but you are the same, and your years have no end (Psalm 102.27, ESV)

Time cannot apply to God. C.S. Lewis gave us an illustration which I’d like to pass on to you. If you can, think of eternity, of infinitude, as a pure white sheet of paper extending infinitely in all directions. Then think about a man taking a pencil and drawing a line, one inch long, on that infinitely extended sheet of paper. And that little line is time. It begins and it moves an inch and ends. It begins on the paper and it ends on the paper. So time began in God and will end in God. And it doesn’t affect God at all. God dwells in an everlasting now.…

You and I are creatures of time and change. It is in “now” and “was” and “will be” and “yesterday” and “today” and “tomorrow” that we live. That’s why we get nervous breakdowns, because we’re always just one jump ahead of the clock. We get up in the morning, look at the clock and let out a gasp of dismay. We rush for the bathroom, brush our teeth, tear downstairs for breakfast, eat a half-cooked egg and rush out to catch the commuter bus. That’s time, you see—time is after us! But God Almighty sits in His eternal now. And all the time that ever was is only a tiny mark upon the infinitely extended bosom of eternity.

No beginning, no ending, no time limitations, no start, no finish.… I am so small, Lord, and yet You care for me. Thank You, Loving Father. Amen.

Please join me in a prayer of thanks but also a prayer of need as I start the process for another degree.

Howard

Under the working of the Spirit of God through such men as Finney and Wesley, no one would ever dare to rise in a meeting and say, “I am a Christian” if he had not surrendered his whole being to God and had taken Jesus Christ as his Lord.…

Today, we let them say they are saved no matter how imperfect and incomplete the transaction, with the proviso that the deeper Christian life can be tacked on at some time in the future.

Can it be that we really think that we do not owe Jesus Christ our obedience?

We have owed Him obedience ever since the second we cried out to Him for salvation, and if we do not give Him … obedience, I have reason to wonder if we are really converted!

I am satisfied that when a man believes on Jesus Christ he must believe on the whole Lord Jesus Christ—not making any reservation!

This post is from: Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-Day Devotional. 

We submit that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to improve upon this. It embraces the whole sphere of religion, appearing as it does in its three directions: God, the individual, society. Within that simple triangle all possible human activities are carried on. To each of us there can be but these three dimensions: God, myself, others. Beyond this we cannot go, nor should we even attempt to go. If we serve God according to His own will, and in doing so serve our generation, we shall have accomplished all that is possible for any human being.

David was smart enough to serve God and his generation before he fell asleep. To fall asleep before we have served our generation is nothing short of tragic. It is good to sleep at last, as all our honored fathers have done, but it is a moral calamity to sleep without having first labored to bless the world. No man has any right to die until he has put mankind in debt to him

A. W. Tozer, Tozer on Christian Leadership : A 366-day Devotional (Camp Hill, PA.: WingSpread, 2001).

I remember reading an article on running, and in that article the writer said that a runner needs to think like a champion and to think like a champion he needs to follow what they did.  The article went on to talk about the many different habits of the best runners of those days.  The author also stated that a person needs to change their habits and take on the habits of a champion.  So I researched all the champions sprinters of the day, men like Don Quarrie, Houston MacTear and Steve Williams.  I read what they eat, how they trained and what habits they did that they said worked for them.  Starting one month after my 9th grade ended I started to implement their workouts in my own training schedule.

The bottom line is that I learned that if I was going to be the fastest I had to train like the fastest so that I would obtain the prize, just like they did.  These men became my mentors in running.  When I finally turned my will and my life over to the Lord I did the same thing with my recovery and walk with Jesus.

When I had finally enrolled into the discipleship recovery program in the Oakland Penile Compassionate ministry I kept my eye out for men that were champions in their recovery and their Christian walk.  The mission used to have services every day of he week and men would come in a preach powerful messages.  That is where I found champions.  I started to talk to them, ask questions and hang with them when ever possible.  I read what they were reading, learned their study habits and slowly but surely I found that I was developing new habits. It was than that I learned one of the most powerful lessons in Christian walk.  We all need to train with purpose and not aimlessly.

In his 1st letter to the Corinthians agrees with that when he said that we must “So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:24–27, ESV).  So over the past years I have disciplined my body, mind and heart with the habits of my mentors.

If a person in recovery does not train with purpose and develop new habits, the old ones will surface and thier walk will be powerless. Just like a runner who goes out for track as a 9th grader without proper training and the learning of new habits, and he runs with no power.

When the new habits are not formed we can anticipate that the person would relapse.  As I developed and displayed Godly habits, my attitude toward others overflowed with compassion,  I instinctively served when I saw a need, and I started to rely on the divine presence and power  of God in the middle of crisis.  I learned that the more I trained in the habits, the more the Christian fruit revealed.  All of these traits and many more of the Christian “runner” arise out of “practice,” and as we participate in those practices, experiences, and relationships through which Jesus changes us to live like him.

I have come up with an awesome recovery acronym that has helped me over the years develop the habits of a Christ follower and blood bought believer in Jesus.

R     =     Read & Study God’s word
E     =     Engage in Healthy Relationships
C     =     Connect with God in Prayer
O     =     Openness & Confession
V     =     Volunteer and Connect
E     =     Engage in Fellowship
R     =     Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
Y     =     Yield to the Jesus as Lord

We will find that when we walk out this RECOVERY road as a Christ-follower, these steps will bring a life-transformation and a powerful and effective new life.

When I walked on to the track in 10th grade I was a new person, with new habits.  Habits of a champion, and is showed because that year I broke a number of records and made varsity by the third race.  I remember the Track coach walking up to me one day and saying to me that I run completely different than the previous year and he asked me what I did, I looked up at him and said that I learned the habits of champions.  We need to do the same thing in our walk, learn the habits of a champion. Those champions being Jesus Christ, Paul, Peter and the many different men and women found in the word of God!!