Thought Quotient

“Jesus takes us to places we would never choose ourselves, in order to give us what we could never get anywhere else - Himself!”

- Wayne Stiles, Insight for Living Ministries

• http://vimeo.com/4541424

After four and a half years of vigilantly fighting breast cancer, the 37 year old wife and mother of two was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

But for Rachel the essence of life is found in her relationship with God through Jesus. And that’s why Rachel is convinced that death is not dying.

On March 4, 2009, what started out as a small talk to a women’s group at her church grew into an event attended by 600 women from around Vancouver, giving Rachel an opportunity to share about her hope in the midst of terminal cancer.

Rachel’s honest and thought-provoking talk touched women of all ages and left a hunger for discovering more about Rachel’s journey and the faith that has so deeply affected her life.

• http://deathisnotdying.com

No Satanic evil can withstand the prayers of God’s people. Let me tell you from experience, there is NOTHING like prayer in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ - claiming the blood of the Cross to resist the enemy. Pray for one another by NAME. Pray for protection, direction, peace … because it will be the prayers of God’s people that will withstand the Enemy.

Os Guinness, a Christian author, went to England to give a lecture series at Essex University. He was being introduced to the audience and moments before he was about to speak, he looked and noticed a young woman sitting in the front row. What caught his attention was that the young woman had the most peculiar expression on her face - a look of fierce anguish. Recalling a warning he had received that anti-Christian protesters might attempt to disrupt his lecture series, Guinness paused to pray that God would bless the meeting and restrain Satan so that God’s message would go forth with power. Then Guinness stepped to the lectern and proceeded to give his talk. The lecture proceeded without interruption and was enthusiastically received. After his talk, the young woman with the strange expression walked up to him. She was angry and baffled. “How did you do that,” she demanded.

‘How did I do what?’, Guinness answered.

“The spell that you cast on me to keep me in my seat,” she asked. “You knew I had been sent here by the witches coven to protest your talk, didn’t you? And you put some sort of spell on me to keep me silent.”

‘The only spell I used was,’ Guinness replied gently, ‘was to pray the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.’

A few weeks later, Os Guinness was back in America and a Christian lady asked him how his Essex lecture series had gone. “The reason I asked,” she explained, ” - at the same time you were about to give your lecture in England I was suddenly overcome by an impression of you standing upon a platform and a woman seated in the audience near you. I had a sense that a battle was going on between the two of you - a spiritual battle between the power of God and the power of Satan. And I immediately went to my knees and prayed for you and the woman in the audience.”

When you stepped into the Christian life, you didn’t step onto a playground, you stepped into a battleground. Let’s take this seriously.

-Chuck Swindoll, www.insight.org

The Father of lights, unseen in His glory,
Sent forth the Son of His love,
To tell in His life and death the story
Of grace from Heaven above, -
For Jesus Christ is the Image bright
Of the Loving God, of the great “I AM”;
That powerful, precious, holy Light
Whose countenance shines as the sun in his might.

The world in the shadow of sin is lying;
It gropes for it cannot see;
And millions are daily stumbling, dying:
The Light is shining on me.
If Jesus Christ is the Image Bright
Of the Loving God, of the great “I AM”,
It is only just, it is only right,
That I should bear witness of that Light.

Oh, many the lights that are not of Heaven!
They flicker, grow dim, and die;
But only the Son Whom God hath given
Forever can satisfy.
For Jesus Christ is the Image bright
Of the Loving God, of the great “I AM”;
And He who sent Christ from the glory-height
Sends us to bear witness of that Light.

The Spirit of God, most gentle and gracious,
Invites to the city above:
Her light is like unto a stone most precious;
The Lamb is the Light thereof, -
For Jesus Christ is the Image bright
Of the Loving God, of the great “I AM”,
And we who shall walk in robes of white
Are sent to bear witness of that light.

- Betty Scott Stam

Who would choose ignorance, corruption, and slavery over freedom and truth? Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Yet a worldview grounded in personal autonomy and moral relativism has unintended consequences that are not desirable and far reaching.

Check out today’s BreakPoint for a sobering commentary:

From the outside looking in, an intelligent observer can see the signs of a once-great civilization in decline: rising corruption, sexual licentiousness, and the abandonment of once-cherished moral principles.

The once-great civilization is Western Christendom. And the outside observer is Indian scholar Vishal Mangalwadi. His new book, “Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations” shows how dearly the West is paying for abandoning the Christian worldview — the very worldview that made its greatness and prosperity possible.

Read the full commentary here:

• ‘Truth and Transformation’

And He still has the scars to prove it!

Why should our exalted Lord appear in His wounds in glory? The wounds of Jesus are His glories, His jewels, His sacred ornaments. To the eye of the believer, Jesus is passing fair because He is “white and ruddy” white with innocence, and ruddy with His own blood. We see Him as the lily of matchless purity, and as the rose crimsoned with His own gore. Christ is lovely upon Olivet and Tabor, and by the sea, but oh! there never was such a matchless Christ as He that did hang upon the cross. There we beheld all His beauties in perfection, all His attributes developed, all His love drawn out, all His character expressed. Beloved, the wounds of Jesus are far more fair in our eyes than all the splendour and pomp of kings. The thorny crown is more than an imperial diadem. It is true that He bears not now the sceptre of reed, but there was a glory in it that never flashed from sceptre of gold. Jesus wears the appearance of a slain Lamb as His court dress in which He wooed our souls, and redeemed them by His complete atonement. Nor are these only the ornaments of Christ: they are the trophies of His love and of His victory. He has divided the spoil with the strong. He has redeemed for Himself a great multitude whom no man can number, and these scars are the memorials of the fight. Ah! if Christ thus loves to retain the thought of His sufferings for His people, how precious should his wounds be to us!

- Charles Spurgeon