Whatever is Pure Archives
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Breakthrough for a Broken Heart: Overcome Your Disappointments and Live Into Your Dreams! By Paul Davis Are you going through life without feeling? Are you having difficulty connecting well with others? Are you fixated on your past pain and unable to boldly move into your future? Learn how to mend a broken heart and move on to attracting loving and lasting relationships. Paul Davis shows you how to aggressively deal with behavioral patterns that sabotage relationships, and teaches you to connect with your Creator for a new beginning. |
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Each New Day: 365 Simple Reflections, 25th Anniversary Edition By Corrie ten Boom Corrie ten Boom knew that she'd find daily help in Scripture --- no matter what she was going through! Based on incidents from her life, these 365 uplifting devotions will remind you of the Christian's victory over sin, Satan, and death; of God's wonderful promises; and that the present and future are in his hands. 224 pages, softcover from Baker. |
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The Walk of Repentance By Steve Gallagher The Walk Of Repentance is a 24 week study about repentance: what it is, what it brings about and what kind of behavior and attitudes we must repent of. This study has not been formulated to give a person more "head knowledge", the idea of it is to help the Word of God take root in your heart so that you can experience that true repentance. Each week of this curriculum has a theme, with a different Bible study each day. Each day you will have different types of studies on the same theme. On day six and seven of each week you will find the story of the Church woven through character studies of different Christians down through the centuries. Your walk of faith will be deeply affected as you encounter the level of devotion of others and what Christianity is really all about. |
Whatever is Pure - January 2006
Rev 21:5 (KJV) "And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful."
I was a very literal child, I must confess. It came as a disappointment to wake up on my sixth birthday not feeling a whole lot different than I felt the night before at the little kid age of five.. It made no sense that as now I could I claim a whole new number for my age yet I did not have a lot to show for it overnight. I truly expected to rise from my little cot much wiser, more mature and worthy of carrying the ponderous age of six upon my slight shoulders. Wait! This made no sense! I was no longer five, no longer a 'kid' in my eyes. I was a 'big girl' now. Six! Opening a book, I discovered I read about at the same speed I did the night before. I still struggled with tying my shoes and I still had to ask for help to reach the milk jug. My brothers towered over me as they pulled on their jackets to head to school and my next door neighbour continued to call me her 'sweet little girl'. It was all a mystery and a deflating mystery at that. Not much had changed.
I held the same view about New Years Day. I was sure the world would be totally new on January 1. Tucked safely in bed, I'd listen to the murmurs and laughter of the adults as they partied in the new year around the dining room table, playing cards. I'd overhear the same old lines year after year.
"My how time flies... " Fly? Would morning ever come? Would the mysterious new year ever arrive?
"It just seemed like yesterday we put up the Christmas tree.." Yesterday? It was a life time ago! Will morning ever come?
"I sure hope next year is better than this one.." Of course it'll be better! Silly adults. It'll be new. Everyone knows that new is always better than old!
"I wonder if we'll be all together next year.." What? It's only 9:00? Who slowed down these clocks!
I'd awaken in the morning and look out the window, expecting that the snowy yards of the neighbourhood would be different some how. I'd hope that perhaps my parents wouldn't be so grouchy after the late night they had. I'd look at my older brother and wonder how come he wasn't new? What a disappointment. Nothing was new. Everything was the same. If my little disillusioned six year old heart had ever read Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NIV), it'd have definitely agreed with Solomon when he wrote: "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
Praise God, he understood that heart cry of mine and of so many others. He declared to us. "Behold I make ALL things new." He boldly and confidently states this truth in the very last book in the second to last chapter in the bible. After all, he could back up this statement by pointing us to his victory over sin and death and the countless lives transformed through his power.The proof is in His word, from Genesis to Revelations. He's in the 'making all things new' business.
Today is indeed a NEW day. If we have confessed our sins and repented, the slate is clean. There is no dust, no grime and no dirty fingerprints to mark the pages of this new year. Our past cannot sully the fresh white slate in front of us. Our future cannot take away our new day. Rejoice with me. Right now, this very second, this very moment that you spend reading these words is 'new'. How you choose to be a steward of that 'new slate' is up to you. My fervent prayer is that I never take for granted that gift of 'newness' and that I do all in HIS power granted to me to cherish the potential of 'all things new'. Relationships strained, mistakes made, I'll bring them to the cross so I can treasure the gift of newness he grants me every day. 1 Jn 1:9 NIV "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."
© Katherine Walden
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More From The Bridegroom
"Come now my love into our secret place
And let me breathe perfume of your hair.
Each one I've counted, each my fingers trace
And each anoint with kisses as we share.
I long to wrap you in my strong embrace
'Till all your fears and tears will disappear
And in shared hopes and dreams you'll find such grace
To overcome such trials as appear.
I love you, Love, and ever will rejoice
When we, at last united, live as one.
Forever will you know and hear my voice
As I complete the song we have begun.
So sing, my love, and join your voice with mine
'Till we at last at wedding feast may dine."
©Robert Grob
rdgrob67@earthlink.net
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The New Way
The twilight had started to set in and the Garden of Eden radiated with the glorious presence of God this evening of the undated past, as Jehovah approached the only man on earth. As Adam saw the glory, he turned towards God with an excitement that could hardly find a vocal expression. Right in the Garden, one could hear, though in a low tone, the music of angels singing in heaven the praise of Jehovah.
All the while, in spite of all the splendour of the Garden, where nothing lacked, Adam did not find complete joy. Neither the glory of all the flowers nor the exciting rush of the four-headed river in the Garden gave him complete joy. Each type of creature found joy in relating with the fellow members of its kind, but Adam was the only in his class of creature. The only of his kind! It was for him a really lonely world.
When God put him in the Garden, He had spelt out a task for him, which was to keep it, but this he was doing without finding complete fulfillment.
However, if Adam had known the plan of Jehovah as He approached the Garden that glorious evening, certainly he would be more excited. Earlier that day, when God was being treated to a glorious music continually presented by the countless angels around His throne, He had suddenly remembered something: man was created in His image, among others, with a desire for fellowship. He was not alone up there, but as He peered below into the Garden, He saw a lonely man; holding a bouquet of rose which he has just plucked. Adam, with the flower in his right hand, had walked leisurely and solely for a short while as if looking for someone in whose hand to place it. Someone? But he knew he was alone. All alone in the world! The only member of his species! The thought of this ‘someone' gave birth to a void, a great emptiness in him. And it was because God has seen this void that He whispered under His breath, "it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him" (Gen. 2: 8).
So when God came that evening it was for a different purpose other than the previous. Previously, when He came in the twilight to fellowship with Adam, He had told him many things about Himself, including His kingdom and His creative work which He accomplished before Adam came into being. But that special day, He had come to fulfill a purpose that would facilitate one of His commands during creation: "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen.1: 28).
That evening after exchanging greetings, God led Adam to a plain region in the Garden, very close to the flower from which he had earlier plucked a bouquet as if bespeaking a great future event. God had laid Adam before Himself… And it was only through a vision that Adam got to know what transpired afterwards. God had made him to sleep very soundly and brought out a bone from his side, and therewith made the ‘someone' for whom his heart had earlier yearned. Though the yearning couldn't be rightly defined. ‘Someone' to fill the entire void in his life.
When Adam woke and turned and felt ‘something' (nay, someone!) warm beside him, he reached out to her (yeah, not it!) with his right hand and smiled mildly. It was as if he was now discovering something new about himself: ability to express a new dimension of love, to care in a totally different way, and to be responsible to someone not higher than himself, etc.
While God stood by to watch Adam and the day-old woman beside him, the man had hugged her with indescribable passion, the gesture which was equally responded as if the woman herself had been struggling to come into existence for that purpose, long before she was created from Adam's rib.
Adam broke away from her and held her at arm-length and smiled and said, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh…" (Gen. 2: 23).
That moment, the heavenly music that was hitherto heard in a low tone, beamed across the Garden. The fellowship that always took place in heaven seemed to have been replicated on earth, as the twosome, wrapped in love and divine glory inched away from the spot where God made the woman. They got to the place where Adam had earlier fetched the flower. He reached out his hand to the flower again and fetched another bouquet. He smiled mildly and placed it in the right hand of Eve. That was the first material expression of his love for her...
Sometime later, through their disobedience to the command of God, this couple and all generations born after them lost the Garden. But thanks to God for His great love, He made a way of return, not just into the Garden, but unto His very place of abode. But men can not return through the golden way of the garden, but through Jesus Christ by accepting Him as the Lord and Saviour. He is the New Way.
When you read this story, did you realise any void in your life that you want God to fill? It may not be in marital dimension only, but God knows about it, and as you put your trust in Him, He would fill it in Jesus' name. Amen.
© Bunmi Osho-Davies
oshodavies@yahoo.com
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