Make us one, Lord!

In Heidi, I find it ironic that they call him "AlmUncle" {Uncle of my soul?} Soul-Uncle? Still, their considerations were that his sins had found him out, in his grief and that he had received some just deserts for his earlier sins that they weren't privy to. What a horrible direction in grief? Still, it often is the case that the Christian position is to remind the grieving soul of their ultimate consequence.

I hardly think it the focus of the soul to itself in grief. But, on the goodness and mercy of God.

It is of the Lord's mercy that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new, like the dew... Great is Thy Faithfulness!

I have found in my grieving, that even though my conscience is instructed on this from earliest of life, that is the first truth to vanish in grief. The goodness of God, the mercy of God and the love of God vanish under the severity of God, in grievous conditions.

So many times I awoke in post-partum to look at the baby and think that they were changing color before my eyes and going septic, like baby Benjamin did. The Holy Spirit would minister to my soul, but everytime I would see another person the fear would be that they would touch the sensitive area that would cause the tears to start, which I couldn't stop, once started. I am sure that AlmUncle had such a fear. Thus the curmudgeonic cycle. There is no way to know what of their unwitting conversation would spark the tears. You simply cannot wrap your entire body to show your grief. You cannot close your ears to their supposed comforts and many a comforting beginning conversation travels quickly into a crushing blow about some other sin or transgression that might have drawn God's wrath upon your head, as your own conscience supposes.

God is sovereign. My comfort, by the time I was grieving in Enoch's birth, was that God doesn't always kill, sometimes he has not allowed some to die at all.

Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.{not enduring death}

That was some comfort, for a while.

There are awful, spiteful thoughts of God that encrust the grieving, bereft heart. They are certainly a fountain of spiritual pollution. I can imagine that God's mercy to AlmUncle and to the deserted community of grief that lived around AlmUncle would get some comfort from the innocent and simple eyes of little Heidi. She was the look of a time when faith in the soul were new. Her heart wasn't yet full of the pollutions of soul that had become the daily swamp of living for that poor deserted soul.

God's Church can reach to the heart of grief, because God has given it liberty into those forsaken regions. Lord, grant comfort, In Jesus' Name, Amen.

Praising God for the development of grief ministries. When I remember Heidi...Great is Your Faithfulness!

25 years since I lost my only son and I am grateful for the real comforters. I thank God for the development of Psychology in the neuthetic counselors. When I hear how Christianity had crushed many a grieving spirit and how I had often spoke judgment to the grieving and encouragement to the pompous. Discernment is the fruit of the grieving process mixed with the tutelage of the Holy Spirit.

God promises to make all of your bed in your sickness and I have seen him do that for me. I am grateful for that. Part of the restoration of sons and daughters back into my life was also a sense of sympathy that God can grow maturity in the midst of the grieving process

I always understand the "Almuncle-curmudgeon". I can see how each wound and crushing word tore any semblance of faith from that poor lost soul. I haven't experienced that level of personal attack, by God's mercy, but, even with the wonderful comforts that God poured, the grief could send a person under the bed. I know that God is good, but when I look at real bereavement, my heart groans and wants to hide, even from God. I know You are good, I say, but what a painful providence that is, here and there.

I am thankful that there are people who have studied painful providences and know how to speak peace into the grieving soul. People will always wonder is this or that providence a deserved thing. "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." "It is of the Lord's mercy that we are not consumed...""He makes all our bed in sickness..."

When hard times come and a person's ways please the Lord, He enters in. Even if they are not God-pleasers, the ministries of the church have developed to such an extent that God has entered the grief process with us. Don't let the "Almuncle" live without faith. "The goodness of God leads to repentance." God sent Heidi as a comfort to the Almuncle. He is touched with the feelings of, even his infirmities. Raise up Your Church to do right in this difficult area of ministry, Dear Lord! In Jesus' Name, Amen.

Ambitions from 2009----Am I one of the worshippers?

God’s worship and Praise To Him belongs all of the Glory!

God’s Expressed intention in praise and worship—like clearing the path of trees. Praise and worship clears us of the pride and self-centeredness that is a hindrance to seeing the true and exalted position of God in relation to us. Before we learn the value of praise and worship, we are still thinking that God is here for our benefit and not we, for His glory. Like the wife that says, I just want my husband to do what I said. Wrong. God made us for the purpose of assisting the husband not visa versa. When we do it the other way we are upside down. If you don’t want to be made for God’s glory don’t enter into worship. If you don’t want to be a helper, don’t get married. (an aside)

God’s Expressed invitation to praise and worship-- Enter into His Presence—With thanks giving

God’s Expressed inclusion in praise and worship Words of worth and increasing our vocabulary to improve our verbal adoration of him. Music that is worthy of His presence. Inviting and praying that God would accept our praise and worship. Study and looking in the Word at the times when God declined His people’s sacrifices and worship. Use of God’s Word to worship Him with. Prayer of protection and help to those who lead us in worship and praise. Prayers of protection over those whose families and praise make up the substance of praise. Those whose vows are attempting to be kept are those who make up the mass of praise for God to inhabit. Keeping short accounts with one another.

God’s Expressed habitation of praise and worship God’s Expressed insertion into praise and worship

1. The difference between Saul and David—praise and worship--- There is so much that imitates the sacred that is merely superstition. There are paintings and music that can evoke tremendous emotion and exaltation and these are not all bad but that is not always glorifying to God. Saul made up a very religious reason for the stuff that he did. I wanted to sacrifice these animals to the Lord, that is why I disobeyed. I wanted to talk to Samuel, that’s why I went to the witch. Excuses for disobedience are not blessed. David messed up massively and cost many lives in numbering the people and killing Uriah, God had mercy because he wasn’t full of excuses. He fessed up to God thoroughly. We can’t know when we are fully fessed up to God, only He can. Presumptuous sin is a hinderance to worship as an initial sign that we are grieving the Holy Spirit. God is straight up in His relations with us and gives us clear evidences of His pleasure and displeasure and that was Annanias and Saphira in the NT and Uzzah in the OT. God’s presence is awesome in His pleasure with us and in His wrath to us also. God is present in Mercy or in Wrath. God is a consuming fire. Obed Edom’s family could live with the expressed presence of God in their house because they were obedient to the Lord in their interaction. No small task for a large family. 325 mighty men of God were in Obed Edom’s lineage. Obedience and maybe even the word obedience came from the testimony of obedience that Obed –Edom’s family exuded. (look up Gittites)

I. Examples of Worship and Praise in Scripture- II. Examples of worship and praise in relationship with you- III. Ambition to better preparation for worship and praise. IV. Ambition to being a better worshiper

True worshipers are who the Father seeks to worship Him- Seeing what Jesus was referring to when He discussed this with the Samaritan woman and what He was inferring through this. How God blessed her holy ambition for the salvation of her entire city. Jesus placed this appetite upon her. She was bereft of this before meeting Christ. He cut to the chase, so to speak and paralleled the filling of her need with the Filling of the Father. God doesn’t have to seek anything. But she got it. The Father seeks such to worship Him. What is God the Father thirsty for? An unnecessary question. He who needs nothing would discuss with us that He seeks such to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth

Expecting God to inhabit our praise and make us better worshippers of Him. The Father seeks such to worship Him. Spirit-----Truth----Help us Lord to become better worshippers. As God has promised from Jeremiah and all of the prophets to make all of the nations into worshippers of Himself by the cleansing of water by the word. He takes the time to show us our faults before Him and that which He has engaged Himself to clean us up in. Moab being the wash pot! The last, it seems from scripture is the coming of the washpot for the all to come and become cleaned. All of the other people groups having had reformations and that is what we see in the history of the world. Great reformations and great changes of life and all the former idolaters of the world turning their cultural attention to the policies of Jesus. That seemed to be how the Lord looks at the world not as individuals, although He is personal and particular, but as groups with portions of His image and portions of dirt and grime pressed into their cultural persuasions. As we bang against eachother the masses of us knock off the wicked prejudices and particularities and we can see, as it were the image of Christ being

We Expect You, Lord!

We were going to hear Joni Eareckson Tada. There was spiritual anticipation for such a day. A visitor, who knows God, like she does, must have a message for us.

I went back and forth, to go or not. Do I really want to hear her? I know Jesus. I know her message, do I really need to see her in person. Last week, I couldn't wait to see her. Today, I was murmuring, I am not ready for the level of devotion she is beckoning from my soul.

It took a little prodding from my dear husband to get me motivated. I wasn't unaware of the spiritual battle of getting there for this occasion.