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Is There Room in Your Heart for Jesus?

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 51

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Is There Room in Your Heart for Jesus?

Is there room in your heart for Jesus? This question comes to bear during the Christmas season with the ‘no room in the inn’ saga of Mary and Joseph. Verlyn Verrugge wrote along these lines with the following. “There was pain in Bethlehem on Christmas night. There was rejection in Bethlehem. We today stand by the manger and marvel and rejoice at the Child born to Mary in a barn. ‘Joy to the world, the Lord has come,’ we sing. But on that first Christmas night, there were no doubt tears in the eyes of Joseph and Mary. Nobody in their family circle would help them. Nobody cared. The only ones who did come to the manger to witness the child were the lowly night-watch shepherds, directed there by God himself, while the prim and proper—yes, and self-righteous—relatives were right upstairs, missing the most awesome birth in the history of the human race. How incredibly sad!”1

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What Is the Meaning of the Star in the Christmas Story?

 

[Tweet “She gave birth to her firstborn son… laid him in a manger… b/c there was no room for them in the inn.”]

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Using Your Faith to Combat Injustice

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 50

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Using Your Faith to Combat Injustice

How are we supposed to deal with injustices and still be a person of Christlike character? The following illustration begins to answer that question. — During the Great Depression, my father moved to a farm as a tenant. He signed a contract stating that he and the owner would share equally in the proceeds from milk and crops. In the fall, however, the landlord wouldn’t give us our share of the money from the wheat crop. Dad’s appeals to him accomplished nothing, so he consulted a Christian lawyer. Reading the fine print in the contract, the lawyer advised my father that he could take no legal action.

The landowner was unethical, but he had been clever enough to keep out of trouble. Rather humorously, the lawyer said, “Mr. Vander Lught, you have three choices. You can kill the crook and get yourself in deep trouble. You can cheat him and become like him. Or you can take the wrong and let God take care of you and him.” —Herbert Vander Lught. 1 One day Jesus gave us a parable along the lines of injustice. How did He say that we should respond? Let’s take a look at this in this week’s Light on Life.

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Why Doing the Word of God Is The Ticket to Success

[Tweet “Jesus wants to encourage us, specifically, when a child of God is facing injustice.”]

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Why You Can Learn from Rabbis about Being a Doer of the Word

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 49

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Why You Can Learn from Rabbis about Being A Doer of the Word

It is one thing to memorize certain verses in the Bible. It is another to be a doer of the Word that you’ve remembered. There is a story of a missionary in Korea who had a visit from a native convert who lived a hundred miles away, and who walked four days to reach the mission station. The pilgrim recited proudly, without a single mistake, the whole of the Sermon on the Mount. The missionary was delighted, but he felt that he ought to warn the man that memorizing was not enough—that it was necessary to practice the words as well as to memorize them.

The Korean’s face lit up with happy smiles. “That is the way I learned it,” he said. “I tried to memorize it, but it wouldn’t stick. So I hit upon this plan—I would memorize a verse and then find a heathen neighbor of mine and practice it on him. Then I found it would stick.” Scripture is the guideline for a believer’s life. Are you just reading the Bible, or are you doing it?1

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The Astounding Secret of Not Forgetting God

[Tweet “Who is truly pious? The person who studies the Word and who practices what he’s studied.”]

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Is Praise and Worship the Pillars of Your House [Encore Podcast]

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 48

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Is Praise and Worship Pillars of Your House?

Recently, I ran across this illustration that shows how praise and worship should be pillars of our house.  In the Chilean village of Chungungo water is nearly as valuable as precious metal. The region is arid and parched, forcing the village to truck in freshwater over dirt roads from miles away. Until recently the average person could afford a mere four gallons a day (compare that to the average American who uses ninety gallons a day), and buying even that meager amount soaked up 10 percent of household incomes. In Chungungo bathing was a luxury. But then scientists experimented with an ingenious new system for obtaining water. The 330 residents of Chungungo now drink water—the freshest they have ever tasted—from high above, atop nearby El Tofo mountain.

Under the direction of Dr. Robert Schemenauer, a Canadian cloud physicist, workers hung on eucalyptus poles a “wall” of finely woven propylene nets, each the size of eight queen-size bed sheets sewn together. Seventy-five such nets sift the clouds that sweep in incessantly from the Pacific Ocean. A close look at the plastic nets reveals propylene fibers meshed in tiny triangles. Like dew collects on grass, infinitesimally small water particles from fog collect on these fibers. Ten thousand such water particles must coalesce to produce one drop of water the size of a tear. Still, each water net collects forty gallons of water a day. The seventy-five nets on El Tofo sift a total of three thousand gallons daily from the drifting clouds and fog.

Sometimes our lives feel as dry and parched as the rocky soil around Chungungo, where only shrubs and cactus grow. What we need are spiritual water nets. Few things will flood the reservoirs of your soul like giving thanks to God.1 It’s that Thanksgiving time of the year. Worship, praise and thanksgiving, that’s what we’re talking about in this week’s Light on Life.

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Why It’s Important to Flow in Faith’s Domain

[Tweet “The higher you go in God, the stronger, the more stout your pillars need to be.”]

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Why Doing the Word of God Is The Ticket to Success

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 47

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Why Doing the Word of God Is The Ticket to Success

The Bible is a book that speaks to your everyday life. George Mueller, who was known for his strong faith, confided. “The first three years after conversion, I neglected the Word of God. Since I began to search it diligently, the blessing has been wonderful. I have read the Bible through one hundred times and always with increasing delight!” 1 Reading the Bible is the preliminary to strong, active faith. But, it’s only the beginning. You can’t just read it. You have to put what Bible you have read to use in your everyday life. The secret to a healthy spiritual life is in the using. The power of God is in the using. The growth is in the using. In today’s post, we take a look at why you should consider the Bible as an everyday resource for your life, one that you don’t just hear but act on.

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What Is Your Testimony of Jesus?

[Tweet “Many of us were not raised to put the Word of God to use. We’ve had to learn that.”]

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What is the Blessing Side of the Hand of God?

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 46

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What is the Blessing Side of the Hand of God?

Proverbs 21:1 says the king’s heart is in the hand of God. That means all the kings, not just the good ones, not just the righteous ones. So, in last week’s podcast, we honed in on the phrase ‘the Hand of the Lord’. What does that mean, ‘the heart of the king is in the hand of God?’ The Bible speaks of the ‘hand of the Lord,’ the ‘finger of God,’ and the arm of the Lord. But here, in Proverbs twenty-one verse one, we have the hand of God, not arm or finger. We saw that the phrase ‘the hand of the Lord’ or the phrase ‘the hand of God’ occurs fifty-five times in the Bible. What is the Hand of God? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Is it something you want to experience or something you don’t want to experience? And so, we looked at the negative side, the judgment side of the hand of the Lord. We saw it manifest in the case of Israel’s sin. We saw it visible in the New Testament of Ananias and Saphira, and we pretty much determined that we don’t want any of that ‘hand of the Lord’ in judgment business because our God is a consuming fire. There is a positive side to the hand of the Lord. There is a blessing side. As believers, we want all there is of the blessing which comes from the hand of God in our daily life. The heart of the king is in the hand of God. That’s what we are talking about in this week’s Light on Life.

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Why We Have Limited Manifestations of the Spirit

[Tweet “Physical strength is rooted in the spirit of man, not the muscles of man. It has spiritual roots.”]

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What is the Hand of the Lord?

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 45 - Encore Episode

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What is the Hand of the Lord?

William J. Wolfe has called Abraham Lincoln “one of the greatest theologians of America.” He added that Lincoln’s theology was profound, “not in the technical meaning of producing a system of doctrine, certainly not as the defender of someone denomination, but in the sense of seeing the hand of God intimately in the affairs of nations.” 1 The hand of God is seen among the nations and appears in the well-known verse in Proverbs 21:1. In today’s Light on Life, we will look at the phrase ‘The hand of the Lord’ and how it applies to the rulers of the nations.

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Why Mixing Sacred and Unsacred Is Not a Good God Thing

[Tweet “God’s little pinky finger is enough to knock the devil completely out of commission.”]

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What Is God’s Response to the Gay Lifestyle?

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 44

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What Is God's Response to the Gay Lifestyle?

Let’s start out with this question today. What Is God’s Response to the Gay Lifestyle? And the follow-up question to that is what should your response be as a child of God to this lifestyle choice? And I say choice because it is a choice. Robert L. Spitzer, the Columbia University psychiatry professor who convinced the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973, is now stirring controversy again by saying that homosexuals can change their orientation—if they want to. “The subjects’ self-reports of change appear to be, by and large, valid, rather than gross exaggerations, brainwashing or wishful thinking,” he summarizes. Spitzer interviewed 153 men and 47 women who said counseling had helped to change their sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. ABC News sums up the data: “66 percent of the men and 44 percent of the women reached what he called good heterosexual functioning—a sustained, loving heterosexual relationship within the past year, getting enough emotional satisfaction to rate at least a 7 on a 10-point scale.”1 God’s Response to the Gay Lifestyle that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Challenging the Monumental and Mammoth Enemy of Weariness

[Tweet “How can you lead people into the Kingdom if you won’t have anything to do with them?”]

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Why the Jesus Way Means Total Trust All the Time

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 43

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Why the Jesus Way Means Total Trust All the Time

Robert Schuller relays this family story about the issue of total trust. In his words, he says, “One problem I remember was a time when our son Bob broke our trust and lied to his mother and me. He was still young, dating Linda, his wife-to-be, and was only allowed to see her on certain nights. Well, one night, he wanted to see her without permission and told us he was at his friend’s house. When we found out the truth, there was a real scene between us. He had violated our trust; it was like a crack in a fine cup that marred its appearance. In the confrontation, I smashed a fine English teacup on the floor and told Bob that to restore our trust would be like gluing that cup back together again.

He said, “I don’t know if I can do that.” And I said, “Well, that’s how hard it is to build confidence and trust again.” The outcome was that Bob spent weeks carefully gluing the pieces together until he finished. He learned a vital lesson. 1 There are lessons here in this story that help us in understanding what it means to follow Jesus. Believing and then abiding in Him means total trust all the time. Robert’s son violated parental trust, and it caused a momentary ‘crack’ in their relationship. Continuing in the words of your Father God builds an intact trust. Why the Jesus Way Means Total Trust Total Time is our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Is Suicide the Unpardonable Sin?

[Tweet “Real disciples continue, they persevere, they work the Word until the Word works.”]

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More of Why Believing and Abiding Is the Key to the Happy Life

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 42

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More of Why Believing and Abiding Is the Key to the Happy Life

In last week’s podcast, entitled Why Believing and Abiding Is the Key to the Happy Life, we began to focus on what believing and abiding in Jesus means. We saw that to ‘believe’ means to entrust oneself to an entity in complete confidence, with the implication of total commitment to the one who is trusted. We understood that ‘abiding’ means to continue in a specific state, condition, or activity. And, that when you weave these concepts together, you come up with total commitment – total time. That is that God wants you to trust Him all the way all the time for your entire life. In this podcast, we pick-up where we left off last week as we continue to hone in on what Jesus meant when He said, if you abide in me, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. More of why believing and abiding is the key to a happy life. That’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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How Meditating the Word Makes You Sharp in the Things of God [Encore]

[Tweet “Continue in the Word – Total trust for total time – that’s the litmus test of effective discipleship.”]

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Why Believing and Abiding Is the Key to the Happy Life

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 41

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Why Believing and Abiding Is the Key to the Happy Life

Missionary pioneer J. Hudson Taylor of China was working and worrying so frantically that his health was about to break. Just when his friends feared he was near a breakdown, Taylor received a letter from fellow missionary John McCarthy that told of a discovery McCarthy had made from John 15—the joy of abiding in Christ. McCarthy’s letter said in part: Abiding, not striving nor struggling, looking off unto Him, trusting Him for present power … this is not new, and yet ’tis new to me.… Christ literally all seems to me now the power, the only power for service; the only ground for unchanging joy. As Hudson Taylor read this letter at his mission station in Chin-kiang on Saturday, September 4, 1869, his own eyes were opened. “As I read,” he recalled, “I saw it all. I looked to Jesus, and when I saw, oh how the joy flowed!”

Writing to his sister in England, he said: As to work, mine was never so plentiful, so responsible, or so difficult; but the weight and strain are all gone. The last month or more has been perhaps the happiest of my life, and I long to tell you a little of what the Lord has done for my soul.… When the agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before. Believing and abiding is the key to a happy life. That’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.1

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What Are Fruitful and Unfruitful Places with God?

[Tweet “The word ‘abide’ is also a favorite word of John. He uses this word forty times in his gospel.”]

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How God Delivered Me from A Brain Aneurysm [Encore Podcast]

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 40

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How God Delivered Me from A Brain Aneurysm

We’re doing an encore podcast this week because Sharon just celebrated her sixtieth birthday. Eighteen years ago, she suffered a brain aneurysm. So, we thought it was fitting and right to re-air how God brought her through. Just know today that Jesus is a healing Jesus and what He did for her, He can and will do for you.

This is an encore episode of Sharon Horvath’s miraculous healing testimony from a brain aneurysm. This podcast first aired in April of 2015.

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Faith and Prayer: Important Lessons to Know

[Tweet “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivers him out of them all.”]