sheshisown
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- May 25, 2008
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Resolve to bring your story home this New Year! 
“Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and has had compassion on you.†Mark 5:19 NKJV
A poor wretched man who was possessed with a legion of evil spirits lived a life worse than simple madness. His home was among the graves of the dead night and day, and he was the terror to all those who passed by. The authorities had attempted to restrain him; his insanity had been stopped with chains, but in the spasms of his madness he had torn the links in pieces. Attempts had been made to reclaim his humanity; but no man could tame him.
He was worse than a wild beast because beasts can be tamed; but his violent nature would not surrender. He became his own misery, he ran on the mountains night and day, crying and howling horribly, and cutting himself with sharp flints and torturing his poor body with most horrible behaviors. 
Then Jesus Christ came to him and said to the devils, “Come out of him.†The man was healed in an instant; he fell down at Jesus’ feet; he became a rational being his soul was rescued by his Savior. :D At the feet of Jesus out of his gratefulness for such great deliverance, he said, “Lord, I will follow you wherever you go; I will be your constant companion and your servant; permit me to be.†But the Lord told him no. Though Jesus surely respected his motive of gratitude, his desire to serve Christ is the heart of every person truly transformed. However, Jesus commanded him to live a life that would beyond doubt reveal his gratitude. :crazy The life we are all begin, who are transformed by the marvelous salvation of Jesus Christ.
Jesus said; “…go home to your friends and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and has had compassion on you.â€Â
OKAY first, here is what we who are saved are to tell; second, why we are to tell it; and then third, how we ought to tell it.
First then, it is to be a story of personal experience. We are not to begin to take up doctrinal subjects and expatiate on them, and attempt to bring persons to our peculiar views and sentiments.
We are not to go home spouting the stories of the various doctrines we have learned recently. At least, we are not commanded to do so; we may, if we chose, and probably no one will stop us. Though many may fall asleep out of boredom. But we are commanded to go home and tell not what we have believed, but what we have livedâ€â€what we really know to be our own; not what great things we have read, but what great things the Lord has “done for youâ€Â. Not only what we have seen done in the congregation, and what great sinners have turned to God, but what the Lord has done for you personally.
Many a preacher is a story teller, and stories are wonderful for teaching difficult truths. But mark this: there is never a more interesting story than that which a man tells about himself, nothing is fresher and more piercing to another human heart than when a man, is himself, the story. How clear a vision is given when it goes out of one beating heart into another receptive heart and bypasses the head entirely! Nothing strings the minds and lives of human beings together, so closely, as common experience, shared.
Next, it must be a story of God’s free grace. It is not, “Tell your friends what great things YOU have done yourself,†but it is, “what great things the Lord has done for you.†The believer in free grace, who trusts the great fundamental truths of the gospel, ignores the idea of any power that any human being brings to their salvation or to the great work of sanctification afterward only made ours through the Spirit of God’s grace.
This once condemned soul now declares, “I will tell what the Lord has done for me."
It is true I must tell how I was first made to pray; but I will tell it this wayâ€â€
‘Grace taught my soul to pray,
Grace made my eyes o’erflow.’
It is true, I must tell of the many troubles and trials in which my God has been with me; but I will tell it this wayâ€â€
‘Was grace which kept me to this day,
And will not let me go.’
We are to say nothing about our doings, our willings, our prayings, our seekings.2 But we are to ascribe all~ to the love and grace of the Great God who looks on sinners in love and makes them his children and heirs of everlasting life! Go home, then man, and tell the poor sinner’s story. Go home, woman, and open your journal, and give your friends stories of God’s marvelous grace. Tell them of the mighty works of God’s hand which he has worked into you from his own free, sovereign, undeserved love. Make it a free grace story around your family fire this year. :love2
See this last, and observe, that a man who is grateful is always filled with, the greatness of the mercy which God has shown him. He always thinks that what God has done for him is immensely good and supremely great.
Maybe when we are telling our story one of our friends will say, “So what’s the big deal in that?†Then our answer can be, ‘It may not be a great thing to you, but it is to me. You say it is a little thing, a foolish thing, to repent, but I have not found it to be at all. It is a great and priceless thing to be brought to know myself to be the sinner I am, and to honestly agree with God in confessing it. Do you say it is a little thing to have found a Savior?†Look them in the face and say, “If you had found Him too, you would not think it a small or a foolish thing. I have forever been freed from the burden on my back! If you had suffered with my pain and guilt, and felt its daily weight growing as I have for many years, you would think it no little thing to be made free of it completely, through one sight of the cross!â€Â
:
And if your friends or family cannot see its greatness~ shed great tears~ in great sincerity~ and pray That they may be brought to believe that you are at least truly grateful. No story is more worth hearing than one that springs from a heart full of gratitude…
Most important of all~ your story must be told by a poor sinner who feels not to have deserved what he or she has received. “How he has had compassion on you.†It was not just an act of kindness; no it was God’s act of free compassion towards one who was in misery. Oh! I have heard men and women tell the story of their salvation and of their spiritual life in such a way that my heart has hated their story, for they have boasted in the greatness of their sins, and have merely mentioned the love of God without a tear of gratitude. Revealing a devastating lack of the greatest treasure of every true saint; the simple thanksgiving of the truly humbled heart.
This evil twisting of the gospel exalts the saved soul to the side of the Only Exalted God. How easily we forget what poorâ€â€lostâ€â€ruinedâ€â€nakedâ€â€sinners we were. And no unrepentant sinner cares to hear a story that includes our ‘good works’ before Christ saved us… distancing them FAR from the cross of their Savior… filthy rags, every one. :naughty
Oh no! Tell it, tell it, we MUST tell it as we have received it! Begin to tell of the grace of God as we have trusted and have lived it ourselves. Then, our eyes will become fountains of tears. Our hearers will not nod their sleepy heads, but will brighten up and listen, because they are hearing something which we have really lived today, and which they recognize as being true, even if it is not true in them. Tell your story, as lost sinners, for blessed saints make no sense to the lost, confounded by satanic lies.
Oh Lord… Do not allow us, Your children, to go this lost lonely world and say, “Here is a saint come home to the poor sinners, to tell them a story.†For our friends and family remember well what we used to be, though we have forgotten by the grace of our God. :yes The world can still see the ravages of our sinful lives. They are never fooled by any shabby piousness pretended before them. We must not mock the truth, but rather live out and tell out the truthâ€â€by the grace of God.
Their chains of tyranny will not be broken without our hearts broken and naked as was Jesus body for them. The wretched stinking death that rips at their bodies and makes its evil home in them can only be dissolved by His perfect Love. Their insane words howled out of the madness of shame, and blame, and lying philosophies, will end only when we offer them their Savior. He desires to bear their burdens so heavy, to open their hands that grip sharpened flints, to rescue their hearts from the abyss of their violentlives. Do we desire their release as our Savior does? Do they deserve His great salvation any less than we did? May we crave their repentance knelt before His beautifully pierced feet, and plead for tender hearts to woo them to Him, and weep to SEE them return to rational minds and new lives. ALL by God's most marvelous grace!
Resolve then, by God’s grace to tell your storyâ€â€this year.
bonnie
“Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and has had compassion on you.†Mark 5:19 NKJV
A poor wretched man who was possessed with a legion of evil spirits lived a life worse than simple madness. His home was among the graves of the dead night and day, and he was the terror to all those who passed by. The authorities had attempted to restrain him; his insanity had been stopped with chains, but in the spasms of his madness he had torn the links in pieces. Attempts had been made to reclaim his humanity; but no man could tame him.
He was worse than a wild beast because beasts can be tamed; but his violent nature would not surrender. He became his own misery, he ran on the mountains night and day, crying and howling horribly, and cutting himself with sharp flints and torturing his poor body with most horrible behaviors. Then Jesus Christ came to him and said to the devils, “Come out of him.†The man was healed in an instant; he fell down at Jesus’ feet; he became a rational being his soul was rescued by his Savior. :D At the feet of Jesus out of his gratefulness for such great deliverance, he said, “Lord, I will follow you wherever you go; I will be your constant companion and your servant; permit me to be.†But the Lord told him no. Though Jesus surely respected his motive of gratitude, his desire to serve Christ is the heart of every person truly transformed. However, Jesus commanded him to live a life that would beyond doubt reveal his gratitude. :crazy The life we are all begin, who are transformed by the marvelous salvation of Jesus Christ.
Jesus said; “…go home to your friends and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and has had compassion on you.â€Â
OKAY first, here is what we who are saved are to tell; second, why we are to tell it; and then third, how we ought to tell it.
First then, it is to be a story of personal experience. We are not to begin to take up doctrinal subjects and expatiate on them, and attempt to bring persons to our peculiar views and sentiments.
We are not to go home spouting the stories of the various doctrines we have learned recently. At least, we are not commanded to do so; we may, if we chose, and probably no one will stop us. Though many may fall asleep out of boredom. But we are commanded to go home and tell not what we have believed, but what we have livedâ€â€what we really know to be our own; not what great things we have read, but what great things the Lord has “done for youâ€Â. Not only what we have seen done in the congregation, and what great sinners have turned to God, but what the Lord has done for you personally. Many a preacher is a story teller, and stories are wonderful for teaching difficult truths. But mark this: there is never a more interesting story than that which a man tells about himself, nothing is fresher and more piercing to another human heart than when a man, is himself, the story. How clear a vision is given when it goes out of one beating heart into another receptive heart and bypasses the head entirely! Nothing strings the minds and lives of human beings together, so closely, as common experience, shared.
Next, it must be a story of God’s free grace. It is not, “Tell your friends what great things YOU have done yourself,†but it is, “what great things the Lord has done for you.†The believer in free grace, who trusts the great fundamental truths of the gospel, ignores the idea of any power that any human being brings to their salvation or to the great work of sanctification afterward only made ours through the Spirit of God’s grace.
This once condemned soul now declares, “I will tell what the Lord has done for me."
It is true I must tell how I was first made to pray; but I will tell it this wayâ€â€
‘Grace taught my soul to pray,
Grace made my eyes o’erflow.’
It is true, I must tell of the many troubles and trials in which my God has been with me; but I will tell it this wayâ€â€
‘Was grace which kept me to this day,
And will not let me go.’
We are to say nothing about our doings, our willings, our prayings, our seekings.
2 But we are to ascribe all~ to the love and grace of the Great God who looks on sinners in love and makes them his children and heirs of everlasting life! Go home, then man, and tell the poor sinner’s story. Go home, woman, and open your journal, and give your friends stories of God’s marvelous grace. Tell them of the mighty works of God’s hand which he has worked into you from his own free, sovereign, undeserved love. Make it a free grace story around your family fire this year. :love2 See this last, and observe, that a man who is grateful is always filled with, the greatness of the mercy which God has shown him. He always thinks that what God has done for him is immensely good and supremely great.
Maybe when we are telling our story one of our friends will say, “So what’s the big deal in that?†Then our answer can be, ‘It may not be a great thing to you, but it is to me. You say it is a little thing, a foolish thing, to repent, but I have not found it to be at all. It is a great and priceless thing to be brought to know myself to be the sinner I am, and to honestly agree with God in confessing it. Do you say it is a little thing to have found a Savior?†Look them in the face and say, “If you had found Him too, you would not think it a small or a foolish thing. I have forever been freed from the burden on my back! If you had suffered with my pain and guilt, and felt its daily weight growing as I have for many years, you would think it no little thing to be made free of it completely, through one sight of the cross!â€Â
: And if your friends or family cannot see its greatness~ shed great tears~ in great sincerity~ and pray That they may be brought to believe that you are at least truly grateful. No story is more worth hearing than one that springs from a heart full of gratitude…
Most important of all~ your story must be told by a poor sinner who feels not to have deserved what he or she has received. “How he has had compassion on you.†It was not just an act of kindness; no it was God’s act of free compassion towards one who was in misery. Oh! I have heard men and women tell the story of their salvation and of their spiritual life in such a way that my heart has hated their story, for they have boasted in the greatness of their sins, and have merely mentioned the love of God without a tear of gratitude. Revealing a devastating lack of the greatest treasure of every true saint; the simple thanksgiving of the truly humbled heart.
This evil twisting of the gospel exalts the saved soul to the side of the Only Exalted God. How easily we forget what poorâ€â€lostâ€â€ruinedâ€â€nakedâ€â€sinners we were. And no unrepentant sinner cares to hear a story that includes our ‘good works’ before Christ saved us… distancing them FAR from the cross of their Savior… filthy rags, every one. :naughty
Oh no! Tell it, tell it, we MUST tell it as we have received it! Begin to tell of the grace of God as we have trusted and have lived it ourselves. Then, our eyes will become fountains of tears. Our hearers will not nod their sleepy heads, but will brighten up and listen, because they are hearing something which we have really lived today, and which they recognize as being true, even if it is not true in them. Tell your story, as lost sinners, for blessed saints make no sense to the lost, confounded by satanic lies.
Oh Lord… Do not allow us, Your children, to go this lost lonely world and say, “Here is a saint come home to the poor sinners, to tell them a story.†For our friends and family remember well what we used to be, though we have forgotten by the grace of our God. :yes The world can still see the ravages of our sinful lives. They are never fooled by any shabby piousness pretended before them. We must not mock the truth, but rather live out and tell out the truthâ€â€by the grace of God.
Their chains of tyranny will not be broken without our hearts broken and naked as was Jesus body for them. The wretched stinking death that rips at their bodies and makes its evil home in them can only be dissolved by His perfect Love. Their insane words howled out of the madness of shame, and blame, and lying philosophies, will end only when we offer them their Savior. He desires to bear their burdens so heavy, to open their hands that grip sharpened flints, to rescue their hearts from the abyss of their violentlives. Do we desire their release as our Savior does? Do they deserve His great salvation any less than we did? May we crave their repentance knelt before His beautifully pierced feet, and plead for tender hearts to woo them to Him, and weep to SEE them return to rational minds and new lives. ALL by God's most marvelous grace!
Resolve then, by God’s grace to tell your storyâ€â€this year.
bonnie
