Spread the Word

5/24/1995

Greetings all, in the Carpenter, King... Please read all of this from beginning to end? And put it into practice? Leap for Joy in Him! And spread the Word : )

“...what counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight—it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” (Eisenhower; Source: Speech to the Republican National Committee, Jan. 31, 1958)

“...in the final choice, a soldier’s pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner’s chains.” (Source: First Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1953)

This is a quotation from a civil war soldier, penned some 130 years ago in the United States for a vastly inferior cause than the Purposes of God for His People, the Bride of Jesus, and planet earth. Can you, will you, say these words to the Father and Creator, now?

“We must win this war. Therefore I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully. And do my utmost as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on [the Spirit of God working mightily in] me alone.”

“But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

“Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

“Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind.

“Brethren, join in following my example, and note those who so walk, as you have us for a pattern. For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame; who set their mind on earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.

“Therefore, my beloved and longed-for brethren, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, beloved” (Phil. 3:17-4:1).

Disciples of Jesus, please don’t be like the man who buried his talent and never quite got around to doing anything with what God had entrusted to him... PLEASE take action to be “always ready to give a reason for the Hope that lies within you”!!! “GO into all the world.” It is time to “be active” as Ellen reminded me that Paul had said to Philemon (vs. 6).

In His Love,