Parlez-vous Anglais?

By Gobel Brockman


In June of 1982 I took a vacation by myself to Quebec City in Quebec, Canada. It was - and is - an incredibly beautiful place, and I hope to go back sometime. The people there were for the most part very friendly and as helpful as they could be. However, they are primarily French speaking, so before the trip I basically learned just enough French to tell the French-speaking people there that I couldn't speak French. Immediately upon arrival at the airport I realized that I should have learned more French than I did. I got a taxi and and asked the driver, "Parlez-vous anglais?" (Do you speak English?) He said "No" in a way that let me know he also wasn't interested in learning at that moment. I finally got him to understand to take me to a hotel - ANY hotel. This began a 5-day adventure that included ordering a pizza that could have easily fed five people (when it came to my table I understood the look the girl at the counter gave me when I ordered) and scaring a lady at the camera counter at K-Mart. (She got on the intercom and said something in French, and in a moment the manager came running - literally. Fortunately he spoke English and laughed when I told him all I wanted was to buy a camera. Apparently I had frightened the girl behind the counter.)

I think about that trip often, and always with fondness. But one of the things that I think of is that here I was in a different country, in a different culture, with some people who couldn't understand a word I was saying to them. I was a visitor in their homeland, just there for a short time. Which got me to thinking along these lines: that's how the Bible describes us as Christians in this world. In I Peter 2:11 we are told,

     "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against your soul."  

"Strangers and pilgrims." As Christians, that's how we are supposed to view our time here. We believe that our home is with Christ. As such, we're not home here. Yet how often do we forget that? How often do we try to fit in in a place where we don't belong? We spend so much time and energy trying to build our lives here, forgetting that just like me in Quebec City, we're nothing more than temporary visitors in a place that isn't home. As much as I enjoyed my trip, when my plane departed from Quebec City on that Wednesday afternoon I knew I was "going home." Home to a place where people could understand what I was saying, where I knew what size pizza to order, and I could buy a camera without freaking everyone out at the local K-Mart. When my time comes to leave this earth, that's how I'm supposed to view the trip - I'm going home. Home to a place where righteousness dwells. Home to a place where pain and sadness will be no more. Most of all, a place where my heavenly Father will be, and all will be well with Him there. I want to encourage all of you by reminding you that your time here is winding down, but Christ has made a way for all of us to make it home. Jesus is the only way, but He's made the way for you and me to join Him.

Jésus vous aime. (That's French for 'Jesus loves you.')

The Holy Spirit - We Need Him!

By Gobel Brockman

(This week's devotional is an excerpt from my upcoming book "The Holy Spirit: Still for Today, Still for You" that will be available at www.amazon.com very soon.)

     “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” – John 14:26

Imagine that it’s your first day on a new job. You’ve been told that “this is a great place to work” with great pay and benefits. You have a general understanding of what the company does, but you’re not completely sure of what your specific responsibilities are going to be. So you go in on the first day expecting to go to an orientation class, followed by a bit of on-the-job training. Now imagine that upon arrival you are greeted by your supervisor. He or she takes you to your work area, gives you a hurried two-minute explanation of what they expect from you, and then walks away. The responsibility’s now yours, and yet you feel totally unprepared for the task.

Here’s the funny thing – I’ve actually experienced that. I’m sure some of you reading this have experienced a similar situation. If so, you understand the worry and frustration that level of “training” causes. You’re committed to the idea of doing as well as you can and actually earning your paycheck, but you enter into your new responsibilities with little or no idea of how to fulfill them. You also soon realize that you’re probably going to be trained in how to do your job the right way after you’ve been disciplined for doing it the wrong way. (I’ve experienced that as well.) I mention this because there are too many people who sadly enter their new life in Jesus Christ with that same mentality. They’ve been led to a salvation encounter with Jesus Christ, and they’ve been told, “Now live for Him” without being told how to live for Him. Their mindset seems to be, “Jesus did all He could do for me on the cross; from here on out it’s my responsibility to live out this Christian life.” Not only is that kind of thinking erroneous, it can and will lead to defeat and a feeling of hopelessness. I truly believe that “Step One” in a new convert’s discipleship needs to be an understanding that we don’t live the Christian life merely in our own power. The Apostle Paul put it this way in Philippians 2:13:

     “For God is the One working in you, both to will and to do His good pleasure.”

God is working in us! What a relief! What a joy! Yes, we are indeed called to live a life of obedience and surrender, but we are not called to live it in our own strength. God is working in us to make us what we need to be day by day. The question must then be asked, “How does He work in us?” The answer is found in the Scripture quoted at the beginning of this chapter – the Counselor (the Holy Spirit) has not only been sent to be with us, but to dwell in us. What a promise!

Jesus knew how important it was that the His disciples be filled with the Holy Spirit. The disciples received this gift in obedience to Him and immediately saw its impact in their lives, so much so that they preached and proclaimed the importance of the Holy Spirit to those that they ministered to. What a joy it is to know that the same Spirit that was available to them is still available to us today! Perhaps you’ve never thought of it in these terms, but consider this: the same Holy Spirit that hovered over the face of the waters at the beginning of creation (Genesis 1:2), came upon Samson and gave him his incredible strength (Judges chapters 13-16), and filled the disciples with overwhelming boldness to preach and supernatural power to perform signs and wonders (all of Acts) is still available to you and me today!

May we ask God to fill us with His Spirit continually!

I Am Not Ashamed

By Gobel Brockman


     "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. For it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." - Romans 1:16 (MEV)

I will begin this week with a story taken from the daily devotional "Daily Awakenings" written by the late evangelist Steve Hill:

     "A Christian soldier once said to his chaplain, "Last night, before going to bed, I knelt down and prayed. My companions raised a loud laugh and began to throw boots and clothes at me."
     "Well," replied the chaplain, "suppose you defer your prayers till after you retire, and then silently lift up your heart to God." Meeting him soon after, the chaplain asked him if he had taken his advice.
     "Sir, " replied the God-fearing soldier, "I did take your advice for two or three evenings, but I began to think that it looked like denying my Savior; so I once more knelt down and prayed as at first."
     "What followed?" asked the chaplain.
     "Why sir, not one of them laughed at me anymore. The whole fifteen now kneel down, too, and I pray with them."

I have a question for everyone reading this who claim to be believers in Jesus Christ: are the people around you aware of your faith? I'm not asking if you daily bombard people with Bible verses and Christian jargon; I'm asking if people know that you believe in Jesus Christ not only by your words, but by your actions? Do people ever look at your life and feel the need to ask, "What's different about you?" I firmly believe that we are at a point in history where middle-of-the-road Christianity will no longer suffice. The days of people trying to please both the world and Jesus Christ must end, because living like that means we are really pleasing neither. The soldier in the story had to decide whose opinion he cared about - and so do we. 

In the book of Acts we see the early church being mightily used by God. People were coming to a saving knowledge of Jesus and many signs and wonders were taking place. Not everyone was happy about this, however. The Bible says that the apostles were threatened by the religious leaders to no longer teach or preach in the name of Jesus. Their response was this prayer to the Lord:

     "Now, Lord, look on their threats and grant that Your servants may speak Your word with great boldness, by stretching out Your hand to heal and that signs and wonders may be performed in the name of Your holy Son Jesus." When they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness." -Acts 4:29-31 (MEV)

My prayer is that God will fill me and every believer with that same boldness today. If you have Christ in your life then you have the answer that this world needs. Too many people - even in the church - are looking to politicians to help us. The problem with that thinking is that politicians can't help with man's true problem - SIN. This world doesn't need political change; it needs a reviving move of the Holy Spirit. It needs to see the power that is found in the name of Jesus manifested in our midst. For that to happen, today's Christians are going to have to decide to be filled with His Spirit, stand up in His boldness, and proclaim life to a dying world. We're going to have to decide that offending God is far worse than offending people. We're going to have to stand up and speak out in a world that wants us to sit down and shut up. 

I've made the decision that Jesus has been too good to me to remain silent about Him. Jesus said in the gospels that if we are ashamed of Him in this world, that He would be ashamed of us before the Father. (Matthew 10:32-33) I want to spend what time I have left on this earth proclaiming the name of Jesus to a lost world, and with God's help and and anointing I will. People need to know the truth about Jesus Christ.

Even if they throw their boots at me.  

One Answer for the Whole World

By Gobel Brockman

Every week I check the stat tracker on this blog to find out how many people have read it and where it’s being read. For the last few months I’ve been both pleasantly surprised and humbled at the number of people from outside of the United States who have been reading this devotional every week.  Every week I pray before I begin typing. Part of that prayer is this: “Father God, You know who will be reading this and what is going on in their lives. Please give me the right words to say, and may I glorify Jesus Christ in my writing this week.” Writing this devotional isn’t just taking a few moments and typing a few thoughts to me; I truly want people to hear about life in Jesus Christ and draw closer to Him as a result. This week as I thought about the people in different nations who may be reading this, I realized that some of you are from nations and cultures that I as an American can’t really relate to. But as soon as I thought about that, I remembered the words that are found in Joel 2:28-32:

     “And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. And also on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days. And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth: blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Emphasis mine)

Here in America and around the world we see difficult and dangerous times. Terrorism seems to have hit an all-time high, and innocent men, women, and children are being forced to pay a price that isn’t theirs to pay. Economies around the world are tenuous at best, and world leaders seemingly have no answers on how to fix our problems. Finding good news seems to be difficult at best. With that being said, however, I do indeed have good news for you. As the Scripture above says, God has promised that in these last days that He will indeed pour out His Spirit on ALL FLESH, and that WHOEVER calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved! That means YOU! Regardless of what country you’re reading this from, we all need the same thing: we need a new, fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit! What that means is simple: regardless of where you are and what you’re presently facing in life, our need is the same – we need the Holy Spirit to touch us again and draw us back to Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Not a man, not a church, not a religion, but Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I can offer you no hope outside of Jesus Christ, but in Him we not only have hope, but He gave us an incredible promise in John 10:10:

     “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”

What does Jesus promise us? Abundant life! I don’t just mean that we have the promise of Heaven, but we can have His Spirit and His presence with us right now! If you have never surrendered yourself to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, then regardless of what nation you’re in, your need is the same – you need to make Jesus Christ your Savior. You then need to ask God to fill you with the Holy Spirit, and as we have read, He’s already promised to give it to you! Just pray and ask Him in faith. If you have never acknowledged Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and you want to do so, simply pray a prayer similar to this:

“Heavenly Father, I confess to You that I am a sinner and need a Savior. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He died on the cross for my sin. I believe that three days later God raised Him from the dead, and He is forever Savior and Lord. I ask Jesus Christ to come into my life, and I surrender everything to Him. Jesus Christ is now my Lord, and I will take up my cross and follow Him.”

I want to thank you all for joining me every week on this devotional. Please know that I appreciate you giving me a few moments every week to talk to you. I pray that the Holy Spirit will indeed be poured out upon you this week in abundance.

And I hope to see you here next week!