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
by donfinto | Feb 10, 2016 | The Good Report
If your life is boring, or even ordinary, it may be that you are not listening for that inner, sometimes wild, voice of the Holy Spirit. God can call us to do many ordinary things, but He can also call us to do wild, extravagant, unusual things. For example, giving literally the clothes off our backs, or the watch on our arm, or the diamond on our finger, or the money in our pocket, or even a car or a house.
God called King Jehoshaphat of Judah to send out the choir in front of the army in order to defeat the enemy! It worked because God ordained it.
The Syrian General Naaman went down to the Jordan and baptized himself seven times as a cure for his leprosy. I doubt that would work every time, but it worked for Naaman, because that’s what God, through a prophet, told him to do.
If an army is losing a battle, try sending three men up on a hill overlooking the battleground, and have two of them lift up the hands of the other one. Maybe that will help? Maybe not? It worked for Aaron and Hur who held up Moses’ hands in Israel’s battle against the Amalekites. God’s instructions!
Want to try Isaiah’s prescription for calling a nation back to the Lord? Then go “stripped and barefoot” through the land for three years!
Sometimes God’s words, if they are unusually weird, may need to be tested again and again! But you get the point!
Peter walked on water, Matthew left his tax collector profession, David danced very un-King-like in front of the ark of the covenant, Hosea married an adulteress, both John the Baptist and Samson wore ultra long locks, Paul sent out prayed-over handkerchiefs to heal the sick, Jesus healed a blind man with mud made out of his own saliva and dirt. All of them only following the sometimes unusual call of God!
Let us be willing to be Godly weird, Godly wild, yes Godly wise, in the Holy Spirit!
by donfinto | Feb 3, 2016 | The Good Report
Practice hospitality. Romans 12:13
We ought therefore to show hospitality to such people [those who
are working in the kingdom] so that we may work together for the truth.
3 John 8
We have some of the finest homes in the world, but often use them little. We have well-equipped kitchens and beautiful dining areas, but often end up sitting in a very noisy place trying to visit, instead of around our own tables. Our extra bedrooms are luxurious, but sometimes seldom occupied.
Yes, we live in stressful times, but let’s not allow the stress of our times rob us of the joy of being hospitable.
Remember that time when Abraham was “sitting in the tent door” (Genesis 18:2) and those three men came by? Abraham “ran from the tent door to meet them,” asked if he could refresh them with “a morsel of bread.” Then Abraham “hurried into the tent and asked Sarah quickly to “make cakes.” Later one of those men turned out to be the LORD Himself, who had come to announce to Sarah that “this time next year” she would have a son.
What if Sarah had responded, “Abe, this is not at all a convenient time! Please give me a little more notice before inviting three unknowns for dinner!”
Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers
for by so doing some people have sown hospitality to angels without knowing it.
Hebrews 13:2
Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.
1 Peter 4:9
May the Lord help us to make our homes, our apartments, or even our dorm rooms and automobiles places of fellowship, prayer and joy!
For King Jesus and for His Kingdom!
by donfinto | Jan 20, 2016 | The Good Report
We’ve just past through the strongest giving time of the year. Thank God for all the generosity that we have experienced both in our own hearts and the hearts and lives of those around us.
One of the first “revelations” the Lord gave me when I began to realize that God still speaks to us today, were the words of Acts 20:35, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” My translation of that is, “It makes us happier to give, than to receive!”
This morning I happened to be reading Paul’s words to the early Corinthian believers, “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully, will also reap bountifully… God is able to make all grace abound to you… you will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion…”
May the Lord help all of us to live lives of generosity! Not just as special seasons, but always! And not just money, but things. I still remember that beautiful wool rug Martha and I brought back from Germany. We stored it in our basement, since we had no use of it in our first house at the time. It rotted! I should have known! Jesus told me not to do that! “Store up treasures in heaven,” He said, “where moth… cannot destroy” (Matt. 6:20). If we don’t need it, let’s give it to some one who does!
All for the King and His Kingdom!
