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The Rewards and Blessings of the Highly Diligent

Scripture List

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There are rewards and blessings for those who walk in diligence.

Diligence, the Bible speaks a great deal of the importance of this word as it connects to our everyday life. What is diligence and what do the scriptures say about this all-important character trait? Here are a plethora of Bible verses on the subject. You could even call this a scripture list of which there are already several on this website. The truth is the more fanatical you are about Jesus, the more fervent and zealous you are about His plan for your life, the greater the impact you are going to make for the Kingdom of God. Let’s drill down a bit into this life-changing Bible word.

[Tweet “With diligence, you cleave to God’s Word and by doing so you reap His blessings.”]

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#S4-025: Secrets to Hearing God: Are You Waiting? [Encore Podcast]

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Waiting on God Helps You Hear God

In close connection with listening to God is the idea of waiting on God. People are hindered from receiving direction from God simply because they are not waiting around long enough to hear what He has to say. We are religiously praying instead of spiritually listening. Waiting to hear is part of the prayer discipline.

This is Part Two of the Series Secrets to Hearing God. You can find Part One by clicking “Secrets to Hearing God: Are You Listening? [Podcast]

[Tweet “Calmness, understanding, and strength are never the companions of hurry.”]

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Why You Need To Walk In The Light to Enjoy Fellowship 

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You Can Have a Rich and Full Fellowship with God

During World War II, the enemy conducted experiments to find the most effective type of punishment for eliciting information from prisoners. They found that solitary confinement was the most effective. After a few days of solitary confinement, most men would tell all. That is why we need fellowship—without it, we too become easy prey for temptation and abandonment of our values.1 Fellowship is what we are going to look at today. What is fellowship? The word is one of those ingrained Christian words. It ranks up there with the word prayer, faith, grace, and righteousness. But what is real fellowship with God?

[Tweet “Fellowship is not a one-way street. Joint participation is a better way of looking at the word fellowship.”]

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#S4-024: The Good News Is the Bad News Was Wrong [Podcast]

Revival Fire for the Twenty First Century

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The Age of Miracles Has Not Passed Away. That's Good News!

Miracles, we see them in the Bible, a book which spans 4000 years of recorded history. From the very first book of the Bible where God healed Abimelech in response to Abraham’s prayer in Genesis 20:17 all the way through to the leaves of healing from the Tree of Life in Revelation 22: 2, we see God’s desire for man to be ‘every bit whole.’ Yet there are those who say it’s all in the past. That the age of miracles has ceased. That God waited until the death of the last apostle and then removed His miracle hand from the earth because now we have His Word. Or, at least that’s the theory of it. This ideology has a name. It is called cessationism. Cessationists believe that when the Old Testament canon closed at Malachi, for the next 400 years until John the Baptist, the gifts had ceased. Similarly, when the New Testament canon closed the gifts ceased.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessationism] Well if God doesn’t do miracles any more, than that’s bad news. But, I’m here to tell you today that the good news is, the bad news was wrong. That’s what we’re talking about on this week’s Light on Life.

Listen to the Audio

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[Tweet “How can people say healing is no more when we have historical records from the Church Fathers?”]

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Are You Over Prioritizing Your Everyday Life?

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Are You Over Prioritizing Your Life?

Someone asked Emily Post, “What is the correct procedure when one is invited to the White House and has a previous engagement?” She answered, “An invitation to lunch or dine at the White House is a command, and automatically cancels any other engagement.” 1 The issue is one of priority. There are life’s situations which take precedence. What about God and His Kingdom? Is there a priority we need to observe in the realm of the Spirit? The word ‘priority’ is not a Bible word but the concept is. It is epitomized by the word ‘first’ in such passages as Matthew 6:33. Many in our generation are experiencing the pains of an overload. We overcommit and overprioritize. Practicing the concept of ‘first things’ is a sure way of helping you navigate the maze.

[Tweet “Taking take care of your family is a responsibility, not a calling. There’s a difference.”]

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Why You Should Not Pass Up the Opportunity to Destroy Little Giants

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Learn to Deafeat Little Ginats before the Big Ones Come Along
  • David had confidence that he could defeat giants like Goliath because he had experience taking on lions and bears. The lesson we need to learn is that we need to work with God to defeat the little giants before we take on the Goliaths we may be confronted with.

1 Samuel 17:32–36 (ESV) — 32 And David said to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.” 33 And Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him, for you are but a youth, and he has been a man of war from his youth.” 34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant used to keep sheep for his father. And when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, 35 I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him. 36 Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.”

  • Many are just waiting around.
  • They are not using their faith against the small stuff of life.
  • David didn’t do this.
  • The confidence that he needed to boldly declare to the King that he could take this huge enemy on came from many experiences of taking on much smaller giants.
  • David slew the lions and the bears and that’s he knew Goliath was toast.

[Tweet “David slew the lions and the bears and that’s how he knew Goliath was toast.”]

Taken while visiting the Oklahoma City Zoo. For more of our travels check out our Instagram account.© 2017 Emery Horvath

For more ‘photo posts’ see ‘Are You Stoked about God’s New Sensational City?

 

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#S4-023: Secrets to Hearing God: Are You Listening [Encore Podcast]

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Here Are Three Secrets to Help You Pickout God's Voice in the Midst of the Crowded Voices

This story on listening is an appropriate intro into our new series on learning to hear God’s voice. Barbara, five, had disobeyed me and was sent to her room. After a few minutes, I went in to talk with her about what she had done. Teary-eyed, she asked, “Why do we do wrong things, Mommy?” “Sometimes the Devil tells us to do something wrong, and we listen to him,” I said. “We need to listen to God instead.” “But God doesn’t talk loud enough!” she wailed.1 How loud God speaks is not the determining factor in hearing Him. Knowing how to listen is so much more vital. Here are three tips for helping you hear your Father God in your heart as you walk out your everyday life.

[Tweet “If God’s voice is a still quiet voice then guess what you have to do in order to hear it?”]

Listen to the Audio

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Why You Can Be Thrilled With God’s Excellence

The Second Epistle of Peter

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You Can Be Thrilled with God's Excellence

Are you in love with excellence? Does it thrill your heart when you see it displayed? Gene Stallings tells of an incident when he was defensive backfield coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Two All-Pro players, Charlie Waters and Cliff Harris, were sitting in front of their lockers after playing a tough game against the Washington Redskins. They were still in their uniforms, and their heads were bowed in exhaustion. Waters said to Harris, “By the way, Cliff, what was the final score?” As these men show, excellence isn’t determined by comparing our score to someone else’s. Excellence comes from giving one’s best, no matter the score.1

[Tweet “Excellence is doing things well. It is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.”]

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#S4-022: Breakthrough Revivals: Important Spirit Lessons We Can Learn [Podcast]

Revival Fire for the Twenty First Century

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God can breakthrough in Revival power in the lives of people in your world.

Throughout the course of divinely spiritual history, God has chosen to breakthrough among men in power. At times, these visits are very focused and powerfully penetrating. Especially when men have fallen and slipped into perpetual carnality and carelessness. We saw in last week’s podcast that revivals of religion are scriptural. We looked at an Old Testament example with King Asa. What about the New Testament? Are there any revivals of God’s Presence there? The answer is one hundred percent yes. The Book of Acts lays out for us some of the essential components of breakthrough revivals.

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[Tweet “The combo of the preached Word and the Spirit moving is what caused breakthrough in Ephesus.”]

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Are You Complacent or A Zealous Jesus Disciple?

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Are You A Zealous Disciple of the Lord Jesus? If Not You Can Be.

How does a zealous disciple of Jesus behave? John Wesley was denied the privilege of preaching from the pulpit in the church; but with true evangelistic fervor took his father’s tomb for a pulpit and preached to the people the great truths of full salvation. Whitefield loved field preaching. Returning from a tour he lighted a candle and went upstairs to retire, weary after the journey; but the people gathered in front of the house and filled the street; and there on the stairway with a lighted candle in his hand, he preached his last message, retired and was no more; for God took him. John Knox, who cried out in his earnestness, “Give me Scotland or I die,” carried with him this zeal to the close of his ministry. Often he would be supported by attendants in order to reach the pulpit; but when he arose to speak the divine passion so filled his soul that one of his friends said: “So mighty was he in his yearning that I thought he would break the pulpit into bits.”1 How is your zeal for the things of God. On a scale of one to ten, where would you rank yourself? Here are some Bible verses to help stir your heart to full white zeal for the Lord.

[Tweet “People do not want to just see you hand out salvation tracts, they want to see your tracks!”]

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#S4-021: What Is Revival and Why Is It Fatal to the Kingdom of Darkness [Podcast]

Revival Fire for the Twenty First Century

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What is Revival?

What is a revival? According to Ron Mcintosh, former chaplain of ORU, the term ‘revival’ means several things. For one, it is a divine attack on society. It is the marshaling of forces fatal to the kingdom of darkness. It is the enlisting, training, and empowering of believers as a prelude to evangelism. Revival is God’s military tactic which concentrates His resources for a vital blow at a crucial moment. It is a reinvigoration of God’s people with His truth and power.1 As you can see, true revival covers a wide and diverse range. In the last two podcasts, Why Humility Is Part of An Excellent Life and Humility: Putting on God’s Suit we introduced and spoke on the fruit of the spirit called humility. Humility certainly finds it’s way into the spectrum of revival via verses like 2 Chronicles 7:14. We’ll take a look at this and some other matters as we start this new series with the subject ‘Why Revival Is Fatal to the Kingdom of Darkness’, all this and more on this week’s Light on Life.

Listen to the Audio

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[Tweet “When you experience His reviving personally then revival becomes God’s active moving for you.”]

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Three Areas We Need to Be Prayer Smart In

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Three Areas to Be Prayer Smart In

Pastor Jim Cymbala shares his experience with us: After I had been pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle for about a year, the church had grown to fifty people, but we were facing problems: little money, few people coming to faith in Christ. One Tuesday afternoon, I sat in my cubbyhole office on Atlantic Avenue, depressed. I knew that later that day, fifteen people, at most, would come to church to pray. How could God call me and my wife to this city not to make a difference? I wondered. I walked into our empty, little sanctuary and recited to God a list of my problems: “Look at this building, this neighborhood … Our offerings are laughable … I can’t trust So-and-so … There’s so little to work with.” Then the Holy Spirit impressed upon me, “I will show you the biggest problem in the church. It’s you.” In that moment I saw with excruciating clarity that I didn’t really love the people as God wanted me to. I prepared sermons just to get through another Sunday. I was basically prayerless. I was proud. I fell on my face before God and began to weep. “God, whatever it takes, please change me. I would rather die than live out some useless ministry of catchphrases.” The Brooklyn Tabernacle began to turn around, and twenty years later, we are still learning about the tremendous power of prayer. Every Tuesday evening many hundreds of people come together simply to pray. 1 The Bible is our prayer book. In it are truths which will help make us smart in the fine art of prayer. Here are three truths which will help you.

[Tweet “It is a very good idea to read the scriptures about what you are praying about before you pray.”]