Take God To Work

Galatians 6:9  

"And let us not be weary in well doing: 

for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."

   One of the best ways to find God and therefore life, at your place of work is to invite Him there. Pour out your feelings and frustrations about work every morning in prayer. Then spend five minutes in silence listening for God's counsel, not necessarily in words, but in gradual illumination. On your way to work, ask God to accompany you throughout the day, and believe He will. 

   Always remember this truth. No matter where you are, no matter what your job, you can serve God and minister to people around you. God cares less about where you work than how you work. Seek to serve others, work to the best of your ability and maintain a faithful, grateful attitude. There are three things God says about work: (1) Jesus is your boss. (2) God works through your work. (3) You can trust God with your work.

   My Friends, We don't always see immediate results from our commitment to follow God at work, but be encouraged. He will use your commitment to give your best to make an incredible impact on others, in His timing.You will find yourself looking forward to each day
and inspiring others to to the same.
Amen!

Reading: 1 Cor. 1; 2 
Paul's Teaching On:
Unity, Power Of God,
And True Wisdom
Ref: HG SB; DSB

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

Life Is A Battle

1 Corinthians 9:26-27  

"I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, 

not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, 
and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have
 preached to others, I myself should be a castaway".

   This life would not be a real challenge if one never tried to gain success. But life feels like a battle because of  the universe which we live in. We must stand on our faith for our faithfulness will be redeemed. A weak soldier can not win a battle; A slow runner can not win a race. We must always be pressing onward to a goal. 
   To win the fight and to be victorious in the race demands discipline. We have to discipline our bodies. It is one of the neglected facts of spiritual life that very often spiritual depression comes from nothing else than physical unfitness. If a man is going to do his best work in anything he must have the fittest body when he does it. 
   We must also discipline our minds and it is one of the tragedies of life, that most of us refuse to think until we become incapable of thinking. We can not solve problems by refusing to see them or by running away from them. We must discipline our souls, we can do so by facing life's sorrows, it's temptations with the strength God gives and it's disappointments with courage. My Friends, How much more should a Christian discipline himself to win the crown which is eternal life? 
Amen!

Reading: 1 Cor. 9:22-27
Ref: HG SB; DSB

May God Bless You 

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

Are You A Hinder

1 Corinthians 9:14  

"Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which 

preach the gospel should live of the gospel." 

   Some may say that Paul carried his independence to far, because he may have hurt the Corinthians by refusing all aid. But Paul was one of those independent souls who would starve than be dependent on others. Paul would do nothing that would bring discredit or hinder the gospel. Men judge a message by the life and character of the man who brings it; and Paul was determined that his hands would be clean. 

   My Friends, all leaders in the church today, must not allow anything in their lives that would contradict the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let me go a little father; not only the preachers, deacons and teachers but, the individual Christians as well. Some one once said to a preacher, "I cannot hear what you say for listening to what you are." Question? Could anyone ever say hat about you? 

Amen!

Reading: 1 Cor: 9:9-14

Ref: HG SB; DSB

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr

The Cross Life Ministry

   

A Father In The Faith

1 Corinthians 4:14  

"I write not these things to shame you, 

but as my beloved sons I warn you." 

   Paul is saying that all their errors and mistaken ways are due, not to deliberate rebellion, but to the fact that they have forgotten. That is so true of human nature. Often it is not that we rebel against Christ; it is simply that we forget Him. And it is not that we deliberately turn our backs on Him; it is simply that we forget that He is in the scheme of things at all. Most of us need one thing above all; "a deliberate effort to live in the conscious realization of the presence of Jesus Christ." It is not only at the sacrament but at every moment of every day that Jesus Christ is saying to us, "Remember Me." 

   Jesus never said, "By their words you shall know them," He said, "By their fruits you shall know them." The world is full of talk about Christianity, but one deed is worth a thousand words. There is a love which can ruin a man by shutting its eyes to his faults; and there is a love which can mend a man because it sees him with the clarity of the eyes of Christ. Paul's love was the love which knows that sometimes it has to hurt in order to amend. 

   My Friends, What a world we would live in if just half of the men in this world could have the love that Paul had for his fellow man. Paul was a Father in the Faith, because he taught The Gospel of Jesus Christ to anyone who was within hearing distance around him, it did not matter where he was or what time it was.

Amen! 

Reading: 1 Cor. 4:14-21

Ref: HG SB

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry 

Humility And Unchristian Pride

1 Corinthians 4:6  

"And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos

for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think of men above 

that which is written, that no one of you be puffed 

up for one against another."

   All that Paul has been saying about himself and about Apollos is true not only for them but also for us all. We all must be kept humble by the thought that it is not the judgment of men they are facing, but the judgment of God.
   We must all walk in like humility. Paul had a courteous way of including himself in his own warnings and his own condemnations. The true preacher or teacher seldom uses the word you and always uses the word we. He does not speak down to a man; he speaks as one who sits where they set and who is a man of like passion with them.
   If we really desire to lead men to Christ, our attitude must not be one of condemnation but one of pleading. We must not hit them with criticism, but shower them with compassion. We must remember that it is the word of God, which condemns all pride.When we think of what we have done and think of what God has done for us, pride is ruled out and only humble gratitude remains. My Friends, Let us never forget, that we owe our souls to God!
Amen!

Reading: 1 Cor. 4:6-13
Ref: HG SB; DSB

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

The Three Judgments

1 Corinthians 4:1  

"Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, 

and stewards of the mysteries of God." 

   Paul is come to the thought of judgment. The Corinthians, with their sects and their appropriation of the leaders of the Church as their masters, have exercised judgments on these leaders, preferring one to the other. So Paul speaks of three judgments that every man must face. 

   He must face the judgment of his fellow men. In this case Paul says that that is nothing to him. But there is a sense in which a man cannot disregard the judgment of his fellow men. The odd thing is that, in spite of its occasional radical mistakes, the judgment of our fellow men is often right. That is due to the fact that every man instinctively admires the basic qualities of honour, honesty, reliability, generosity, sacrifice and love. "There are only two people who can tell you the truth about yourself--an enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly."   

   He must face the judgment of himself. Once again Paul disregards that. He knew very well that a man's judgment of himself can be clouded by self-satisfaction, by pride and by conceit. But in a very real sense every man must face his own judgment, because if he loses his self-respect, life becomes an intolerable thing.

   He must face the judgment of God. This is the only real judgment. Only God knows all the circumstances. He knows the struggles a man has had; he knows the secrets that a man can tell to no one; he knows what a man might have sunk to and he also knows what he might have climbed to. Only God knows all the motives. "Man sees the deed but God sees the intention." Many a deed that looks noble may have been done from the most selfish motives. . 

   My Friends, We would do well to remember two things; first, even if we escape all other judgments or shut our eyes to them, we cannot escape the judgment of God; and, second, judgment belongs to God, and we are not the judge of any man. 

Amen! 

Reading: 1 Cor. 4:1-5

Ref: HG SB; DSB

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

Spiritual Things To Spiritual Men

1 Corinthians  2:10  

"But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: 

for the Spirit searcheth all things, 

yea, the deep things of God." 

   Paul lays down the fact that the only person who can tell us about God is the Spirit of God. There are feelings which are so personal, things which are so private, experiences which are so intimate that no one knows them except a mans own spirit. Paul tells us and the same is true of God. There are deep and intimate things in Him which only His Spirit knows; and that Spirit is the only person who can lead us into really intimate knowledge of God.

   Paul speaks of the man who in (v-2:14) lives as if there was nothing beyond physical life and there were no needs other than material needs, whose values are all physical and material. A man like that cannot understand spiritual things. A man who thinks that nothing is more important than the satisfaction of the sexual urge cannot understand the meaning of chastity; a man who ranks the gathering of material things as the supreme end of life cannot understand generosity; and a man who has never a thought beyond this world cannot understand the things of God. To him they look mere foolishness. No man need be like this; but if he stifles "the immortal longings" that are in his soul he may make himself like this, so that the Spirit of God will speak and he will not hear. 

   My Friends, It is easy to become so involved in the world that there exists nothing beyond it. We must pray to have the mind of Christ, for only when he dwells within us are we safe from the encroaching invasion of the demands of material things.

Amen!

Reading: 1 Cor. 2:10-16

Ref: HG SB

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr

The Cross Life Ministry 

     

The Wisdom Which Is From God

1 Corinthians 2:9  

"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 

neither have entered into the heart of man, 

the things which God hath prepared 

for them that love him."  

   Out in the streets, and to those who have just newly come into the Church, we talk about the basic elements of Christianity; but when people are a little more mature we give them deeper teaching about what these basic facts mean. I am not saying that there is a kind of distinction between Christians; it is a difference of the stages at which they are. The tragedy so often is that people are content to remain at the elementary stage when they should be going on further to think things out for themselves. 

   "We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery,"  which means something whose meaning is hidden from those who have not been enlightened, but crystal clear to those who have. Paul tells us that this special teaching is not the product of intellectual activity of men; It is the gift of God and it came into the world with Jesus Christ. All our discoveries are not so much what our minds have found out, as what God as told us. This by no means frees us from the responsibility of human effort. Only the person who works can make himself fit to receive the real riches of the mind of a great teacher. It is so with us and God. The more we strive to understand, the more God can tell us; and there is no limit to this process, because the riches of God are unsearchable. 

Amen!

Reading: 1 Cor. 2:6-9

Ref: HG SB

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

The Glory Of The Shame

1 Corinthians 1:26-27 

"For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, 

not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the 

foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath 

chosen the weak things of the world to confound 

the things which are mighty;" 

   Paul glories in the fact that, for the most part, the Church was composed of the simplest and the humblest people. We must never think that the early Church was entirely composed of slaves. Even in the New Testament we see that people from the highest ranks of society were becoming Christians.

   Somewhere about the year A.D. 178 Celsus wrote one of the bitterest attacks upon Christianity that was ever written. It was precisely this appeal of Christianity to the common people that he ridiculed. He declared that the Christian point of view was, "Let no cultured person draw near, none wise, none sensible; for all that kind of thing we count evil; but if any man is ignorant, if any is wanting in sense and culture, if any is a fool let him come boldly." Of the Christians he wrote, "We see them in their own houses, wool dressers, cobblers and fullers, the most uneducated and vulgar persons." He said that the Christians were "like a swarm of bats--or ants creeping out of their nests--or frogs holding a symposium round a swamp--or worms in conventicle in a corner of mud." (Ref: DSB). 

   It was precisely this that was the glory of Christianity. In the Empire there were sixty million slaves. In the eyes of the law a slave was a "living tool," a thing, not a person at all. A master could fling out an old slave as he could fling out and old spade shovel or hoe. He could amuse himself by torturing his slaves; he could even kill them. For them there was no such thing as marriage; even their children belonged to the master, as the lambs of the fold belonged not to the sheep but to the shepherd. Christianity made people who were nothing into real men and women, more, into son and daughters of God. It gave those who had no respect, their self-respect. It gave those who had no life, life eternal. It told men who, in the eyes of the world were worthless, that, in the eyes of God they were worth the death of His only Son. My Friends, Christianity was, and still is, the most uplifting thing in the whole universe!  

Amen!

Reading: 1 Cor. 1:26-31

Ref: HG SB:

       Barclay Study Bible

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

 

Sin Shall Not Have Dominion

Romans 6:6  

"Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, 

that the body of sin might be destroyed, that 

henceforth we should not serve sin." 

   Standing with Christ on the resurrection side of death, we must present our whole being to God for His use. Because we have left forever behind, nailed to the cross, the body of sin, and therefore must see to it that every power within us shall become a weapon in God's great warfare against evil. "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;" (Col. 2:14). Let your powers be mobilized for God, so that there shall be no room left for the devil. "Neither give place to the devil, " (Eph. 4:27).

   All of us serve a higher power, but which one is it? Our real owner and master, whatever we may say, is indicated by our life. We belong to the one whom, in a crisis, we obey. My Friends, service to sin leads to uncleanness,iniquity, and death. Service to God leads to righteousness, and that to sanctification, and that to eternal life. Mold your life after Christ, as an obedient child of God. We have our reward in Heaven where life is life indeed!

Amen

Reading: Rom. 6:12-23

Ref: HG SB

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

Saved By His Life!

Romans 5:1  

"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace 

with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:"   

   We stand in grace, we look for glory. Our standing is sure, It is ours forever, through union with the living Christ. It is our admission to the home of God's elect. We have passed the threshold and have received, our new white robe. But being in the house we find it several stories high. They are marked  with the Phrases, Not Only So and Much More. 

   Starting from faith, the staircase mounts from peace to hope, "By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God," (Rom 5:2); from hope to love, "And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us," (Rom. 5:5); from reconciliation to salvation and life and joy in God, "Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.  And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement," (Rom. 5:5-11). So what He does is, He awakens in our hearts responsive admiration and glad consent.  Stand on these successive heights in your mountain climb to take your breath and behold the far spread landscape.

   My Friends, Let us not be worried with the ladder climb when all these rounds of light invite us. Just ponder where the Apostle distinguishes between reconciliation and salvation. What music there is in that wonderful phrase, Saved By His Life! By His Life For Us In Heaven And In Us By His Spirit. 

Amen! 

Reading: Rom. 5:1-11

Ref: HG SB

May God Bless You

and Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross life ministry