I first heard of this book through Steven Furtick’s book, Sun Stand Still. The entire chapter that Steven wrote called, “The Page 23 Vision” was based off a line he read of this book.
Fresh Wind Fresh Fire is by Jim Cymbala, Pastor of The Brooklyn Tabernacle. This books was very refreshing. It rekindled my passion for ministry and what God has called the church to be. This is a must read for anybody that is in ministry or believes they are called to ministry.
My big takeaway was: “I knew that a lot of churches gave lip service to the idea that God can do anything. But we needed to have real faith that anyone who walked in, regardless of his or her problems, could become a trophy of God’s grace.”
That is what the church and ministry and God are all about. It is why we do what we do. Ultimately, it’s something only God can do. It’s not just preaching a great message, it’s believing God to work in people’s lives.
Get this book and you will have your heart and mind renewed. It will help you refocus on what is really important to God and that is us being totally dependent on Him!
Buy it here:
Highlights:
- I despaired at the thought that my life might slip by without seeing God show himself mightily on our behalf.
- I knew that a lot of churches gave lip service to the idea that God can do anything. But we needed to have real faith that anyone who walked in, regardless of his or her problems, could become a trophy of God’s grace.
- PRAYER IS THE SOURCE of the Christian life, a Christian’s lifeline.
- Charles Spurgeon once remarked that “the best style of prayer is that which cannot be called anything else but a cry.”
- If our churches don’t pray, and if people don’t have an appetite for God, what does it matter how many are attending the services?
- He is concerned not only whether we’re doing God’s work, but also how and why we’re doing it.
- If a meeting doesn’t end with people touching God, what kind of a meeting is it? We haven’t really encountered God. We haven’t met with the only One powerful and loving enough to change our lives.
- God nowhere asks anyone to have a large church. He only calls us to do his work, proclaiming his Word to people he loves under the anointing and power of the Holy Spirit to produce results that only he can bring about!“
- If God is real and you truly want his help in your life, then go his way. Otherwise, do whatever you like! Of course, it will destroy you in the end; you can’t change God’s consequences any more than you can change the law of gravity.”
- Bigger is not better if it comes at the expense of disowning the truth or grieving the Holy Spirit.
- God does not ask us to be clever in appealing to those who want a worldly type of wisdom. It is not by might, not by power, not by computers, not by cleverness, but by my Spirit, says the Lord (see Zech. 4:6).
- William Law, an English devotional writer of the early 1700s, wrote, “Read whatever chapter of Scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it—yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon him.”
- I have met preachers who have punched up a computer file and proudly showed me what they would be preaching for nearly the next year. Everything was cut-and-dried. The pressure of having to seek God week by week had been removed. What if God has a different idea? What if the spiritual temperature of the congregation changes by next October?
- The old saying is true: If you have only the Word, you dry up. If you have only the Spirit, you blow up. But if you have both, you grow up.
- When it comes to spiritual matters, you and I will never know our potential under God until we step out and take risks on the front line of battle.
- The heroes of church history whom we now revere were not known for their cleverness; they were warriors for God.
- Christ will one day assess the quality of our work. He will pay no attention to trends set by others in the pastoral profession.
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