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In our study of Galatians this past Sunday morning (Adult Sunday School Class), we studied the sixth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. As we were going over that chapter, the Lord planted a seed from his Word in my heart and mind. It was Gal. 6:9, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” It wasn’t the focal passage of the morning, but it was one that the Lord wanted to reveal further to me.

Later that morning, when Sam Nadler was preaching, he made reference to our coming glorification. Wow. At that point, the seed God had planted just an hour and a half earlier came to life, and it’s been “growing” since. Here’s the deal…..there’s a reaping coming, even an ultimate one. We have a hope that will be realized, our glorification. We are going to be glorified! “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (I Thes. 4:16-17).

Let’s face it, life can be tough, even as a believer. Yea, there are good seasons and mountain top experiences, but there are plenty of other times where it’s just plain hard to get through the day. We encounter circumstances daily that, if we let them, can drag us down and make us weary. “Let us not grow weary” wouldn’t be there in Scripture if there wasn’t that tendency in us to grow weary (our Creator knows us well, doesn’t he?).

So for today, tomorrow and the days that follow, here’s to not growing weary. Instead, here’s to being eternally minded and heavenly focused. As “first fruits,” Jesus was resurrected & glorified. He has paved the way. Our turn is coming!

In my travels I have met many wonderful and interesting people. I have learned that God has pre-arranged appointments for me, if I am paying attention. Several years ago, I was traveling in Argentina and some new missionary friends offered to give me a ride on the long commute between the domestic and international airports in Buenos Aires. They needed to take a detour first to the Youth With A Mission missionary base in Buenos Aires, which I was happy to do. On the way in the car, I received a clear impression from the Lord that He had a special appointment for me waiting at the mission base.

At the base, I began looking for that appointment, and I met several young people who had connections with people I knew as far away as Australia, as well as in South America. But after making those connections, I knew I’d not met the Lord’s appointment. It was as though He was saying “not yet–there is someone else I want you to meet.” While waiting for my friends, someone offered me coffee. Sitting nearby there was a young woman of short stature and slight build who spoke English, and we began a conversation. Her English was very good, but her accent didn’t seem to be Spanish, and I asked her where she came from.

Her name was Laura, and I quickly became interested in her story. She had grown up as a child under Ceausescu’s Romania, the communist dictator who ruled Romania during the Cold War. Ceausescu was a monster of a man and imposed unimaginable misery on a whole nation of people during those days. In the 1980’s, I worked a little with an organization that tried to help persecuted Christians and Jews and knew something about the suffering and persecution in that country (Richard Wurmbrand became famous because of his book, “Tortured for Christ” describing 14 years of torture in Ceausescu’s prisons as a Christian). Ceausescu had deliberately starved the nation of food and denied its people heat in its bitterly cold winters so that he could export foodstuffs, clothing and anything of value to enrich his treasuries and glorify himself with delusional projects. Many Romanian couples didn’t want to have children because of the misery of life and the birth rate severely dropped. Laura, like most children in Romania at that time, almost never saw protein, meat or cheese in her young life. Once, a man gave her and her sister lumps of cheese, the first she had ever seen. When she brought it home excited, her parents refused to let them eat it because there were cases of agents in the regime giving poisoned cheese to children to discourage any distribution of food outside the government’s control. It broke her young heart not to eat that cheese and she couldn’t understand why her parents refused it and threw it away.

Later, when she arrived in Argentina at about 20 years old, she told me she had gained more than ten kilos (more than 22 pounds) in a short time. She said her Argentine doctor told her that her weight gain was integral to her bones and internal organs, and the Argentine diet of meat and milk was the perfect antidote for a lifetime of nutritional deprivation. So, Laura and I became good friends that day and in later trips to Argentina, I arranged for her to fly from her base to churches in the northern part of the country where our ministry was based. She spoke perfect, unaccented Spanish and excellent English, and was a wonderful public interpreter for me. The churches I introduced her to in Argentina fell in love with this tiny vision of faith, spiritual might and lone courage. We believe she was the first missionary actually sent out from her country after the end of the Cold War. When in Romania as a teenager, she didn’t know where Argentina was on the map, but believed God was sending her there. As with other missionaries, she had to provide her own support, but she didn’t know anyone in the western world or in South America, and had no means of support. She lived every day in absolute faith for her daily provision and tested the promises of Jesus every day, which was the condition I found her in. God never failed her any day in those years.

Beyond her story itself, something she said to me is the basis of this devotional. During one of her visits to us in northern Argentina, she described to me how she trusted God for her life and her provision although she remained without support from known sources. But she told me, without any trace of pride or irony, that she had become bored with trusting God only for her daily provision, and she wanted a greater challenge to trust God for. In other words, she had become so accustomed to the supernatural daily provision of God, it seemed entirely routine and natural to her. She was not trying to impress and didn’t grasp the magnitude of her statement, but it filled me with awe. I knew what Jesus felt when he said of the Gentile woman, “I have not found faith like this in all of Israel.” He stopped the presses and called time-out to hold the Gentile woman up as an example to his disciples of the woman’s profound faith discovered in an unexpected person.

So I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you about Laura of Romania, who believed God to do His work in her when it was not possible for her to find a way to a country of which she had no knowledge, and who trusted God for her daily survival with no visible means and no safety net. And when this became so natural to her as to be routine, she asked God for more to believe and trust Him for.

The last time I saw Laura, she had just finished speaking to a mesmerized Argentine church as my guest. She had to leave the meeting early after speaking that night so she could catch an overnight bus to her base. The people had fallen in love with her and marveled at her, literally surrounding her with prayer and blessing. We wept that night as we prayed together before she left, and through our shared tears she called me “father” and I called her “daughter.” We still communicate maybe once or twice a year by email, as she has moved on to other countries and callings. But I wanted to introduce you to my friend Laura who taught me about living by faith.

God desires to speak to us, though He will often do so in many different ways. When we are in a place of needing to know His will concerning a matter, most of us would say that we would love to hear that still, small voice imparting instruction or direction to our situation. But we may just as easily hear through the illumination of His written word. God may choose to reveal His truth in a number of ways – through dreams, a sermon, a word of knowledge, circumstances, or even by way of an inner “nudge” that we often refer to as His leading. As a child of God, you have experienced Him speaking to you in many different ways. (There’s no secret formula.) But the purpose of His speaking is always the same. He wants to communicate with us because He desires to be in relationship with us.

This is sometimes hard for us to grasp… this idea that the God of the universe wants to have an individual relationship with me. We know that He loves us… John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” But we often see God as so holy and righteous, that He is unapproachable. We need to be reminded again of the truth that the God who gave His only Son to save the world made it much more personal than that. He gave the very best of himself to save YOU, and to save ME. This past Sunday, Scott Wilcher, a well-loved son of this church, brought the morning message. In his sermon, Scott illustrated how Christ didn’t come simply as a bridge over the chasm of sin to bring us to God, but that God actually entered into and became sin for us through the person of Jesus, in order to redeem us to Himself. He didn’t just make a way… He became the way. And He didn’t just do it for everyone else; He did it for me.

Today, as you draw near to Him with praise and thanksgiving, remember that the Father loves you and desires to have fellowship with you… So much so, that He has held nothing back in order to make His love personal… just for you.

As a result, while going through these tragedies and even after they were over, they didn’t question God’s goodness or blame Him for the tragedies. They had also learned not to blame themselves by saying things like, “I didn’t do enough”, or “I should have prayed and fasted more.” They had learned to be willing to live without all the answers. They discovered that if you want the peace that passes understanding, you have to give up your right to understand.

This testimony has encouraged me to spend time praying and meditating on the goodness of God. Jesus said, “No one is good – except God alone” Luke 18:19b. The entire Bible is a testimony to the fact the He is good. “…the goodness of God leads you to repentance” Romans 2:4. “The LORD is good to all; He has compassion on all He has made”
Psalm 145:9. “… God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” Romans 8:28.

As we study the goodness of God, we began to realize that God is always for us. What a comforting and stabilizing truth. Listen to these excerpts from Romans 8:31-39:

“If God is for us, who can ever be against us? . . . Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one . . . Who then will condemn us? No one . . . Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean He no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? . . . No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

If you are reading this on your computer, I have included a few songs on this theme that you might enjoy worshiping to. Just click on any of the following links:

In Christ Alone:

You Are For Me:

You Are Good:

My prayer for you as we close is that the Holy Spirit will give you a deeper revelation of the goodness of God and the depth and certainty of His love for you. And with that revelation, may He enable you to love others in a deeper way with that same love,

Norm Kaneklides, Elder

During this time of fasting, I hope you have prayed based on fresh revelation received during your times with the Lord. In my previous devotional on fasting (which some of you may not yet have memorized), I mentioned that one of the “whys” of fasting was to achieve a God-honoring purpose. The above passage has been one of my recent requests for St. Giles.

Now, we know that God is omnipresent, i.e., he is present everywhere a once, working as the ultimate multi-tasker (Acts 17:24). He cares for the sparrow and charts the courses of the stars. Second, he is in each believer through the person of the Holy Spirit, a reality that, if grasped, will profoundly affect the way we look at ourselves in the mirror and live our lives in the world (1 Cor. 6:19; Eph. 1:13).

But there is another aspect of God’s presence described in Luke 5:17. Sometimes, God manifests his presence for a specific purpose. During those times he works sovereignly to heal the sick, save the lost, and accomplish more in a moment of grace than a lifetime of self-discipline can obtain. When that happens our job is to receive and rejoice.

People at St. Giles need healing. The world at our door needs salvation. We all need greater, deeper, more lasting personal transformation. Let’s ask the Lord to manifest his presence for his glorious purpose.

As we pray and fast this week, let us consider the magnificent promises of God’s Word. It is really quite amazing how broad and far-reaching are God’s promises to answer believing prayer. Let me reiterate – believing prayer is the key. So, as you meditate on these promises, let it cause you to reach out for more in prayer than is humanly possible. Let us be bold enough to pray “God-sized” prayers. May the Holy Spirit lead us into prayers that are asking what is impossible for man so that God will get all the glory as our prayers are answered.

“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. “ (John 14:12-14)

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” (John 15:7-8)

“In that day you will no longer ask me anything. I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”  (John 16:23-24)

“Jesus replied, ‘What is impossible with men is possible with God.’ “ (Luke 18:27)

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Mat 7:7-11)

Pray in faith and wait expectantly … and patiently for through faith and patience you will inherit all that has been promised.

Rick Watkins, Elder

On my way to work yesterday morning, the song “In His presence” came to my lips, and in the privacy of my car (one of the few places I feel comfortable singing out loud….smile), I kept singing the lines, “In your presence, all fear is gone, In your presence, is where I belong…..” It’s probably the same for you, but when I enter into His presence, everything changes…..everything. All the cares, the worries, the weight of this world seem like nothing. Nothing else matters, and everything is put into proper perspective. Sunday, in worship with you all, I spent the morning in that awesome place. I don’t live in that place every moment, in fact I find myself often distracted and not dwelling in His presence, and it’s then I feel the weight of daily circumstances and concerns. I’m a little slow to learn, but the Lord is faithful to remind me of His truths & promises. One passage He often reminds me of is Phil. 4:6-7, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” What is your “everything?” I have plenty to “fill” and define that term, maybe you do too. Well, scripture exhorts us to take “the everything” and give it – surrender it to the one who can handle it. Some of it is easy to give over, some of it, well……..not so easy.
Today, enter into His presence. Enter into the holy place, with everything and as you are, and experience our most awesome God, our Father who is greater and bigger than anything and everything we have to bring Him. Enter in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, and experience the incredible peace of God that comes even in the midst of all that is around us. The promise is that we will experience a peace, a peace that even guards our hearts and minds. Can you see it? A peace, set up around our hearts and minds, guarding our hearts & minds from the “everything” that tends to upset/concern/worry us. It doesn’t make sense in the natural. All those cares and concerns, but we walk in peace! Wow! What a place! Let’s enter there today.

Jeff Barhite, Elder

Mark Twain reportedly said, “It’s not what I don’t understand in the Bible that troubles me; it’s what I do.” Fasting is like that. Going without food is something a small child can understand. But why it’s important in the Kingdom of God is profound and mysterious. In this devotional, I’d like to offer several observations about the “why” of fasting. For further reading, you might check out Derek Prince’s book, Changing History through Prayer and Fasting. The title alone of the book is enough to convict me.
First, as the scripture quoted above makes clear, Jesus stated that after his physical departure from earth his followers would fast. In Matt. 6:16 Jesus said, “When you fast . . . .” In this area, Jesus led by example. He fasted 40 days and nights before beginning his ministry. (Matt. 4:2). Thus, the first why of fasting is simple. We do it because Jesus practiced it and commanded it.
Second, there is often a link in scripture between fasting and achieving a God-honoring purpose. Examples include: deliverance and healing (Mk. 9:29), repentance (Joel 2:12-13), Godly favor (Ester 4:16), and setting people apart for ministry (Acts 14:23). If God considers fasting part of the process through which he works in world, who are we to disagree? Better to do it than argue about it.
Third, fasting does something in us besides making our stomachs growl in protest. It takes aim at one of our greatest enemies, what the KJV calls “the flesh” and the NIV labels “the sinful nature.” Fasting declares to our flesh, “You are not my Lord. I belong to Jesus Christ.” During fasting our carnal mind clears; our spiritual ears perk up. By denying ourselves, the truth that “He must increase and I must decrease” comes a bit closer to reality. (Jn. 3:30). Isn’t a greater level of freedom from the sinful nature is a benefit worth missing a plate of spaghetti?
May the Lord, who works on many levels at once, bless you as you walk with him.