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Book: "Isaiah - God saves sinners" Buy from www.amazon.co.uk or www.amazon.com

Author: Raymond C Ortlund

Quote: What is conviction of sin? It is not an oppressive spirit of uncertainty or paralysing guilt feelings. Conviction of sin is the lance of the divine surgeon piercing the infected soul, releasing the pressure, letting the infection pour out. Conviction of sin is a health giving injury. Conviction of sin is the Holy Spirit being kind to us be confronting us with light we do not want to see and truth we are afraid to admit and the guilt we prefer to ignore. Conviction of sin is the severe love of God overruling our compulsive dishonesty, our willful blindness, our favourite excuses. Conviction of sin is the violent sweetness of God opposing the sins lying comfortably undisturbed in our lives. Conviction of sin is the merciful God declaring war on the false peace we settle for. Conviction of sin is our escape from malaise of joy, from attending church to worship, from faking it to authenticity. Conviction of sin, with the forgiveness of Jesus pouring over our wounds, is life

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Author: Charles T. Buntin

Quote: If we were to make an illustration of Jesus as if He were a policeman going under cover in a bad neighborhood, the Kenosis doctrine has the policeman leaving his weapons at home, along with his badge and other symbols of authority. He can call on headquarters for help, but he himself is helpless and defenseless. The orthodox teaching has the policeman himself as a "lethal weapon", he is a martial arts expert who can kill with a blow--he is skilled on the level that he can reach within a man's chest and pull out his still-beating heart--he can defeat multiple opponents. He can leave His I.D. , badge, uniform, etc., behind just like cop number one, but he cannot cease to be the walking weapon that he is. He looks normal, he appears as helpless as the first policeman, but he has the ability within himself to defend himself. He might choose to call for help; he might even choose to allow himself to be shackled, hurt or killed for the good of the mission--but he has the ability within himself to defeat his enemies. Raise that illustration, and the powers of the second policeman to infinity, and the illustration shows the difference in the two doctrines.

Webpage: http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=657

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Author: Annettee Budzban

Quote: To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes." Isaiah 61:3 (KJV). I sold my house shortly before my husband and I were married five and a half years ago. I was going to temporarily move into an apartment, so I needed to eliminate many of the things I was holding onto that were no longer necessary. Before I knew it, I had 16 years of my pats in an old junk heap in front of my house. Overnight someone had come and set a match to this junk heap. All that was left was a huge pile of ashes. I was devastated. At the mess it left. My husband being the loving man he is, was out there with all his might shoveling these ashes into the garbage truck. As I looked at this picture, I saw the love of God shoveling away the ashes of my old life. Jesus wants us to take our ashes of hurt and disappointment and give us something beautiful in return. Refusing to accept Satan's lies that I could not put my past behind me, and meditating on scriptures about the new things God wanted to bring into my life, were the methods I found helpful in overcoming life's disappointments. But it took time, patience, and my willingness to let go, as the fire of the Holy Spirit burnt them up. We can't allow Satan to keep us in the ash heap. We need to pray and ask God to release His promise to give us, "Beauty for Ashes."

Webpage: http://www.sermonillustrator.org/minisermons/folder1/BEAUTY%20FOR%20ASHES.htm

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Book: "The Tide is Turning" Buy from www.amazon.co.uk or www.amazon.com

Author: Terry Virgo

Quote: In Philippians Paul tells us as Christians to, "Do all things without grumbling or disputing..." Often we wonder how to shine as a light in the world and here is one way that is very clear. We are in the midst of a world that complains all the time. Sadly the world seems to complain about every situation. If it has been a fine week for weather we hear a complaint about how it is bound to rain because the weekend is coming! People complain about the buses and trains being late, about the way the office is run, about the management, about people. We constantly hear this dull, grating noise of complaint and ingratitude. The Church shines as a light in the world, not only by proclaiming Jesus in the streets, but by doing all things without grumbling and complaining. This is enough to make you shine today! Remember to keep shining! Encourage one another all the time - husbands, wives and parents. We must stop one another in our tracks and say, "Remember you're a Christian! Remember to do all things without grumbling or complaining!"... There are two languages in the world: the language of grumbling and the language of thanksgiving, and there are some who live in between and can speak both. Don't live on the border learning a foreign language - be a true native of Zion!

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Book: "http://news.yahoo.com/desk-fuehrer-004700702.html" Buy from www.amazon.co.uk or www.amazon.com

Quote: At CIA headquarters in Langley, one of the newest artifacts in the agency’s private museum is a message from a father to his 3-year-old son. The gold-embossed letterhead features a swastika and the name Adolf Hitler. “Dear Dennis,” the seven-sentence letter begins. “The man who might have written on this card once controlled Europe — three short years ago when you were born. Today he is dead, his memory despised, his country in ruins.” Dennis is Dennis Helms, now a 69-year-old intellectual-property lawyer in New Jersey. The letter writer was his father, Richard Helms, the CIA director during the Vietnam War and Watergate eras, who died in 2002. Right after Germany’s surrender, Lt. Helms, an intelligence operative, sneaked into Hitler’s chancellery in Berlin and pilfered the Fuehrer’s stationery. He dated the letter “V-E day” for May 8, 1945. In particular, Dennis loves the letter’s ending. His father signed off with a term that he rarely used for himself. “The price of ridding society of bad is always high. Love, Daddy.” Now there is a picture of the Gospel.

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Book: "Confessions of a Reformission Rev" Buy from www.amazon.co.uk or www.amazon.com

Author: Mark Driscoll

Quote: I am particularly concerned, however, with some growing trends among some people: the rejection of Jeus' death on the cross as a penal substitute for our sins; resistance to openly denouncing homosexual acts as sinful; the questioning of a literal eternal torment in hell, which is a denial that holds up until, in an ironic bummer, you die and find yourself in hell; the rejection of God's sovereignty over and knowledge of the future, as if God were a junior-college professor who only knows bits and pieces of trivie; the rejection of biblically defined gender roles, thereby contributing to the "mantropy" epidemic among young guys now fretting over the best kind of looffah for their skin type and the number of women in the military dying to save their Bed, Bath and Beyond from terrorist attacks; and the rejection of Biblical names for God, such as Father, which is essentially apologising before the unbelieving world for the prayer life of the flamboyantly heterosexual Jesus, who uttered the horrendously polictically incorrect "Our Father" without ever having the decency to apologise for being a mysonogystic patriarchal meanie. This is ultimately all the result of a diminished respect for the perfection, authority and clarity of Scripture, all of which was written by patriarchal men.

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Quote: Roy Robertson is one of the founders of "The Navigators," and has been instrumental in the follow-up ministry for Billy Graham’s Hong Kong crusade. Robertson shared this revealing insight from his own past: "My ship, the West Virginia, docked at Pearl Harbor on the evening of December 6, 1941. A couple of the fellows and I left the ship that night and attended a Bible study. About fifteen sailors sat in a circle on the floor. The leader asked us to each recite our favorite scripture verse. In turn each sailor shared a verse and briefly commented on it. I sat there in terror. I couldn't recall a single verse. I grew up in a Christian home, went to church three times a week, but I sat there terrified. I couldn't recall a single verse. Finally, I remembered one verse -- John 3.16. I silently rehearsed it in my mind. The spotlight of attention grew closer as each sailor took his turn. It was up to the fellow next to me. He recited John 3.16. He took my verse! As he commented on it I sat there in stunned humiliation. In a few moments everyone would know that I could not recall from memory even a single verse. Later that night I went to bed thinking, 'Robertson, you're a fake.' At 7:55 the next morning I was awakened by the ship alarm ordering us to battle stations. 360 planes of the Japanese Imperial Fleet were attacking our ship and the other military installations. My crew and I raced to our machine gun emplacement, but all we had was practice ammunition. So for the first fifteen minutes of the two hour battle,we only fired blanks, hoping to scare the Japanese airplanes. As I stood there firing fake ammunition I thought, 'Robertson, this is how your whole life has been -- firing blanks for Christ.' I made up my mind as Japanese bullets slammed into our ship, 'If I escape with my life, I will get serious about following Jesus.'"

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