Monday, June 30, 2008

One_Minute_Bible_Verse



“ I believe that God above created You for Me to love , He picked You out from all the rest cause He know i`d love You the best ”

We Need Each Other: To Wait and Weep With


Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. 1 Peter 3:8 (NIV)


As a pastor, I see situations daily that nobody should ever have to go through alone. Nobody should ever have to wait in the hospital while a loved one is in life-or-death surgery. No woman should ever have to wait alone for the lab report on a problem pregnancy. Nobody should ever have to wait for news from a battlefield alone. Nobody should ever have to stand at the edge of an open grave alone. Nobody should ever have to spend the first night alone when their spouse has just walked out.

Life’s tough times and tragedies are inevitable – each of us will face them. But we don’t need to go through them alone. We need God’s safety net to help hold us up through these difficult times.

What is God’s safety net? It is a group of other believers – a handful of people who are really committed to you. We call this kind of group a community. Here’s God’s plan for community: “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26 NIV). Community is God’s answer to despair.

Romans 12:15 expresses a similar idea: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (NIV).

The first part of that verse is easy. When something good happens to someone, it’s often easy to join in on the party.

But when someone is having a tough time, it can seem more difficult. But, really, it’s simple. When you’re going through a crisis, you don’t want advice; you just want somebody to be there – to sit with you, hold your hand, put an arm around your shoulder, or cry with you.

As Paul tells us, “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11 NIV). Encouraging someone else doesn’t always mean giving a pep talk or words of wisdom. Sometimes the best kind of encouragement is just sitting in silence – waiting and weeping with a friend.

Do you have a safety net – a group of fellow Christians you know you can count on in life’s toughest times? If not, go out today and begin building those friendships. The hard times in life are inevitable, and only a fool would go into them unprepared......Rick Warren


လက္ဆာ အဖ်ား

ဖတ္ရန္။ ။ ေရာမၾသဝါဒစာ ၃ း ၁၉ - ၂၆

သို႕ျဖစ္၍ ယခုတြင္ အေသြးေတာ္အားျဖင့္ ေျဖာင့္မတ္ရာသို႕ ေရာက္ျပီးမွ ထိုသခင္အားျဖင့္ အျပစ္ငရဲမွ ကယ္ခၽြတ္ေတာ္မူျခင္းသို႕ေရာက္မည္ဟု သာ၍ေျမာ္လင့္စရာရွိ၏။
(ေရာမၾသဝါဒစာ ၅ း ၉)

တခါက သာသနာျပဳ သူနာျပဳဆရာမ လီလီ ပီနီအို (Lily Pinneo) အေနာက္ အာဖရိကနိုင္ငံသို႕ ေရာက္ရွိေနခ်ိန္တြင္ လက္ဆာအဖ်ား (Lassa fever) လို႕ေခၚတဲ့ ေရာဂါေၾကာင့္ ေသလုေမွ်ာပါးျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ နယူးေယာက္ျမိဳ႕ကို ပ်ံသန္းစဥ္ခရီးမွာ အဖ်ားက ၁၀၇ ံ ရွိခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အပူက်ဖို႕ ဆရာဝန္မ်ားက သူမကို ေရခဲနဲ႕ထုတ္ျပီး ေခၚေဆာင္လာခဲ့ရပါတယ္။ ကိုးပတ္ၾကာေသာအခါမွာေတာ့ သူမ၏ ကိုယ္အေလးခ်ိန္ေပါင္ ၂၈ ေပါင္က်ျပီး ဆံပင္မ်ားလည္း ဆံုးရႈံးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ သူမအသက္ရွင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ဓါတ္ခြဲခန္းတြင္းက ဆရာဝန္ ကာဆယ္လ္ (Dr. Casals) ကေတာ့ သူမ၏ ေရာဂါကို ဂရုတစိုက္ေလ့လာ၊ စစ္ေဆး၊ ေဖြရွာေဖာ္စပ္ရင္းက ေရာဂါပိုးမြား ကူးစက္ကာ အၾကီးအက်ယ္ဖ်ားနာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ လီလီဟာ သူမ၏ေသြးကို ေသြး ( ပလပ္စမာ ) ကို လွဴဒါန္းျပီး ဓါတ္ခြဲျပဳ၊ ရွာေဖြျပီး ဆရာဝန္ၾကီး ကာဆယ္လ္၏ အသက္ကို ကယ္တင္နိုင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

က်မတို႕ အေယာက္ဆီတိုင္းလည္း အျပစ္ဆိုတဲ့ ေရာဂါကူးစက္ျခင္းကိုခံရၾကပါတယ္(ေရာမ ၆ း ၂၃ )။ က်မတို႕ကို ကုသေပးနိုင္သူ တဦးတည္းရွိပါတယ္။ ေယရႈခရစ္ေတာ္၏ ကားတိုင္ေပၚမွာ သြန္းခဲ့ေသာ အေသြးေတာ္သည္ က်မတို႕ အေယာက္တိုင္းဆီမွာ ရွိတဲ့ အျပစ္ကို ေဆးေၾကာေပးလိုက္ပါသည္။ တမန္ေတာ္ရွင္ေပါလုေရးထားတဲ့ အတိုင္း
(ေရာမၾသဝါဒစာ ၅ း ၉) သို႕ျဖစ္၍ ယခုတြင္ အေသြးေတာ္အားျဖင့္ ေျဖာင့္မတ္ရာသို႕ ေရာက္ျပီးမွ ထိုသခင္အားျဖင့္ အျပစ္ငရဲမွ ကယ္ခၽြတ္ေတာ္မူျခင္းသို႕ေရာက္မည္ဟု သာ၍ေျမာ္လင့္စရာရွိ၏။ က်မတို႕၏ လုပ္ေဆာင္ရမည့္တာဝန္က စိတ္နွလံုးသားမွ မိမိအျပစ္ကို ဝန္ခံျပီး ေယရႈရွင္ကို ကယ္တင္ရွင္မျဖစ္လက္ခံ၊ ယံုၾကည္၊ လိုက္ေလွ်ာက္ျခင္းအားျဖင့္ ဝိညာဥ္ကို ကုသျခင္းခံယူဖို႕ဘဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ...... Dennis Fisher

Redeemed ... how I love to proclaim it!
Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb;
Redeemed throught His infinite mercy,
His child, and forever, I am. ..... Crosby
က်မတို႕၏ အျပစ္ႏြံထဲမွ လြတ္ေျမာက္ဖို႕ရန္ အဖိုးအခသည္ ေယရႈခရစ္ေတာ္၏ အေသြးေတာ္တည္း။

Sunday, June 29, 2008

One_Minute_Bible_Verse


“ Choose Life ”

စစ္မွန္ေသာဝန္ခံခ်က္

ဖတ္ရန္။ ။ ဆာလံက်မ္း ၅၁ း ၁ - ၁၃

အကၽြနု္ပ္သည္ ေမြးစကပင္ အျပစ္ပါလ်က္ရွိပါ၏။ အမိဝမ္းထဲမွာပ႗ိသေႏၶယူစဥ္ပင္ အျပစ္စြဲပါ၏။
( ဆာလံက်မ္း ၅၁ း ၅ )

က်မသည္ အုန္းသီးကို အရမ္း နွစ္သက္ပါ၏၊ အျမဲတမ္းလည္း စြဲစြဲလမ္းလမ္း မက္မက္ေမာေမာ ရွိပါသည္။ က်မ ဒုတိယတန္းေက်ာင္းတက္ခ်ိန္၏ တညေန၌ ျခစ္ျပီးသား မေျဖရေသးေသာ အုန္းသီးထုတ္ကို မီးဖိုေခ်ာင္ရဲ႕ စဥ့္နီတုန္းေပၚမွာ ေတြ႕လိုက္ရျခင္းက အေမာလည္းေျပေစ၊ အဆာလည္းေျပေစခဲ့ပါ၏။ က်မအေမ မီးဖိုေခ်ာင္ထဲ မုန္႕ဖုတ္နည္းေလ့လာမယ္ဆိုျပီးဝင္သြားေရာ
၊ က်မၾကားလိုက္ရတဲ့ အသံက ဒီကအုန္းသီး ဘယ္သူစားသြားလည္း ဆိုတာပါဘဲ။ က်မရဲ႕ ခ်က္ျခင္းအေျဖက မသိဘူးကလြဲ က်န္တာ ရွိနိုင္အံုးမလား။

အေမကညီမေလးကို လည္းစစ္ေဆးပါ၏၊ ညီမေလးကလည္း သူမစားေတာ့ မစားဘူးလို႕ဘဲေျဖပါတယ္။ ဘယ္သူ႕ကိုမွ ေမးမရတဲ့ဆံုး နင္တို႕အေဖလာပါေစအံုး ဆိုတာနဲ႕ေမေမထြက္သြားပါတယ္။ က်မရဲ႕ လိမ္ညာ ျငင္းဆန္ျခင္းအမႈ႕ က်ဆံုးခါနီးမွာ က်မယူစားလိုက္မိေၾကာင္း ဝန္ခံခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ဘယ္သူကမွ က်မကို လိမ္ညာဖို႕ မသင္ခဲ့ပါဘူး၊ ဆာလံက်မ္းမွာ ဆိုတာတဲ့အတိုင္း က်မဟာ ပ႗ိသေႏၶ တည္ကတည္းက အျပစ္နဲ႕မကင္းသူပါ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ဆာလံက်မ္းကို ေရးတဲ့ ေဒးဗစ္ကေတာ့ မိမိရဲ႕ အျပစ္ေတြကို ေဆးေၾကာ၊ ဝန္ခံဖို႕ ဘယ္သူဆီ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္ရမယ္၊ ဝန္ခံ၊ ေတာင္းပန္ရမယ္၊ ဘယ္သူူက အျပစ္ေတြကို ေဆးေၾကာေပးနိုင္တယ္ ဆိုတာ သိထားခဲ့ျပီး ေဖာ္ျပခဲ့ပါတယ္။

က်မတို႕အသက္တာမွာလည္း ဆက္ဆက္ျပီးက်ဴးလြန္ေနေသာ အမွားအတြက္၊ ဘုရားသခင္ထံေတာ္ပါး အစဥ္အျမဲ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္၊ ခြန္အားယူရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ထာဝရဘုရားသခင္သည္ ေႏြးေထြးေသာလက္အစံုျဖင့္ အျပစ္မွလြတ္ေျမာက္နိုင္ဖို႕ ကမ္းလင့္ၾကိဳဆိုေနပါတယ္။ က်မတို႕အျပစ္ကို ဝန္ခံျပီဆိုရင္ တဖက္မွာ ေႏြးေထြးေသာရင္ခြင္နဲ႕ ထာဝရဘုရားသခင္ ကမ္းလင့္ၾကိဳေနေၾကာင္းကို သတိရၾကပါစို႕..... Joe Stowell

က်မတို႕အျပစ္သည္ ညစ္ညဴးလွပါ၏။
ေယရႈရွင္ ၾကြလာပါ၊
ကားတိုင္ေတာ္၏ တန္ခိုး၊ အာနုေဘာ္နွင့္
ကယ္မဖို႕ရန္ၾကြဆင္းေတာ္မူပါ။ ........ Sleeper

အျပစ္ဝန္ခံျခင္းျဖင့္ စစ္မွန္ေသာ ေပ်ာ္ရႊင္ျခင္း ရရွိပါေစ။


Saturday, June 28, 2008

Risks in Faith: God Multiplies


“ Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness ”

2 Corinthians 9:10 (NIV)


If you give God your time, he multiplies it. If you give him your money or energy, he multiplies those too. It’s like planting seeds. Farmers know that seeds must be given away – sacrificed by being buried in the ground – to do any good. If you keep a seed in a sack, it does no good, but if you plant it, it multiplies. For example, when you plant just one watermelon seed, you get a bunch of watermelons with hundreds of seeds in them. In the same way, God multiplies whatever you give him.

What’s the key ingredient in this seed planting? Faith. But we have to understand the difference between faith and bargaining. Bargaining is when you say, “God, help me close this deal and I’ll give you part of it.” But God doesn’t work that way. God asks for faith – he wants us to sacrifice in advance, not knowing that we’ll get anything in return –then he wants us to let him figure out how to repay us.

One of the great lessons that Kay and I have learned is that you cannot out-give God. Whatever you give him, he multiplies. Three different times in our marriage, God told us to give away our entire savings. Each time we obeyed, and each time God restored our finances in greater ways than ever before.

I’ll never forget one of our church building campaigns. Kay and I prayed about how much to give, and God told us to give an amount equal to one year’s salary. I didn’t know how we would live for an entire year without a salary, but we obeyed God.

About a month later, we saw God’s plan when a publisher asked me to write a book and offered an advance of $100,000. That book became The Purpose Driven Church.

Jesus makes us this promise in Luke 18:29-30: “I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life” (NIV).

And 1 Corinthians 15:58 says: “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (NIV).

Remember, when you give a seed in faith to God, he will multiply it.......Rick Warren


Friday, June 27, 2008

One_Minute_Bible_Verse


“ I am the way and the truth and the life . No one comes to the Father except through me ”

( John 14 : 6 )


We Need Each Other: To Watch Out For


Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Philippians 2:4 (NIV)


Each one of us needs other people to watch out for us – to defend us, protect us, and help us stay on track. In the book of Philippians, the apostle Paul tells us that we should look out for each other’s interests, not just our own. What a counterculture verse! In America today, it’s all about me – my needs, my interests, my wants, and my ambitions. But Paul teaches us to look out for others too.

Since September 11, 2001, Americans have been much more vigilant for each other as we are on the lookout for more terrorist attacks. But did you know you have an enemy far more destructive than terrorists? You have a personal enemy who wants to defeat you. His name is Satan. He wants to bring problems into your life, to ruin your relationships, and to hurt you as badly as he can.

Why does he want to hurt you? Because he wants to hurt God, but he can’t – so he goes after God’s children. On your own, you will never win against Satan. But when you have other people to watch out for you and help you, you can be victorious.

Here’s good advice from Ecclesiastes 4:12: “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves” (NIV).

Does anyone have your back? Is anyone defending you – watching out for your spiritual welfare? You need a community of people who are saying to you: “We’ll be with you when you’re going through the tough times. We’re not going to let you get discouraged or depressed.”

Community is God’s answer to defeat. Ecclesiastes 4:10 says, “If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him” (NIV).

Remember: You can try, but you can’t live life well on your own. We all need other people – to walk with us, to work with us, and to watch out for us.....Rick Warren


Thursday, June 26, 2008

One_Minute_Bible_Verse



“ But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hear the words and understands it. He produces a crop yielding a hundred , sixty or thirty times what was sown. ”

( Matt 13 : 23 )

We Need Each Other: To Work With


For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)


God put us on earth to do a certain work that only we can do. Ephesians says that God made us to do good works and that he planned in advance what we would live our lives doing. However, he didn’t plan for us to do that work alone. We need people to work with us.

You know the feeling you get when you do too much work on your own. You get exhausted and burned out. Why? Because you’re trying to do your work alone, while God never meant for you to go through life working alone.

God tells us in Ecclesiastes 4:9 that “two people are better than one, because they get more done by working together” (NCV). When you work as a team, you get so much more done. Plus, having good teammates alongside you is a whole lot more fun and less tiring!

Picture this: Individually, each of us is like a snowflake; on our own, we can’t make a big difference. However, when one fragile snowflake sticks together with a lot of other snowflakes, they can stop traffic. Like snowflakes, we can make a big difference if we work together, each one of us doing only our small part.

Did you know that when we work together here on earth, we’re actually practicing for eternity? In heaven, we will all have to work, but each of us will have just a small piece of work, so we’ll never get overloaded or tired. Still, though no one will carry a heavy burden as each one of us does our small part, all the work will get done.

As you walk through life, remember that you’re not supposed to do everything on your own. You need other people to walk alongside you, but you also need other people to work alongside you. As you share the burden of your work with fellow Christians, you’ll find that you actually accomplish more for the glory of God....Rick Warren


Wednesday, June 25, 2008

One_Minute_Bible_Verse



“ All the stars of the heavens will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like a scroll , all the starry host will fall like withered leave from the vine , like shriveled figs from the fig tree ”

( Isaiah 34.4 )

We Need Each Other: To Walk With


Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, so walk in Him. Colossians 2:6 (NIV/NKJV)


The Bible often compares life to a walk, because life is a journey; we’re not sitting still. Throughout the New Testament, we are told to walk in wisdom, love, light, and obedience. We’re told to walk as Jesus walked. We’re also told to walk alongside other people. Here are three reasons to walk with other people:

1. It’s safer. Have you ever walked alone at night through a dark alley or down a lonely country road? It’s a little scary. But if you have another person with you, you immediately feel safer.

2. It’s supportive. Life is not a fifty-yard dash; it’s a marathon. Walking with other people gives you the energy to keep on going until the end.

3. It’s smarter. You learn more by walking with others than by walking alone. If you’re walking alone in the wrong direction, you may never realize it. But if you have a friend alongside you, one of you is likely to recognize you’ve veered off the path and need to find the right direction.

We also learn some important lessons when we walk alongside other people. We learn how to get along with others, how to cooperate.

We also learn how to love. Genesis 2:18 tells us, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (NIV). God hates loneliness, and community is God’s answer to loneliness. When we walk alongside other people, we find a community where we learn how to love.

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Walking alongside other people also teaches us hospitality. 1 Peter 4:9 says, “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling” (NIV). What’s your grumble? What’s your excuse for not opening your home to friends?

Maybe you’ve said, “My home is dirty!”

Well, clean it up!

Or perhaps your excuse is: “My home isn’t big enough.”

Can you put three people in it? Jesus says, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20 NIV).

Everybody has a longing for belonging because God made us for relationships. When we walk alongside other Christians in community, we find that longing satisfied....Rick Warren


Tuesday, June 24, 2008

One_Minute_Bible_Verse




“ As you know , we consider blessed those who have persevered .You have heard of job`s perseverance and seen what the Lord finally brought about . The Lord is full compassion and mercy. ”

( Jame 5 : 11 )


Risks in Faith: God Multiplies


Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.

2 Corinthians 9:10 (NIV)


If you give God your time, he multiplies it. If you give him your money or energy, he multiplies those too. It’s like planting seeds. Farmers know that seeds must be given away – sacrificed by being buried in the ground – to do any good. If you keep a seed in a sack, it does no good, but if you plant it, it multiplies. For example, when you plant just one watermelon seed, you get a bunch of watermelons with hundreds of seeds in them. In the same way, God multiplies whatever you give him.

What’s the key ingredient in this seed planting? Faith. But we have to understand the difference between faith and bargaining. Bargaining is when you say, “God, help me close this deal and I’ll give you part of it.” But God doesn’t work that way. God asks for faith – he wants us to sacrifice in advance, not knowing that we’ll get anything in return –then he wants us to let him figure out how to repay us.

One of the great lessons that Kay and I have learned is that you cannot out-give God. Whatever you give him, he multiplies. Three different times in our marriage, God told us to give away our entire savings. Each time we obeyed, and each time God restored our finances in greater ways than ever before.

I’ll never forget one of our church building campaigns. Kay and I prayed about how much to give, and God told us to give an amount equal to one year’s salary. I didn’t know how we would live for an entire year without a salary, but we obeyed God.

About a month later, we saw God’s plan when a publisher asked me to write a book and offered an advance of $100,000. That book became The Purpose Driven Church.

Jesus makes us this promise in Luke 18:29-30: “I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life” (NIV).

And 1 Corinthians 15:58 says: “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (NIV).

Remember, when you give a seed in faith to God, he will multiply it.....Rick Warren


Monday, June 23, 2008

One_Minute_Bible_Verse


“ And everyone who call on the name of the Lord will be saved ”

( Acts 2 : 21 )


Developing Self-Control


Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control. Proverbs 25:28 (NIV)


Self-control brings with it the good feeling of competency. Like a finely-tuned precision automobile, your life stays on course with the slightest touch of steering. The results of self-control are confidence and an inner sense of security.

Self-control and self-discipline are also key factors in any success you hope to have in this life. Without self-discipline, you are unlikely to achieve anything of lasting value.

The Apostle Paul realized this when he wrote, “Every athlete in training submits to strict discipline, in order to be crowned with a wreath that will not last; but we do it for one that will last forever.” (1 Corinthians 9:25 GNT)

Olympic athletes train for years in order to have a chance to win a brief moment of glory. But the race we are running is far more important than any earthly athletic event. So self-control is not optional for Christians.

How do we gain true self-control?

1. Admit your problem. The starting point for developing self-control is to face what God has already said about me: I am responsible for my behavior.

James 1:14 (PH) says, “A man’s temptation is due to the pull of his own inward desires, which can be enormously attractive.”

Do you realize what that says? It says you do things because you like to do them! When I do something I know is bad for me, I still do it because I like to do it. I want to do it; it’s an inner desire.

Do you want more self-control? Admit you have a problem and be specific about it. Begin praying specifically about your problem areas.

2. Put your past behind you. Philippians 3:13-14 (NIV) says, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal ….”

This verse exposes a misconception that will keep you from gaining self-control: Once a failure, always a failure.

Failure in the past does not mean you’ll never be able to change. Focusing on past failures, however, does guarantee their repetition. It’s like driving a car and looking in the rearview mirror the whole time. You’re going to collide with what’s ahead of you.

Ask God to help you put your past behind you.....Rick Warren


Sunday, June 22, 2008

One_Minute_Bible_Verse



Now the God of hope fill You all joy and peace in beliving , that Ye may abound in hope , through the power of the Holy Ghost ”

( Romans 15 : 13 )


Self-Control Is Christ’s Control


Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12 (NIV)


There’s nothing you can do as well without Christ as you can with him. Any struggle you’re facing will be easier to conquer with his help.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to clean up all your messes before you ask God for help. That’s like curing yourself of a disease before you drive down and see the doctor. Go to God first and get his help in all your battles.

The secret of self-control is Christ’s control. Then, as you face temptations that are too strong for you to resist, remember he is with you and turn them over to him. Remember, Christ provides the power to change your life!

But Jesus will also use two things to help you develop self-control:

1. Avoid temptation. It is just pure common sense: Don’t put yourself in situations where you’ll face temptation. If you struggle with alcohol, don’t go into a bar. If you’re struggling to lose weight, don’t load the refrigerator with ice cream. Do whatever you must to avoid temptation.

2. Make yourself accountable. Find someone who will check up on you, pray for you, and encourage you in the areas where you want to develop more self-control. Ecclesiastes 4:12 says, “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (NIV).

If you’re serious about self-control, find another believer you trust and say, “I have this problem. I’ve confessed it to God. I’ve asked forgiveness, and now I want to ask you to help me. Will you be my ‘buddy,’ a person I can call on the phone when I need support and encouragement?”

I believe God intends for every church to be filled with “buddy” relationships where people are accountable to each other, where they help and encourage each other in the Lord.

Having someone hold you accountable is tough, but it works.....Rick Warren


Saturday, June 21, 2008

One_Minute_Bible_Verse



“ The World is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path ”

( Psalm 119 : 105 )

Risks in Faith: Where God Guides, God Provides


And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:19 (NIV)


If God tells you to do something, he will give you the energy, talent, resources – whatever you need – to do it. Where God guides, he provides.

In 1979, I was finishing seminary in Texas when God said, “I want you to go to the Saddleback Valley and start a church.” There were two problems with that: I had never been a senior pastor, and I didn’t know anything about the Saddleback Valley; I’d never been there, and I didn’t know a single person there.

But my wife, Kay, and I decided to take a risk and launch out in faith. We loaded a U-Haul truck and moved with our four-month-old daughter to the Saddleback Valley.

We arrived during rush hour in January, 1980. I grew up in a town of fewer than 500 people, so when I saw the jam-packed freeway, I thought God had chosen the wrong guy.

But where God guides, God provides. We stopped at a real estate office and I met Don Dale. I said, “My name is Rick Warren and I'm here to start a new church. I need a place to live and I don’t have any money.”

Within two hours, Don found us a condo with the first month rent-free. Don also became the first member of Saddleback Church. Saddleback’s first service was in our home with just seven people – my family and Don’s family.

God began bringing others to join us in planting a church. And in April of 1980, 205 people streamed up the ramp at Laguna Hills High School for our first public worship service. It was amazing. I thought, “God! You have provided! This is the place we’re supposed to be.”

Kay and I believed in the dream and the vision that God gave us for the Saddleback Valley, and we followed that dream, even when it involved risks. If you’re going to live by faith, you’re going to have to take some risks. In some situations, you’ll wonder if God is going to come through. But keep believing – because where God guides, God provides..... Rick Warren

Friday, June 20, 2008

One_Minute_Bible_Verse



“ For thou wilt light my candle : the LORD my God will enlighten my darkness ”

( Psalm 18: 28 )


Balancing Your Life


"Don't let the errors of evil people lead you down the wrong path and make you lose your balance." (2 Peter 3:17, CEV)

Blessed are the balanced; they shall outlast everyone.

One of the events in the summer Olympics is the pentathlon. It is composed of five events: pistol shooting, fencing, horseback riding, running, and swimming. The pentathlete's goal is to succeed in all five areas, not just one or two.

Your life is a pentathlon of five purposes, which you must keep in balance. These purposes were practiced by the first Christians in Acts 2, explained by Paul in Ephesians 4, and modeled by Jesus in John 17, but they are summarized in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission of Jesus.

These two statements sum up what this daily devotional is all about - God's five purposes for your life:

1. "Love God with all your heart": You were planned for God's pleasure, so your purpose is to love God through worship.

2. "Love your neighbor as yourself": You were shaped for serving, so your purpose is to show love for others through ministry.

3. "Go and make disciples": You were made for a mission, so your purpose is to share God's message through evangelism.

4. "baptize them into …": You were formed for God's family, so your purpose is to identify with his church through fellowship.

5. "teach them to do all things …": You were created to become like Christ, so your purpose is to grow to maturity through discipleship.

A great commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will make you a great Christian.

Point to ponder: Balance is critical if you're going to fulfill the five purposes of your life.

Verse: "Don't let the errors of evil people lead you down the wrong path and make you lose your balance." (2 Peter 3:17, CEV)

What will you do about it: Take a survey of your life. Are you fulfilling all five of your purposes? What do you need to do to find balance in those five areas?

Prayer: Ask God to balance you. Ask him to shift your priorities and rearrange your life so that you're fulfilling your whole purpose... Rick Warren


Thursday, June 19, 2008

က်မဘဝ တစိတ္တေဒသ...ျမိဳ႕

ဆန္တက္ရတယ္ ဒီခရီးရွည္~~~~ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္က ဒီေက်ာင္းေတာ္
ခရီးၾကမ္းမ်ားကို ျဖတ္္ျပီး ေရာက္လာသူ~~~ အေဆာင္သူမေလးရယ္

အိမ္ကုိပဲ လြမ္းလုိ႕လား ~~~~ျမစ္ၾကီးနားက မေပ်ာ္လို႕လား
ေပ်ာ္နိင္ပါေစ ျမစ္ၾကီးနားက ၾကိဳမယ္

ရႈခင္းမ်ားစြာ သာတဲ့ေျမ~~~~ နင္ေရာက္ဘူးရင္ ေပ်ာ္နိင္မယ္
အလြမ္းသီခ်င္းမ်ားနဲ႔ ခ်န္ျပီး လြမ္းေနသူ~~~~ ေတာင္ေပၚသားေလးရယ္

အေဆာင္သူေလး လြမ္းျပီလား~~~~ ျမစ္ၾကီးနားက ၾကိဳခဲ့တာ
ေပ်ာ္နိင္ပါေစ ျမစ္ၾကီးနားက ၾကိဳမယ္

(အလြမ္းသီခ်င္းမ်ားနဲ႔ ထားခဲ့ ခဲြရခါနီးမွာ
ကိုယ့္ရင္ေတြဟာေလ တဒိတ္ဒိတ္ခုန္ေစ ဒါအခ်စ္စိတ္ပဲလား
ေပ်ာ္နိင္ပါေစ ျမစ္ၾကီးနားက ၾကိဳမယ္)

ေတးဆို - L.ဒဲြေ၀ါမ္ ၊ G.တိန္းလုပ္ ၊ N.ဆိုင္းလီ
ေတးေရး - ေကာင္တန္ေရာ္

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One_Minute_Bible_Verse



“ Though one may be overpowered , two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. ”

( - Eccles.4:12 )


Loving Others As Yourself


Love your neighbor as yourself ….” (Luke 10:27 NIV)

The Bible teaches that you should take deliberate action toward loving your neighbor – in the same way you want to be loved by your neighbor.

Yet God knows this is an impossible assignment unless you have his Spirit working within you, guiding and transforming you. It’s hard enough to love yourself, let along the contrary neighbor down the street (my polite Southern way of saying disagreeable).

You will be empowered to love your neighbor as you allow God to empower you – as you trust and obey (“for there’s no other way”!) God’s leading in your life, as you purposefully give your whole being – heart, soul, mind, strength – to God.

This brings you daily to the door of dependence upon God, a threshold you step through acknowledging that you need him to work through you. In doing this, you’re able to draw upon God’s strength and love. He becomes the power – the infinite love – within you to love others as yourself.

His love working within you transforms you from being self-centered to being supernaturally other-centered. Being other-centered frees you to love without expecting anything in return. It empowers you to love others, knowing they may not want or appreciate your love.

They may waste your love; they may discount your love; they may react angrily to your love; they may never understand your love. Yet your other-centered love demonstrates the depth and breadth of God’s love for us: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 NIV)

So what?

· Affirm your faith – No doubt there are parts of your life where you already place others before yourself. They may be simple matters, yet they represent a step toward other-centeredness. Thank God that you’ve come this far, and receive his affirmation for your faith.

· Step forward in faith – Ask God to show you the self-centeredness in your heart, and ask him to transform that spot into an epicenter of other-centeredness. Ask God to show you the specific steps you should take to bring your beliefs about loving others into alignment with the way you actually love others.

· Pay the price to love others – It's one thing to say other people are valuable; it's another to pay the price of your time, your energy, your resources, your finances, and your vacation days to translate those words into action. Ask God to show you one person he wants you to start loving in a supernaturally other-centered way – and then do it.

· Question to consider: What small step is God suggesting you take today that will help you move from self-centered living to other-centered living?......By Jon Walker


Wednesday, June 18, 2008

One_Minute_Bible_Verse


“ So we fix our eyes not on what is seen , but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal ”



( 2Corinthians4:18)


Why Must We Forgive?


“For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Matthew 6:14-15 (NIV)

We have to forgive the people who’ve hurt us, and it has nothing to do with whether or not that person deserves forgiveness. They don’t deserve forgiveness, but then, we don’t deserve it either.

We forgive those who’ve hurt us because God forgives us for how we’ve hurt him. To be honest, the reason we often have a hard time forgiving others is because we don’t feel forgiven ourselves.

But when Jesus died on the cross he paid the penalty for every sin that you or I ever committed or will ever commit. And if we’re going to be forgiving people, we first need to accept God’s forgiveness that comes from Jesus Christ.

Also, we should forgive knowing we will need God’s forgiveness sometime in the future. Jesus said, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15 NIV).

Carrying a grudge just keeps us stuck in the past, and when we’re stuck in the past, we’re controlled by the past. Our unforgiveness can control us. The Bible says, “Surely resentment destroys the fool, and jealousy kills the simple” (Job 5:2 NLT).

The Bible also says that only the foolish harbor a grudge (Ecclesiastes 7:9). Accept forgiveness from God and give forgiveness to others......by Rick Warren.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

အမ်ားသိေစရန္


က်မ ဘေလာဂ့္ေရးရျခင္း၏ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္က အလုပ္ေတြ အမ်ားၾကီးလုပ္ရင္း၊ ေလာကီအရာမွာ ေမြ႕ေလွ်ာ္ရင္း ဘုရားနဲ႕ စကားေျပာဖို႕၊ ဆုေတာင္း ခြန္အားယူဖို႕ ေလွ်ာ့ရဲလာတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ က်မယံုၾကည္ရာ ထာဝရ ဘုရားသခင္ေပးထားတဲ့ ၂၄ နာရီဆိုတဲ့ အခ်ိန္ကာလ အားလံုးကို ကိုယ္ပိုင္ တဦးတည္း အတြက္ မသံုး၊ ၂နာရီနဲ႕ ၄၀ မိနစ္ဆိုတဲ့ ခ်ိန္တိတိ က်က် မဟုတ္ရင္ေတာင္၊ ရတဲ့အခ်ိန္အနည္းငယ္ကို မိမိရဲ႕ ဝိညာဥ္ခြန္အားရဖို႕သတ္သတ္မွတ္မွတ္ေလး အခ်ိန္ယူလုပ္ခ်င္လို႕ပါ၊ ဒါေပမဲ့ ကိုယ္တေယာက္တည္း ဆုေတာင္း၊ ေက်းဇူးေတာ္ခ်ီးမြမ္းတာထက္ ကိုယ့္ရဲ႕ ယံုၾကည္ျခင္းကို လည္း ေဝဌခ်င္လာတယ္၊ ဒါေၾကာင့္ က်မရဲ႕ယံုၾကည္ျခင္း၊ ဝိညာဥ္ခြန္အား ရယူျခင္းကို ဘေလာဂ့္ေလး တခုအေနနဲ႕ ေရးသားရျခင္းျဖစ္တယ္။


စိတ္ထဲမွာခံစားရတာေတြ၊ တျခားေသာ္ ဘာသာေရးဆရာေတြရဲ႕ တရားေဟာခ်က္ေလးေတြ ကိုယ္တေယာက္တည္း ဖတ္မဲ့ အစား အားလံုးနဲ႕ ေဝဌ ဖတ္ရျခင္းပါ။ ခံစားခ်က္ေဖာ္ျပရာမွာ မည္သူ႕ကိုမွ် ဘက္မလိုက္၊ နိုင္ငံေရး၊ လူမ်ိဳးေရး မပါဘဲ ကိုယ့္ရဲ႕ယံုၾကည္ရာတခုတည္းကိုဘဲ တင္ျပရျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္လို႕ ေျပာၾကားလိုပါတယ္။

ငယ္ငယ္ကတည္းက ဆဲေရးတိုင္းထြာမႈ႕ကို မၾကိဳက္တဲ့သူပါ၊ မိဘကလည္း မၾကိဳက္တတ္ေအာင္ သြန္သင္ဆံုးမခဲ့ပါတယ္၊ ယခုခ်ိန္ထိ တိုင္းတပါးသူေတြေရွ႕မွာ သူတို႕ ဆဲေရးတိုင္းထြာရင္ေတာင္၊ က်မမေၾကာက္မရြံ႕ ရံႈ႕ခ်သူပါ၊ တိုင္းတပါးသူ မ်ားေတာင္ က်မေရွ႕မွာ ဆဲေရးတိုင္းထြာမိရင္ က်မကို ျပန္ျပီးေတာင္းပန္ေနက်ပါ၊ ဒါကလည္း အခ်င္းခ်င္း ေလးစားသမႈ႕ျပဳျခင္းတခုဘဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အဲဒါေၾကာင့္ က်မဘေလာဂ့္မွာ လာလည္ၾကေသာသူမ်ားကိုေလးစားပါတယ္၊ ေက်းဇူးလည္းတင္ပါတယ္၊ ဘယ္သူမို႕လို႕၊ ဘယ္ဝါမို႕လို႕ ဆိုတာမခြဲျခားဖိတ္ေခၚပါတယ္၊ ယဥ္ေက်းသိမ္ေမြ႕စြာဆက္ဆံေျပာဆိုျခင္းကိုလည္း လိုလားပါတယ္လို႕၊


ဘုရားသခင္၏ ျမတ္ေသာနာမ၌ ..... လားရႈိးသူ


One_Minute_Bible_Verse


“ Let no one make little of you because you are young, but be an example to the church word , in behaviour , in love , in faith , in holy living ”

( Timothy 4 : 12 )

How to Let Go of Past Hurts


Dear friends, never avenge yourselves. Leave that to God. For it is written, “I will take vengeance; I will repay those who deserve it,” says the Lord. Romans 12:19 (NLT)

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First, relinquish your right to get even. Leave that up to God; he’ll take care of it (Romans 12:19). I’ve been married for thirty years and I’m ashamed to say, I’ve hurt my wife many times. But after thirty years, we’re still together and more in love than ever before. Why? Because it’s not hurt that destroys relationships, it’s an unwillingness to forgive. We’re human; we’re going to hurt each other. But the question is, will you give up your right to get even? And will you offer forgiveness? When you do, any hurt can be overcome.

Second, respond to evil with good. How can you tell when you’ve released somebody, when you’ve completely forgiven them? You can actually pray for God to bless the person who hurt you. The Bible says we should overcome evil with good, praying for those who hurt us (Romans 12:21; Matthew 5:44).

Third, repeat these steps as long as necessary. Forgiveness is rarely a one-time shot. When somebody hurts you, we tent to think about it over and over and over. How often do you have to forgive the person? The Apostle Peter once asked Jesus, “‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times’” (Mathew 18:21-22 NIV). In other words, it needs to be continual, limitless; we shouldn’t even try to count the times we forgive, just as Jesus doesn’t count the times he forgives us.

Fourth, begin telling others about God’s forgiveness. The Bible says, “For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. This is the wonderful message he has given us to tell others. We are Christ’s ambassadors, and God is using us to speak to you. We urge you, as though Christ himself were here pleading with you, “Be reconciled to God!” (2 Corinthians 5:19-20 NLT). ...... Rick Warren



Monday, June 16, 2008

Go light your world!!!!!!

Go Light Your World

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Just Getting Along?

I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. 1 Corinthians 1:10 (NIV)

The Bible doesn’t tell us “one anothers” to just get along with one another. Even the worst of enemies can bury their differences for a short time when it’s beneficial for meeting a mutual goal.

But God, sending a note through our big brother, Paul, calls us to a higher standard than just getting along: “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose” (Philippians 2:1-2 NIV).

Our testimonies are validated by how we get along with other believers – that is, how we get along with one another in our congregations, our small groups, our choir rehearsals, our deacon/elder meetings, not to mention our families. Jesus says, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35 NIV).

Yet, love doesn’t look much like love when it’s accompanied by arguments and disputes and constant fighting. My spiritual mentor, Steve Pettit, notes this is perhaps the hardest aspect of authentic Christian fellowship – because conflicts arise every time people are thrown together. Even a man and a woman who vow to love one another until “death do us part” can’t always see eye-to-eye.

It’s understandable, then, when a group of people who have nothing in common, except for the Jesus-life inside them, find it difficult to agree with one another all the time, perhaps even difficult to agree even one time.

What does this mean?

• Take your disputes to Jesus. We may have differing opinions, but on this one thing we must agree: Jesus is the head and his opinions are the only ones that matter (James 4:7). As we submit to Jesus, he will wash away our divisions and disputes with love that flows from the fountain of God.

• Agree to agree with Jesus. Has God brought to mind someone with whom you need to work out some differences? Instead of trying to make the other person agree with you, agree with God and submit to what God tells you to do. If God so leads, tell those on the other side of a conflict or dispute that you are willing to submit to the will of Jesus and encourage them to do the same. .......


Jon Walker

Sunday, June 15, 2008

ဖခင္ေကာင္း တစ္ေယာက္


ေျဖာင့္မတ္ေသာ သူသည္ မိမိေျဖာင့္မတ္ျခင္း လမ္းသို႕ လိုက္၍၊ သူ၏ သားစဥ္ ေျမးဆက္တို႕သည္ မဂၤလာရွိၾက၏။
သုတၱံက်မ္း ၂၀ း ၇

“ မင္း ငယ္ငယ္တုန္း ကေပ့ါ ငါကခရီး ေတာ္ေတာ္ထြက္ျပီး အိမ္နဲ႕ ခြဲခြာရတာကြ ” ဟု ကၽြန္ေတာ္္၏ဖခင္ တခါက ဝန္ခံခဲ့ပါသည္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ကၽြန္ုပ္အေနနဲ႕ေတာ့ အမႈမဲ့ အမွတ္မဲ့သာ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါသည္။ အဘယ့္ေၾကာင့္ ဆိုေသာ္၊ အေဖသည္ အခ်ိန္ျပည့္ တာဝန္ထမ္းေဆာင္မႈ႕ ၊ ညေနပိုင္း သီခ်င္း ဦးေဆာင္မႈ႕၊ တခါတရံ အမ်ိဳးသား သံစံုသီခ်င္း အဖြဲ႕နွင့္ ခရီးထြက္မႈ႕မ်ား ၾကားထဲက ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ဘဝ၏ အမွတ္တရေန႔ရက္ ၾကီးၾကီး ငယ္ငယ္ အေဖသည္ အျမဲရွိေနျခင္းေၾကာင့္ အေဖအိမ္နဲ႕ ခြဲခြါရတယ္ ဆိုတာကို ကၽြနု္ပ္ မမွတ္မိျခင္းျဖစ္ပါလိမ့္မည္။

ကၽြန္ေတာ္ အသက္ ( ၈ ) နွစ္အရြယ္တြင္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ပါဝင္ခဲ့ေသာ ေက်ာင္းျပပြဲ၌ လာေရာက္ၾကေသာ မိဘေတြမ်ား ၾကား၌ အေဖသည္ တစ္ဦးတည္းေသာဖခင္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါသည္။ အေၾကာင္းအမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳး ပံုစံအသြယ္သြယ္ျဖင့္ အေဖသည္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕ ေမာင္နွမမ်ားအား သူ၏ဘ၀တြင္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕သည္ မည္မွ် အေရးပါေၾကာင္းကို ေဖာ္ထုတ္ ျပသေလ့ရွိပါသည္။ အေမ ဆံုးပါးခါနီး အခ်ိန္တြင္လည္း အေဖ၏ အေမ့အေပၚတြင္ ထားေသာ အတၱမဲ့ေသာ ခ်စ္ျခင္းကို ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ခံစားနားလည္ခဲ့ရသည္။ သို႕ေသာ္ အေဖသည္ သာမာန္လူတစ္ေယာက္သာ ျဖစ္ေသာေၾကာင့္ သူသည္လည္း အရာအားလံုး ျပီးျပည့္စံုေသာ သူတစ္ေယာက္ မဟုတ္ခဲ့ပါ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ေကာင္းကင္ဘံု၌ ရွိေသာ အဖဘုရားသခင္၏ အရိပ္ကို ထင္ဟပ္ျပနိင္ေသာ ဖခင္ျဖစ္ပါသည္။

ဤကမၻာေျမေပၚတြင္ ရွိေသာ ဖခင္တိုင္းသည္ မိမိ၏ သားသမီးအေပၚတြင္ ခ်စ္ျခင္း ၊ ၾကင္နာျခင္း ၊ ေမေတၱာ ၊ ဂရုဏာနာမ်ား မျပသနိင္ဘူးဆုိလွ်င္ သားသမီးမ်ား အေနျဖင့္ အထက္ေကာင္းကင္တြင္ ရွိေသာ အဖဘုရား၏ ခ်စ္ျခင္း ေမေတၱာကို သိနားလည္နိင္လိမ့္မည္ မဟုတ္ေပ။ ( ထာ၀ရ ဘုရားသည္ သနားတက္ေသာ သေဘာ ၊ ေက်းဇူး ျပဳတက္ေသာ သေဘာ ၊ စိတ္ရွည္၍ ဂရုဏာ ၾကြယ္၀ေသာ သေဘာ ရွိေတာ္မူ၏။ ဆာလံက်မ္း ၁၀၃ း အခန္းငယ္ ၈ ) ။

ဖခင္ တစ္ဦး အေနျဖင့္ သားသမီးမ်ားကို သြင္သင္ ၊ ဆံုးမ ၊ ျပဳျပင္ ၊ ခ်င္ခင္ ၊ ၾကင္နာ ၊ ဂရုျပဳျခင္းျဖင့္ ျပီးျပည္စံု ကံုလံုေသာ အဖဘုရားရွင္ထံသုိ႕ လမ္းျပ ပို႕ေဆာင္ နိင္မည္ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။......Cindy Hess Kasper

how blessed are the children
Who in their fathers see
The tenderFather-love of God,
And find their way to Thee... Johnson

အဖဘုရားအလိုေတာ္အတိုင္း အသက္ရွင္ေသာ အသက္တာသည္ သားသမီးမ်ားအတြက္ အေကာင္းဆံုး အေမြတည္း။




Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Pleasing God – Practical Worship


Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Romans 12:1 (NIV)



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Why does God want your body? Why doesn’t he say, “Offer your spirit”?

It’s because without your body you can’t do anything on this planet. In eternity, you’re going to get a new, improved, upgraded body but while you’re here on earth God says, “Give me what you’ve got!” He’s just being practical about worship.

You’ve heard people say, “I can’t make it to the meeting tonight but I’ll be with you in spirit.” Do you know what that means? Nothing. It’s worthless! As long as you’re on Earth your spirit can only be where your body is! If your body isn’t there, neither are you!

In worship we are to “offer our bodies as living sacrifices.” Now, we usually associate the concept of sacrifice with something dead, but God wants you to be a living sacrifice. He wants you to live for him!

However, the problem with a living sacrifice is that it can crawl off the altar, and we often do that. We sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” on Sunday, then go AWOL on Monday.

In the Old Testament, God took pleasure in the many sacrifices of worship because they foretold of Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the cross. Now, God is pleased with different sacrifices of worship: thanksgiving, praise, humility, repentance, offerings of money, prayer, serving others, and sharing with those in need.

Real worship costs. David knew this and said, “I will not offer to the Lord my God sacrifices that have cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24 TEV). One thing worship costs us is our self-centeredness. You cannot exalt God and yourself at the same time. You don’t worship to be seen by others. You deliberately shift the focus off yourself.

When Jesus said, “Love God with all your strength” (Luke 10:27), he was pointing out that worship takes effort and energy. It is not always convenient or comfortable, and sometimes worship is a sheer act of the will – a willing sacrifice. .....Rick Warren



Sunday, June 8, 2008

The Great Commission: Starting Where You Are in Your Life Mission

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” John 20:21 (NIV)

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Everybody’s life mission is unique, and only you can fulfill your life mission. The moment you become a believer, the moment you step across the line and give your life to Jesus Christ, God has an assignment for you.

Parts of your life mission are unique, but one part all believers have in common is this: God wants you to tell other people about what’s happened to you. He wants you to share your testimony, your lifestyle, and your witness.

The Bible says it like this in Acts 20:24 (NCV): “The most important thing is that I complete my mission, the work that the Lord Jesus gave me – to tell people the Good News about God’s grace.”

Once I become a Christian, a major part of my life mission is to invite people into God’s family. Jesus said in John 20:21 (GWT), “As the Father has sent me, so am I sending you.”

What has he sent us to do?

The Bible tells us in Acts 1:8, “You will be My witnesses in Jerusalem , Judea, in Samaria and in every part of the world.” This is a very, very important verse: it not only tells us what we’re supposed to do; it tells us where we’re supposed to do it.

First, it says, "You will be My witnesses.” Have you ever watched a courtroom trial? You know what a witness is – a witness is somebody who shares from personal experience. “I saw this ... I heard that … I watched that ….”

Witnessing does not mean you have to be a theological expert. It doesn’t mean you have to be a pastor or preacher. It simply means you share what God is doing in your life.

Besides, people expect pastors to talk about Jesus. But when your pastor talks about Jesus Christ, some people think, “Well, he’s just the paid professional. He’s the paid salesman. Of course, he’s going to talk about God.”

On the other hand, when you talk about what God’s done in your life, you are demonstrating that you’re the satisfied customer! Who has more credibility—a paid salesman or the satisfied customer?

You are the authority on your life. Nobody else can share your witness. If you don’t do it, that part of your life message will never be heard on this earth, and that’s a tragedy. If you don’t say it, nobody else is going to say it for you. We are to witness and share what God has done in our lives and what’s happened to us since we became believers.

Where are we to do it? We’re told to take the message to four places:

“In Jerusalem , in Judea, in Samaria and in every part of the world.”

What does that mean? Am I supposed to get on a plane and go over to Jerusalem to share my faith? No. Remember, where were the disciples when they were hearing these words from Jesus? They were in Jerusalem .

Here’s the point – start where you are. What’s your Jerusalem ? It’s your family, your friends, and your co-workers. That’s your Jerusalem . You start with the people closest to you. You don’t have to go somewhere else first. You start with the people in your own sphere of reference.

Then it says you go to Judea . Judea was like the county. What is your Judea ? At Saddleback, we live in Orange County , with 2.5 million people. Many of them still need to hear the good news, and, no doubt, there are many in your Judea who also need to hear the good news.

Then Jesus says you’re to go to Samaria . That’s like the county next door. But the Samaritans were culturally and ethnically different from the disciples. The third place you take the message is to people of a different culture, language, or ethnic group than you.

Do you know anybody who speaks a different language than you do? Since I live in Southern California , I can tell you that there are 187 different languages spoken within driving distance of my church!

My point is this – you don’t have to go very far to find your Samaria . It’s right next door. Have you ever been to a fast food restaurant? There’s your Samaria !

Then Jesus says go to “the ends of the world.” For hundreds and hundreds of years, Christians couldn’t literally obey that part because the ability to travel was extremely limited. In fact, for many years the human race didn’t even know the world was round. But today, there are many opportunities for believers to go on short-term trips that lead them to the “ends of the world.”

So that’s the mission. Start with your Jerusalem . Move on to Judea, then to Samaria – and then to the ends of the world. While you’re there, share the good news. Invite others into God’s family!

by Rick Warren


Thursday, June 5, 2008

A Graduation Wish

Why are you cast down, O my soul? ..... Hope in God; for I shall yet praise Him.
( Psalm 42 : 5 )


The high school commencement speaker was the president of a large corporation. He was chosen for the occasion because of his success. Yet His speech came with a most unusual wish for the graduates.

The speaker told the students sitting before him in their graduation gowns, "If I could have one hope for you as you go out into the world, it would be this: I hope you fail. I hope that you fail at something that is important to you." He went on to say how his own early life had been one failure after another, until he learned to see failure as an effective teacher.

Many of the songs of Israel were born in seasons of failure. Out of desperation came the cry, "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God" (Psalm 42: 1-2).

Sometimes we are not ready to see the wonder of God's wisdom and strength until we are gasping for breath in the exhaustion of our own strength.

A recurring story of the Bible is that mountains of faith rise from the valleys of failure. Before discovering the high ground we are looking for, we may need to see the failure of the dreams we hold in our hearts and trust instead in the love, wisdom, and guidance of our God. ......... Mart De Haan

The lessons we learn from our failures
Are lessons that help us succeed,
And if we are wise and we heed them,
Then failure is just what we need. .... D.De Haan

Learn from your failures, or you will fail to learn.

က်မတို႕ အသက္တာမွာ အရႈံးထဲက သင္ခန္းစာယူျပီး ေအာင္ျမင္ရာသို႕ ေလွ်ာက္လွမ္းနိုင္ၾကေသာ သူမ်ားျဖစ္ပါေစ။

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Don't Go Down There

ပညတ္ေတာ္တို႕အတိုင္း က်င့္ေစာင့္ျခင္းအရာသည္ ခ်စ္ရာေရာက္၏။
(ရွင္ေယာဟန္ ၾသဝါဒစာ ဒုတိယေစာင္ ၁ း ၆)

This is love, that we walk according to His commandments. II John 1:6

In this book Lessons Learned Early, Jerry Jenkins tells a story about his freshman year in college. It was 1968, a year of tremendous political and social upheaval in the US.

Tiots had broken out in many major cities. From the rooftop of his dorm in Chicago, Jerry heard sirens and saw fires burning. Students had been told to stay on campus, but Jerry wanted to see what was happening.

As he ran toward a store that was blazing a few blocks away, a police car pulled up beside him. " Don't go down there," the officer warned.

Jerry waited till the car pulled away and then kept walking. This time he made it more clear as he repeated, "Don't go down there" and leveled a shotgun out the window.

Our rebellious or willful streaks often lead to unhappy outcomes. In anger, Moses struck the rock to get water rather than just speak to it as God had commanded. He forfeited the privilege of entering the Promised Land with his people ( Number 20: 7-20). Jonah disobeyed an order to go to Nineveh and was given 3 days to think about his choice... inside a big fish (Jonah 1).

What does it take for us to obey Him? Will we obey simply because we love Him? (John 14:15,21)......... Cindy Hess Kasper

Nothing between, like worldly pleasure:
Habits of life, though harmless they seem,
Must not my heart from Him every sever...
He is my all! There's nothing between. ..... Tindley

Obedience is another word for love and loyalty.

လိုက္နာျခင္း၊ က်င့္ေဆာင္ျခင္း၊ အားျဖင့္ မိမိ၏ခ်စ္ျခင္း၊ သစၥာရွိျခင္းကို တိုင္တည္နိုင္ၾကျပီး ဘုရားသခင္၏ နိုင္ငံေတာ္သို႕ ဦးတည္နိုင္ၾကပါေစ။

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Risky business

He said to them, "Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?" Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. Matthew 8:26


Denis Boyles knew it would be challenging to interview a man on a roller coaster.... especially when the interview took place during an attempt to set a world's record for continuous riding. After several times around the track, Denis was so overcome with fear he could heardly talk.

Then the man showed him how to use his body and feet to lean into the loops, twists, and turns. Writing in AARP Magazine, Boyles explained how that took away the terror. It also taught him a lesson about risk and fear. The roller coaster felt risky though it was quite safe. But driving his car to the amusement park posed far greater risk of injury. Risk and fear are easily confused.

As Jesus and His disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee, a storm came up and waves swept over their boat. Incredibly, Jesus was asleep. The disciples woke Him and said, " Lord, save us! We are perishing!" (Matthew 8:25). In a gentle rebuke, Jesus asked, "Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?" Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm" (v.26).

Like the disciples, the more we learn about Jesus, the more we trust Him. Our greatest risk is failing to depend on Him when life seems out of control. .... David McCasland

But we see Jesus! Oh, what peace!
What balm for troubled heart!
His very name brings rest and calm
And bids the fears depart! .... Adams

Keep your eyes on Jesus and you'll soon lose sight of your fears.