by donfinto | Mar 16, 2016 | The Good Report
1 Samuel 2:6
These prophetic words from Hannah at the dedication of Samuel are still true today! The Lord makes alive! He alone holds the power of life and death.
The Lord has pretty vividly impressed this truth on me during the last few days! Some of you may not be aware that, but for the intervention of God, I would not be around. I am grateful that the Lord used some emergency room doctors to insist that a gall bladder, later found to be full of infection, and a large stone, needed immediate removal. Otherwise I would not be here. A sobering experience! But also an affirmation from the Lord, that I have work to do before I leave.
Though this was a very dramatic way of showing that I still have a purpose for remaining, none of us needs that kind of high drama to know that we have a God-to-be-fulfilled destiny.
I love Luke’s description of the life of David: “When David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep” (Ac. 13:36). David had a God-purpose for his generation! The Lord was going to keep him alive until he had finished. This is also true for you! And for me!
Our enemy would like to take us out prematurely, but he does not have that authority. Jesus holds the “keys to death” (Rev. 1:18).
King David had many close encounters with death, going all the way back to the times when, as a young man, he killed a lion and a bear, then the many times King Saul tried to kill him. But David had a destiny from God.
David later declared: “You have delivered me from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of life”(Ps. 56:13). “Unless the LORD had given me help, I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death” (94:17).
These words from David are our words as well! We have been delivered from death, and from stumbling, that we may walk before God in the light of life! Let’s lean into the future and fulfill that God-ordained, Jesus-saturated destiny!
by donfinto | Mar 10, 2016 | The Good Report
2 Chronicles 13:18
The Old Covenant Scriptures are filled with examples and challenges to rely on the Lord, not on our own intellect and prowess.
Abijah became king in Judah following the death of his father, Rehoboam. Rehoboam had not been a godly example for his son. Rehoboam relied on the counsel of his young contemporaries, rather than the Lord, and lost most of the kingdom of David and Solomon to his adversary Jeroboam.
Immediately after Abijah ascended to the throne of Judah, Jeroboam declared war against him, Jeroboam with eight hundred thousand fighting men against Abijah’s four hundred thousand. “ But Abijah and the kingdom of Judah were “victorious because they relied on the Lord, the God of their fathers.”
Similar stories are repeated throughout Scripture.
These are not just nice Bible stories for Sunday School classes. These stories point us to a path of victory in every endeavor if we “rely on the Lord.”
Rely on our own strength, intellect, and wisdom, and we fail.
Call on the name of the Lord, listen for His instructions, and obey, and we will walk forward in victory.
God is calling us forth as a powerful worldwide army of Jesus followers who will continually look to Him for strength and wisdom in every battle!
by donfinto | Feb 17, 2016 | The Good Report
“Encourage one another daily!”
Hebrews 3:13
Three people in my early life held an unusually important place: my grandmother, a voice coach during my last year of college, and my private German tutor during the first months of our living in Germany.
Why these three? Because each of them, at a strategic time in my life, saw more in me than I saw in myself. They called forth in me what I did not see, and challenged me to be more than I had been.
Ultimately I learned to transfer what these three did for me, to the grandest Encourager of them all – to Jesus Himself and His Spirit Who lives in me – in us!
Paul put it like this: (“May our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who loved us and by His grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word” 2 Thessalonians 2:16).
And the Hebrew writer admonishes, “Encourage one another daily” (Hebrews 3:13).
Some one needs encouragement from you even as you read this! Pick up that phone! Grab the note pad! Walk into the next room! Participate with God! Call forth destiny! Bring forth courage! In-courage!
For the King and for His Kingdom!
Don Finto
