RCCG Victory Temple Chantilly's Podcast

I The word of the Lord endures forever.' Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you." 1Pe 1:25 NKJV

In the fourteenth century, there was not a single copy of the Bible in English! It was available only in Latin, the language of the clergy, and those were chained to the podiums of the cathedrals. Then a prominent professor of divinity at Oxford University said, "This is not right. People should be able to read the Bible in their own language." Church leaders branded him a heretic and an instrument of the devil. Like Noah who pounded the nails into the ark while people ridiculed and scorned him, John Wycliffe began translating the Scriptures as a flood of persecution emerged around him. When he finally completed his translation of the Scriptures, he wrote this in the flyleaf of the first copy of the English Scriptures: "This Bible is translated and shall make possible a government of the people, by the people, and for the people." Five hundred years later, President Abraham Lincoln borrowed that statement for his famous Gettysburg Address.

Thirty years after Wycliffe died, he was again proclaimed a heretic. Consequently, his body was exhumed, and his bones were burned to dust, and his ashes cast into a river. A contemporary historian describes the scene like this: "Thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into (the river) Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the ocean. And thus ashes...are the emblem of his doctrine…now..dispersed the world over." Hence Peter writes, "'The word of the Lord endures forever.' Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached unto you."

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"Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more." Jn 8:11 NKJ

"The scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery... they said to Him,

'Teacher...Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?'..

Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear. So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, 'He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first...When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, 'Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?' She said,

'No one, Lord.!' And Jesus said to her, 'Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more'" (vv. 3-7, 10-11 NKJV). That day Jesus demonstrated three things:

(1) The hypocrisv of a double standard. Since this woman had been "caught in the very act." surely they knew who the man was, too. There is still a double standard todav that looks down on a woman because of her past while excusing a man by saying,

"He was just sowing his wild oats." The Pharisees used stones, we use words, but the victim ends up wounded regardless. (2) Who alone is qualified to judge. "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first." Who was the only sinless one among them that day? Jesus! So He alone is qualified to judge. (3) You can rise above your past.

"Go and sin no more." Those words could be rephrased, "Go, and because you have had an encounter with Jesus, you can rise above your past."

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"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." Ps 119:105 NAS

The words "Your word is a lamp to my feet" mean you're supposed to walk according to God's will and not your own thoughts, wishes, or impulses. The words "and a light to my path" mean you can't go in any direction you choose; you must follow the path that God has planned for you. You will never go wrong consulting the Scriptures for direction, but make sure you keep the Scriptures in context. Don't use the "open-window method," allowing the wind to blow across the pages of your Bible, then shutting your eyes, pointing to a verse and saying,

"This is God's leading on this." If you do that, you could wind up with the verse, "Judas went away and hanged himself" as the verse for your day! Would you want to go to a doctor with an illness and hear him say, without ever examining you, "It's your gallbladder"? You would ask, "How do you know?" And he would say, "Well, I sat by the window a few moments ago and trusted God to blow the pages of my anatomy book to your problem-and the topic on the page was 'gallbladder.!" You would run out of there pretty fast, wouldn't you? Some people practice this kind of theological voodoo, then get into trouble and say, "Well, God led me," when God had nothing to do with their choices. Whenever you read the scriptural phrase, "This is the will of God," you can be sure that it's His will. If you disobey Him, you will suffer the consequences, and if you obey Him, you will be blessed.

If you obey Him, you will be blessed.

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"Working for the Lord." Col 3:23 NIV

If you were in charge of hiring people at work, what would you look for? Skill, dedication, punctuality, reliability, patience, kindness, and consistency?

Jesus said, "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much" (Lk 16:10 NIV). Life mostly consists of little things, so if you're unfaithful in little things, you will be unfaithful in most of life. Do you possess a "guilt pile" at work?

It's that little stack of items you haven't gotten around to yet. Faithfulness includes how vou handle it. It may not matter much to you that someone has sent you an email or written you a letter, but that person anticipates an answer. Their world may be counting on it. How do you manage the little things in life? Jesus said, "If you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?" (v. 12 NIV). If you owned the business you work for, would you be taking all those extra coffee breaks? Would you buy the rental car you just abused for a week? How you handle the things that are not yours is a test of faithfulness to God. See how sensible this is? Faithfulness is important in all areas of life. God says you will be rewarded for your faithfulness, so do your best at work. "Work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters" (Col 3:23 NIV). As a follower of Christ, you should have a reputation for being the most dependable person on the job. Why?

Because vou're aware of who vour true boss is!

How do you manage the little things in life?

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"Cast vour cares on the Lord and he will sustain you." Ps 55:22 NIV

If you grow up in hard times, you will automatically do one of these two things: (1) Trust God more because you have experienced His faithfulness. (2)

Worry, think, and incessantly talk about the "what ifs" in life. And there are lots of them to think about, because the future rests in God's hands and not yours. It's possible for a thing to seem much bigger to you than it really is. That's the essence of worry.

It's like a snowball; it starts small, but as you roll it over and over in your mind, it becomes bigger and bigger until it has the potential to bury you. What's the answer? "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding" (Pr 3:5 NKJV). Fill you heart with God's Word. Then develop the habit of letting what's in your heart be more real to you than what you see, think, or feel. You can choose to think about what God can do instead of what you cannot do. If you continue to obsess about the difficulty of your situation, you will end up in despair. In other words, you will feel trapped. When that happens, it's easy to panic and begin to do irrational things that just make the problem worse.

Instead, "Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken." The word "sustain" means to strengthen, support, and hold you up. God may not take you out of the situation immediately, but His sustaining grace will bring you through it. Today, give your problem to God.

His sustaining grace will bring you through.

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"I have told you these things, that My joy and delight may be in you." Jn 15:11 AMPC

You need to enjoy each day of your life for Christ's sake, because He paid a very high price for you to be able to. He said, "I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows)" (Jn 10:10 AMPC). He said: "I have told you these things, that My joy and delight may be in you, and that your joy and gladness may be of full measure and complete and overflowing" (Jn 15:11

AMPC). He said, "Ask and keep on asking and you will receive, so that your joy (gladness, delight) may be full and complete" (Jn 16:24 AMPC). Jesus actually prayed that you would have joy: "Now I am coming to You...so that My joy may be made full and complete and perfect in them [that they may experience My delight fulfilled in them, that My enjoyment may be perfected in their own souls, that they may have My gladness within them, filling their hearts]" (Jn 17:13 AMPC). With Jesus Himself praying such powerful words about His desire for you to have joy, how could you ever doubt that God wants you to be happy and enjoy your life? As a redeemed child of God, you're a walking billboard for Christianity! Don't go around looking severe, stern, strict, sour, and sensorial, believing that you're coming across as "spiritual." No, that's a turnoff to non-Christians! You need a new mindset; a scriptural one that will enable you to enjoy life and make you a more enjoyable person to be around.

God wants you to be happy and enjoy life.

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"Do not dwell on the past... I am doing a new thing!" Isa 43:18-19 NIV

Author Ellen Vaughn continues: " (3) We must also forget our successes. That doesn't necessarily mean we must forget the great projects we have completed. We are to work and live with excellence unto God, and He takes pleasure in our successes as they are offered to His glory. But we should forget past successes if they have defined our identity or caused us to be complacent, smug and self-congratulatory. We're not to fondle the past, dwelling on past glories. (Similarly, we must make sure our stories of God's work and grace in our lives are not all old. If we can only point to instances of God's faithfulness from five years ago but none from this week, our connection with Christ isn't very current.) Paul warns the Philippians against those who would put their confidence in human criteria and accomplishment: 'If someone...thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more' (Php 3:4 NIV), he said, citing his power résumé that many in his day would have coveted. But his focus wasn't on his past: 'Whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ... But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus' (Php 3:7, 13-14 NIV)." The good news is, God doesn't analyze your past in order to determine your future. He says, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past... I am doing a new thing!" Learn from the past, leave it, and don't look back!

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'Do not dwell on the past... I am doing a new thing!" Isa 43:18-19 NIV

In the words of the legendary baseball plaver

Satchel Paige, "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you." That's good advice! Paul bottom-lines it like this: "Focus on...Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead" (Php

3:13 NLT). Author Ellen Vaughn writes: "Before our spiritual vitality can really flow, we must forget three things. [Today, here are two: (1) We must forget our sins. Obviously we must remember our sins in order to confess them. But having done so, we must let them go. The fact that God forgets is like calling heaven and hearing, 'There is no record of any offense. They're expunged, as if they never existed.

Satan would lure us to live in guilt and fear. He pulls us into the shadowboxes of memory in which our worst sins replay on the walls of our minds...We need to be very clear here, or we'll miss the liberating point. It's not as if forgiveness is real only if we experience some kind of holv amnesia. It's not up to us. It's up to God. And the Scriptures say that God forgets our sins (See Heb 8:12). (2) We must forget our shame. Paul could have been a prime candidate for shame. He had presided over the harassment, imprisonment, torture, and murder of innocent human beings. But God's grace is stronger than our shame. It was defanged when Jesus died and rose again. We can forget our slithering shame, for Jesus took it. He scorned it, beat it, broke it. We need not take it back." The word for you today is-

"Do not dwell on the past...I am doing a new thing."

God's grace is stronger than our shame.

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"I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Ps

23:6 NIV

For some of us, the love of God doesn't feel real.

Why is that? Because we have tried to make this earth our home. And as a result, we live with worry and frustration. Only when you have the right view of there will you have the right view of here. When you understand where your true home is, death is never a period; instead, it's a conjunction. Less than one second after you die, you will be escorted into the presence of God. You won't even be dead long enough to know you died. You don't expire; you transfer. Quicker than you can blink, you move from one dimension to another. You go from living in this time to dwelling "in the house of the Lord forever." Most of us will not die suddenly of a heart attack, or a stroke, or in a car crash. For most of us, death will come gradually as we wear down over time. You will feel your body deteriorating and atrophying, and you will know you're nearing death. Then God will put you into transition mode. He will make heaven look much more appealing than earth so that you will be thinking, "I wish God would just hurry up and take me home." He may even give you a little preview of glory and let you see your Savior waiting to welcome you. When you glimpse those arms wide open, you will want the trip to hurry up and take place. You will say like David, "As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when 1awake in Your likeness" (Ps 17:15 NKJV). Home sweet home.

You don't expire; you transfer.

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"All the days of my life." Ps 23:6 NKJV

Most insurance companies are trustworthy. They will cover you through most of the seasons and adversities of life. But not all insurance companies are that way. In some cases, the moment you make a claim against them, they either hike your premiums through the roof or cancel your policy.

But the insurance policy you have with God is awesome. The premiums were paid in the crimson cash of Jesus' blood when He spoke these words:

"It is finished " which means "paid in full." There are different kinds of insurance that cover things like fire, property, theft, health, automobiles, and death.

But the only insurance policy that can cover you beyond death is the one God offers. And you don't have to worry about reading the "fine print." because He will not cancel it. Paul lays it out for us:

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Ro 8:35, 37-39 NKJV).

Have you repented of your sins? Have you placed vour trust in Christ to be vour Savior? Then vou're covered for time and eternity. "Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come; 'tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home."

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