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TFTD - January 2018


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01 January 2018

 

“Holiness is achieved not by spiritual means alone without the rough and tumble of life. Stumbling blocks become stepping stones to higher and better things. The challenge to be longsuffering comes remarkably often. How wonderfully Joseph always rose to the occasion by meeting such challenges, uplifted by his continuous consciousness that “God was with him” (Acts 7:9-10; Genesis 45:5,8). Many centuries later when Paul reviewed the circumstances of his life he confirmed how he had become increasingly aware of the divine hand that had guided and the heart that had planned (2 Corinthians 6:1-10). His unshakeable conviction was born of the sheer facts of longsuffering, “and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). This is a great and glorious affirmation to comfort and encourage us. Many a fire of experience sweeping over the lives of God’s people has revealed unsuspected qualities of patience, endurance, longsuffering, which have been to the enrichment of others and to the glory of the One they lovingly serve. “Take my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience” (James 5:10).”

 

- Claud Lamb

The Fruit of the Spirit (1981)

 

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02 January 2018 

 

"If ever we deliberately pose before men as other than we are, the sin of Ananias hovers at our hand. If ever we determine to pretend to a devotion and a self-sacrifice which we do not show and have not made, we are in peril of lying to God’s Holy Spirit, regarding what men will think of us now as much more important than what God thinks now, and will declare then. And when ever any pretence of ours seems to expose us to this terrible danger, it is better to pull ourselves up short, and resolve not to seem before men other than we are."

 

- A.D. Norris

Peter: Fisher of Men
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03 January 2018

 

"The Lord Jesus reflected the balance and priorities of God. Warm hearted, sensitive, compassionate—the Father and the Son are all these and more. But they see with longer vision than is sometimes true of ourselves; they are working for a greater good. Their first concern is our spiritual welfare, for they seek to have us join with them for ever in the bonds of eternal fellowship."

 

- Don Styles

Christ's First Concern-Our Spiritual Welfare (1983)

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04 January 2018

 

"In our walk on the path of life we shall come across people who do not believe in God, yet seem to show more “christian” love than some who are believers. This should remind us of James, who said that faith without works is dead and works without faith are dead also. Therefore, when performing acts of kindness, we must embody spiritual things as well."

 

- S.G. Winter-Moore

Love Thy Neighbour as Thyself (1984)

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05 January 2018

 

"High above all other wondrous works of which we have experience is that miracle of ineffable love and divine power which alone can keep such feeble creatures as we are from falling from grace, and can present us stainless and faultless before God’s throne. Then shall come to pass that which is written, “With gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought: they shall enter into the king’s palace” (Psalm 45:15)."

 

- Claud Lamb

To Keep You from Falling (1993)

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06 January 2018

 

"There are different kinds of glory, as Paul reveals. There is a terrestrial glory and there is a celestial glory. There was the glory of Solomon, but a shadow of the glory of the lily. Yet there is no glory in creation that can compare to the glory revealed to Moses in Sinai. “And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third, and to the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:5-7). Here was a proclamation of glory in a name which was comprehensive of mercy, graciousness and forgiveness, which attributes are finally to be revealed in a multitude of glorified ones."

 

- W. Willey 

A Picture of Redemption (1959)
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07 January 2018

 

"The idea of “building” provides a criterion by which a man’s work can be judged. But here again there must be clear aims; we must have the Master’s building plans. To build to our plans, to preach our own theories, to fix for ourselves what we ought to do—may all be in vain. To cast away the imaginations of our own heart is wise and good. But when a man has seen the truth and then becomes its enemy, pulling down where he had before builded, he is the more responsible. So Paul defines what his position would have been had the charges of his accusers been correct. “For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God” (Galatians 2:18,19)."

 

- John Carter

Builders of God’s House (1960)

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08 January 2018

 

"It was strange how blind Israel were to the implications of their own Scriptures. The Christ they looked for was a national deliverer. The idea that through the work of Messiah Israel would become a world church was completely foreign: their narrow nationalism had no place for a Messiah who would bring light of truth to the blind, ignorant multitudes of the nations. There were, however, faithful discerning Israelites who knew the truth. Simeon, taking in his arms the infant Christ, “blessed God” for that his eyes had seen God’s salvation “which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the nations ...” (Luke 2:31-32). John the Baptist, heralding the Saviour, spoke to the people of Isaiah’s prophecy that through the coming One “all flesh should see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6)."

 

- Alan Eyre

The Light of the World (1968)

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09 January 2018 

 

"In Christ we see the full revelation of God’s word, the perfect expression of His active truth. Not only does Christ speak truth; he is truth; he is the Word which with unfailing power is accomplishing God’s ends; and so in the last vision, when he is seen going forth with the heavenly armies to subdue all the world to righteousness, he is called “Faithful and True” and his name is called “The Word of God”. How, then, does Christ himself regard the earlier writings? The final answer, as of so much else in Jesus, is the Cross; because it was written in Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, it was binding upon him to suffer; because he came to do the will of God, he took upon himself all that was prescribed to him in the roll of the Book, and was obedient even to death, and that the agonizing and shameful death of the cross. We have also his many express declarations of the authority of Scripture; and one such saying must be carefully considered in a study of the Sermon on the Mount."

 

- L.G. Sargent 

The Teaching of the Master

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10 January 2018 

 

"By common consent the finest and best analysis of love in the Bible is in 1 Corinthians 13. Why it was revealed first to the believers at Corinth we cannot tell—perhaps they needed it most. But for all disciples it is a masterpiece. Love divided so as to make love complete; an apocalypse of spiritual life lived in the standing ground of human need and human weakness. Love on the earth battling against the things which are unlovely. Love positively active, for goodness sake; a blueprint of how the theory works. Love leavens life. Every virtue is impregnated. No part of discipleship escapes the influence of love."

 

- Dennis Gillett

The Genius of Discipleship

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11 January 2018 

 

“Jesus spoke a great truth when he said: “My Father is working still, and I am working” (John 5:17, R.S.V.). It is not always easy for the believer, or the Household for that matter, to appreciate the reality of God as the Great Planner, the continuing Worker, who now has His Son to help Him, and to whom He has delegated so much of His Plan. But this is the fact; this is the reality and it should make every ecclesia the more ready through its elders, to declare in word and deed, “Our Father is working still, our Lord Jesus works, and we too are working with them.”

 

- John Marshall

The Living Ecclesia (1971)

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12 January 2018 

 

“Never through all the frustrations, disappointments and difficulties, did Christ ever lose faith in God and His purpose, in the ultimate redemption and the final triumph, whatever the pain and the cost and the humiliation. “Take away this cup from me; nevertheless not what I will but what thou wilt.” For it “hopeth all things and endureth all things”. “For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross and despised the shame”the joy of a redeemed people, a ransomed earth, a restored world. Through the cross lay a crown, through the pain, a prize, not for himself or his own glory, but the vision of the slain Lamb surrounded by those redeemed “by his blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation.”

 

- S. Harris

What It Means to be a Christian (1969)

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13 January 2018

 

"Knowing God ... must not be just knowing about God. Something more is needed than an acquaintance with the details the Bible gives about creation, the covenants of promise, the events of Israel’s history, those of the life of Christ, and even of the elements of the gospel, absolutely essential as all this knowledge is. The reason is that God reveals Himself to us in His word as a personality, an individual, having distinctive qualities and always acting consistently in His holiness, righteousness, abundant mercy, forgiveness, and judgment of sin. This is not the god of pantheism, diffused vaguely throughout nature, nor the God of the Bishop of Woolwich, to be identified apparently with the spirit of love. The God of the Bible stands for certain definite principles, lays positive and precise obligations upon His servants, acts in their individual lives and in the life of their community. He brings His people out of bondage by a display of His power and judgment, sends His prophets to instruct and warn, raises His Son from the dead and shows him to many witnesses, and will send him again to the earth to complete His purpose. The worshipper’s knowledge of his God is personal, intimate; it brings him a sense of God’s supreme reality and His rule, which he will strive to interpret in the day-by-day events of his own life."

 

- F.T. Pearce

The Knowledge of God (1967)

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15 January 2018

 

"It is in “speaking truth in love” that we may grow up into him in all things, “which is the Head, even Christ”. Not merely “the Truth” as a body of doctrine but truth (for in the Greek the phrase “speaking truth” is one word without the definite article); truth as comprehending the faithfulness of God in Christ and the integrity it calls for from us. Then from Christ “the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying—the building up—of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:15-16)."

 

- L.G. Sargent

One Loaf, One Body (1966)
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16 January 2018 

 

"Knowing that our sins are forgiven, and that it is our High Priest in heaven who has reconciled us to God, being now set down at His right hand, let us resolve to fulfil our part, being debtors and bought with the price of Christ’s own blood; let us resolve to improve our stewardship in the Household of God and to go on renewing that resolve."

 

- Grahame A. Cooper

Be Ye Reconciled to God (1987)    
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17 January 2018

 

"Earthly wisdom is essentially self-seeking; therefore it is impure. It is double-minded and unstable in all its ways, full of “confusion and every evil work” (James 3:16). “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure”; it is the handmaid of the Lord, and seeks only God’s will and God’s glory."

 

- Claud Lamb

Not Hearers Only (1986)
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18 January 2018

 

"In order to bind sin and take it captive, Jesus met it on its own ground, human nature. Thus his victory was both true and unique. True, in that he overcame sin though tempted precisely as we are; and unique, in that he is the only one who has been totally sinless even though tempted. Christ did not demonstrate righteousness and holiness in a detached way; he brought his sinless life to God in this earthen vessel of human nature. This wonderful circumstance was a marvel of faith and righteousness, a real conquest of sin, and a perfect offering to God: 'God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sin offering ... condemned sin in the flesh' (Romans 8:3)."

 

- Harry Tennant

The ChristadelphiansWhat They Believe and Preach
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19 January 2018

 

"We believe we are very near the return of the Lord; let us then, in spite of the prevailing apathy to the things of God, “continue stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and prayers” (Acts 2:42), so that we may find a place in the kingdom for which we long and pray. We mark our devotion to this calling, each time we meet around the emblems of God’s love."

 

- Wm. J. Webster

The Church of the Living God (1989)

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20 January 2018

"The apostles, though fishermen and unlearned, were strongly imbued with these dispositions, and therefore were interesting men, and fitted to be the instruments of the grace of God, bringing salvation—interesting in a different way than modern taste would compute, but still interesting. They were not the colourless and insipid men which it is customary to assume in the absence of station and accomplishments. Men who love God, and adore Christ, and believe in the kingdom, and practice mercy, and speak truth, submit to wrong, and are kind to all men, and humble in their own deportment, and small in their own estimation, are not the sort of men with whom modern life has made us familiar in the lower class,—who mostly love themselves and adore nobody, and believe when they see, and act unfeelingly, and tell the truth when it suits them, and stand up for their rights, and are kind only to chums, and democratically self-assertive in their attitude, and as good as any other man in their own eyes. The working man is glorified wonderfully by modern politicians who depend upon his vote; but the working man, whether by the seaside or in the heart of the country, is not the type of the men whom Christ chose for apostles from among those who had been gathered together out of Israel by the preaching of the word of the Lord by John the Baptist. “Poor stuff” they may have been according to Gentile modes of reckoning men, but according to divine views, which are the lasting views, they were the “salt of the earth,” the “little children” whom the Father loved—the men chosen as the altogether suitable instruments for the attested declaration of the Father’s love, and the after manifestation of His glory, as foundation stones in the new Jerusalem of the ages to come."
 
- R. Roberts
Nazareth Revisited 
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22 January 2018

 

"... the way of the tree of life has been kept from the beginning, that he that overcometh may enter in and partake of its fruit. Let us resolve to open the one door which it is in our power to keep closed. "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will eat with him, and he with me. To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in his throne" (Revelation 3:20-21)."

 

- Alfred Nicholls

An Open Door (1970)

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23 January 2018

 

"Words are an “overflow” of the heart; they make apparent its contents. The speech of the disciples must be sincere and beyond reproach. Their duty is to speak truth and to be faithful to promises. By doing this they proclaim their love for God and their fidelity to the precepts and life of their Master."

 

- Harry Sheppard

The Moral Teaching of Jesus (1960)

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24 January 2018

 

“It is our conduct, our manner of life, our attitude of mind, that determine what we really are, children of the flesh or true children of God, in fellowship or out of it. “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth; but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” “Beloved, now are we the sons of God”, and when he shall appear, we shall be like Him. Having this hope, let us purify ourselves here and now, that we may participate in the final glory, “Sons of God with power.”

 

- S.S. Ball

The Family of God (1948)
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25 January 2018

 

"It is possible to sit through many meetings and not think deeply about our true relationship with God. But if we really lay our hands on the head of the Son of God, “the lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world”, we recognise that it was because of our sins he died, and because of our imperfections he suffered unjustly.

 

“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:46)"

 

- Peter Scott

Sacrificed for Us (1995)

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