Christian Witness

Fresh as the Sunrise

October 24, 2017 by Beryl Smith Leave a Comment

“I will sing aloud of Thy mercy in the morning; for You have been my defense and refuge in the day of my trouble” (Psalm 59:16).
“Cause me to hear Your lovingkindness in the morning, for in You do I trust; cause me to know the way in which I should walk, for I lift up my soul to You” (Psalm 143:8).

The poet J. E. Raneim wrote:

Are you weary, are you heavy hearted?
Are you grieving over joys departed?
Do the tears flow down your cheeks unbidden?
Have you sins that to men’s eyes are hidden?
Do you fear the gathering clouds of sorrow?
Are you anxious what shall be tomorrow?
Are you troubled at the thought of dying?
For Christ’s coming Kingdom are you sighing?
Tell it to Jesus,
Tell it to Jesus,
He is a friend that’s well known.
You’ve no other such a friend or brother,
Tell it to Jesus alone.

We would do well, when we rise in the morning and look into the mirror, to ask ourselves, “In whom is my trust this morning?”

If we look within, we’ll be distressed. If we look back, we’ll be defeated. If we look around, we’ll be distracted. We would do well to have a higher view of life. To be dismayed, we should look before. To be delivered, we should look to Christ. To be delighted, we should look up… up to the Face of our Lord Jesus Christ for:

Salvation from our sins: “Look unto Me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God and there is none else (Isaiah 45:22).
Forgiveness for our many offenses: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9).
Knowledge of God’s working in us: “For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
Assurance of God’s presence with us: “For He Himself said, ‘I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).
The supply of everything we need: “And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).
Protection until Christ returns: “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Thessalonians 5:23).
Receiving us to Himself and our home in Heaven: “Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:1-3).

Let each of us, every morning, say with our whole heart;

When the sun rises over the hills, I will look to You (Matthew 28:20).
When my spirit seems void Your presence, I will speak to You (John 16:24).
When my prayers seem unheard, I will know You are listening (Jeremiah 33:3).
When temptations try to lure me, I will seek Your aid to resist (James 4:7-8).
When bad memories persist, I will know You can cleanse my memory (Heb. 9:14).
When my faith seems weaker, I will ask You for stronger faith (Luke 17:5).
When my weakness plagues my efforts, I will ask for Your grace (2 Cor. 12:9).
When I feel alone, I will know You are with me (John 14:18).
When I seem defeated, You will give me victory (Philippians 4:13).

The old German hymn, if we let it, will cause us to praise like this:

When morning guilds the skies, my heart awaking cries,
May Jesus Christ be praised.
Alike at work and prayer… to Jesus I repair …
May Jesus Christ be praised.
When sleep her balm denies, my silent spirit sighs,
May Jesus Christ be praised.
When evil thoughts molest…with this I shield my breast,
May Jesus Christ be praised.
Does sadness fill my mind, a solace here I find,
May Jesus Christ be praised.
Or fades my earthly bliss, my comfort still is this,
May Jesus Christ be praised.
In heaven’s eternal bliss, the loveliest strain is this,
May Jesus Christ be praised.
The powers of darkness fear, when this sweet chant they hear,
May Jesus Christ be praised.
Be this, while life is mine, my canticle divine,
May Jesus Christ be praised.
Be this the eternal song, through all the ages on,
May Jesus Christ be praised.

Will we ever learn to rise in the morning and look beyond our mirror to see the living Christ of the Universe waiting for us to come to Him in prayer? Will we lift our spirits to the presence of the Father where Christ is waiting as our intercessor—our attorney—to plead our cause and give to us the mercy and grace to bountifully supply for us our deepest needs?

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews. 4:15-16).

To Ponder:

Are you struggling to find God’s help with trials that seem to surround you?
Do you lack the spiritual strength to rise above and beyond your trials?
Are you searching in God’s Word to gain the strength you need from Him?
Are you memorizing and trusting His promises to you?
Will you commit to being totally yielded to His will for every hour of your life?

To Pray:

Father in Heaven, every morning please convict me, give me the grace to repent and turn from my many weaknesses and sins; please cleanse me, fill me, and by Your Spirit’s grace and power use me today to reach others with Your wonderful Gospel of salvation. I ask this for Your glory in Jesus’ Name.

To Remember:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, for Thy sake we are being put to death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:35-37).

A Thorn, You Say?

September 20, 2017 by Beryl Smith Leave a Comment

“And because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me – to keep me from exalting myself.” (2 Corinthians 12:7)

Why do we always wonder about someone else’s thorn? Theologians and Bible expositors have done that for years. What was Paul’s “thorn”? Was it his eyesight? Was it a mother-in-law? Was it some awful weakness he had in that fleshly part of his old nature? Those aren’t the questions we should be asking. The problem is not with Paul’s thorn; I think we need to be thinking about our own thorns.

What is a thorn, anyway? The Greek word for “thorn” is SKOLOPS (σκολοψ). It can mean anything pointed and is used as a metaphor for a thorn or a plague. And that tells our story. What is our thorn? Could it be a physical weakness, an ailment, a physical handicap, or could it be a weakness in our very nature – something like the “sin which so easily entangles us” that we find in Hebrews 12:1? You know, that sin of omission or commission that seems to war against us in our climb up that steep hill on our pilgrim journey to the Celestial City? Is it that sin we are exhorted to despise, lay aside and from which we should run? It unmercifully plagues us! Could it actually be our ill temper, our cursing, or some baser lust of our old, fleshly nature?

One thing is sure about Paul’s thorn: God allowed Satan to use it to attack Paul. The word “buffet” comes from KOLAPHIDZO (κολαφιζω). It can mean to beat with a fist (Jesus beating in Matt. 16:67), to treat roughly (Paul, in I Cor. 4:11), or to punish or treat harshly in general (I Peter 2:20). Those aren’t very comforting prospects, are they? But God in His providence allows it for good reasons.

In Paul’s case it was to keep him from getting the “big head” for learning some very special, heavenly, godly truths. The truths were great; but the beating he was getting from Satan to entice him to think of himself as a fantastically smart guy was something from which he wanted to be delivered. He supplicated the Lord three times for relief; but God gave him His remedy. It was the remedy that sustained Paul all the way the headman’s axe in Rome, under the sentence of that evil emperor Nero, in 67 A.D. God answered him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). [Read more…]

Moral Relevance – The Rabbit Trail to Dissipation

September 14, 2017 by Beryl Smith Leave a Comment

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

“The great business of Satan at the present time is to seek to deceive the people of God with things that seem to be in accordance with His mind, but which are really deceitful imitations…Let the precious truth of the indwelling and gifts of the Holy Spirit be declared, and Satan will follow with false gifts and another spirit, leading even earnest souls into the wildest fanaticism. Let the truth of the new birth be insisted upon, and the devil will raise up teachers after his own heart to tell men that being born again means simply ‘rising out of the self-life into the spiritual, reaching out after the higher ideals, seeking to make that which is highest, noblest and best of ourselves; thus saving ourselves by character.’ This is a sample of the teaching heard in many a supposedly orthodox pulpits at the present time.” (H. A. Ironside, Lectures on Daniel the Prophet, p. 182, 187, 1920)

In a promotional statement from the pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, we are told, “In his new book, The Power of I Am, Joel Osteen shares the secret to changing your future. Osteen encourages readers to think positively and improve their lives by speaking the promises of God. Filled with practical advice and encouragement, The Power of I Am shows readers how they can redirect the course of their lives through the words they say. When you speak the right ‘I am’s,’ you’re inviting the goodness of God. I am victorious. I am blessed. I am talented. I am anointed. Your words have creative power. With your words you can bless your future!”

The greatest myth ever propagated by religionists of any flavor for centuries has been the simple statement that one can get to God for success and blessing by lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps and endeavoring to live a good life in relation to others.

You might ask, “What is moral relativism? Well, it’s a mindset and lifestyle that says, “My sense of morality is whatever I think it to be according to whatever is happening around me. My morality depends on my present circumstances in relation to everything and everyone around me. It may change from time to time, depending on how our culture changes.”

At one time in America, morality was based on the Ten Commandments found in the Judeo-Christian religion. Those commandments express the moral character of the God of Jews and Christians. Devout Jews are rigid in their efforts to keep the Law God has placed upon them in Scripture. Christians are faced with the words of Jesus Christ, who said, “If you love me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). Christ’s commandments expanded the Ten Commandments to a deeper moral responsibility, imposed upon those who would profess belief in Him. Added to the moral degradation observed in our current culture, we now have a form of moral relativism that insists on tolerance and inclusivism. To be considered acceptable we must abandon the exclusivism of Biblical morality.

It really doesn’t matter what you think as an autonomous individual. Believe whatever you want. One is a bigot who says a candidate for high federal office should have to refrain from using what was once termed “filthy language” and boasts of a lifestyle based on the moral depravity embraced by many starting in the 60s and 70s. And what’s worse is that many in the Evangelical World care not what a presidential candidate’s lifestyle and past are. Isn’t morality relative to the times in which we live? Is there really anything wrong with wanting to have our ears tickled, accumulating for ourselves teachers in accordance with our own desires; and what’s wrong with turning away our ears from the truth, and turning aside to myths? Isn’t this the way we should all do things in this age of myths?

We American evangelicals and biblical fundamentalists had better wake up and smell the roses. I fear we are satisfied in smelling what is normally put under the roses and are willing to accept the judgment God is sending us through our devolving culture and ungodly leaders.

The time has come for believers to get into their closets and onto their knees. It’s time we believers speak out, lifting the Biblical standard of righteousness. Our nation is sliding into dissipation and ruin.

The Missing Element

February 21, 2017 by Beryl Smith Leave a Comment

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5)

The Old Testament is old. It was not written to us in the 21^st Century. It is not relevant to our culture and time. The person who says that is ignorant of what the Old Testament Scriptures reveal about the depravity of man and the holiness and eternal purposes of the God of the Universe.

To say that the laws, principles, moral and spiritual standards God gave the Jewish people have no relevance to our time and culture is to exhibit gross ignorance of both Judaism and Christianity. It is an absurdity. God said to Jeremiah,

“Behold, I put my words in your mouth. See, I have appointed you this day over the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant…You have seen well, for I am watching over My word to perform it.” (Jeremiah 1:9b-12)

Jeremiah, like other select individuals, was called by God to deliver His message to His people – both those of faith and those of unbelief. Enlightened by the Holy Spirit, they were rendered infallible in speaking and writing. Evangelicalism in America today appears to have lost its prophetic voice. The New Testament declares to the Church,

“Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy…one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and exhortation and consolation…One who speaks in a tongue edifies himself; but one who prophesies edifies the church…therefore, my brethren, desire earnestly to prophesy.” (I Corinthians 14:1, 3-4, 39)

Today, as never before, the Church needs those who have been called by God to prophesy to the Church. I’m not talking about professed biblical scholars who foolishly set dates for the rapture of the Invisible Church. The gift of prophecy, as Paul stated, is for the “edification, exhortation and consolation” of the Church – the body of Christ. It is not a ministry to unbelievers. Its focus should be to call the people of God back to God and away from its absorption of our pop culture in worship and practice.

The Old Testament Prophets didn’t simply speak God’s opinion on the nation of Israel. They spoke God’s revealed word of discernment and judgment. They boldly proclaimed,

“My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water…My people are foolish, they know Me not. They are stupid children. And they have no understanding. They are shrewd to do evil, but to do good they do not know.” (Jeremiah 2:13, 4:22)

How long do you think an emergent church leader would last if he preached like that? The Old Testament Prophets spoke God’s judgment upon His people, the Jews. And in doing so they condemned the heathen around them with whom they had compromised and made alliances. They even prophesied that God would use those pagan nations to punish His chosen people.

Ancient Israel and Judah had forsaken the authoritative rule of the God of their fathers. They had amalgamated themselves with the worship of pagan deities and had sunk to the immoral practices of their heathen neighbors. Today’s emergent church, in many ways, has been invaded by the American pop culture. Emergent churches sought “new measures” for attracting the unsaved and opened their arms to our culture’s ways of marketing. In making alliances with the practices and psychology of our pop culture, the Evangelical Church has become as popular as any social organization. In doing so the traditions, creeds, theology of our Protestant forbearers have been abandoned for a message suited to satisfy the “tickling ears” of the masses. Traditional forms of worship were cast aside for new, emergent forms of liturgy. What’s missing in our Starbuck generation of relationship-building evangelical churches? What’s conspicuously absent is intestinal fortitude for pastors to preach the whole counsel of God. The gift of prophecy both in the Old Testament and the New Testament Church was and is to boldly proclaim the valid implications and applications of authoritative Scripture, whether church attendees like it or not. Until we see that on a broad scale our nation will continue to devolve in ways never resembling the greater generations of our past.

The Old Testament scriptures contain vital history, theological wisdom, divine promises, and unchanging judgments of God upon the sin of His people and those who know Him not. To ignore its truthful teachings is to incur the judgments the Prophets proclaimed. They are as relevant and applicable today as when they were first spoken. Not written to us, they are for our generation and generations to come. And what’s more,

“When He ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men…He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:8-12)

Where do you hear the voice of God’s prophets for this era of doom and death?

Things That Go “Thump” in the Night – Part 2

May 2, 2016 by Beryl Smith Leave a Comment

Continued from Part 1

6. Robbing God in a world of plenty:

We are told that less than 6 percent of today’s churchgoers tithe, that is, give at least one tenth of their gross income to the Church. We explain away God’s question and answer in Malachi:

Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you.” (Malachi 3:8-9)

We no longer build beautiful churches in which to worship. We build what looks like a warehouse or a lecture hall. Why? It’s quite simple: our churches are filled with thieves – professing Christians who fail to give what belongs to God – His tithe. Our church attendees think they can tip God and get away with it. We allow ourselves to join our highly commercialized and pleasure seeking culture and get smothered in either things or debt. Then we convince ourselves that we cannot “afford” to tithe. And the “devourer” – Satan – laughs at our affluency, lust for things, and failure to please God by giving Him tithes and offerings. As a result, we miss the message of God through Malachi:

“I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of Hosts. Then all nations will call you blessed, for your will be a land of delight, says the Lord of Hosts.” (Malachi 3:11-12)

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