A new beginning

I started a new book today, Big God by Britt Merrick.  He wrote this book during a time when his 5 year old daughter was struggling with cancer.  She went into remission but the cancer came back and eventually took her life.  I watched this family, from a far, as they went through this time in the valley of the shadow of death and found my faith strengthen by their living testimonies.  I hope to share little tid-bits along the way. . . and so we begin.

“I have hidden Your Word in my heart”.  In difficult times, when we have read our Bibles, we can fall back on His truth, His promises and what we know about His character.  Verses like Phil 4:6-9 can shape and protect our hearts and minds and prevent us from going to the dark places.  We need to intentionally choose to trust in His Word.  It is living, active, inerrant, infallible, authoritative and true.  As A W Tozer once said “We can’t expect those without faith to understand the power of the Word because it is through faith that the Word is revealed”.   The Bible tells us about Jesus, and reveals the character of God so that we can know that He is good and faithful.  Therefore, Let the Word of Christ dwell richly in you.

The starfish story

As I started my quiet time this morning I thought about how easily I am distracted (by the cares of life and puppy dogs wanting in and wanting out) and my prayer was that I would keep my focus on Jesus.

                                                            

In my reading I was impressed by a line – that the same God who cares for everyone without exception, loves each individual with an exceptional love.

Because we are the recipients of this exceptional love, it frees us to love others.  The author makes a distinction between actions done in love and activism.  Where an activist may want to heal, restore, redeem or re-create, those acting out of love point through their actions to the healing, restoring, redeeming and re-creating presence of God.

As I mused on this I thought of the starfish story.  Sometimes we see all these starfish, the distractions and cares of life that seem so overwhelming that we miss that one we are to minister too, that one whose life we can touch with a word of healing or a smile of affirmation.  Nothing we do out of love for Him will ever go unnoticed.  It’s not our responsibility to clear the beach, just be there for the one (or ones) He has placed in our life.

How cool is that!!!

At our group last night, a couple of the women are doing the Beth Moore study on 1 Thessalonians.  We were taking about prayer and one them mentioned Beth saying that each morning our Father is just waiting for us to get up and talk with Him.  It reminded me of something I had read recently by Tozer  “Did you ever stop to think that God is going to be as pleased to have you with Him in Heaven as you are to be there?” 

The idea of Him really desiring and delighting in us - in me - and being in relationship with Him, is beyond explanation or my limited understanding.

This morning as I woke up I thought of how complete and whole God is.  He needs nothing.  He is the Great I am, the Three in One, the beginning and the end, an unbroken fellowship of unity and communion.  And still He desires to be in relationship with us, so much so that He has provided the way, the only way, for that to become a reality. Jesus is the way.  The way of returning into the completeness, the wholeness and holiness of God, where we too can experience that unbroken fellowship and communion with the lover, the desirer of our souls.  How cool is that!!!

The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.  Zeph 3:17

A thought and a prayer.

Father, it’s hard to see the bread of life when your stomach is empty  - but that is my heart’s desire.

To cultivate an appetite for Jesus.  Out into the deep, where my feet don’t touch, not to struggle but to float.  Beyond the gift to the Giver.  As we seek Him, He reveals Himself to us through His Spirit.  Not demanding but asking in faith, knowing He is good and can be trusted.

Be on guard

Guard your relationships (and your heart) from harmful influences.  Maintain balance.  The internet can be a good thing or a bad thing; your job can rule over you or you can rule over it.  Anything in life can be a weight or a wing.   We have control, a choice, over what we allow into our lives.  Are my choices, my values, guided by a biblical world view? We can accept His provision and be grateful or reject it and complain.  We can choose life or death.  He accepts us as we are, at whatever level of commitment we are able to bring but He will always desire more because full surrender is where fullness and peace and joy and love abound.  The deeper we go, the more He covers us until we are completely drowning in His grace.

Morning ramblings

Love is a choice.  Talking with a friend last night about an intense exercise program and what we say to ourselves.  The story of the little engine that could came to mind.  When some challenge arises, we can rise to the occasion by telling ourselves “I can do this”. Or we can let it defeat us by telling ourselves “I can’t do this”.  Sometimes love is like that.  And sometimes just saying the words is not enough.  I need the Father’s help and more – not just His assistance but His existence in my life.

Another thought this morning is that I want to go deeper and that requires discipline, being intentional, making the effort.  Deeper in the sense of connection, of knowing and being known. As an introvert, I find this difficult.  The desire is there but sometimes the cost is just too much.  Connection for me is being comfortable with someone, not feeling the need to speak and yet communicating.  Words so often fail me.  I say something without really wanting to speak and yet wanting to be heard.  To fill the empty space between.

Sometimes prayer is like that.  I’m never sure what to “say” but would much prefer to just be still and listen . . . or to just be still.  What a comfort to know that my Father is always present with me in the moment.

Those who fear Him

This morning Psa 147:11 caught my attention and I thought how amazing that God would take pleasure in “those who fear Him”.  Fear can mean to be afraid or it can mean to reverence, and when it comes to God, I think both are an appropriate response.  Too often we try to bring Him down to our level in an attempt to understand Him or to somehow have control over Him.  And while He did become human, He was, is and will always be God, the creator of all that is seen and unseen.  Unless He reveals Himself to us (which He has) we could not begin to know Him.  It is here that I find that holy tension – that He desires to be in fellowship with us and yet He is so beyond, above and separate from us.

In the garden “those who fear Him” got perverted and fear took on a negative connotation.  Rather than drawing us into fellowship in became something that separated us.  We believed the lie - that we could be like Him and that somehow He was holding out on us when in truth His desire was to bless us, to provide for us and to be in relationship with us – on His terms, not ours.

Jesus came to bring us back into the center of relationship with the Father once again; to restore all the previous blessings and privileges that belong to “those who fear Him”.  The Psalms give us a glimpse of what those blessings are.  I am so grateful to be among "those who fear Him".

The LORD takes pleasure in those who fear Him,
In those who hope in His mercy.  Psa 147:11

Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear Him,
On those who hope in His mercy, Psa 33:18

The angel of the LORD encamps all around those who fear Him,
And delivers them.  Psa 34:7

Oh, fear the LORD, you His saints!
There is no want to those who fear Him. Psa 34:9

Surely His salvation is near to those who fear Him,  Psa 85:9

For as the heavens are high above the earth,
So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him;  Psa 103:11

But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting
On those who fear Him,
And His righteousness to children's children,  Psa 103:17

He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him;
He also will hear their cry and save them.  Psa 145:19