GOD’S WORD FOR AUGUST 4

We are reading from a daily devotional  called “Running To Win” written by Erwin Lutzer  and the late, great D.L. Moody.   Erwin Lutzer is a light in our day as D.L. Moody was in his.  Besides his many ministries, and many books, Pastor Lutzer was Senior Pastor at Moody Church in Chicago for 36 years and now serves as Pastor Emeritus there.  He is  Chancelor and a former professor at Moody Bible Institute, where he taught Theology and Ministry, and now has numerous radio teachings.

GOD ALONE

1 Peter 3:18

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”

D.L. MOODY

Here we see that Christ was raised up from the grave by the Spirit, and the power exercised to raise Christ’s dead body must raise our dead souls and quicken (give life to) them.  No other power on Earth can quicken a dead soul but the same power that raised the body of Jesus Christ out of Joseph’s sepulchre.  If we want that power to quicken our friends who are dead in sin, we must look to God, and not be looking to man to do it.  If we look alone to pastors, or Christ’s disciples, if we look alone to Christ’s disciples to do this work, we shall be disappointed; but if we look to the Spirit of God and expect it to come from Him and Him alone, then we shall honor the Spirit, and the Spirit will do His work.

ERWIN LUTZER

The unconverted are not only spiritually dead, they think they are alive!  Of course, they are alive physically, but they don’t know they’re dead spiritually.  If I might paraphrase Martin Luther, “The natural man is blind and deaf and dead, but he perceives himself to be able to see, and hear and he sees himself as being alive.”  In other words, sin blinds us from seeing ourselves as we are in God’s presence.

Why share the gospel?  The Word of God, combined with the Spirit of God, breathes into the human heart the life of God.  Our privilege is sharing the Word:  only God can take those words and create life.  Our God is a God of resurrection!

PRAYER

Father, please help me to trust Your Word to breathe life into those who hear.

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John 3:7

Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’

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1 Peter 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

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1 Peter 1:23

since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;

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John 16:13

When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come.

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James 1:17

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

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James 3:17

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

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Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

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John 14:6: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'”

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Acts 4:12: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

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2 Cor. 5:17

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

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