FEEDING ON HIS FAITHFULNESS

Recently I have been drawn to Psalm 37. Each time I read it I am encouraged and then I return to my regular pattern of devotional reading. A few days later I am drawn again to Psalm 37 and then a few days after that it happens again. There is something in this outpouring of King David’s heart that is pertinent for this hour and the Lord doesn’t seem to want me to get very far away from it.

This psalm was written because David was going through a difficult time. The psalm begins,   “Do not fret because of evildoers” (Psalm 37:1, NKJV). The word fret means to be hot, furious, angry, and the psalmist is saying to us, “You must not let this happen! Do not allow the circumstances of life and the evil you see in the land fill you with anger.” God is telling us, “I am still in charge and you are to walk in My peace . . . so fret not!”

The psalm goes on to tell us, “Do not be envious of those who work evil, for they will soon be cut down like the grass. You are to trust in Him and do good works; be fruitful where He has planted you and (this is really important) feed on His faithfulness” (see verses 1-3).

There are at least two ways to look at the statement, “Feed on His faithfulness.”

1. Some commentators suggest that we are to see this as a commitment by God to provide for His people who have faith in Him.

Faith pleases God and He always responds to the faith of His people. Carol and I know this to be true and we have experienced it afresh in just the last few years. But I also think the psalmist was challenging us to see this statement in another way.

2. I believe David was encouraging us to feed, literally to ingest, to have meals of faithfulness, by remembering and rehearsing God’s faithfulness to us and to all His people.

As we feed on (have a meal of) His faithfulness and remember what He has done, we are encouraged to believe for what He is going to do!

So how can we feed on His faithfulness?

It’s easy to make the mistake of thinking this is something complicated—this idea of feeding on His faithfulness—and it is not. It’s really quite simple. I think it may be its simplicity that causes us to often ignore its great potential.

We learn God’s faithfulness and we feed on it by answering our calling to stay in fellowship with Jesus. “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:9). As believers, Jesus is the center point of our life. As we enter into and stay in that relationship, that fellowship, we are fed by the intimacy, by the communion, we have with Him.

His faithfulness is revealed to us when we feed on His Word because the Bible is packed full of powerful stories of God’s faithfulness to His people. You cannot read through Hebrews 11 and not have your faith stirred and encouraged. Read through the book of Acts, or Genesis and Exodus, the first six chapters of Daniel, and see if your faith is not fed and your understanding of God’s faithfulness expanded.

His faithfulness is refreshed in us when we praise and worship Him. Praise is the response of the righteous for what God has done. Worship is the response of the righteous unto God for who He is, the admiration of His person.

We feed on His faithfulness when we give thanks for what He has done in our lives. Give Him thanks for His provision, thanks for all the answers to prayer, thanks for your salvation, thanks for His leading and guiding in your life. Thank Him for the infilling and empowering of the Holy Spirit. There is so much to give thanks for because God is so faithful!

It is as we feed on His faithfulness that we find ourselves “delighting in Him.” Delighting is an outflow of our feeding on His faithfulness.

Here are a few passages of Scripture that speak of His faithfulness.

“Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments” (Deuteronomy 7:9).

“His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).

“Your mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds” (Psalm 36:5).

“Your faithfulness endures to all generations” (Psalm 119:90). I love the way the New Living Translation puts this verse: “Your faithfulness extends to every generation, as enduring as the earth you created.”

“God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

SPIRITUAL OXYGEN by Dr. Jack Hayford

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite times of year. But in November of 1981, I was especially excited about it. In addition to the usual joys that accompany this wonderful season, I had an extra reason to celebrate:

Our family had just moved into a lovely new home! And though we still had boxes to unpack and pictures to hang, we were feeling especially blessed.

There was just one nagging problem. In the weeks since the move, various members of our family had started getting sick.

The illnesses were nothing serious, just pesky ailments of different kinds. But they'd swept through the household like a wave. First, both of our boys caught colds. Then, Anna's throat got sore and raspy. Next, my youngest son's fiancé, who was living with us at the time, came down

with something else entirely; and finally my daughter turned up with a swollen gland on her neck for seemingly no reason at all.

One night as we were getting ready for bed, Anna realized that with Thanksgiving just a few days away, she needed to get well quick. "Honey, I really want you to pray for me," she said.

After we prayed together for her healing, I laid awake in the dark for a while and pondered the situation. There had to be a reason for this recent rash of sicknesses in our family. Something is going on here, I thought.

Was it the house?

No, surely not. The spiritual atmosphere of our new home had been sweetly cleansed even before we moved in. Members of our church who'd helped remodel it had been flooding it with love and prayers for months. And though Anna and I hadn't yet formally dedicated the house to the Lord (we planned to do so after we were settled in) we had temporarily covered every room with prayers for God's protection.

So, spiritually, everything seemed to be in order. Yet it was obvious something was still wrong.

With Anna already asleep beside me, I silently prayed for wisdom. "Lord, please help me understand this. What's happening?" I asked.

The answer came immediately. In my heart the Lord showed me a vision of what appeared to be a big inflatable tent-the kind that's kept erect by a system of air pumps and fans. The middle of the tent was partially collapsed. The top of it was sagging down.

I knew the instant I saw it what the vision meant.

The tent represented the condition of the temporary spiritual covering Anna and I had put over our house a few weeks earlier. It was sagging and deflated. The reason? "There hasn't been regular praise in this place since you moved in here," the Lord said.

It was a sobering revelation but it carried no sense of condemnation. It wasn't like the Lord was saying, "You didn't praise Me so now you're going to get it!" On the contrary, like a loving Father, He was graciously reminding me of a vital spiritual truth:

Praise sets up a mantle of protection around us! It produces a spiritual atmosphere that our adversary, the devil, cannot move through. It serves as a powerful weapon we can use against him and insulates us from his attacks.

You can probably guess what Anna I did the next morning when we woke up. We walked through every room in the the house praising the Lord.

As we did, we sensed the atmosphere becoming more buoyant. We felt a little like we'd boarded the Goodyear blimp and we were rising up higher and higher. Within a couple of days everybody in the family was well.

That Thanksgiving I learned a lesson I will never forget.

I learned that no matter how busy I might be, I need to maintain a continual spirit of thanksgiving to God. I need to keep praising Him because, for us as believers, praise and thanksgiving is our very breath. It's our spiritual oxygen.

Just think how important oxygen is to us physically. Our bodies absolutely must have it. We can survive for a while without food and even without water, but we must have air all the time. The same is true spiritually where giving thanks to God is concerned. We need to do it on a constant basis. To be spiritually healthy, we need to live in a sustained atmosphere of praise.

"But Pastor Jack," you might say, "is that really possible?"

Yes! The Bible confirms it. It says in verse after verse:

- From the rising of the sun to its going down the Lord's name is to be praised. (Ps. 113:3)

- I will praise the Lord at all times. I will constantly speak his praises. (Ps. 34:1, NLT)

- Let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. (Heb. 13:15)

Notice that last verse compares our praises as believers to the sacrifices the Israelites made in the Old Testament. That's significant! Why? Because in Leviticus 6:13 the Lord gave the priests specific instructions about the altar upon which those sacrifices were offered. He said, "A fire shall always be burning on the altar; it shall never go out."

Personally, I find that command encouraging because tending the fire wasn't all the priests had to do. They also had to offer prayers for the people. They had to shovel the ashes off the altar and take them outside the city and bury them. They had to wash and care for their ministry

garments. In other words, the priests had a very busy schedule!

Yet in the midst of it all, they managed to keep the altar fire burning.

You and I as modern day believers can do the same. We don't have to join a monastery where all we have to do is praise the Lord. We can keep the flame of thanksgiving going in our hearts even while we go about the business of our everyday lives.

We can have praise on our lips while we're getting dressed in the morning. We can speak or sing out our thanksgivings to God as we go to work or to the grocery store. Morning and night, we can find opportunities to lift our hearts in worship to Him.

I'm sure you already do this to some degree. But, loved one, I want to encourage you to do it even more. In this special season, I want to challenge you to come up to new levels of thanksgiving! That's why I've arranged for you to receive my 4-CD series, All Hail the Power and my 2-CD series, Five Reasons for Thanksgiving and Thanks-Living as a thank you gift for your support this month. It will stir within you a fresh fire of gratitude toward God. It will help you live increasingly in an attitude of perpetual praise.

Oh, what a marvelous way this is to live! First and foremost, it blesses the Lord, and second, blesses us. It surrounds us with a mantle of divine protection and enlarges us spiritually. It changes our character, our countenance, and our lives.

Beloved, until I write you again, let's ask the Lord to teach us more about this glorious lifestyle. Let's tell Him more often how much we appreciate Him. Let's celebrate this holiday season by constantly breathing the powerful oxygen of praise!

With a grateful heart,

Pastor Jack

www.jackhayford.org

Jack Hayford Ministries

PO Box 92627

Southlake, TX 76092

LET'S TALK ABOUT RECYCLING

I hope you recycle. We do—newspapers, plastic, aluminum and glass. We try to recycle other things as well, such as used clothing, old furniture, books—we either give them away or call a ministry we can donate them to. Recycling is important and is a form of renewal to items we no longer want or need.

And recycling has been a part of church life for hundreds of years. Let me explain.

A powerful and new world missions thrust that began in the late 1700s under the leadership of William Carey, J. Hudson Taylor and others slowed down and lost much of its momentum in the late 1800s. The missionary emphasis was revived following the Second World War as thousands of Christian servicemen came home from overseas with a burden to share the Good News with millions who had never heard of Jesus Christ. These wonderful men and women had been exposed to the spiritual darkness in Europe, Asia and Africa and many returned with a burden to do something; hence, a renewed world missions emphasis resulted.

The Pentecostal outpouring that began in the early 1900s grew and spread exponentially for about thirty to thirty-five years and then seemed to lose a lot of its energy. In the late 1950s an Episcopal priest in Van Nuys, California, had an encounter with the Holy Spirit and began speaking and teaching about it. Suddenly the Holy Spirit movement was recycled to a whole new audience. The growth of the Pentecostal/Charismatic message took on dimensions that no one ever thought possible. There are some estimates now that fifty percent of the worldwide Christian Church is now Pentecostal/Charismatic in belief and practice, and it continues to grow.

Recycling also seems to happen in doctrinal emphasis. After decades of poor or inadequate teaching on faith, thirty or forty years ago a renewed emphasis on faith emerged in the Church and a whole new era was birthed. We could go on and on talking about various areas of the Church where emphasis or truth has fallen into disuse or been abandoned and suddenly a resurgence of what was neglected occurs.

It seems to me that recycling is healthy for the Church as it strives for maturity.

But let me add this word of caution. Not everything that gets recycled in the Church is good.  Some things that died in years past need to be left in the graveyard. They were not life-giving before and they are not now.

Let me illustrate what I mean.

In the early 1970s Carol and I were living with our very small children in Dallas. I was the crusade director for David Wilkerson and we conducted area-wide crusades throughout the U.S., Canada and western Europe. In the summer of 1973 a well-known Southern Baptist evangelist conducted a crusade at a stadium in Garland, Texas. I went to one of the evening services and I’m being honest when I tell you that I went to see how they did things. Frankly, I was impressed! I enjoyed the service, everything was well organized, there were several thousand in attendance, and the altar call was excellent.

 

One thing that the evangelist emphasized, however, really troubled me. He went to great lengths to emphasize, “The Church won’t tell you this, but serving Jesus is totally fun. It’s fun all the time.” 

I wondered how I had missed that in my study of Scripture! That emphasis was around for a few years and then seemed to disappear because, thankfully, saner minds had prevailed and corrected an erroneous emphasis. Scripture does not teach that serving Jesus is fun all the time. Scripture does teach that all believers can know the joy and peace of the Lord that sustains them in times of trouble, but it also says, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12, ESV).

The “Jesus is fun and exciting all the time” message is trying to make a comeback in portions of today’s Church. I’m seeing it advertised on some TV shows and in print messages. Not long ago I looked at the website of a church that was being planted in New York City and a part of their mission statement is “living life is meant to be fun!”

This is the negative side of recycling. I believe the Holy Spirit uses the recycling principle to assist the Church in staying healthy and on target. The enemy also uses the principle to try to perpetuate error and imbalance.

Is serving Jesus fun all the time? No! The Creator of the universe is far more interested in our growth and maturity than He is in our momentary feelings of elation. One of the attributes that Isaiah prophesied about the Messiah is that He would be known as “everlasting Father” (Isaiah 9:6). This is speaking of His fatherly nature. Every good father wants his children to grow up to be fully developed and mature and that means that at times discipline must take place. To take another approach is child abuse and it results in adults retaining the immaturity of children.

STRENGTH AND COURAGE

The first chapter of Joshua is on my short list of favorite chapters in the Bible.

Joshua was about eighty years old when he became the leader of the Jewish nation—certainly not a young man. He had spent his life as a trusted associate to Moses, one of the most dynamic leaders in the Old Testament. Joshua followed Moses out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and into the wilderness along with a couple million escaping Jews.

Joshua was there when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments; he was there when Moses got angry and didn’t follow instructions and then struck the rock instead of speaking to it. He was there through good times and bad and he proved himself over and over as a loyal and competent associate. Joshua was a skilled military commander who led the Jewish army to victory under the oversight of Moses (Exodus 17:8-16).

Joshua was as complete a number-two man as any nation could wish for. But then Moses died and God put Joshua in charge!

The first nine verses of Joshua 1 are God’s encouraging instructions to Joshua as he stepped into the shoes Moses had filled for so long. Among the wonderful promises and instructions God gave to Joshua in these verses is his admonition to him to “be strong and courageous” (verses 6, 7 and 9).

These first nine verses are a prescription for success in leadership and in all areas of life. The message God poured out for Joshua is applicable to you and to me . . . with no exceptions!

Recently I have spent considerable time attempting to understand the command to “be strong and courageous” and why it was repeated as it was.

First, let me tell you what this “strength and courage” message is not.

The attributes that God is speaking of do not include the phony, tough guy image so prevalent today among segments of the entertainment world. This is projecting an unreal image and, sadly, it has found its way into the Christian world. The “tough guy” image of some Christian personalities is very unChristlike!

So if strength and courage for a Christian are not cultivated images, then what are they?

When the Bible speaks of a person being strong, it is not referring to physical strength; it doesn’t mean looking muscular or tough. God’s instruction to Joshua was not to join a gym and begin lifting weights. No, “be strong” is speaking of the inner attitude, the character of a man/woman of God. This is a person who has allowed the character of Christ to be formed in him, and that has nothing to do with visual images. It has everything to do with allowing the “solid Rock” to become the core of your life and it takes time for this to happen.

I was privileged to know David Wilkerson for forty-eight years. Brother Dave, as he liked to be called, was a small man in physical stature. But spiritually he was a giant—a strong man. When he died, he left a legacy that will not be matched by very many others in recent history. His legacy includes nearly 1300 Teen Challenge Centers around the world; a megachurch with an attendance of about 8,000 located at 51st and Broadway in the heart of New York City; The Cross and the Switchblade book that has been read by nearly 20 million people; The Cross and the Switchblade movie seen by over 50 million; and a very successful crusade ministry that led hundreds of thousands to faith in Christ. And this is only a portion of the legacy.

To be strong is to allow faith to become your heart and life!

Courage speaks of the outward behavior that flows from the inner attitude of strength. In our vernacular, courage finds its expression in “faith with works” (see James 2:17).

Courage gets a message from strength. Strength says to courage, “You can do this!” Courage says, “I’m not sure I’m ready; I’m not sure I have enough experience.” Strength says, “I know you can do this! I am fully confident that just as God has provided everything needed in the past, He will provide again in this. He is faithful and we are to be obedient.” And courage replies, “You’re right and I’m going to step out, believe God, and do what He says!”

I love the story from the biography of David Wilkerson regarding the purchase of the building in Manhattan that is now the home of Times Square Church.

Gary Wilkerson (David’s son) tells the story:

My dad and Bob Phillips (one of the associate pastors) had begun taking walks together through Times Square, and one day during the negotiating period, Dad stopped in his tracks. “Bob,” he said out of the blue, “I need you to believe God with me on this. I don’t know where the money is going to come from for this theater.” Bob answered, “Okay, of course, I’ll believe God with you.”

They walked another block, and Dad stopped again. “Bob, I mean it,” Dad said. “I really need you to believe with me on this. I need you to stand with me.” “Okay, yes, I will,” Bob answered. Dad did the same on the next block. “David,” Bob finally told him, “I’d love to believe with you. I’ll do everything I can to believe. But how can I believe for fifteen million dollars? I’ve never done that.”

Bob remembers that Dad’s face turned stern. “It was not hardness,” he says, “it was resoluteness of purpose. David was that way in everything he did. He asked me, ‘Have you ever believed for five dollars?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What about five hundred dollars?’ ‘Absolutely, over the years I’ve had to believe God for five hundred dollars for ministry.’ He said, ‘That’s the same faith you believe with for fifteen million. You believe it is in God’s hands, and the amount is not a problem for him.’”

            (The Cross, The Switchblade and the Man Who Believed, page 266).

David Wilkerson’s ministry bought the building that now houses Times Square Church for sixteen million dollars in cash that God had miraculously provided.

That’s an example of strength and courage. “Be strong and very courageous” (Joshua 1:7).