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"If you abide in My Word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free...So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed!" (John 8:31-32,36)

Listening To Jesus

September 26, 2017 by Beryl Smith Leave a Comment

“If anyone hears My sayings, and does not keep them, I do not judge him;
for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects
Me, and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke
is what will judge him at the last day.” (John 12:47-48)

“God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions
and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He
appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” (Hebrews 1: 1-2)

Have you ever imagined what it would have been like to be sitting on the hillside where Jesus was teaching His “Sermon on the Mount?” Or what would it have been like to be the third person walking with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, hearing Him explain His mission to this world after He rose from the dead? I have. There is no greater source of information relating to Jesus Christ than the very words of Jesus Himself. If you want to know what Christianity is, go to it’s source: Jesus Christ, as recorded in the pages of Scripture.

As I look back over my life, I wish I could have known my mother’s father. Grandpa Clemens Thomas Diete was a graduate of both Berlin and Hanover Universities in Germany. He was a veterinarian surgeon, world traveler and, having joined Teddy Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders,” was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. He immigrated to America some time in the 1890s. Although he died two years before I was born, somehow I was bequeathed his medical bag and journal. It’s written in German. I don’t read German. And I never heard my grandfather speak. I hold his journal in my hands; but I cannot understand it.

The writer of the book of Hebrews tells us that God spoke to man in times past through His selected prophets; but in the Gospel age in which we live, God has spoken to us through His Son, Jesus Christ. But how am I to hear Him? Is His voice still audible? Can I count on Him to speak comfort, wisdom, guidance, and encouragement to me today? In over sixty-five years of following the Savior, I have found the answer to those questions a positive “Yes.” All I have to do was read with my eyes and hear with my spirit.

In their little volume “Jesus Said,” Ron Philpchalk and Phil Wiebe said, “No other individual has so affected the course of history. Yet He wrote no books, cut no records, produced no videos or music. The closest tangible link we have with Him is a few hundred words recounted by His close companions.”[1] Just what did Jesus say to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that I can still hear and see with very own eyes? How does Jesus speak to me?

First of all we need to feast our eyes on every word He uttered recorded in sacred Scripture. It’s right there, if we would just take the time to read it. In His high priestly prayer, recorded in John chapter 17, Jesus prayed to the Father saying,

“I manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world; Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to Me, and they have kept Thy Word. Now they have come to know that everything Thou hast given Me is from Thee; for the words which Thou gavest Me I have given to them.
(John 17: 6-8a)

Jesus said all that He needed to say. We have everything we need from His very voice to guide us in this world. The big question is, are we listening to Him?

Secondly, to go beyond the words of Jesus is simply to listen to Him speak through His apostles. Again, Jesus prayed to His Father,

“As Thou didst send Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world….I do not ask in behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word.”(John 17:18,20)

Jesus continued to speak through His apostles. And His words flow right off the pages of Scripture, right there in front of us. If we neglect to read and study the Epistles, we do so at our own peril. Such riches await our looking, our listening, our devoted study.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy in the Church of Jesus Christ today is the apathy of professed believers who have never shared the words of Jesus with another individual. The vast majority of professing followers of Christ have never developed an effective witness for Jesus. Rather than courageously witnessing for Him, they would rather hide their witness, except when they gather with other believers. Alas, the world sleeps in the darkness, while the church sleeps in the light.

My mother had always wondered whether her father, a Roman Catholic, had ever come to personal faith in Jesus Christ. When I was home from college one summer, staying with my parents, my mother gave me permission to search through my grandfather’s large, leather travel trunk. It had carried his personal things to China, the Philippines, and other foreign places. In it I found an amazing piece of paper, a Gospel tract, printed by the Gospel Track Society in Oakland, California. It bore a clear message of salvation and provided a line at the end for someone to sign their name signifying that they has accepted Christ as their Savior. On that line, in a familiar hand, was the name Thomas Clemens Diete.

Today people are searching for truth in many places: nature, science, psychology, world religions, focus groups and personal gurus. My life is being continually transformed as I listen to Jesus as He speaks through His recorded words. How I wish others could come to know Him. I think the time could never be more opportune to know what He said and to share it with people who are in darkness and need His life giving words.

To Ponder:

 1.  Do you know what Jesus said?

2.  Do you perceive the value of the words of Jesus and His apostles?

3.  Do you have a desire to know and follow His precepts?

4.  Are you teaching your children what Jesus said?

5.  Are you desirous of sharing Jesus’ words with others?

To Pray:

Lord, speak to me, that I may speak
in living echoes of Thy tone;
as Thou hast sought, so let me seek
thy erring children lost and lone
O teach me, Lord, that I may teach
the precious things Thou dost impart;
and wing my words, that they may reach
the hidden depths of many a heart.
O fill me with Thy fullness, Lord,
until my very heart o’er-flow
in kindling thought and glowing word,
Thy love to tell, Thy praise to show.
O use me, Lord, use even me,
just as Thou wilt, and when, and where;
until Thy blessed face I see,
Thy rest, Thy joy, Thy glory share.[2]

[1] Philipchalk & Wiebe, Jesus Said (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1995), preface.

[2] “Lord Speak to Me,” by Frances R. Havergal

Faith, Grace, Learning, Life Struggles, Love, Trials, Truth, Worship Tagged: eternity, faith, forgiveness, prayer, revival, Spiritual Truth, trials, vision

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)

[Read more…]

Belief, Christian Vocation, Christian Witness, Culture, Devotion, Evangelical Church Tagged: culture, doctrine, Evangelical Church, revival, Spiritual Truth, witnessing

Give Thanks for These

June 8, 2015 by Beryl Smith Leave a Comment

“The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yes, I have a godly heritage.” (Psalm 16:6)

We are so remiss to give thanks for the blessing of Providence. We read in the Scriptures of the saints of old – Abraham, Joseph and others – how God in His mercy saved, protected, and preserved them. Yet in our temporal freedom and abundance, we fail to show gratitude to the Father of mercies. We are an ungrateful lot! And what are those mercies we so easily neglect to consider?

Statisticians tell us that only five percent of people on this earth live under true democracy. Ninety-five percent live under military, political, or religious dictatorships. Look at the list of almost 195 nations and see the poverty, physical danger, diseases, and terror that holds these people in a dungeon of hopelessness. [Read more…]

Christian Vocation, Evangelical Church, Holy Spirit, Spiritual Growth, Spiritual Truth, Theology Tagged: Christianity, Divine Providence, doctrine, Evangelical Church, mission, Postmodern Christianity, revival

Suggested Reading

December 3, 2014 by Beryl Smith Leave a Comment

To my Friends Across The Country:

I have wanted to write you about a series of books that I would like to recommend to you.

David F. Wells (PhD. University of Manchester, Distinguished Senior Research Professor @ Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) received a Pew grant, “Exploring the nature of Christian faith in the contemporary modernized world.” From his study he has produced a series of very good, relevant, Christ-honoring books that I feel every spiritually minded Christian should read.

Here are the titles of books written by David Wells that I hope will peak your attention:

  1. No Place for Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (1993)
  2. God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (1994)
  3. Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (1998)
  4. Above All Earthly Powers: Christ in a Postmodern World (2004)
  5. The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (2008)
  6. God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-love of God Reorients Our World (2014)

I have been deeply moved and blessed by David Wells’ ministry. He has appeared on the White Horse Inn and his books are sound, relevant, and filled with Biblical Truth.

From his latest book I quote from his concern regarding worship in many, if not most of the evangelical churches in America:

“If we look at the way in which many evangelical churches have actually been worshiping since the 1970s, it is rather different from what I have been describing. It has become far more culturally defined than Biblically. It has often catered to generational niches. It has been about marketing a ‘product’ in a way that attracts new customers. The new customers, though, tend to belong to one of the generational tribes. Christian faith is pitched to them often without doctrinal truth. Pastors who have been in this business have mistakenly thought that doctrinal truth is ‘off-putting’ to believers and unbelievers alike. And the outreach that has been done often has far more in common with the entertainment world than with the truths at the core of Christian faith. Too often it has been about the worshipers, and giving them a pleasant experience as they express themselves, rather than about the God whom they have come to worship.

…Now, along the edges of the evangelical world, this disposition is producing a lot of bleeding. It has propelled an exodus out of evangelical churches. Some have moved out into Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglo-Catholicism, and Catholicism. Others have simply moved home. Born-againers, in significant numbers, are dropping out of church. This is not true everywhere, or of everyone, or of every church. But many who were once part of the born-again world are now turning away from evangelical churches. In one study done in 2013, it was found that in the recent past, 70 percent of the young people who had been raised in evangelical youth groups had dropped out of church attendance once they became independent adults. Why?”

(God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-love of God Reorients our World; pp. 198-199)

Now, having been a believing Christian for over three-quarters of a century and a minister of the Gospel for over a half-century, this is what I have observed:

In the evangelical churches in America in the 1920s to the 1930s, liberalism and higher criticism invaded the major evangelical denominations, churches, colleges, and seminaries. The cancer of European liberalism, skepticism, and unbelief became embedded in evangelical circles. Out of this came those often condemned as “fundamentalists.” They started new denominations, colleges, seminaries and churches. They were called “fundamentalists” because they held to the major biblical truths of the Protestant Church. I am a fundamentalist! No apologies. No hedging my theological beliefs in the faith of our Protestant for-bearers. One of my ancestors, Ralph Blaisdell, was a Puritan who left England in 1635, to be a “planter” in the New World. He left the skeptical liberalism of the Church of England so he could worship God according to the dictates of his Puritan heart.

Since the 1970s, a profound change has taken place in the evangelical world. To put it simply, the “emergent movement” has done to the professing evangelical church in America what liberalism did to the church in the 1920s and 1930s. Today the church has forsaken sound theology, and expositional preaching, and has turned its emphasis into what Christian Smith in his book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual lives of American Teenagers called “moralistic, therapeutic, deism.” Today the church has forsaken any claim to be “fundamental” and is producing “another gospel” that offends no one, leaves theology in the back room, welcomes all into the “gathering,” and lets them leave with a gospel not demanding repentance of sin and absolute trust in the Christ of the Cross and the Empty Tomb.

The invisible Church of Jesus Christ in America is in desperate need of a spiritual revival in the hearts of her leaders. The nation crumbles in moral and spiritual darkness while the Church stumbles in dim light.

I urge you to pray for a genuine Holy Spirit rejuvenation in Christ’s body. We “come out from among them and be separate” (II Corinthians 6:17-18) or we perish with a nation that has turned itself from the God of the Bible to the god of secular humanism.

Culture, Emergent Church, Evangelical Church, Spiritual Growth, Theology, Worldview Tagged: Christianity, postmodern, revival, theology

Paul’s Forgotten Last Words

November 11, 2014 by Beryl Smith Leave a Comment

“The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.”
II Timothy 4:22)

Years ago I discovered a biblical truth that has changed my thinking about my life here on earth. It changed my approach to evangelism and my sharing Christianity with those to whom God leads me. It is a very foundational and simple truth; however it is a truth long neglected and seldom taught by those who claim to minister the Word of God. It is the truth of God’s Word relating to man’s creation and existence today; and that includes both the redeemed and the lost.

You may not have heard teaching about this before. I’m sure it is something about which you have wondered. You may not agree with the way I have attempted to unfold this truth; but I encourage you to read this. If you feel so led, I would appreciate your comments.

Why did Paul, in his last sentence to his son, Timothy, say, “The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you”? Why is it that we find so many references in the Bible to that part of both Christ and man that is called “spirit?” Please note the following biblical references:

  1. At the angelic announcement of Christ’s incarnation: “And Mary said: ‘My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior’” (Luke 1:46-47).
  2. At the death of Jesus: “And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit’” (Luke 23:46).
  3. At the martyrdom of Stephen: “And they went on stoning Stephen as he called upon the Lord and said, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!’” (Acts 7:59).
  4. From Jesus’ teaching on the new birth: “That having been born of the flesh is flesh, and that having been born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).
  5. The biblical description of Christ’s redemptive work: “So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit’” (I Corinthians 15:45).
  6. Concerning the believer’s union with Christ: “And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness” (Romans 8:10).
  7. Concerning the Holy Spirit’s witness to the believer: “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16).
  8. Concerning the Word of God in its work in the believer: “For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).
  9. The only way to worship God is by means of a quickened spirit in communion with the Holy Spirit: “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).
  10. Concerning the divine preservation of the believer: “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).

These are my convictions, after over 55 years of studying the Bible:

  1. Like the Triune God, humans are tri-parted beings, possessing body, soul, and spirit (Genesis 1:26).
  2. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, their spirit – having been indwelt by the Holy Spirit – became dead. Death for them was the withdrawing of the Holy Spirit, who is the life of God in action in this world (Genesis 3:3).
  3. Every individual born into this world has a spirit. Men and women are born having a spirit that is void the presence and communion of the Holy Spirit. They are spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1-7).
  4. Regeneration is the instantaneous, sovereign, divine act of God, whereby the Holy Spirit quickens our spirit by becoming the Life of God in us (Titus 3:5-7).
  5. Believers worship today in the very presence of God, where the people of God eternally live in spirit with God (Hebrews 12:22-24).

It grieves me that we, in the evangelical world, have neglected to realize and teach that we are spirit beings. Some have distorted the biblical teachings on the Holy Spirit, thus scaring off those who should be teaching the Bible’s truths. Evangelicals have marginalized the person and work of the Holy Spirit and we continue to grieve His Person, thus marginalizing His blessings in our individual, family, and corporate life of worship and service.

May the Triune God be pleased to once again visit us with revival and spiritual rejuvenation; and may the Holy Spirit continue to exalt Jesus Christ, as He builds His church in this fallen world.

Come, Holy Spirit, heav’nly Dove,
with all Thy quick’ning powers,
kindle a flame of sacred love
in these cold hearts of ours.

In vain we tune our formal songs,
in vain we strive to rise;
hosanas languish on our tongues,
and our devotion dies.

Dear Lord, and shall we ever live
at this poor dying rate,
our love so faint, so cold to Thee,
and Thine to us so great?

Come, Holy Spirit, heav’nly Dove,
with all Thy quick’ning powers,
come, shed abroad a Savior’s love
and that shall kindle ours.

Isaac Watts

May Isaac Watts’ prayer be ours today!

Beryl's Blog, Christian Witness, Evangelical Church, Holy Spirit, Sovereignty, Spiritual Growth Tagged: Evangelical Church, Holy Spirit, regeneration, revival

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Beryl Smith

AvatarBeryl has a great love for studying the Bible and Christian theology. Beryl is a 12th generation descendant of Ralph Blaisdell, an English Puritan who came to America from Bristol, England in August, 1635 on the sailing ship “The Angel Gabriel.”
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