on that cross would go free, but that anyone
who stepped around it would be killed. The first seven, we are told,
trampled on the cross, and were allowed to go free. The eighth, a girl,
knelt before the cross, and was shot. All the rest in a line of a
hundred students followed her example.
In order to avoid pain, humiliation, disgrace, and death, we can trample on
our cross and go forth to a false freedom; or, we can kneel in "worshipful
acceptance," and carry it to our Calvary "in thankful submission," there to find the
liberty wherewith Christ sets us free, the life that is hid with Christ
in God, the joy that is unspeakable and full of glory.
And all throughlife I see a cross,
Taken from Born Crucified by L.E. Maxwell.
Precious Risk Takers
Tim Plett
I sense the Lord has a word for his precious risk takers. There may
be a tired, burned out risk taker out there who needs to hear it.
My dear risk takers. I have been there with you when you have taken a
risk and stepped out into something new. I have been there with you in
your successes. I have also been there with you in your failures, working
through you even then. I have been there with you when you stumbled in
your attempt to dance the dance of grace. I have been there with you when
you skinned your knees and bruised your elbows. I have been there when you
have been corrected and submitted with grace. I have been there when you
cried in humiliation over a failure. I have been there when you were
criticized for risks others thought foolish.
And in it all you have grown. I have used even your weakness. Through it
all you have grown into a brokenhearted warrior, bold and strong, yet
tender, sensitive and submitted.
My precious, precious reckless risk taker. I love you. I am not ashamed to
call you servant, child and friend. I am honored when you take the risk of
throwing yourself with abandon onto My grace. I am honored when you say no
to fear and yes to me. I am honored by a heart that treasures Me above all
else. I am honored when you declare Me to be your Joy and Satisfaction.
I am honored when you risk for the sake of pearl of great price. I am
honored when you value the worth of My name above your own reputation. I
am honored when you follow Me without knowing the end from the beginning.
I am honored when you risk being thought a fool for My sake.
You are mine. Do count the cost of taking risks for me. There are costs
as the world calls costs. Rest, drink deeply from the well of My grace.
But don't retreat behind a wall of self protection. You will not find Me
there. Keep on. Keep on. Keep on. Keep on. Fruit will come. Harvest will
come. You will see Me. For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.
Blessings,
Tim
tplett1@mb.sympatico.ca
March 3, 2001
You've stripped away our heritage, You've outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms, and precious children die.
You seek for answers everywhere, And ask the question "Why?"
You regulate restrictive laws, Through legislative creed.
And yet you fail to understand, That God is what we need!"
Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not
even have a chance to eat, he said to them, "Come with me by yourselves
to a quiet place and get some rest."
http://www.fullnessonline.org
E-mail: fullness@airmail.net
Where the sons of God yield up their breath;
There is no gain except by loss;
There is no life except by death;
No glory but by bearing shame;
No justice but by taking blame;
And that Eternal Passion saith--
Be emptied of glory and might and name.
Has the reader embraced "his cross" today?
And tomorrow will you do the same?
Submitted by the DiggersFive-Fold Today Archives
The Lord has given us the grace to reconcile the children to their Fathers
As One Body
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