To multiplied trials? His multiplied peace!

A Broken and a contrite heart, the Lord will not despise.

He resists the proud, but gives grace.

Gives Grace to whom?

Those who think they stand take heed, lest they fall. Gives grace to those who have a broken and a contrite heart. The Lord despises self satisfaction.

He walked, dear Daniel through that horrifying life of despicable interaction with the Babylonians on every side.

Down to the end, they continued to remind him that he was a slave and not a full social member of their system.

It was abhorrent what other cultures did to subjugate the people that they had taken into captivity. God showed Daniel that He had a purpose. God inhabited the praises of those Hebrew boys and gave them favor comparable to the loss of their families and their lives and their personal pride.

God had mercy for years and with very much of the nonsense that those people had done. When He had enough, He had enough. It is amazing that the issue to them was always pride. He dealt with a lot of their mess without judging them. But when it got to the breaking point. He came Himself to deliver his people. His mighty hand saved the Hebrew boys. He came in person to deliver them. From the time of the fiery furnace. From the proud, pompous speech of Nebby and the taking of the Holy vessels for their wicked party. God Himself came to deliver. He owned them, because they had owned Him.

The older that I get, the more grateful that I am for the expositors of the scriptures who teach us.

As I see, how easy it is to wander from my intentions to love and obey the Lord; I gratefully pray for the voices that God has used in my soul to represent His fatherly care. Why should I love and fear You my Savior? Sometimes the devil accuses, even the Father and even the Saviour. I see the love of God in His instructions and in His lending us pastors and teachers to represent Him, in this world.
I especially remember Pastor Martin's expression of love and care, to my bereft soul. Bitterness, is sure to carry more souls to Hell than gregarity, in my opinion. Bitterness is a suffocating influence. Pastor Martin and other pastors took the crushing coils of bitterness from around my neck and kept me from my own demise. Jesus loves me this I know, is a song that has insulated, perhaps, many little children from the blindness to the love of Jesus. The Bible tells me that Jesus loves me. What does that mean? What is the love of God? What are the loves that God has blessed me with. Pastors have the ability to shine the lights on the attributes of God, for help or for ill. Thank you, God for the stalwart pastors, persistent in love.
I remember not being able to see the goodness of God in my life. I remember not being able to see the sunshine of the love of God. The foolishness of the things preached: the goodness of God, the preciousness of the sacrifice of Christ, the intensity of the expression of God's goodness, has led me to repentance.
Even knowing Christ, we are led from faith to faith in seeing the love of God in the expressions of unselfish loves from God. God is great and greatly to be praised.

If all the sky were a scroll...
To write the love of God above...would drain the oceans dry,
Nor could the scroll contain the whole... if stretched from sky to sky.

Till they all come to the unity of the faith?

God is working in us, both to will and to work of His good pleasure. He has made it clear, from scripture that He has intention of a spiritual takeover, throughout the world by the love of Christ and the sacrifice that He has made. Initially, He has parted the nations and separated them into denominations by when salvation came to the nations. Here, in America, those lines get blurred. But in the other nations the dates that they celebrate are akin to the salvation of their race. Their rosh hashana, so to speak. We have dates of personal revival and intentions to holiness. The specific date that the Lord held our hearts sway and vanquished us personally in His love, like marriage. That is our personal date of experiential religion. But all in all, the dates that God's people found Him standing there on their behalf are worthy of celebration as well. Here we raise our Ebenezer! The Ethiopian Eunuch and the doctrines of the faith penned by Athenaseus are the African American's rosh hashana. We were the first gentiles, through Philip, quiet as it is kept and then the other nations came after. God's amazing work through the Queen of the South and the Queen Candice in her lot are dates that we accept. God is making one flesh out of us all and we will all lay aside those dates and celebrations of Christian conversion and hold alone to the unity of the faith, unto a mature and whole man of faith. God grant us that unity.

When God holds my heart in His hand...

Sometimes we miss what God wants to do in our hearts because we don't want Him to see where we have been. We jip ourselves from the healing Hand of the Most High. Confess your sins to oneanother and pray for one another, that you may be healed. Not everybody can bear your burdens to Jesus, but somebody, who loves you, can carry you to the Throne of grace.
I love You, Lord and I want to obey, but my sins are standing like mountains between me and You. I don't want to live like that anymore. I want You to break the walls down between us, so that I can know You in the pardon of my sins and confession and grace and mercy. Our needs can smother us, where is the goodness of God when I am smothering in my remaining sin. How come, everybody senses God in worship and I am not seeing Him. I am smothering in my sins, when I say that. I need to find a small group to sit and learn of Him. To be real and growing in the presence of brethren and love and be loved, by the Hand of God in His church. His love reaches even me. His power reaches even me. As Zacchias I must find the tree by where He is coming by and climb it and let Him know that I want Him in my house today. Jesus is more willing to come to our house than we are to invite Him.
Help me, Lord!

Faith, Hope and Love...These Three?

I think that we spend time nurturing the love of the brethren in many areas of life, most of which are outside the family. God sets the solitary in families. Love is lent to us by God in these many relationships. God is sovereign and as Daniel said in his prayer, to us belongs confusion but to God belongs wisdom and honor and truth. Unfortunately, we forget that in our expressions of love, it seems, most of all.
We leave ourselves sitting ducks for the worst sins on the right hand and on the left. God blessed us with Church to help us negotiate the turns of love on either side. The solitary have a place to bring their loveless selves and find a drop of love that can get them through the day. The confused and diverted must come and find the spiritual harnesses for their mental and emotional distracted selves. The goal of the devil for everyone, is to take from God and one another and not to give. Take the glory from God for yourself. Gods intentions are for all to receive what they need, in love from God and give what they have, to His church.
Confusion reigns when the reins of our love are not given to God; having our souls patiently instructed and directed appropriately. There are seasons of special danger, such as midlife and empty nest. We mustn't be afraid to bring our sadness and need to God, who has all things richly to enjoy. Let us not gouge ourselves with one set of love expressions. We are brothers and sisters in Christ and have to pray one for another that we may be healed in our Churches and in our families and free one another to enjoy the fruit of brotherly love that is healing to the soul. We sin and love oneanother inappropriately either by overzealous expression or by inhibition. Only Jesus can direct us in our love to carry oneanother in our paralyzed parts to the throne of grace where we can find mercy and grace to help in a time of need.
There is mercy for the lonely and the fallen and the defiled and the uncontrolled and the sorry, sick and sad. We do not need to pretend in the midst of the family of God and we neither need to bare all, either. We can look at oneanother and know that, if we are in His presence we are there because we are standing in the need of prayer. God enters when we praise Him and gives us the touch from Heaven that allows us to learn of Him in His word. To learn to govern ourselves better in the next week and to learn to grow in correct expressions of love to oneanother.
Lord, I have been so selfish and wanting. I have been so wrong in my expressions to my brethren and loved ones. There is forgiveness and healing and instruction in You and that is why I come into Your presence.
Am I the one who is to instruct Your people? Then I fall on Your grace for help in this season. Am I the listener? I come with ears attuned to what You would say to direct me. In all seasons and in all positions, I am there to give and to receive. God has more than heart can wish. More healing and more grace and more instruction than we can hold. Let us pick up what He gives in Worship and get home to digest and grow up.

Waiting for a response from the sheep.

I really used to wonder, why is Pastor Martin giving us all of the details of the whys that he does each thing that he does?
We had an entire Sunday School class about how God grants a hearing from others. How he personally chooses to give counsel to others. It was a blessing, but I said why is he telling us this.
We were too young to know about the gradations of exposing ourselves to people. He was old enough to teach us and we could not know what a blessing this would be throughout our lives. Not exalting the man, mind you, but that God used his example and he had the privilege of seeing God use his example to mold another generations of people to glorify God as the church.
He said you cannot just give counsel to one another willy nilly (my translation not his). You must wait for a hearing from the person. People will let you know when they can hear this or that biblical counsel. He said when someone listens to what I say I give them more to listen to. It seems like a plain truth, but it was a beautiful instruction in the development of community.
The truth can be the light, but it can and does also become a battering ram, sometimes. We must be careful not to be those who stamp out the smoking flax. Level headed and balanced leadership that can come from multiple elders from different parts of the country and socioeconomic levels should be the biblical model, but in lieu of that we sometimes condescend to one strong preacher with a big voice and alot of gifts in teaching. Not wise, but convenient.
Pastor Martin gave us one word of counsel as a couple. This word has stood the test of time throughout the 26+ years. Keep the communication going in a positive direction. That is all he needed to say to my biblically zealous husband.
If he would have held his breath for my response, he would just be breathing now. I am the type of sheep that keeps my responses to myself. He taught me to give some response about what the instruction did to help me.
We have still, so far to go in the grace of God and I am grateful that the initial instructions were so directive.
We all had catapaulted into battering rams of the scriptures for a season, but it was not for the want of instruction. It is obviously a stage in church development, akin to the terrible twos where young converts to the Lord beat one another with the scriptures for sport and learn to love one another as a result. Thank you God for good Pastoring.

The Exposition!

Only one time, do I remember sitting at the exposition. That was not one of those activities, like communion, or confession that we would be forced to take part in, or I probably never would have done it. I never did anything that my mother put on the forced code, without a discussion about it. I got to the age where I thought about what I believed and then, confession was in question, communion was thought about. I am not sure why rebellion raises its ugly head at that age, but I wanted to love God, I just didn't want to do what my mother said. That may be true of all children, but at 15 at one of the retreats I sat for, at least an hour at the Exposition. I was prayerful and expecting and I was looking for God to send some light or something to make me see that the host would be turned into the Body and Blood of Jesus. I prayed and looked...
God met me there. I know that I came out of that time disappointed that nothing that I thought would happen had happened, but something did happen. I saw that God's work is quiet and mysterious and He will meet us where we are. Ignorant and rebellious, yet seeking Him, or awake and intelligent and submissive; God is glorified when we seek Him.
He is always exposed, in all that He has made. It is I who am are blinded by my sins. Maybe, I didn't see that then, but I do see it now. Maybe thanks to those hours in Exposition or maybe in spite of it.

Does Jesus care?

Oh yes, He cares. I know He cares, His heart is touched with my griefs, when the burdens heavy, the long night dreary, I know my Savior cares.

I can really see God holding my heart in His hands sometimes and doing the delicate work of putting the pieces back together. It seems that He touches each part of my heart, when I am grieving. He spends His time and attention on me so at that time that I am learning to appreciate the struggle.
The diamonds of the preciousness of time in the presence of God while He is in surgery upon my raggedy self is more than thought or mind could know. He poured Himself into Daniel, all the more for the more that he had lost, that seems clear, the same with Job. I really don't want to go through what they went through to get that close to God. I simply want to know Him in what I am going through. Sometimes my griefs feel more than I can bear. Sometimes, I feel incapable of picking myself up from a season of sadness about my inability and ineptitudes and weaknesses. I may find some comfort in things like a good meal or a beautiful painting, but my heart is only bound together when God puts His hands upon me and takes the rags of my life and wraps my fractured heart with His hands. He cares and identifies with me. He loves and shows that love to me in His word. The Lord is my shepherd, even when I feel that I am alone in this trial. The Lord is with me, whether people can see what I am suffering or not. The Lord upholds me and I am helped. There is a purpose in this struggle that I am feeling and He is the greatest part of it. If I come through this knowing more of Him, that is the most important treasure. He did that with every one of His dear friends. He drew out of them, closer communion through the life of suffering that He entered into with them. Those who grew closer to Him, became good friends and those who missed the presence of God for their pride, missed the greatest treasure that there is.
I pray to be the former and not the latter, but every rung goes higher and higher. I stumble and miss His presence here and there and I pray not to become shipwrecked.
I know that He loves me and condescends to listen to my faintest cries. I know my Savior cares.

He holds my heart in His hands and binds it together, for His glory.

Fret not!

I used to listen in the earphones to the sounds of Paul Simon's fingers on the frets of the strings of the guitar, or Jose Feliciano. My favorite sound was the squeek of the change of the chords, especially at the end of a song the "plink", squeek is just one of my favorite sounds in the world, that human's make. It made me think about the mastery of God on our lives.



Letting God's fingers squeek on the frets of our lives. God is building the most beautiful score from the pressure that He is putting you under, Jayne.(I say to myself) I have to believe that or the squeeks of God's fingers on the circumstances of my life will result in my "fretting". DON'T FRET. Listen to the squeek and know that these situations which are tempted to create the fretfulness are the Master's pressures in my life to make the music that is going to be the story of His glory in my life. I am not the beauty nor the story, His glory is the story and the song. I am the string. Fred says, to the master player, "let me hear you spank those strings". God does more than spank the strings. God does more than put the pressure regularly to make the sound that He desires. If you are not feeling the pressure at the present time perhaps it is because you are not a part of the chord that He is playing at the moment. In time, He will get to your chord and the pressure that He places and the squeek that His fingers make on the frets are a music that we will hear through out eternity. Perhaps the rest for the people of God is God's Bose studio, allowing us to hear the symphony that He was creating through our lives. You mean, I was a part of the percussion section and that was why there was syncapation to the pressure that He was placing on my life? Maybe? Halleluia, When we get to hear our part, which is very small in the symphony of human history, He will have been shown to be, as He is, just and the justifier of those who come to God through Him.