Soul, Do You Have the Spiritual Initiative and Discipline to Make it to the Finish Line of Life, in Faith?

Proverbs 24:1  Be not thou envious against evil men, neither desire to be with them. Proverbs 24:2 For their heart studieth destruction, and their lips talk of mischief. Proverbs 24:3 Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established: Proverbs 24:4 And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches. Proverbs 24:5 A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength.

From Time to time, my minds eye recalls the very last gaze into my dearest Grandmothers' eyes. She had suffered for years from cancer and it had deteriorated her body. The agony of body and soul that I saw there. The sadness that I couldn't ease any of that, by presence or song. We had done all our comforts and now it was time for the goodbyes. I said words that felt blank and insignificant in the light of the eternity that she was facing. She had shared her favorite hymn with me earlier and I had thought this visit was for me to tell her how very much she had meant in my life. She said, don't say anything at all. Don't sing, just sit there. I did that and I cried for years later that I couldn't ever tell her. Did she know?

I would trade every trophy to have gone back and not have missed those silly things she wanted me to do. Shopping? Watch tv? not as important as a tourney! Now it was. My Father cried buckets of tears, like I hadn't seen ever. The tears came from behind his hand like a fountain. Why couldn't I have taken her to the movies and done those silly things? He had the same sentiments that I did. Chasing the next level of greatness in the park scene seemed more important at the time. Scholarships that it lent us may have been okay, but they were no comfort at her gravesite.

Learning to prioritize responsibilities and not miss the really important things for the trivial is difficult. Women have unusual stumblingblocks to seeing God's mercies in their pain. Scripture tells us this and I have found it true in my experience.

The accuser seems to have a megaphone deep into the soul of women as we age. He accuses your every service and labor pain. He accuses God's every goodness and mercy. Perhaps this is part of the curse, as well.

Accumulating good counselors and good counsel, who can cut through your most foolish defense of your sin, is best. Try not to give the devil as much to accuse your soul of and keep short accounts with your loved ones, so that you are ready at the moment's notice, should it come that swiftly.

Proverbs 23 notes from Sunday school

Minister Walker Friendship Cafe Sunday School Lesson!

Eating friends : fun seekers

Business friends: team players

Counsel friends :project workers

School friends: learning with

Knowing who is trying to manipulate you and why? People watch what you eat...how much...are you greedy in public...? Do people tell you what they observe? Or do they use it to humiliate you and set the parameters? Stay focused on the learning projects above all the other pursuits on every level! That will keep you out of reach of the manipulators!

The concept of cyber cookies! saftety procedure cookies! Deceptive friends!

Stress relievers... Vs.17 who you should never envy...sinners...people who are characterized by their behaviors! Proverbs 23:21 KJVS [21] For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. How to make your momma happy Vs25 Some things not to get caught up I. Even in the little dab will do ya's! Why are most people that you see on the side of the road . In a woeful circumstance... Proverbs 23:29 KJVS [29] Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? Now it is a secret place to be...that is more dangerous! Proverbs 23:32 KJVS [32] At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Ps 119:how can a young man....

Now as I read this set of wise instructions, I see several categories of friends and acquaintances and how they influence me which are placed before me for my assistance and usefulness.

Some buddies that I think about in the passage are authorities around and about us. They are watching to see how their influences can be used for their best promotion.

ie. When you sit to eat with a ruler, watch out! The bigger kids, the richer kids, the smarter kids, etc. know how to use their presence as a magnet for their own comforts and pleasantries. If you are like them and exalt them, they will try you in your loyalties, at the table. They seem to know that at the table you are most vulnerable.

The Family Table can be a trying place for the manners and courage that you can have in the daycare, the school cafeteria, the college dorm and throughout your life. Fathers must understand this to wisely use their comforts and encouragements to grow Godliness in their children. If you are accepted at home, it is a strong influence of confidence in your life.

I remember being very little and seeing certain people who affected my parents discipline and hating them for it. My mind said, why do they listen to that person and keep me from doing what I want because of them? I was 7 when this was severely impressed on my heart. My mommy was 27, when I was 7 and she asked her grandmother if I could go into the water at the beach this close to having eaten. Mu said, "You know better, Camille." and that was the end of it! I huffed and puffed and was as angry as I could be. That kept me close to MU and mother playing in the sand next to the baby, while everybody else was enjoying the cool of water. I was seething.

Before the sacredly passed down half hour had passed a cloud came into Mu's view and she said to another grandchild, not my mother, Anne, tell everyone to get to the car a storm is coming up quick.

We packed up quickly and were at the car when torrents of showers and bolts of lightning struck all around the car and my father had to go back and forth carrying this one and that one to their cars, while we were safely snug in the car.

My seething developed into an awe! I guess that woman knows God, I said to myself and that is why my mother didn't even let her finish her sentence and followed it to the letter, on that occasion.

Unfortunately, we are teaching free thinking lessons to 2 year olds, by our lack of instruction and clarity and more often than not, they may never get to know people who they can really trust their knowledge of truth and God. That is very sad to me. Fathers and mothers innoculate their children from seeking counsel from foolish, when they show honor to people who have a proven character. When we listen to our children and honor their opinions, from time to time we are winning their hearts to become one of the people who might be our confidant and we theirs. Let's not miss these tiny opportunities to win our children into friends, as well. Letting them know why we do things and hearing their childish reasonings for things are often roads into their hearts.

Pastor Martin said, one time years ago that listening to your little one's story about "wormypoo" and crying with her about little emotional traumas at 2 years old will open doors when she is thinking about this or that fellow. I poopooed the significance in my mind, but followed it and have found it truly the case.

When my heart is overwhelmed?{Considerations from the maternal prayer of Anna in Siam}

Our Father," I could not but ask in the darkness of my trouble, did it need so bitter a baptism as ours to purify so young a soul?

When we pray as mothers, so often our concerns are for our welfare, but far more the spiritual welfare of our children. God sees our distresses.

After this bitter disappointment that the King was not a welcoming monarch for her and her son, Anna says to her son that we must pray. Her heart, however is that his faith be purified and not stamped out, by this dark distress. God gave her a heart to see his youthful enthusiasm and that the fears had not yet settled into his own soul. He was trusting that God had guided her to a safe and exciting situation for them. He had seen griefs and hung onto his faith. But could that remain if more ugly circumstances awaiting them?

Her heart prayer, she penned; as her mouth prayer was simply to allay the fears of her young disciple.

A mother's brooding!

The Whinings that we would allow, if there weren't little ones in hearing distance. Not because I am so strong, Lord am I silent in my struggles, but my faith is small right now, that You know what you are doing and I needn't give the air the benefit of knowing that providence has me questioning Your power and Goodness! God, make me silent when my prayers are for the benefit of venting my unbelief. My faith{and perhaps every mother's faith}isn't strong enough to watch my child lose their faith in God.

so often my mind goes to Grandma Ruth's real question "Where's your faith?" at the loss of my baby. I really didn't get the blow from her, on that. She was asking me, where is the faith that I see those "Baptist Women" show when they go through these things? You are acting like we do! Faith and unbelief are alike in grief, for sure. She was trying to make me prove that I am a Christian to her, to lift her eyes from her unbelief and to make my mother get up from the blow. I couldn't do that. Parts of my faith died with that baby. God knows that and mothers and grandmothers have to carry the corpse of their childrens' dead faiths. She was crying under the power of the grief of mine dying. Mother pall-bearers in the griefs try as they might have a greater burden than carrying the body. If there were no God, it would be a hopeless task. Only He can breathe on a dead part of your faith and awake it to usefulness on His Kingdom plan.

In this prayer, Anna says, Lord please have mercy on me not to see my child's eyes lose hope in You. We can all enter this prayer. Amen.

Learning to take time in the presence of God! {Seems an elderly task}

The first thing to go in cyberspace is taking time

Time to read, seems tedious. Time to reason and form an argument, as well. Time to meditate is swiftly becoming like the Latin language, dead! I think.

It made me say that perhaps like the salt that engulfed Lots wife, our gracious God marks the place where the Spirit leaves a culture, by killing the language right there. Have you lost the time to meditate? Have you lost the ability to meditate on Christ for a whole day? Have you lost the ability to sit in a portion of God's goodness for a minute? New Yorkers have always had their own time calculations. "Takes too long, next!" Do you have to take so much time and attention on anything but a construction project? Let the professionals do it. The professionals cannot construct your soul, to grow in the grace of God. If you don't take the time to devise and learn the structures and the mathematical calculations that will project your soul from your sinful estate into the heavenlies, the professionals may have to scrap the project.{ a horrible thought!}

Learning to tarry before the Lord!

Taking time before the Lord to know that the truths heard are the truths received into the soul. Christ can and may confirm your soul in a moment's time, but like a diet, it didn't take a minute to get into this point in your sin. God may make you tarry in your lack of assurance and that may be the case. If you are not willing to wait on God for his spiritual confirmation of your condition, perhaps you are not ready to leave the presence of the Lord. Come back to the spot where the Lord has met you and tarry there until your heart confirms that He is holding you in His unbreakable grasp. Don't let your faith die, like the Latin language. Remember Lots Wife! God can break the grasp of even the pillar of salt! Trust HIM!

Post Christmas Meditation from Psalm 10

Psalm 10:3  For the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the LORD abhorreth. Psalm 10:12  Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up thine hand: forget not the humble. Psalm 10:16  The LORD is King for ever and ever: the heathen are perished out of his land. Psalm 10:17  LORD, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear: Psalm 10:18  To judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may no more oppress.

Do we bless our own covetous hearts?

What a good reminder, this few days after Christmas?

Am I as grateful for my gifts and blessings this day as I was on Christmas Day? Am I looking for the new acquirements and what I will put on my list for next year? Am I seeking to float favor with others for the position that they hold by giving them things and accolades, when it is clear that they are in need of reproof and rebuke. Am I Giving gifts when they need a spanking??

Christmas is a good lesson of favor and Blessings. Learning of the Naughty and Nice list is just the beginning of what God wants us to see from the celebration of this holiday, should we choose to celebrate it. God is sweeter and kinder than Santa and His list is far more exacting and gracious. The price for our sins has been paid in Christ! But God still abhors covetousness. We have built our society on covetousness. Help us to rebuild that part.

Contentment Sermon by Cal Walden, probable good listen! Is my mouth calling God's favor or His abhorrence? What I say and how I say it is very significant, especially to little ones. They follow every verbiage line. from Bridges Proverbs 10

11. The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life; but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked. The Indwelling Spirit—"a well of living water"—is the glorious privilege of the righteous. (John, iv. 14; vii. 38.) Hence his mouth, replenished from the heavenly source, is a well of life, sending forth refreshing waters. (Chap. xvi. 23.) The precious talent of speech is thus consecrated to His service, "who made man's mouth." "Grace in its measure is poured upon our lips" (Ps. xlv. 2); and our "tongue" becomes "our glory." (Ps. lvii. 8 ; cviii. 1.) Wit, originality, imagin- ation may furnish ‘the feast of reason, and the flow of soul.’ But how poor is this pleasure compared with the godly instruction—perhaps with little intellectual attraction—that pours forth from a well of life! Servant of God! honour your high privilege of thus ministering a blessing to the Church. (Verse 21; xv. 7. Eph. iv. 29.) Enlarge its exercise by increasing your spiritual store, and walking in closer fel- lowship with your God. What owe you to His grace, who hath made your mouth a well of life; while the violence of the wicked falls back upon themselves, and covers their mouth with confusion?

He knows that we are prone to wander! I must run to my Savior for cleansing and comfort in my foibles! There are little ones following me into my pit of departure. Help, Lord! Like running for a stray bump on the third, I am sometimes headlong falling over myself in my remembering the rearing days and trying to stear forward in my own soul. God help! Amen. Thank God for Grace and Mercy!

Expressing and Experiencing Love Twice Removed?

I am still working on a precious scarf for my dear Ethan. It is not perfect, by any means. It is the work of a month of knitting and purling and straightening on the needles. When my father said he wanted a silk scarf, I had no thought of knitting one. I never thought of knitting him a woolen one. He said he wanted to look like Humphrey Bogart with a 6 foot silk scarf hanging off his overcoat. I could identify with the thought of wanting to be a "proper gentleman" in every outward expression. I knew what he meant.

There is something humble and demeaning about wearing homemade clothes. But there is one thing that is for sure, there is a personal love and care that goes into a season of knitting for a loved one. There is a spiritual covering of prayer and intention that is unmatched. Sometimes, when I go into the thrift store and feel the stitches of an old discarded afgan, I feel that direct expression of love and that is what I am trying to imitate, when I knit for my loved ones. It is a palpable and direct expression of love that covers the body and gives a great worth to life. Somebody loves me enough to caringly craft this garment and prayed for me in every stitch.

I don't shop much! I don't feel comfortable in the stores. I was so moved to shop with my daughters the other day and in awe of some of the stitch patterns that come off of the looms of today's machines. I feel the cloths and try to find that sense of loving delight that I find in the thrift stores. I don't know that I feel anything, but the pleasure of perfect fabrics. I do love the feel of perfect fabrics also. But, I prefer the feeling of real love directed toward me. I wonder if the children of today feel covered. I wonder if they can reason from the gifts and things that their parents shower on them to the reality of the love that they are experiencing.