The Bible and Life

Friday, January 31, 2025

Half A Christian?

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

Text: Matthew 5:16; Acts 1:8

Spurgeon (1) wrote, " I think I may say to every person whom I am addressing,-If you are yourself saved, the work is but half done until you are employed to bring others to Christ. You are as yet but half formed in the image of your Lord. You have not attained to the full development of the Christ-life in you unless you have commenced in some feeble way to tell others of the grace of God; and I trust that you will find no rest to the sole of your foot till you have been the means of leading many to that blessed Saviour who is your confidence and your hope?

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Let us ask Him to give us grace to go a-fishing, and so to cast our nets that we may take a great multitude of fishes. Oh, that the Holy Ghost may raise up from among us some master-fishers, who shall sail their boats in many a sea, and surround great shoals of fish!"

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1. Spurgeon, Charles " Instruction In Soul Winning "

William James Roop

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

The Power Of A Testimony

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

Here is a true story about the power of a testimony. Enjoy.

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He Preached Some Of His Best Sermons Through The Lips Of Other Men

STAUNCH WILLIAM BOOTH was about his doctrine, he was just the opposite when it came to his methods. Given his aim of saving the lost, there were few things he wasn’t willing to try. In one meeting at which the crowd seemed to have little interest in his preaching, he decided to turn the floor over to a Gypsy hawker who had recently been saved. Almost as soon as this man started to give his testimony, the crowd was transformed and seemed to hang on his every word. From that day forward, testimonies from new converts were given at almost every meeting.

William also started to delegate responsibility to new converts at each meeting. He found their enthusiasm to be contagious, and as they served at each gathering, prospective converts became even more receptive to the gospel message. It later became a saying in the Army that William preached some of his best sermons through the lips of other men. “He never monopolized the meetings. He made others help him—they were as much theirs, as his. This helped to make them attractive as well as effective.”

- God’s Generals ( The Revivalists )

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William James Roop

Friday, January 24, 2025

You Can Be Forgiven

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

Text: John 1:9; Colossians 3:13.

Gabrielle Carey is an Australian author most widely known for the movie Puberty Blues, based upon the book of the same title. In a later book, In My Father’s House Carey relates an incident that led to her conversion to Christ.

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Carey was raised in an atheist humanist household. Her father was a university lecturer with a passionate commitment to the left side of politics. Throughout her upbringing he railed against oppression, capitalism and was a key figure in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam years. He also railed against God and the church, finding it impossible to believe in a God when the world was full of so much suffering.

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But that left Gabrielle tremendously burdened. In her book In My Father’s House she writes, "One of the hardest aspects of growing up as the daughter of a humanist was the worry of having to live up to incredibly high intellectual and moral standards. And worse, what happened when it was discovered that you hadn’t? Would you be given a second chance? Could you confess your weaknesses? Would you ever be forgiven? What would my father say if he found out that I was just another brainless, mind-moulded, media-manipulated failure to humanity?"

It was this burden of guilt Gabrielle found lifted when she converted to Christian faith. "Perhaps what I liked most about Catholicism" she writes, "or at the least the Catholicism the abbot had introduced to me, was knowing I could be wrong, knowing I could behave badly, awfully in fact, and that I would still be loved. That all I needed to do was own up and I’d be forgiven...At least with a Catholic God and father you could fail without feeling that it was the end of all hope. And that was such a relief."

Source: Scott Higgins, based on Carey’s In My Father’s House (Pan McMillan, 1992)

William James Roop

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Put First Things First

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

Here is an article about putting your spiritual health front and center.

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PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST.

The first Psalm is so beautiful and further confirms that God wants His people to prosper.

PSALM 1:1-3:

1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not 'wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall PROSPER.

So you see, God wants us to prosper. However, our need is to evaluate things as they should be evaluated — to esteem earthly things lightly and to put first things first.

Everyone thinks the preacher ought to be that way.

For example, if a pastor happened to take the pastorate of a church where he makes more money, many people would think, He just took that church so he'd be better paid. Yet they themselves would think nothing in the world about taking a better job! They would probably even think nothing about moving off to another location where there wasn't a good church — only one in which they'd all backslide!

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Years ago back in the Depression days, I was in a particular town on business, and ran into a certain fellow on the street. He had a good job making good money, but he'd been offered a job in another town making $50 more a month. That was a lot of money back then. I knew many men with families who didn't even make $50 a month. But this gentleman was already making a good salary and had the chance to make an even better one.

He told me, "Did you know I was moving?"

He was a member of a Full Gospel church, and I happened to know that there wasn't a Full Gospel church in the town where he was moving.

I said to him, "What kind of church is there in that town?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Is there a Full Gospel church there?" I asked him.

He answered, "I don't know; I never thought about it."

I said, "No, you were only interested in the extra

fifty dollars a month."

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But wait a minute.

"I knew you before you came into Pentecost. I happen to know that you'd spent all of your money on medical bills for your wife. Doctors thought she had cancer of the stomach.

"But when she received the baptism of the Holy

Ghost, without anybody even praying for her,she was healed.

"I also happen to know that you had spent thousands of dollars on one of your sons who had a physical ailment. But since you began attending a church where divine healing is taught, your boy has been in good health."

"Yes," the man said.

"Well," I said, "I also happen to know that there's not a Full Gospel church in that town." (It would have been different if he had been to going to that town to start a Full Gospel church, but he wasn't. He wasn't capable of starting a church.) The man said, "You know, I never thought about that."

I said, "You'd be taking your family out of a good Full Gospel church, where the Gospel is being preached and where you've been blessed immeasurably, all for fifty dollars more a month. I won't tell you not to do it, but I will tell you to pray about it."

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The next time I saw this fellow, he said to me, "I'm not going; I don't believe it's worth it."

Another man and his wife came to a meeting I was holding in Dallas. The woman's mother, who had gone to be with the Lord, was a member of a church I'd pastored years before. She had been a wonderful Christian and a great blessing to my wife and me.

I knew that this wife hadn't always been a Christian. Years before when she would visit her mother, her mother told me she wasn't saved. But she had later gotten saved, received the Holy Spirit, and attended a fine Full Gospel church.

But when I saw this woman with her husband at my meeting and asked, "Where do you attend church now?" the woman said, "Oh, we don't go anywhere."

"What do you mean? I thought you were a member at such-and-such church."

"Oh, there's not even a church there anymore," she answered. "It was closed down for a while until another pastor came and took over it. Then the pastor backslid and quit preaching. We just go here and there to church every so often. While you're in town, we're coming to your meetings."

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I asked: "Well, where do you pay your tithes?"

"We don't pay our tithes," she answered. "We used to pay them, but we quit. We used to pay our tithes to the pastor, but he backslid."

"Well," I said, "you don't have to backslide just because he did."

I didn't know whether they appreciated me telling them that or not, but I continued: "You need to get in a church somewhere and work for God and worship the Lord. You need to get hooked up instead of going from church to church." A rolling stone never gathers any moss.

"Besides that, we need each other. We need the fellowship of one another."

Someone said, "I can stay home and be as good a Christian as anybody."

You can't do it. The Bible says, "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching" (Heb. 10:25).

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We see that day approaching — the coming of the Lord. We need one another. No, we don't go to church because we're in love with the pastor or the pastor's wife or the Sunday school teacher. We should go to church because we love God and want to worship Him.

Some people lose their children to the devil because the parents don't put first things first. The children grow up physically, and get away from God because the wrong example was set for them. But you can't just tell children what to do. The Bible says, "TRAIN up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Prov. 22:6). You have to set the right example. You have to be a person of faith yourself. Tb do that, you have to put first things first.

F. F. Bosworth said, "Some people wonder why they can't have faith for healing. They feed their body three hot meals a day, and their spirit one cold snack a week."

Folks could have faith for healing or for anything the Word of God promises — prosperity, a healthy, happy family, long life — if they would just put first things first.

Determine in your heart to put spiritual things first and to esteem earthly things lightly. Put God first, even before your own self. You'll be blessed spiritually, physically, and in every way — you and your family as well.

ISAIAH 1:19

"If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the

good of the land."

Kenneth E Hagin ( Biblical Keys To Financial Prosperity)

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William James Roop

Friday, January 17, 2025

Woman In Suitcase

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

Here is the importance about holiness.

Text: Leviticus 20:26; 1 Peter 1:15-16.

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Woman In Suitcase

In January of 1985, a large suitcase, unmarked and unclaimed, was discovered at the customs office at Los Angeles International Airport. When U.S. customs agents opened the suitcase, they found the curled-up body of an unidentified young woman. She had been dead for a few days, according to the county coroner.

As the investigation continued, it was learned that the woman was the wife of a young Iranian living in the U.S. Unable to get a visa to get into the U.S. and join her husband, she took matters into her own hands and attempted to smuggle herself into America via an airplane's cargo bay.

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While her plan seemed to be simple though risky, officials were hard pressed to understand how such an attempt could ever succeed. Even if she survived the journey in the cargo bay, she would remain an illegal alien. In the same manner, some people believe they'll enter the kingdom of God on their own since they've been reasonably good citizens or church attenders. But entry plans of our own design prove not only foolish but fatal.

William James Roop

Friday, January 10, 2025

Be A Witness

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

Here is a fun story about witnessing to others about Jesus Christ, from an unknown source.

Text: Mark 16:17-20; Acts 1:8.

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A few years back I coached my son’s Little League Team. We spent many hours practicing. We practiced and practiced and learned the fundamentals; how to hit, how to bunt, how to throw, how to pitch and catch. We learned all of the secret coaching signs.

We honed our skills day after day in the summer sun. We could have practiced all summer but it would have been meaningless. I may have had a great team; Little League World Series contenders maybe, but unless we quit practicing and went out and met the opposition, I would never know. The team would never accomplish anything until they played a game.

The act of playing the game after careful preparation is what the world is all about. Practicing and learning go for nothing if we don’t go out and use our skills. There comes a moment in time when we need to leave the safety of our pews and go out and meet the opposition and win them over.

William James Roop

Friday, January 3, 2025

How Do You Want To Be Remembered?

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

Contributed by Denn Guptill from an unknown source.

Text: John 3:16.

In 1912, 39 year old, Rev. John Harper a Scottish preacher was making a transatlantic trip to preach at the Moody Church in Chicago. As fate would have it the vessel he choice was the Titanic. We all know the story about the disaster but do you know the story of John Harper? Harper like many others ended up in the water, and as people desperately tried to survive in the chilled waters, Harper swam to them.

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The minister asked people in the water if they knew Jesus. Eventually, Harper approached a passenger clinging to a jagged piece of wood and he pleaded for the man to trust Christ. The minister was completely exhausted at this point. As he succumbed to the conditions and went under the water to his death, Harper said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."

A few years later at a meeting of survivors of the Titanic, the final man who encountered John Harper told the group that he had been saved twice that night. First, he had accepted Christ as his personal Savior because of Harper’s efforts. And, of course, he had been rescued from the deep Atlantic seas. He said “Alone in the night with two miles of water under me I believed, I am John Harper's’ last convert.”

William James Roop