Just Us: 10/31 Manna

DYSMAS CONDUIT

FREE FOOD

(Isa 55:1)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2009

Question for the day: What can we pray with YOU about today?

Good morning,

This is just a reminder that every day, while we are studying God’s Word to add to our website, someone from our ministry, Dysmas Conduit, is holding you up before the Lord in prayer. May He greatly bless you today as you pursue His will and He is glorified through you.

God’s blessings, our love,

George & Sidney Granger

Today’s Chapter in God’s Word

Galatians 6

Listen at

http://www.audiotreasure.com/webindex.htm

Nothing but the Cross

1-3

Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day's out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ's law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.

4-5

Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

Be very sure now, you who have been trained to a self-sufficient maturity, that you enter into a generous common life with those who have trained you, sharing all the good things that you have and experience.

7-8

Don't be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he'll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.

9-10

So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.

11-13

Now, in these last sentences, I want to emphasize in the bold scrawls of my personal handwriting the immense importance of what I have written to you. These people who are attempting to force the ways of circumcision on you have only one motive: They want an easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by a faith that shares Christ's suffering and death. All their talk about the law is gas. They themselves don't keep the law! And they are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. That is contemptible!

14-16

For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. Can't you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do—submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life! All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God—his chosen people. Peace and mercy on them!

Quite frankly, I don't want to be bothered anymore by these disputes. I have far more important things to do—the serious living of this faith. I bear in my body scars from my service to Jesus.

May what our Master Jesus Christ gives freely be deeply and personally yours, my friends. Oh, yes!

CURRENT PRAYER REQUESTS:

Please pray for Mike Brommer as he spreads the Lord’s Seed and witnesses to His glory while on the road today. Please pray also that the Lord will lead him to Kingdom-profitable loads to carry, and that He grants Mike safe passage today to Baltimore, MD.

THANK YOU FOR PRAYING FOR PASTOR BOB ALLMANN

Please remain in prayer concerning his continued healing and that he is upheld by the Spirit, becoming physically strong as he returns to serving the Lord… what he loves to do!

Please continue to pray for Billy Hamburg, whose doctors found 5 tumors in his bladder. He had surgery June 29^th and the biopsy results showed a cancerous condition. He will be undergoing chemo & radiation treatments and will need the Lord’s Hand to overcome his anxiety as well as the cancer.

UPDATE:

After more testing, the doctors have found that, despite the number of tumors found in and around the bladder, that the cancer has NOT spread to any surrounding muscle tissue or organs. They are looking at completely removing the bladder and replacing it with a piece of intestine. WE PRAISE GOD AND GIVE HIM THE GLORY FOR THIS; WE ALSO PRAY THAT BILLY WILL RECOGNIZE THIS AS GOD WORKING IN HIS LIFE!!!!!!!!!

GOOD MORNING, CHURCH!

Pastor Greg Finke

"The Pharisees, who loved money,

heard all this and were sneering at Jesus,"

Luke 16:14

It's easy to hear Jesus' all-or-nothing teachings about money and start down the path to sneering. After all, His clear teaching lays bare our secret hope that we can love money more than the Father and still get away with it. We like to think we can be religious and still hoard our money for ourselves. That somehow the clear teaching that we cannot serve both God and money will not apply to us. That somehow the clear teaching not to rob from God's 10% will be considered just borrowing when He sees it is us doing the robbing.

But Jesus' clear and even blatant teaching undoes us. His clear teaching exposes our sinful nature and reveals our divided loyalties. We want to push back. We want to negotiate. We want to tell Him He doesn't know what He's talking about. I soon end up sounding like the sneering Pharisees.

And why does Jesus do it? Why so blatant? So black and white? So irritatingly clear?

Because He loves us.

He knows our hearts better than we do. He knows how good we are at loop-holes and exceptions. He knows how easily our hearts are given away to the pursuit of the seductive "more." He knows that unless He tells us the truth about our hearts and money, we will soon be swept away by both. What we treasure will have us in the end. And HE wants to have US.

Thankfully, He loves us enough to tell us the truth. It cuts a little. It aggravates us some, but it also sets us free.

"Thank You for telling me the truth, dear Jesus. I almost got swept away again. The current is strong here. My heart is so slippery. I need to be reminded often of what is truly treasure and what is truly not."

Be wise, dear Church!

Pastor Greg