Annie's Blog

Living Water

6/27/2015

River Run Dry
by Berni Dymet
Christianity Works

He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
John 7:38 (KJV)

I don’t know if this ever happens to you, but sometimes, we feel like we’re running out of steam. Do you know what I mean?

Whatever it is we do in life, at home or at work – we give and we give and we give … and little by little it saps our energy.

All that giving drains us and even if we have a holiday to recharge the old batteries, somehow, emotionally, even spiritually, there’s still this … tiredness and emptiness. A sense that, well, I’m not sure if I have a whole bunch more to give.

You’re a mum with some difficult teenagers … and a job to juggle. Or a dad, the “bread winner” if you like, and you’ve been grinding away at this job for what seems like an eternity.

And one day, you wake up and the river has just run dry. There’s just nothing left to give.

Hmmm. Jesus said:
If anyone is thirsty, come to me and drink. And whoever believes in me – rivers of living water will flow from their hearts.

Rivers!
Jesus!

A Father's Heart Transforms

6/20/2015

A Father's Heart Transforms
by Eugene Lee
World Vision

...Lucio and his family were once caught in poverty...

“...I was a very poor man. The only thing I had were a couple of sheep,” says the father of eight. When World Vision came to Soracachi 17 years ago, he participated in the organization’s agricultural training program, learning to grow different types of vegetables and receiving supplies to build greenhouses.

“Through the training I received, I took the risk of having a cow, then two, and then I started having a little more. And that began to change things,” he says.

As World Vision helped him meet his family’s practical needs, Lucio’s heart was also open to new ways of thinking.

“In the past it was very different. We would go out drinking, my wife and I, and we would fight with everybody, and everybody would fight with us,” Lucio says. “We would go from strife to strife. And when we became Christians, we became different kind of people. We started thinking about other people and helping other people...”

Walked through the Gates of Splendor

6/20/2015

Missionary Pioneer Elisabeth Elliot Passes through Gates of Splendor
by Kate Shellnutt
Christianity Today

ELISABETHELLIOT.ORG

One of the most influential Christian women of the 20th century, Elisabeth Elliot, has died.

Elliot, the Christian author and speaker whose husband, Jim, was killed during their short-lived but legendary missionary work among unreached tribes in eastern Ecuador in the 1950s, passed away Monday at 88, according to reports. She had been suffering from dementia.

She wrote two books about her husband’s martyrdom and the years she and her newborn daughter spent living among the Aucas, the tribe that killed him. Her Through Gates of Splendor ranked No. 9 on CT's list of the Top 50 books that have shaped evangelicals. The book became a bestseller, as did Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testimony of Jim Elliot.

“Those became the definitive inspirational mission stories for the second half of the 20th century,” said Kathryn Long, professor of history at Wheaton College. “She really had a sense of her audience as evangelicals, and she could tell this story in a way that keyed into [their] values.”

Long said that Elliot’s later books on missions, No Graven Image and The Savage My Kingsman, raised important questions about mission work. Her legacy, Long said, reflects her complexity as both “a gifted, inspiring writer, and one who’s extraordinarily perceptive.”

Walk with the Holy Spirit

6/20/2015

Can you sense the Holy Spirit's leading? Pastor J.D. Greear reminds believers of their calling to be participants in The Great Commission. J.D. shares how acquainting ourselves with Scripture is essential if we are to grow in our faith, walk in the Spirit, and witness to a lost world.

The Ministry of the Holy Spirit
Pastor JD Greear
at Family Life Today, One Place

Tom Horn and Cris Putnam

6/11/2015

On the Path of the Immortals, Part One

On the Path of the Immortals, Part Two

Stirring with Revival

6/11/2015

Awakening: Is the American Church Stirring with Revival?
by Paul Strand
Breaking Christian News

Christians across America say God is telling them He wants to birth a Third Great Awakening in the land. And He's using intense personal encounters with some Christian leaders to tell them He wants them personally involved.(Screengrab via CBN News)

"I'm going to send a Third Great Awakening to America," Dutch Sheets, author of An Appeal to Heaven, said he heard the Lord tell him a couple of decades ago.

Christian journalist and author Jennifer LeClaire added that she's been hearing it will be "a greater Great Awakening than the world has ever seen."

She writes all about this coming revival and reformation and how to get there in The Next Great Move of God.

In it, she interviews Christian leaders like Sheets and the great revivalist Reinhard Bonnke, who's moved to America because he believes God is about to save many millions here.

But what's interesting about LeClaire and the origins of The Next Great Move of God is that this journalist had for years just been observing the Lord setting up another awakening.

Then He asked her to personally jump in.

"The Holy Spirit said, 'I would like you to be a participant in the revival, not just an observer of it,'" LeClaire recalled.

So she's now bringing together Christians to pray at a Pompano Beach, Florida, facility where she also often writes. She's hoping her new book will inspire many others to also seek the next move of God...

Henry Ossawa Tanner

6/9/2015

Preacher with a Paintbrush
by David Neff
Christianity Today

Painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner, Courtesy Christianity Today

In 1973, after more than a dozen years of turning down invitations to preach in racially segregated South Africa, Billy Graham finally held the first large-scale, mixed-race public event in the nation’s history. “Jesus was not a white man,” he declared to the 45,000 gathered in Durban. “He came from that part of the world that touches Africa, and Asia, and Europe, and he probably had brown skin...”

...The kerfuffle over Exodus got me thinking about the biblical paintings by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937). Tanner was the first African American painter to receive international acclaim and a pioneer in using Middle Eastern models for biblical figures. Tanner came from an illustrious family. His father was a leading bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and editor of the church’s paper, the most widely circulated African American publication at the time. Henry’s sister was the first woman (black or white) to practice medicine in Alabama, and Henry studied at both the prestigious Philadelphia Academy of Art and the Académie Julian in Paris. Many of his paintings were exhibited at the Paris Salon.

Tanner wanted to put us, the viewers, in the frame, for those stories are addressed to us and are about us. Though Tanner sometimes painted a dark (though not African) Jesus—and though he settled in France to escape American racism—he was not on a race mission. His mission was to universalize the biblical message: “My efforts have been to not only put the biblical incident in the original setting . . . but at the same time give the human touch ‘which makes the whole world kin’ and which ever remains the same.” Believing that Bible stories illuminate the universal human experience and offer an encounter with the living God, Tanner wanted to put us, the viewers, in the frame, for those stories are addressed to us and are about us...

Alive after the Fall

6/8/2015

My email friend, SG, mailed me this video. He wrote the summary also. I am happy to be on his mailing list! Thank you, SG, for all the great material!

This video is about Bible Prophesy and the Author’s claim that the end of the United States
will occur by January 1, 2017. He claims that Obama will not finish out his second term as
President, that Obama is the last U.S. President, that the U.S. will be hit hard by an EMP blast,
and that the ‘fall of Babylon’ mentioned in the Bible must refer to the collapse and destruction of America.
Alex Cain’s arguments for this are interesting, clear, and convincing:

When God Bids Farewell

6/8/2015

Ravi Zacharias
Let My People Think
One Place

Moses Prays before God, Public Domain

Have you ever wondered what happens when God turns His back on His people? Or if God would ever turn His back on America? Ravi Zacharias takes a deeper look into stories of the Old Testament as he searches for the answers. That’s this week on Let My People Think.

When God Bids Farewell, Part One
When God Bids Farewell, Part Two

Jonathan Cahn on Capitol Hill

6/2/2015

Jonathan Cahn's warning on Capitol Hill at The Washington Man of Prayer event April 29, 2015

weebly
statistics