God Is Still All-Powerful Today And He is At Work!

I'm just grateful that I serve and know a God that is all-powerful and that I don't have to be a Deist or have all my theological ducks in a row in order to grow in my relationship with God. God has many names which describe Him. One of them is Jehovah Rapha, which means the God who heals. Another one is Jehovah Jireh, which means God is my provider. God is not distant from us, but we will not experience a relationship with Him unless we turn away from our sins and trust in Him. He provided an atonement for our sins, by sending His Son to die in our place.
  The Bible describes God as love. We tend to shy away from that because we know that some people abuse His love and make it an excuse for continuing in sin, but God is love, and has shown His great love for us by laying down His life for us, who don't deserve His love. We deserve His wrath and we deserve punishment from Him, but He pursues us and grants us repentance and faith when we turn to Him.
  In the Old Testament, God worked supernaturally through different people. Miracles took place in various places. We see the same thing happening in the New Testament. Miracles still take place today. The Bible tells us that God will never change. When people see the power of God, they are affected. Many turn to Him and are changed forever.
   The Apostle Paul tells about a church that was endowed with spiritual gifts. There is no doubt that God had blessed this church in a supernatural way, but they were very selfish and Paul hollered at them for their behavior. It was totally dishonoring to God. Paul wanted the Corinthians to use the spiritual gifts, but within the boundaries that were set around them. We have the same problem today. When it comes to the spiritual gifts, many use them outside of the parameters and it brings dishonor to God. When it comes to spiritual gifts, they are given to the church in order to minister to one another. If God uses us to raise the dead, we must be careful to give God the credit for the miracle, and not ourselves.
   Yes, God is still at work today. Miracles still take place. People still get radically saved. God miraculously provides many times. Let's trust in this All-powerful, true and living God today!

God Working In Everyday Life

  I am currently listening to an audio book called, 'The Cross and the Switchblade' by David Wilkerson. It is a fascinating story of God's speaking to a man's heart to reach the lost children living in the ghettos of New York City. As I listen, it is interesting to see how God speaks to David's heart, then confirms what He spoke by fulfilling what He had said. This man's whole ministry is based on his absolute trust in and faith in the True and Living God for all he did and accomplished.
  I have to admit, I have gotten away from listening and hearing from God. There are so many counterfeits in the world that you really do have to learn to be discerning to hear clearly from God. But God really does speak to us. We need to pay attention to what He wants to say to us.
  One such time happened to me not to long ago. I am planning to put together (organize) an evangelism booth for our church, which is sponsoring an Arts & Crafts Festival on November 16th. I have a very creative mind and can go a lot of different ways with this. When I was first asked to do this, my first thought was to do what we did three years ago, when I did an evangelism booth back then.
  Let me go back a little bit further. I always thought it would be fun to do an evangelism booth, but there was no way I could do one. I had some ideas, and our evangelism leader had the opportunity to do one at a fall festival our church was doing many years ago. Our evangelism leader moved away, and there really were no more events going on that would provide an opportunity for us to have an evangelism booth. But I really wanted to do one. It was on my heart, so to speak.
  Three years ago, our church put on a fall festival. I got this bright idea to ask if I could do this 'evangelism booth'. Not realizing the expense that was involved, I made a lot of plans and had a lot of ideas, and God provided the money to put it all together! We had shirts made up. I got many to volunteer to work at this booth, which was amazing to me because anytime I have ever tried to do anything that involves people volunteering to help, I get a very low response. But this time, almost everyone I asked, eagerly responded to the invitation. It provided those in our church to branch out and share the Gospel with the visitors to the booth. Our booth really became a hit. People were flocking to it. Lots of conversations came about and the Gospel was presented to many that day.
   Fast forward. A woman in our church is planning on doing an Arts & Crafts Festival. The money from the table rentals will go to the church and the ministries that it sponsors. When we were at a planning meeting for this festival, our financial director asked me if we could do this booth again, to which I didn't hesitate to say 'yes'. In my mind I was thinking we could use all the leftover material from the last evangelism booth event and just go from there. But as I was thinking about the plans, something in my mind was sensing that this time, the evangelism booth would not be the same theme as the last one. The last theme for the evangelism booth was 'Do you have eyes to see with?'. The point was that a person has to be born again in order to 'see' the kingdom of God. We had optical illusions, T-shirts, a carnival mirror, and a host of other things that worked with the theme. Why couldn't I just use the same theme? Maybe God was doing something different this time, maybe something fresh. So, I am open to what He wants, not whatever is convenient and cheap for me.
   I came up with the theme as I was ordering helium balloons. I had thought of helium balloons about a week before I made this order. When I decided I would look into helium balloons, the prices for imprinted ones was kind of high. The lowest quantity you could order was 1,000. I really don't need 1,000 helium balloons, but even more than that, $230 is kind of steep for balloons. Let me think about this more.
   Along with trying to decide about the balloons, I would have to come up with something to imprint on them. What could I put? I know, I will put Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. Or maybe I could put, 'God is uncreated. He never had a beginning and has always been in existence.' That probably would be too many letters. I was also looking for cheaper helium balloons that I could have imprinted. Finally, in my email box, I received a notice of items available for imprinting that were on sale. I get a couple of these notices every day. I always like to see what is going on sale, and if I had money, I would go to the recommended web page and try to order. Well, I opened up this email and it said that the offer was for helium balloons! I went to the web page (you have to go quickly because the offer is offered to a small amount of people only, for a very short time. First come, first serve.).  When I clicked onto the following page, I made it in time! Now I would have to come up with something to imprint. Maybe the BIBLE thing? An idea quickly came to mind. It was this; Jesus is the Lamb of God. I found a picture of a lamb on the internet and put the words with it and sent the order in. It all took about 5 minutes.
    Now I am going with this theme. I made a slide-show up the other day on Jesus being the Lamb of God in the Old Testament and New Testament. I finally got the slide-show to work on my I-Pad today, so that will be great too.
  As we were having our planning meeting this afternoon, one of the volunteers created a tract, so I let her bring it and explain it. I had no idea what it was going to be on, but as she explained it to me, she is going to use this homemade tract to explain Jesus being the Lamb of God, as shown in the Old Testament and New Testament. Wow, could that be coincidence? Her mind was blown when she saw the imprinted balloon. No coincidence at all! God is orchestrating all our activities as we commit ourselves to Him.
  Last thing is that I decided we needed a backdrop for the tent. We used an evolutionary one that looked kind of strange, the last time we did this. But now, we have a different theme. So, I decided to look for shower curtains to use as a backdrop. Through doing extensive searching, I found one place that sells shower curtains with pictures of lambs on the curtains. They were quite expensive, but there was a discount available until midnight (Got on the Columbus Day weekend sale!). So, now I ordered the curtain and will use that as a backdrop.
   It is amazing to see how everything is falling into place for this. God is working all the plans and difficulties out for us. And we are grateful for His allowing us to do this.

The Cross and The Switchblade - A Faith Builder

     Probably around 37 years ago, I read a book written by a man named Nicky Cruz. I had not read 'The Cross and the Switchblade' until recently, and now I have a better appreciation for both Nicky Cruz and David Wilkerson.
   David Wilkerson was a country preacher in Pennsylvania, during the mid 1900s. Without telling all the wonderful ways God worked in this particular part of his ministry, I will comment on a few. 
   While looking at a Time-Life magazine, during the mid 1950's, David Wilkerson was drawn to an article about 7 gangsters from New York City, who brutally murdered Michael Farmer, a crippled boy with polio. David has an impression from God that seemed way out to him, but he followed the impression which led him on a search in NYC to find these 7 boys. 
   At first, he has nothing to go on, but his burden to find them. He goes to NYC and sits in on a court session that happened to have 2 extra seats, in which David, and his companion Miles, sat in. After that, David persisted in asking the authorities for information concerning finding the names of these boys, to which the authorities eventually became suspicious and David got in trouble with the law on account of his persistence. While he was tricked into holding up his Bible in the air, the camera men got a picture of him which went to the press immediately, which in turn, ended up on the front cover of newspapers throughout that whole section of the country! David was discouraged beyond comprehension, and went back home believing he really didn't hear from God. But what David didn't realize was that God was going to use that embarrassing, humiliating situation to bring him into a special type of ability to be able to reach these gangsters in NYC.
    After going back to PA, with his tail between his legs (so to speak), David apologized to his congregation for what he had done, and for the humiliation he would have caused his church to experience, but, David could not get away from this burden that God placed upon his heart. Instead of his congregation being angry with him, they actually collected money again for him to return to NYC. David and Miles returned to NYC and again started their search for the 7 gangsters who brutally killed a crippled boy with polio.
    When David arrived back in NYC, he searched for the gangsters by trying to find out what their names were. He found the name of the main one, which was luis Alvarez. As he talked with gangsters, they began to recognize David. The gangsters would stare at him and call his name. 'Davey' they would say, as they fondly nicknamed him. He began to recognize this name now. The gangsters would tell 'Davey' "You are the preacher that got in trouble with the police" "You are like us" They found Davey comforting, as they knew he was in trouble with the law, just like they were. They recognized him from the pictures in the newspaper headlines.
    David was told he would need the signatures of the parents of all seven boys in order to have an audience with them. How likely would he be to find all the names of the boys, and the addresses of the homes they came from, in NYC? He went through the phone book to find the parents of Luis Alvarez. There were at least 200 Alvarez names in the phone book, and after calling 40 of them, without a good response, he gave up calling numbers with that name. 
   They took the car and went around Time Square and were going around in circles. They got off on a side road in order to get out of traffic, and ended up in an area known as the 'Spanish Harlem'. He found a place to park and got out of the car. He came across a group of kids and asked them if they knew where Luis Alvarez lived. No one answered. After a long pause, he walked away. Then one of the kids came running up to him and asked David some questions. "You looking for Luis Alvarez?" "Is that your car?" David was getting irritated at trying to figure out what the boy was asking for. After answering the boy's question about the car, David heard the most awesome answer he could have ever heard. The boy told him that David had parked right in front of Luis Alvarez' house! 
   After meeting Luis Alvarez' parents (who were trusting God to send someone to their son) and getting their signatures, David asked if Luis' father knew the names of the 6 other boys, to which Luis' father said that he didn't. One out of 7 signatures is better than none, especially since God arranged this meeting, but how would he get the other 6 parental signatures that were required for him to meet with this group of murderous gangsters?
   On his way out, another young man was running up to his apartment. David called out to him, but he just kept on running. But then he stopped and took a look at David, and recognized him as the preacher who was in trouble with the law due to his desire to meet the gangsters who killed the Farmer boy. He and David communicated now, and David asked this young man if he knew the names and addresses of the other 6 boys who murdered Michael Farmer, to which the young man replied that he did. Not only did this young man give David the names of the murderers, but he directed them to their homes and David was able to get all the parental signatures he needed in order to meet with the 7 boys who murdered the crippled boy with polio! 
   Here is an excerpt of a conversation David had with a man named Nicky Cruz. Nicky Cruz was not one of the 7 boys who killed Michael Farmer, but this young man was as far away from God as anyone could be. When David was introduced to Nicky Cruz, Nicky didn't want to have anything to do with David. Here is how their first conversation went:

David Wilkerson: How do you do, Nicky?
Nicky Cruz: Go to hell preacher.
David Wilkerson: You don't think much of me, Nicky, but I feel differently about you. I love you, Nicky.
Nicky Cruz: You come near me preacher, I'll kill you.
David Wilkerson: You could do that. You could cut me in 1,000 pieces and lay them in the street, and every piece would say, 'I love you'.
Nicky Cruz's story is in the book, 'Run Baby Run'.

I do not want to spill the beans, but I do want to tell you that Nicky Cruz came from a family of 19 children. The family was from Puerto Rico, and their home was not made of a loving family. His family practiced witchcraft and they were Godless people. Nicky learned violence at an early age, and was left to himself and to defend himself in NYC as a boy. But what happened in his life can only be credited to God, and you can read some of his story in 'The Cross and the Switchblade', but his story is in the book, 'Run, Baby, Run'. God had mercy on Nicky and he became a new creature in Christ. God used a man named David Wilkerson to minster God's love to him, and Nicky 'got' the Gospel. 
Watch this video:
Nicky Cruz on Youtube
Here's his testimony: Nicky Cruz Testimony on Youtube