Issue 29

Living Water Newsletter for December 24, 2007

QUOTES & STUFF

Scheduled for January publication - listen to a short excerpt from the CD that will be with it

What Are True Christians?
A chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, made God's own special people that they may proclaim the praises of Him who called them out of darkness into His marvelous light.

A. B. Simpson
The chief danger of the Church today is that it is trying to get on the same side as the world, instead of turning the world upside down. Our Master expects us to accomplish results, even if they bring opposition and conflict. Anything is better than compromise, apathy, and paralysis. God give to us an intense cry for the old-time power of the Gospel and the Holy Ghost!

R. A. Torrey
One of the commonest causes of failure in Christian life is found in the attempt to follow some good man whom we greatly admire. No man and no woman, no matter how good, can be safely followed. If we follow any man or woman, we are bound to go astray. There has been but one absolutely perfect Man on this earth—the Man Christ Jesus. If we try to follow any other man we are surer to imitate his faults than his excellencies. Look to Jesus and Jesus only as your guide.

D. L. Moody
I prayed for Faith, and thought that some day Faith would come down and strike me like lightning. But Faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, "Now Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." I had closed my Bible, and prayed for Faith. I now opened my Bible, and began to study, and Faith has been growing ever since.

Joseph Parker
The man whose little sermon is "repent" sets himself against his age, and will for the time being be battered mercilessly by the age whose moral tone he challenges. There is but one end for such a man—"off with his head!" You had better not try to preach repentance until you have pledged your head to heaven.

Samuel Chadwick
The sign of Christianity is not a cross but a tongue of fire.

When I met Gene he was selling cars, and I invited him to our meetings. He had been coming for a few weeks, but he was spiritually and emotionally cold and hard, like frozen steel.

When I announced I was going to teach on the 23rd Psalm that night, the look on Gene's face said he was in the wrong place. Later he told me, "When you said you were going to teach on the Psalm 23, I thought, Man, I'll get nothing out of this, I've heard that Psalm taught a dozen times, and taught it as often myself." But though neither of us knew it, the power of the Lord to heal was in His Word that night.

I started out by reciting the Psalm: "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul . . ."

When I said those last four words, an explosive cry shot forth from Gene and he burst into tears, as if a dam had suddenly broken inside; he rocked back and forth, his arms half-raised, sobbing uncontrollably. His wife clung to his arm, crying with him.

I went over and put my hand on his shoulder and said, "He restoreth our souls, Brother, He restoreth our souls," and then stood there and cried with him and his wife as the Lord poured healing oil  through them, soothing and healing all the hurt and bitterness.

Within two weeks Gene started working in that little church as a musician and then as assistant pastor; later he started his own church. I taught for him several times, and every time I did he introduced me by telling the story of the night the Lord restored his soul; and never without weeping with joy.

"Oh, men and women, if you wish to get an audience and wish to do that audience some good after you get them, study, study, study, the one Book, and teach, teach, teach the one Book, the Bible, the only Book that is God's Word, and the only Book that has power to gather and hold and bless the crowds for any great length of time."  —R. A. Torrey (1856-1928)

"I Believe in Miracles, Vol. 18," was just released

"You idiot! You've thrown away one of the first books ever printed. A copy recently sold at an auction for half a million dollars!"

"Oh, I don't think this book would have been worth anything close to that much," replied the man. "It was scribbled all over in the margins by some guy named Martin Luther."

At a nearby table, a Scotsman who could not help but hear them, and who could not keep silent any longer, turned around in his chair and said just as loudly to them, "Mon, you make a donkey and I'll make him talk."

I've received a contract for a new book, Christ Is God's Everything for You. Don't yet know the publication date, but the completion date for the manuscript is March 1. Would appreciate your prayers as I work on it.

Harold J. Chadwick