“Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.” 1 Peter 2:12 

       

“He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.” 1 John 2:6 

       

We need more sermons in shoes         — men and women    going up and down the roads of life preaching Christianity by their    imitation of Christ! 

       

The demand of the day is for a higher standard and    style of Christian life. Every follower of Christ must represent His    religion purely, loftily, impressively — before that multitude of    “Bible-readers” whose only Bible is the Christian!
  

       

“The true test of religion, is in the street. It lies in the common    walks of life — even more than in the worship of the sanctuary. The    test of our religion is not the regular manner in which we go to    church, or the way in which we read our Bibles, or any elaborate    religious ritual we perform. Its test is the kind of people it makes    us — the kind of life it produces in us.”
  

       

“A fine illustration of the worth of Christian character was seen in    a teacher of one of the government schools of Japan. His contract    was that he was not to teach Christianity — and, so far as words    were concerned, he kept it faithfully. But all the while his life    was so blameless and beautiful — that it did the work without    words. As evidence of this, forty of the students, without his    knowledge, met in a grove secretly, and signed a covenant to forsake    idolatry — for the religion of their teacher. Some of them are    now preaching the gospel in their native land.”- Theodore Cuyler

       

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Matthew 5:16 

David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
5801 FM 1960 E
Humble, TX. 77346

“A wise man will hear.” (Prov. 1:5)

 The essential difference between the wise man and the fool in the book of Proverbs is that the wise man will hear and the fool won’’t.

 It isn’t a question of the fool’s mental capacity. Actually he may have unusual intellectual ability. But he just cannot be told anything. He labors under the fatal delusion that his knowledge is infinite and his judgments are infallible. If his friends try to counsel him, they receive scorn for their efforts. They watch him trying to escape the inevitable results of sinful and stupid actions, but they are helpless to avert the crash. And so he goes on from one crisis to another. Now his finances are a disaster. Now his personal life is in shambles. Now his business totters on the edge of chaos. But he rationalizes that life is giving him a bad deal. It never occurs to him that he is his own worst enemy. He is generous in dispensing advice to others, oblivious of his inability to run his own life. A compulsive talker, he holds forth with the aplomb of an oracle.

 The wise man is made of better stuff. He realizes that everyone’’s mental wires have been somewhat crossed by the Fall. He knows that others can sometimes see aspects of a problem that he has overlooked. He is willing to acknowledge that his memory may be faulty at times. He is teachable, welcoming any input that will help him make the right decisions. Actually he solicits the advice of others because he knows that “in the multitude of counselors there is safety” (Prov. 11:14). Like everyone else, he sometimes makes mistakes. But he has this saving virtue that he learns from his mistakes and makes every failure a springboard to success. He is grateful for a deserved rebuke and is willing to say, “I was wrong. I am sorry.” Wise children submit to parental discipline; fools rebel. Wise young people obey the scriptural precepts concerning moral purity; fools do their own thing. Wise adults judge everything by whether it is well-pleasing to the Lord; fools act according to what pleases themselves.

 And so it is that the wise grow wiser, and the fools are stuck fast in the rut of their own folly.– William MacDonald

David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
5801 FM 1960 E
Humble, TX. 77346

“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.  And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”- Philippians 4:6, 7
   One of the beautiful things that God promises His children is peace.  Sin robs us of peace with God, peace with ourselves, and very often, peace with others.  But God is the restorer of that which sin has stolen.  We can know peace because we know the Prince of Peace.  Peace is part of our spiritual inheritance.  However, even Christians can have their peace interrupted.  We all have known days of confusion or turmoil, when peace was a stranger to our hearts.  
   Our text speaks of the great blessing of peace, but it also speaks of the things that can hinder us from enjoying or experiencing it.  One of the first things mentioned in our Scripture that affects our peace is worry.  The Bible says, “Be careful for nothing.”  To be careful, or full of care, is another way of describing being anxious or worrisome.  Worry, or anxiety, is an enemy of peace.  One cannot be filled with fretting and worry and at the same time experience God’s peace.  Peace accompanies faith and trust, not worry.  
   Another enemy of peace is prayerlessness.  We are told in our verses to pray about everything, letting our “requests be made known unto God.”  When we do not pray about things, taking our concerns to God, we are forfeiting the peace that God promises.  By contrast, when we make it a habit to cast our cares on Him, trusting Him with the needs and situations of our daily lives, we will know the peace that He promises.  We see still another enemy of peace in our lesson.  It is the lack of thanksgiving.  Our prayers are to be filled with thanksgiving, and the results will be “the peace of God.”  If we do not thank God for the things that He allows in our lives, especially the difficult things, there will be the tendency to become resentful or bitter.  
   We may not always know why God permits certain things to come into our lives, but we can be assured that God is good.  He has a purpose.  Therefore, we can thank Him, by faith, for the circumstances of life.  If we can learn to pray about everything, thanking Him for His will and resisting the temptations to worry, we can know God’s peace.(Thomas Smith)

David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
5801 FM 1960 E
Humble, TX. 77346