Beautiful Freedom

Maximum Impact by Wayne Mack Love does not rejoice in personally doing what the Bible would call evil or sin. (Romans 1:32) Love does not enjoy doing evil to others. It does not enjoy treating others in an unjust fashion - the practice of oppressing others or putting undue pressure on people. It does not make unreasonable demands or engage in the practice of cheating others out of what is rightly theirs. It doesn't make promises that are not kept or fulfilled. Love does not rejoice in gossip or slander. Love does not rejoice in encouraging others to do what is wrong in the sight of God. Love does not enjoy watching others do evil. (Romans 1:32) Love does not get pleasure out of seeing others have evil done to them. Love does not enjoy exposing the sins and faults of others. Love does not feel good about making fun of others - about doing what the enemies of Christ did to Him in Luke 22 and Matthew 27. Love avoids doing what would make others feel uncomfortable or foolish o...

"His servants ye are to whom ye obey." — Romans 6:16 The first thing to do in examining the power that dominates me is to take hold of the unwelcome fact that I am responsible for being thus dominated. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because at a point away back I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because I have yielded myself to Him. Yield in childhood to selfishness, and you will find it the most enchaining tyranny on earth. There is no power in the human soul of itself to break the bondage of a disposition formed by yielding. Yield for one second to anything in the nature of lust (remember what lust is: "I must have it at once," whether it be the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind) - once yield and though you may hate yourself for having yielded, you are a bondslave to that thing. There is no release in human power at all but only in the Redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only One Who can break the ...

"Will ye also go away?" — John 6:67 A penetrating question. Our Lord's words come home most when He talks in the most simple way. We know Who Jesus is, but in spite of that He says - "Will ye also go away?" We have to maintain a venturing attitude toward Him all the time. "From that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him." They went back from walking with Jesus, not into sin, but they relapsed. Many to-day are spending and being spent in work for Jesus Christ, but they do not walk with Him. The one thing God keeps us to steadily is that we may be one with Jesus Christ. After sanctification the discipline of our spiritual life is along this line. If God gives a clear and emphatic realization to your soul of what He wants, do not try to keep yourself in that relationship by any particular method, but live a natural life of absolute dependence on Jesus Christ. Never try to live the life with God on any other line than God...

C. H. Spurgeon "lt is better to trust in the Lord, than to put confidence in man."—Psalm 118:8. OUBTLESS the reader has been tried with the temptation to rely upon the things which are seen, instead of resting alone upon the invisible God. Christians often look to man for help and counsel, and mar the noble simplicity of their reliance upon their God. Does this evening's portion meet the eye of a child of God anxious about temporals, then would we reason with him awhile. You trust in Jesus, and only in Jesus, for your salvation, then why are you troubled? "Because of my great care." Is it not written, "Cast thy burden upon the Lord"? "Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication make known your wants unto God." Cannot you trust God for temporals? "Ah! I wish I could." If you cannot trust God for temporals, how dare you trust Him for spirituals? Can you trust Him for your soul's redemption, and not re...