Faith Not Fiction Ministries, Inc.

05/24/2022

The Lord is close to those whose hearts are breaking; he rescues those who are humbly sorry for their sins.
Psalm 34:18

He heals the brokenhearted, binding up their wounds.
Psalm 147:3

He will wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain. All of that has gone forever.”
Revelation 21:4

You have seen me tossing and turning through the night. You have collected all my tears and preserved them in your bottle! You have recorded every one in your book.
Psalm 56:8

For God has said, “I will never, never fail you nor forsake you.” That is why we can say without any doubt or fear, “The Lord is my Helper, and I am not afraid of anything that mere man can do to me.”
Hebrews 13:5b-6

Hear my prayer, O Lord; listen to my cry! Don’t sit back, unmindful of my tears. For I am your guest. I am a traveler passing through the earth, as all my fathers were. Spare me, Lord! Let me recover and be filled with happiness again before my death.
Psalm 39:12-13

Be merciful, O Lord, for I am looking up to you in constant hope. Give me happiness, O Lord, for I worship only you. O Lord, you are so good and kind, so ready to forgive, so full of mercy for all who ask your aid. Listen closely to my prayer, O God. Hear my urgent cry. I will call to you whenever trouble strikes, and you will help me.
Psalm 86:3-5

I have told you all this so that you will have peace of heart and mind. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows; but cheer up, for I have overcome the world.”
John 16:33

04/17/2022

Where does the time go? It is true that this life is but a v***r.

Moms, remember you are the rudder for the direction of your family ship. The captain chooses the direction, but the rudder is the mechanism through which the ship is steered, causing it to go in the direction the captain chooses.You are making memories with your children and grand children today and every day, whether good or bad. Your words and actions are shaping their future. Choose wisely.

10/10/2021

This happens frequently! As Christians, we must remember that the enemy prowls as a roaring lion. I can speak from personal experience, that the stresses and the pushes against righteous living in today’s society can cause us to act in ways that are not consistent in keeping with our faith and love towards others. It is a great practice before making a comment on a thread, to check the profile of the instigator. Often times, you will be able to determine that the instigation post has been created by an agitator or troll, someone who posts on threads with the express purpose of causing dis-unity and bringing out the worst in all of us.

“The focus of my letter wasn’t on punishing the offender but on getting you to take responsibility for the health of the church. After all, we don’t want to unwittingly give Satan an opening for yet more mischief—we’re not oblivious to his sly ways!”
2 Corinthians 2:9,11 (MSG)

08/22/2021

But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand. Romans 1: 18-23 (MSG)

07/22/2021

Incredible read! Good to the last drop!

Handcuffed Emotions—Straight as a Gun Barrel but Just as Empty by Shane Edelman
*Excerpted from my series on revival and my new book, “Oh God, Would You Rend the Heavens? Understanding and Contending for a Genuine Spiritual Awakening.” More here.
In my last article, I asked: Are you alive spiritually? Are you hungry for more of God’s presence? Or are you divisive and combative over the topic of the power of the Spirit? How our lack of passion must grieve the heart of God.
Don’t misunderstand. We need sound doctrine. Our motto at Westside Christian Fellowship is “Times Change, Truth Does Not,” but we also desperately need the power of the Spirit. It’s possible to be “Bible taught,” but not “Spirit-led”—straight as a gun barrel theologically but just as empty. “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). Experiencing God doesn’t invalidate theology; it confirms it.
Have you received this unction, this baptism of fire that John spoke of in Matthew 3:11? Are you truly desperate for more of God? A. W. Tozer insightfully said, “If the Lord’s people were only half as eager to be filled with the Spirit as they are to prove that they cannot be filled, the church would be crowded out.” I sincerely believe that the greatest need in the church today is to confess our sins, obey the Word, and to be filled with the Spirit.
God Put a Round in Oswald’s Chamber
Oswald Chambers, regarding the time before he received a mighty downpour of the Spirit, admitted, “God used me during those years . . . but I had no conscious communion with Him. The Bible was the dullest, most uninteresting book in existence.” Oswald was straight as a gun barrel but just as empty. A few years later he wrote, “If the four previous years had been hell on earth, these five years have truly been heaven on earth. Glory be to God, the last aching abyss of the human heart is filled to overflowing with the love of God.” God put a round in Oswald’s chamber and pulled the trigger. Heaven was rent; the downpour came to his parched soul.
Now, the decision is yours. Don’t extinguish the flames of revival by mocking the work of the Spirit. Fully surrender your life to Him today. Christian history records countless testimonies of those who received a mighty filling of the Spirit years after conversion.
Don’t Handcuff My Emotions
Sadly, many conservatives chastise things like emotional and extended worship, and avoid it like a plague. To them, lengthy worship is brainwashing, and weeping at the altar is too emotional. Is it wrong when prodigals come home and can’t contain their emotions? Should we be embarrassed when addicts are weeping because the Savior set them free at the altar? When was the last time you wept over the condition of our churches, families, and nation? If you never have, then you fill in the blank.
Let me be brutally honest: many who show contempt for profoundly deep and moving experiences with God have never experienced them for themselves. If they avoid prayer meetings, complain about extended and emotional worship, never miss a meal for God, are unaffected by the depravity around them, and are too mature to go to the altar, are these people truly filled with God’s Spirit? Granted, there are seasons when we aren’t involved in a lot of things, but excuses should not hide our lack of hunger for God.
Do we really believe Jesus would tell us to sit down and be quiet during worship? Would He want us standing like dead men in a cemetery? Not a chance! Our hearts should be deeply engaged. Jesus may rebuke silly trends and sappy worship songs with no theological bearing, but would He handcuff our emotions? I don’t think so. Granted, I am not talking about becoming emotional for the sake of emotions—we can’t fake a move of the Spirit. But there should be a yearning and a desire to worship God reflected in our actions. If you disagree, you’d be hard-pressed to find any Scriptures to support your view.
How to Prevent Deception
Emotions can be deceptive, so we must be careful. George D. Watson notes, “The true saints of God . . . have in all generations had to walk between the two extremes of cold formality on the one side, and wild, ranting fanaticism on the other. Dead formality and the false fire of fanaticism are both Satan’s counterfeits, and he does not care into which extreme the soul plunges.”
On this point, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones reminds us that “we should never interpret Scripture in the light of our experiences, but rather interpret our experiences in the penetrating light of Scripture.” We can prevent deception by making truth the engine of the train and emotions the caboose. Emotions don’t lead; they follow. But when God’s Spirit is truly moving, our emotions will be engaged.
When our experience lines up with Scripture, the emotions that follow can be good and God-given. We are in good company—God’s company. Don’t be embarrassed by the power of the Spirit; embrace it today.

07/05/2021

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?
Galatians 5:13 - 15 (MSG)

God Bless America with Lyrics American flag

06/11/2021

I won't let the rocks cry out
I'll shout it from the mountaintops
Let everything I am reveal
The glory of how great You are
I won't let a breath go by
And miss the chance to lift You high
Let everything I am declare
The story of how great You are

Check out the performance video of "Great You Are" from the studio! is out everywhere: https://JordanSmith.lnk.to/GreatYouAreID!GYAPVConnect with...

06/11/2021

There are times you can feel God ministering to you in such a real way…through something that is not “outwardly religious”, but touches your eternal soul as if His hand gently reached for you and pulled you close to Him. That’s how I felt after listening to the video clip below.

(Article)
Nightbirde, cancer patient with 2 percent chance of survival, stuns with emotional 'AGT' song: 'I'm so much more than the bad things that happen to me'

Lyndsey Parker Tue, June 8, 2021, 10:24 PM·6 min read

America’s Got Talent is known for its wacky circus acts, but every once in a while, there is an audition that is truly haunting. The one that resonated this Tuesday was the final performer of the night, Jane Marczewski, aka Nightbirde — a 30-year-old singer and three-time cancer survivor whose ethereal original ballad “It’s OK” not only left the judges in tears, but earned Simon Cowell’s Golden Buzzer, thus fast-tracking her straight to this season’s live shows.

Nightbirde took the stage looking thin and frail, but she exuded such serenity and strength that when she revealed she had “some cancer in my lungs and spine and my liver” and that doctors had now given her only a 2 percent chance of survival, shocked judge Howie Mandel gasped, “So… you’re not OK?” She answered, very calmly: “Well, not in every way, no.”

While the folk-pop chanteuse didn’t share any more details of her cancer battle during her time on AGT, a blog post on her website goes into detail about her harrowing ordeal. On New Year’s Eve 2019, Marczewski was diagnosed with terminal cancer after “innumerable tumors” were found on her lungs, liver, lymph nodes, ribs, and spine, and she was told she had six months to live. In July 2020 she went into remission, but tragically, the cancer soon returned. “I have had cancer three times now, and I have barely passed 30,” the singer’s blog post reads. “There are times when I wonder what I must have done to deserve such a story. I fear sometimes that when I die and meet with God, that He will say I disappointed Him, or offended Him, or failed Him. Maybe He’ll say I just never learned the lesson, or that I wasn’t grateful enough. But one thing I know for sure is this: He can never say that He did not know me.”

Simon Cowell gives Nightbirde the Golden Buzzer after her beautiful performance of "It's Okay." Nightbirde chases her dreams and proves that she is so much m...

03/07/2021

“I know what it means to lack, and I know what it means to experience overwhelming abundance. For I’m trained in the secret of overcoming all things, whether in fullness or in hunger. And I find that the strength of Christ’s explosive power infuses me to conquer every difficulty.” Phil 4:12-13 (TPT)