Yieldedness is one of the keys to answered prayer. If God has not answered your prayer, then you ought to search your heart, for there might be something that is unyielded to God. Elmer Towns
Quote for the Day
Month: November 2023
Today’s Bike Ride
First ride in a couple of weeks. Nice ride to the end of Haire Drive #cycling #Narrabri #Biketooter
Quote for the Day
That’s the way it is with prayer; when many people pray about the same thing together, yet using many different words, with many different passions, and approaching God in many different ways, it’s beautiful in God’s ear. Elmer Towns
Reflection on Isaiah 3
Scripture
For Jerusalem will stumble and Judah will fall, because they speak out against the Lord and refuse to obey him. They provoke him to his face.
Observation
The Lord of Heaven’s Armies will take away from Jerusalem and Judah everything they rely on – bread, water, heroes, judges, prophets, craftsmen, and astrologers. Children will rule over them.
Judah and Jerusalem will fall because they oppose the Lord. They display their sin like the people of Sodom
Jerusalem is like a beautiful woman. But everything that makes her beautiful will be taken away by by the Lord. The city will be like a ravaged woman on the ground
Application
The Lord is going to judge Judah and Jerusalem severely. Everything, even the skilled leaders and craftsmen, will be taken away. There will be no food and no water.
Why does this awful judgement come to pass? Because they have refused to obey the Lord. They revel in their sin and sneer at God’s law.
That sounds awfully like our country today, and many others.
We are racing towards catastrophic judgement unless our society, especially its leaders, turn to the Lord.
Our values are all mixed up and contradictory, but nobody is allowed to correct them.
It is more difficult to adopt a baby than it is to abort it. We promote all kinds of aberrant and abhorrent sexual behaviour and wonder why depression and loneliness are pandemics in our society.
We desperately need revival before the Lord pronounces judgement on the nation.
Prayer
Lord, please call people back to you. Turn Australia into the Southland of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Proud Brahmin Hindu worshipped a thousand gods
From God Reports:
A pious and proud Brahmin Hindu, Uma Moorthy worshiped idols at the temple every day, and the fact that she went to a Catholic school did nothing to change her convictions. But one day in the 12th grade, she heard a teaching from Isaiah 44, when God points out that part of the log gets used to make an idol and the other part gets used to cook food.
“If you have a brain, think and see,” the sister said to the group at the Scripture Union Bible camp to which Uma went for fun with friends.
The message was confrontational and rattled her.
“That night was a sleepless night because as a teenager I felt so bad in front of all my friends,” Uma says on a StrongTower27 video. She hadn’t been singled out from the crowd by the sister. But the Spirit went to work.
“Just out of curiosity and also to go and fight with that sister, I opened the Bible to the Book of Isaiah and started reading. I was reading just to fight with the sister the next day, but as I was reading, I don’t know what happened. The Holy Spirit just transformed me. For the first time in my life, I got to know that the true living God hates idol worship.”
Uma Moorthy was raised in a staunch Hindu family in Chennai, India. She was proud of her heritage and diligent with her duties. She never missed prayers at the temple. She always had the vermilion “third eye” pasted on her forehead. She washed in the Ganges River and planned to go to the Himalayas.
But the religious strivings collapsed upon reading the word of God.
“I cannot compress this omnipresent god to (the confines of) a statue,” Uma says. “This God of the Bible wants to have a relationship with me. When I was a Hindu, I used to worship a thousand gods. But none of those gods wanted to have a relationship with me. But the God of the Bible wanted to have a personal relationship with me. I can call this God Abba Father, my dad.”
As she read the scriptures, Uma also learned that Jesus’ sacrifice was enough for humanity to be forgiven, thereby making all religious striving pointless.
“I used to do a lot of ritualistic sacrifices,” she says. “This God sacrificed himself on the cross of Calvary while I was yet a sinner.”
Intending to stand up for her faith against the sister, she wound up bending her knee to the Savior.
“That day I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior when I was in 12th grade,” she says.
Inevitably, she was persecuted by her family. They threw out her Bibles and wouldn’t let her pray. She had to lock herself in the bathroom at home to pray.
The Lord healed Uma of stammering. She is now an eloquent speaker, and she became a college lecturer.
Her parents eventually relented and allowed her to marry a Christian man, as long as he was original Hindu and still vegan, she says. They now live in California as missionaries with their two children.
When Uma left India, she left one little Bible on a shelf upstairs. She hoped her parents, who always threw out the bigger Bibles, might stumble across it one day in a special moment and open it.
“One day I was feeling down in the spirit and called my dad and shared that I was worried,” she relates.
“He quoted scripture verses from the Bible, and he said, ‘Jesus is with you. Though we are not there, he is there. He is the living God. He did so many miracles in the Bible.’”
Uma was floored.
“Dad, how do you know this?” she asked. “You were against the Bible. How do you know scripture verses?”
He confided that he had found the Bible one day when he was lonely. He had started reading and couldn’t stop.
Furthermore, it was a miracle that he was able to read the tiny print because his failing eyesight, he said, wouldn’t permit him to read the newspaper. He was 77 at the time.
Uma bought and sent him a big letter Bible.
“Every day he’s sending me verses,” Uma says.
When Mom found out that Dad had converted, she was incensed.
However, the pandemic struck fear into the heart of many Indians, including her mom.
One day, Uma shared Psalm 91 to calm her mother’s fears.
The inevitable happened. The Word and the Spirit touched her heart. Today, Mom is a Christian too, and she’s spreading the truth among all the Hindu relatives, Uma says.
“No one can convert anyone,” Uma says. “Only the word of God can convert a man. God has used the pandemic to bring a revival to India. There’s a lot of people who used to be against Christianity, and God is using the pandemic to bring people to Christ.”
If you want to know more about a personal relationship with God, go here
Quote for the Day
One of the most amazing promises in the Bible is that God will hear and answer your prayer when you ask in agreement with another person. “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven” (Matt. 18:19).Elmer Towns
Quote for the Day
The size of your God determines the answer to your prayers, not the size of your faith. Elmer Towns
Reflection on Isaiah 2
Scripture
In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s house will be the highest of all – the most important place on earth.
Observation
Although Jerusalem is now in ruins, in the last days the mountain of the Lord’s house will be the highest of all. The nations will come to the mountain of the Lord hto learn His ways.
The Lord will mediate between nations. They will hammer their swords into plough shares and will not train for war.
Israel is full of riches and weapons, but it is also full of idols. Human pride and arrogance will be brought low and only the Lord will be exalted.
When the Lord shakes the land, people will abandon their gold and silver idols. The false gods cannot save them in the in the presence of the Lord
Application
We are living in what the prophets called “the last days” (Acts 2: 16, 17). The last days are not the end of the world, but the end of the old covenant.
In these last days, people are coming to a mountain of the Lord that his spiritual not physical, to the house of the Lord that is spiritual not physical.
All over the world, people are coming to the Lord in unprecedented numbers.Whole nations, especially in Africa, have turned from false gods and idols in the space of a couple of generations.
The “mountain of the Lord’s house” is the church. All over the world, millions upon millions of people are participating in church every week. We are starting to see hints of revival in North America and in Europe.
These are the days of the vision that Isaiah saw. It started on Pentecost in Acts 2 and slowly, over the millennia, God’s kingdom is spreading over the world.
Prayer
Thank you Lord for the privilege of living at this time. Thank you for he revival that is happening worldwide. Please bring it to Australia and to my town. Amen.
Quote for the Day
Therefore, from this one verse we see two conditions of prayer. First, we must have absolute faith that God exists and hears us. Second, we must “diligently seek Him.” Elmer Towns
Reflection on Isaiah 1
Scripture
“Come now, let’s settle this,” says the Lord.“Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them white as wool.”
Observation
God’s children, the nation of Israel, rebelled against Him. Even an ox knows its master, but Israel does not know its master, the Lord.
Why do they invite punishment? They are already battered and bruised. The country is in ruins, and Jerusalem abandoned. If the Lord had not saved a remnant, they would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah.
The Lord is not pleased with their sacrifices and rituals. He hates their festivals and refuses to look when they pray.
If they come to the Lord in repentance, He will wash them clean. Their sins will no longer be like crimson, but they will be as white as wool.
Application
The Lord hates sin. He loathes religious hypocrisy. Unless we allow Him to transform our hearts and wash our sins away, then we are headed for judgment.
Many people do not think about sin. They are sure that if there is a God who judges, that they will be OK. At least they are not murderers or paedophiles.
But sin is sin, and however small itseems seems to us ,sin corrupts our souls. It captivates our hearts. It takes us away from the the Lord.
The Lord is always waiting for us to turn back to Him. No matter how evil, sinful or corrupt we are, He can take our sins away.
All of this points to Jesus. His death on the cross is the payment for the sins of the world. God’s forgiveness is available to everyone who will receive it.
Prayer
Lord, I acknowledge that my sins are scarlet, my soul is crimson in corruption. Thank you for your offer of forgiveness. I receive it today. Amen.
New Life Narrabri 
