Do you crave to be inspired by God’s living word? Do you enjoy a great sermon by a great pastor? Nothing beats the worship of a local church, but if you can’t make it to church, or you need some midweek encouragement, why don’t you give Pastor David Dykes, of Green Acres Church in Tyler, Texas a listen?

He is the pastor of my parent’s church and I’ve always enjoyed the worship there and God always speaks through him each Sunday. Green Acres has now moved their sermon audio to iTunes, meaning that whether I’m in Dubai, Hong Kong, Anchorage, or just at home, I can listen to a great word from God. The subscription is free and I set up my iTunes to download new podcasts from Pastor David each time it is updated. Make sure you have iTunes installed and then click on the subscribe button below to signup. Then, in iTunes, just make sure your subscription is set to auto update and enjoy!

TobyLaura.com

From Wesley Pruden:

The malls and the Main Streets will soon fall silent. The ringing cash registers and the happy cries of children will be but ghostly echoes across silent streets as hearths beckon, gathering friends and families.

But in the clutter of Christmas morn, the Christ born in a manger 2,000 years ago still lives, liberating the hearts of sinners and transforming the lives of the wicked. The authentic story of the redeeming power of the Christmas message is nowhere more vividly illustrated than in the incredible life of an English slaver named John Newton.

John Newton was born 300 years ago into a seafaring family in Liverpool. His mother was a godly woman whose faith gave her life meaning. She died when John was 7, and he recalled as the sweetest remembrance of childhood the soft and tender voice of his mother at prayer.

His father married again, and John left school at 11 to go to sea with him. He quickly adopted the vulgar life of rough seamen, though the memory of his mother’s faith remained. “I saw the necessity of religion as a means of escaping hell,” he recalled many years later, “but I loved sin.”

On shore leave, he was seized by a press gang and abducted aboard HMS Harwich, and life grew coarser. He ran away, was captured, put in chains, stripped before the mast and flogged mercilessly. “The Lord had by all appearances given me up to judicial hardness. I was capable of anything. I had not the least fear of God, nor the least sensibility of conscience. I was firmly persuaded that after death I should merely cease to be.”

The captain of the Harwich traded him to the skipper of a slaving ship, bound for West Africa to take aboard human cargo. “At this period of my life,” he later reflected, “I was big with mischief and, like one afflicted with a pestilence, was capable of spreading a taint wherever I went.”

John’s new captain liked him, however, and took him to his plantation on an island off the African coast, where he had taken as his wife a beautiful but cruel African princess. She grew jealous of John and was glad when it was time for them to sail.

John, however, fell ill, and the captain left him in his wife’s care. The ship was barely over the horizon when she threw him into a pig sty, with a board for a bed and a log for a pillow, blinded him, and left him in delirium to die. He did not die, but was kept in chains in a cage and fed swill from her table. Word spread through the district that a black woman was keeping a white slave, and many came to taunt him. They threw limes and stones at him, mocking his misery. He would have starved if slaves waiting passage to the Americas had not shared meager scraps of food.

Five years passed, and when the captain returned, John told how he had been treated. The captain called him a liar and branded him a thief. When they sailed John was treated ever more harshly, allowed to eat only the entrails of animals butchered for the crew’s mess.

“The voyage quite broke my constitution,” he would recall, “and the effects would always remain with me as a needful memento of the service of wages and sin.” Like Job, he became a magnet for adversity. His ship crashed onto the rocks, and he despaired that God’s mercy remained after his life of hostile indifference to the Gospel. “During the time I was engaged in the slave trade,” he said, “I never had the least scruple to its lawfulness.”

The wanton sinner, the arrogant blasphemer, the mocker of the faith was at last driven to his knees: “My prayer was like the cry of ravens, which yet the Lord does not disdain to hear.” Miraculously, he was rescued, and made his way back to England to reflect on the mercies God had shown him in his awful life. He fell under the preaching of George Whitefield and the influence of John Wesley, and was born again into the new life in Christ.

On Christmas Eve in 1807, he died at the age of 82, leaving a dazzling testimony to the miracle born on Christmas. “I commit my soul to my gracious God and Savior, who mercifully spared and preserved me, when I was an apostate, a blasphemer and an infidel, and delivered me from that state on the coast of Africa into which my obstinate wickedness had plunged me.” His testimony, set to music, would become the favorite hymn of Christendom:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

• Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

TobyLaura.com

One night a man had a dream. He dreamed He was walking along the beach with the LORD. Across the sky flashed scenes from His life. For each scene He noticed two sets of footprints in the sand. One belonging to Him and the other to the LORD.

When the last scene of His life flashed before Him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of His life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times of His life.



This really bothered Him and He questioned the LORD about it. LORD you said that once I decided to follow you, you’d walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why when I needed you most you would leave me.



The LORD replied, my precious, precious child, I Love you and I would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.

Cliched? Overused? Tired?

A ‘yes’ to all three of these descriptors of the Footprints poem might work. Nevertheless, I enjoy it and I was thinking on it as I walked along the beach in Dubai. It’s great to know that we have a God in Heaven who is sovereign and thus rules over everything. Even when life’s storms roll through, with faith in Jesus, I can be confidant that my anchor will hold.

I’ve heard it said that Christians, or religious people in general, are weak to have to rely on believing in something unseen to make them feel better and make sense of life, instead of being strong in themselves.  To this I say, “Absolutely!  I am weak!” This is why Jesus says that “the meek will inherit the Earth.”  When we get to a point in our life where the stress is too strong, the troubles are too terrifying, and the pain is too paralyzing, there is no where to turn, but to God!  But, it takes humility to say that we cannot handle our life on our own and devote it to following Him.

I wish I had all the answers and a magic formula for life — unfortunately I don’t.  But what I do know, is that when I loosen the death-grip I have over how I try to control and manipulate my life to suit my own desires, the easier life becomes.  Instead of spinning my tires in place and scrambling to get no where, I can give my troubles over to God and let Him deal with them (for He is certainly capable).   God wants to help us, but we have to allow Him to help us, or He’ll let us go on our miserable way, all alone.

What I take away from the Footprints poem is that the man walking with Jesus on the beach was humble enough to admit that he couldn’t go through this life all by himself.  He needed and wanted a savior — someone to carry him through life’s darkest moments.  In today’s culture, a meek person, a humble person, a person poor in spirit, runs contrary to the ideas of self help, self gratification, and self importance, so that we can be the center of our own universe and control all that revolves around us.  Society says that we need to get recognition, that we shouldn’t appear weak, and that we can solve all our problems if we just search within ourselves.

I humbly submit that we will never have the power within ourselves to ease our troubles and make sense of life.  Once we rein in our pride and admit to ourselves that we need help, God steps in and carries us the rest of the way!  I struggle with failing to give areas of my life over to God because I want to be in control.  I want to do better in that area.  In a word, I need to be more humble.  

So where are you today?  Is there some part of your life that you just need to let go of and allow God to carry you?  I’ll bet, like to poem says, that if you give it to God, He won’t let you down.  It’s okay to not have all the answers and it’s okay to be “weak” in the world’s eyes.  God will never let down those who humbly put their faith in Him.

TobyLaura.com