Now, that is the greatest present that man has ever known! Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. May we share with boldness the words of eternal life through Jesus Christ this Christmas season, and bring unspeakable joy and happiness into the lives of those who have ears to hear!
He is the same God who called you in the beginning and has promised never to leave or forsake you to the end. All leaders go through it, as do fellow Christians. Some of us hide it better than others, but discouragement in ministry is a real concern.
In the early days when Pastor Chuck was coming to Hawaii, we roasted a pig and had Chuck and his group out to the North Shore for potluck fellowship. I got Chuck alone and began to pour out my heart telling him about people and problems I was having in ministry. I figured Chuck had the answers. I have used that line a lot with younger pastors.
Much of our discouragement has to do with people issues. It is interesting that of all the animals God chose to compare us with he picked sheep. Why sheep? Because the behavior of sheep is much like that of humans. It is not a very flattering comparison. Sheep more than any other animal need endless attention, meticulous care and constant watching over. Sheep have a crowd mentality.
If one walks off a cliff others will follow. If one is spooked the whole herd panics. The next day a year-old fan hung herself in the same way. Sheep have a herd mentality. Sadly, it is the herd instinct of sheep. Sheep are helpless when left to themselves. They will graze until the landscape is barren without seeking new pastures and die of starvation.
Sheep have no fright and flight mechanism. Cults devour sheep one after another. When we consider the makeup of sheep we begin to understand the high calling of the shepherd. Shepherds of Judea had a hard and tedious task. Pasture land was scarce along the narrow central plateau which plunged down steep cliffs to dry desert. Sheep would wander into dry canyons or onto perilous precipice and the shepherd would risk his life in a rescue attempt.
Sheep are oblivious and indifferent to being rescued. A certain type of weed, if eaten, would make sheep sick and even die. It is discouraging when sheep in the church take a course of action detrimental to their spiritual health and refuse to respond to the shepherds attempt to rescue them. And yet the good shepherd, Jesus Christ, leaves the 99 and goes after the one. Maybe that one is you. We too are the sheep of His pasture Ps He has promised to finish the work He began in you.
Let discouragement be the tool that drives you to the throne of grace and a new place of intimacy and dependence upon our precious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I could not help but thank God, because indeed, He still is the friend of sinners.
Matthew chapter records the story of Jesus being invited to the home of a Jewish tax collector. This man was what was called a publicani, a man who served occupying Rome against his own people. He collected money from the Jews and was responsible for the collection of toll taxes, import duties, business license fees, boat docking fees and a variety of other fees imposed on them. Because of his job, as a tax collector, he was despised. Part of the reason was that Jews could buy franchises that entitled them to levy taxes, and many were extortioners, others could be bribed easily and many of them became wealthy in this way and as a result, were hated by the people.
According to the Rabbis, there was no hope for tax collectors and and they were considered unclean. Their money was tainted and defiled any who accepted it and was declared to be an outcast, classed with harlots, gamblers, thieves, and one per centers! Is this so? Was there really no hope for people like this? After Jesus had called Matthew to follow him, as a response Matthew opened up his home and invited Jesus over for dinner, an invitation that Jesus accepted.
This outraged the Pharisees, and Mattew records that When the Pharisees saw it, they said to his disciples, Why does your Master eat with publicans and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, he said to them, Those who are whole do not need a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
I had just discharged from the Army and was living at my parents home. As I was seated in the kitchen, I had heard a knock on the front door and went to open it. We had attended elementary school, Junior High, and up to the second year of High School together.
We went through our early and rebellious teen years together and had experimented with drinking and taking drugs together. We lost touch when he was a sophomore in High School, and it had been eight years since I had seen him last.
Now, I had been saved for three years, and he was back in my life. Standing right in front of me. By the way that he spoke to me, I could see that he was under the influence of some drug, or alcohol, or perhaps a combination of both. It turns out he was under the influence of a combination of alcohol and a barbiturates known as seconal, or reds as we used to call them. Would you like to come with me?
Immediately I thought about my reputation in the neighborhood. For several years, my neighbors knew me as a crazy and out of control kid. I was known for drinking, taking drugs, and basically just running wild.
Since becoming a Christian, I had done my best to erase that memory from their minds and really wanted to keep my new reputation for being a Christian untainted. How could I be seen walking down the street with an old friend, who was staggering drunk?
Those who saw me might think that I had gone back to my old way of life. At first, I was tempted to just let him walk to the store alone. I thought that I could have him go buy his beer, and then have him come into the house when he was through drinking it. But something inside me prompted me to walk to the store with him.
The Spirit clearly reminded me of how Jesus was called a friend of sinners. I obviously was no better than Jesus, so I did what I felt He would have me to do at that time. I took a walk with my friend. When we returned, I shared the love of Jesus with Him. As I shared with him, he looked at me and asked a simple question. He asked: does Jesus forgive every sin?
I looked at him and said Yes, He forgives every sin. He has forgiven me all of my sins and He will forgive you of yours, too. I told him that I had lied, stolen, been drunk, did drugs and so many other sins but He forgave me of all of them. He then asked, does He forgive murder? When he asked me that question I said, Murder is not always an action but is recognized as a desire of the heart.
He then said something that made me stop in my tracks. I murdered a man. I had known him since we were young boys, how could that be possible. He then began to share with me what he thought was murder.
He had been serving in the Army and was responsible for carrying classified documents. While carrying documents someone had taken his briefcase and tried to steal it. After sharing with him a few things about what murder actually is, and taking into consideration how he viewed his actions we returned to the subject of forgiveness and I shared with him Yes, God forgives of every sin and this is what you need today.
Forgiveness That day, my friend bowed his head in prayer and received Jesus as his Lord and Savior. As I had the joy of praying with him, I could not help but thank God, because indeed, He still is the friend of sinners. Today, you will have many opportunities to minister the gracious love of Jesus to those who are quite obviously sinners and others who hide their sin well. As ministers of the gospel, we are not to be afraid of loving those who obviously are not aware of the gracious love of God, in Jesus.
Where would we be if it were not for the Grace of God? I am so thankful that God turned me around when He did. Who knows what would have become of me.
Yet I came so close to living a life that surely would have ended in hell. I think of the conversion of great Apostle Paul and how he almost made it to destruction. Saul of Tarsus was just about as wrong as a person could be.
A zealous Pharisee determined to stamp out, Christianity, what he thought to be a cult. Determined to eradicate all those who believed in Jesus of Nazareth breathing out threats and with murderous intent not satisfied with purging Jerusalem, he desired to pursue the believers to the city of Damascus. We read in Acts chapter nine that Saul asked the high priest for permission to carry out his vicious plan to capture and bind any followers of Jesus and bring them back to Jerusalem for judgement.
He was wonderfully converted and became the great Apostle Paul missionary to the gentiles. His conversion is a marvelous story and part of a wonderful apologetic that testifies to the reliability of the biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The dedicated life he went on to live, the wonderful triumphs of his ministry has caused many to believe him to be the greatest Christian minister that has ever served the Lord Jesus. Yet what strikes me most in his story is that he almost made it to his ghastly destination and accomplished his dreadful goal. He surely would have, had Jesus not stopped him in his tracks.
Such blessed apprehension! Such gracious detention! Some folks come perilously close to destruction. They do not realize how near they are to the edge. None of us know how long we have to live or how far we will be allowed to travel down the path to hell. I fear for those who play games with the Grace of God. I have seen men and women stubbornly determined to have their own way. They pigheadedly insist on walking the broad path that they desire rather than the narrow road the Lord would have them walk upon.
The tragic truth is that some of them succeed. I am so glad that Jesus stopped me in my tracks. I was blind and hopelessly lost, headed in the wrong direction until Jesus arrested me and turned me around.
Sometimes I look back and think of the times I almost made it to a life that would have been to the destruction of my soul. I was in a rock band before I was saved. An opportunity arose for us to go to Hamburg Germany and play the same clubs the Beatles were at before they were well known.
Who knows what would have happened if we would have gone. I was so angry at my lead guitarist because he refused to go and the opportunity slipped away. So close.
He left the band and I replaced the uncooperative guitarist with a young brilliant guitar player, fifteen-year-old Alwyn Wall. Later he and I left the band and formed a duo, Malcolm and Alwyn. We started writing our own songs. We met with him and played our music for him and he turned us down. So Close. Oh blessed rejection! We almost made it. Where would we be today had we been successful?
Instead Jesus grabbed us and we had the great joy of giving our talent back to Him and singing for His glory. Oh, but had it not been for His Grace it could have been so different. Paul chose to walk in obedience to Jesus Christ from that point on and every day thereafter. Those two questions sum up the whole Christian life.
So was Saul wonderfully converted, saved by the Grace of God after he almost made it to the place of disaster. What about you? Are you kicking against the goads?
Are you going your own way? God has given you yet another day to turn around and turn to Him. Be sure to avail yourself of His glorious Grace.
A primary distinctive of Calvary Chapel is our endeavor to declare to people the whole counsel of God. We see this principle illustrated when Paul met with the Ephesian elders in Acts The following article is from Pastor Chuck Smith.
The human tendency, however, is to avoid these. For the most part, the teaching ministry of Calvary Chapel is expositional in style. They have their place. They were making fun of his method, but it was an effective method. When we do, we are delivering to them the whole counsel of God. In Nehemiah chapter 8 verse 8, when the children of Israel had returned from captivity and were rebuilding the city, the leadership gathered the people together and constructed a little platform.
They began in the early morning to read the Word of God to the people. I believe this is a worthy definition of expositional preaching — to read the Word, give the sense, and cause the people to understand the meaning. Suddenly it begins to come together in my own mind. I appreciate the insights God has given to other men on passages of the Word.
But in saying that I appreciate and do read commentaries, I must also confess that often I will read pages and pages from commentaries and get absolutely nothing that I can use. So I believe that one of the best commentaries on the Bible is the Bible itself. It takes time to whet and develop the appetite of the people for the Word of God. It takes time for them to grow. For most Calvary Chapels that are planted in a new area, it takes a couple of years to lay the foundation, prepare the ground, plow the hardened soil, work the soil, and plant the seed in the fertile soil.
Then you have to wait. The seed has to grow and to develop. But, eventually, it begins to bear fruit. Now wait and watch and see if any fruit will come forth.
This can be rather discouraging when there are those who come in with a flash and a fire, and seem to generate an immediate crowd. Kate Shellnutt February 17, What would Chuck Smith do? Free Newsletters Get the best from CT editors, delivered straight to your inbox! Issue: March , Vol.
This article is from the March issue. Log in. March More from this Issue. Law and Mercy. Religious programs, including evangelical schools, are a major force for good behind bars.
Response of Christian Aid Ministries and supporters reveals three Anabaptist distinctives that other Christians should find both familiar and thought provoking. It was one thing after another, after another, after another…. SHARE tweet email print. Subscribe to continue reading. We held three Sunday morning services and had more than 4, people at each one.
Many had to sit on the carpeted floor. A large portion of floor space was left without pews so as to provide that option. Calvary Chapel also ministers over the airwaves, and this must account for many of those who travel long distances to fellowship here. A Nielsen survey indicated that our Sunday morning Calvary Chapel service is the most listened-to program in the area during the entire week.
The missions outreach is considerable. We then built a radio station in San Salvador and gave it to the local pastors there. We also gave money to Open Doors to purchase the ship that, in tandem with a barge, delivered one million Bibles to mainland China. It is one of the ten largest Protestant churches in the United States.
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