The Ministry of the Christian 1/31 Friday Faith

The ministry of the Christian is the ministry of the Spirit.  He not only ministers words to another, but he ministers the Spirit of God.  It is the Spirit of God that inhabits the words, that speaks to the spirit of another and reveals Christ in and through him.

-- John G. Lake

Secret of the Abundant Life 1/30 Thursday Thoughts

That is the secret of the abundant life of which Jesus spoke.  Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).  The reason we have the more abundant life is because that, receiving God into our being, all the springs of our being are quickened by His living presence.  Consequently, if we are living today and we receive God, we live life in a fuller measure.  We live life with a greater energy, because we become the recipients of the energy of the living God in addition to our normal energy, through the reception of His being, His nature, His life into ours.

-- John G. Lake

What the Church Should Be 1/29 Wednesday Wisdom

All that Jesus was to the world He purposed that the Church of Christ should be.  First, He blessed the world through His own physical personality.  Second, He established a physical body, composed of many members, joined in one by the Spirit of God.
When He established the second body, the Church, He never itnended that it should be of lesser authority or of lesser power than the first.  It was His real purpose that the second body, the Church, should exercise and fully accomplish all that the first had done.

-- John G. Lake

The Power of God 1/28 Tuesday Truth

The power of God through which men are blessed is not an individual matter that belongs to you or to me.  It is the conscious presence of the living, risen Son of God dwelling in our heart by the Holy Ghost, which causes you and me to know that the power of God is equal to every emergency and is great enough for the deliverance of every soul from every oppression.

-- John G. Lake

Let God Loose! 1/27 Monday Meditation

This is one of my all-time favorite quotes.  I've repeated it many times in the 14 years that I have been posting Lep's Faith Quotes.

Have you been in Canada? Do you know when I was in Canada, there was one thing that struck me peculiarly. The signs would read, "John Brown, Limited." Everywhere I see that sign.  I was holding meetings in the old St. Andrew's Church in Sydney. I asked them one night why they did not put their national symbol on their churches. They wondered what I meant. I said, "Every other business house is LTD; why don't you put it over the church?" An old Scotchman said, "We don't have to. Everybody knows it."

 
...Everybody knows the church is limited...
 

Limited? Sure it is limited.  Limit God, limit ourselves, limit His grace, limit the Word. Sure, our God is a little bit of a god. Most of us could carry Him in our vest pocket, and it wouldn't bulge the pocket. Our God with the "LTD" on Him.

Brother, sister, that challenge comes to us today to let God loose.

-- John G. Lake

He Has Mastered the Devil 1/24 Friday Faith

"I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death" (Rev. 1:18).
That is the reason I do not spend much time in talking about the devil.  The Lord took care of him, bless God!  He has the keys of hell and of death, and He has mastered that individual and that condition once and for all.  If you and I had as much faith to believe it as we have to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is our Savior, we would have mighty little trouble with the devil or his power while we walk through this world.  It is not worthwhile talking about a man after he is whipped out.

-- John G. Lake

Optimist or Groaner? 1/23 Thursday Thoughts

I have always wondered how a Christian could be anything less that an optimist.  It is a sad thing when you hear Christians with a groan in them.  When I meet the groaner I say in my heart, "God, move the man on into the place where he comprehends what Christianity is."  The Christian with a groan in him never moved the world except to groans.

-- John G. Lake

The Christian Who Hungers 1/22 Wednesday Wisdom

So the Christian who hungers and hungers, bless God, and lifts his soul to God, brings God down to meet his own cry.  The spirit of man and the Spirit of God unite.  The nature of God is reproduced in man, as God purposed it should be.

-- John G. Lake

What Are We Hungering For? 1/21 Tuesday Truth

"Blessed are they that hunger."  Bless God!  What are we hungering for, a little bit of God?  Enough to take us through this old world where we will have the dry rot and be stunted and then squeeze into heaven?  "Blessed are they that hunger" for the nature and power and love and understanding of God.  Why?  "They shall be filled."

-- John G. Lake

The Paramount Call of Your Being 1/20 Monday Meditation

Is there a note of despair in your heart?  Have you not attained the thing your soul covets?  Have you desired to be like that sinless, unselfish, sickless one?  God will answer the call of your soul.  You shall have your heart's desire.  But before that call becomes answerable it must be the paramount call of your being.  It is when it becomes the paramount issue of the soul that the answer comes.  Jesus knew.  That is the reason He said, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled."

-- John G. Lake

Everything Else Becomes Secondary 1/17 Friday Faith

The spiritual action that takes place within the nature of man, that strong desire for God -- His ways, His love, His knowledge, His power -- causes everything else, perhaps unconsciously to himself, to become secondary.

-- John G. Lake

The Ways of God 1/16 Thursday Thoughts

He who would understand the ways of God must trust in the Spirit's power to guide and keep.  He who would tread the paths where angels tread himself must realize seraphic purity.  Such is the nature of God, such the working of the Spirit's power, such the attainment of him who overcomes.  In him the joy and power of God shall be.  Through him the healing streams of life shall flow.  To him heaven's gates are opened wide.  In him the kingdom is revealed.

-- John G. Lake

Hearts Purged 1/15 Wednesday Wisdom

Think not to come within the court of God with stain upon thy garments.  Think not that heaven can smile upon a nature fouled through evil contact.  Think not that Christ can dwell in temples seared by flames of hate.  No!  The heart of man must first be purged by holy fire and washed from every stain by cleansing blood.  Know ye [not] that he whose nature is akin to God's must ever feel the purging power of Christ within?

-- John G. Lake

Attain the Highest in God 1/14 Tuesday Truth

Think not that thou shalt attain the highest in God until within thine own soul a heavenly longing to be like Him who gave His life for us possesses thine heart.

-- John G. Lake   [I have no idea why he suddenly switched to King James English in his sermon.]

Come Back With Simplicity 1/13 Monday Meditation

"Prepare ye the way of the Lord, Make His paths straight."  You want God to come and bless your own life?   Then separate yourself from the superficialities and formalities that have possessed your mind and taken your attention, and come back with directness and simplicity to God and He will bless your soul.

-- John G. Lake

Believing Prayer 1/10 Friday Faith

Believing prayer is not much noise.  Believing prayer may not be any noise at all.  Believing prayer is a committing, an intelligent committing of yourself to God, and your mind is stayed in God and your heart is stayed in God and you are walking in God.  You are ready to die rather than go to anyone but God.  This is the real believing prayer.  That is the continuous prayer.  That is prevailing prayer.  Blessed be God!

-- John G. Lake

A Favorite Diary Quote 1/9 Thursday Thoughts

An offhand quote from the diary of John G. Lake that I love:

December 8, 1910

... At the tabernacle service Thursday night, it was a very sweet service with nothing out of the ordinary.  Mrs. Arlow of Whurter, instantly healed of violent internal inflammation!

[An instant healing was "nothing out of the ordinary"!  How little the power in today's church, by comparison.  Dr. A.B. Simpson, founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, said he feared the day would come when the miraculous gifts would cease to be seen in every service. - Lep]

The Gifts and Calling of God 1/8 Wednesday Wisdom

And now, beloved, is the Holy Ghost in the Church today?  Verily, yes.  But you say, "We don't see Him work in this way in our church!"  Why?  Because you say, "All these things were for apostolic days."  Can you find anywhere in the Scriptures that the gifts of the Holy Ghost were withdrawn from the Church of Christ?  There is no biblical authority for such an assertion, but rather we read, "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance" (Romans 11:20).

--John G. Lake

But For Lack of Faith 1/7 Tuesday Truth

Beloved, we have seen that the Holy Ghost came into the Church at Pentecost and the gifts are in the Holy Ghost.  Consequently, if the Holy Ghost is in the Church, the gifts are too.  But for lack of faith we do not see them exercised in the ordinary church.  Now, we stand for obtaining of the Holy Ghost through our personal baptism in the Holy Ghost and the enduement of the Holy Ghost power as promised by Jesus, yea, commanded by Him.  "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you" (Acts 1:8).

-- John G. Lake

Cleansing of Our Nature 1/6 Monday Meditation

Isn't it marvelous, beautiful, wonderful to realize that mankind can receive into their nature and being the power and spirit of the living Christ, which contains the purging power to drive forth from the being every particle of evil, every sensuous thing in the thought and nature so that the man becomes what Jesus was.  That is what the blood of Jesus Christ is calculated to do.  That is what the spirit of Christ is purposed to do in the soul of a man -- the cleansing of a nature from the power and dominion of sin.

-- John G. Lake

I Receive the Spirit 1/3 Friday Faith

 Sin, sickness, death under His feet.  Hell itself taken captive and obedient to His Word.  Every enemy of mankind throttled, bound, chained by the Son of God.  Mankind joined with Him by the Holy Ghost in living triumph.  Why, if I receive of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, of the Christ who is, I receive the spirit of victory and power and might and dominion -- of grace, of love, of power, blessed be God, of all the blessed estate of which Jesus Himself is now the conscious Master.  All these things He gives to the Christian through imparting to him the Holy Ghost.

-- John G. Lake

The Life That Is Now 1/2 Thursday Thoughts

"As He is," not as He was, John said, "so are we in this world."  Not in the life to come.  The glory is not for the life that is coming, but for the life that is now.  The victory is not for the future.  It is for the now. It is not for the good days by and by.  It is for the now.  Not for heaven to come, but for heaven on earth now.

-- John G. Lake