When You Are a Soldier!

Psalm 71:9  

Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth.

Psalm 71:10  

For mine enemies speak against me; and they that lay wait for my soul take counsel together,

Psalm 71:18 

Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.

Psalm 71:19

Thy righteousness also, O God, is very high, who hast done great things: O God, who is like unto thee!

How we lament the days of swiftness of body and mind, when they are gone?

We imagine the enemy who was in earlier days coming and chasing us down and we can no longer deliver ourselves, much less others.  when the legs are aching and the mind is slower our heart laments.  Like a dear friend who has passed away we lament.  Was our trust in our own strength?  Was our trust not in the Lord to enable us to overcome?  Was our trust in our swiftness of mind and body?  

If so, we are truly in a sorry state!  No! Even now our trust is in the Lord to deliver us. 

My father in law looked at me and said Do you think you are helping me?  God has put it on your heart to help me.  I didn’t understand the anger of needing help in our aging times.  I do now.   God give us the heart and mind to serve you as we age.

Proverbs 11:18 

The wicked worketh a deceitful work: but to him that soweth righteousness shall be a sure reward.

Proverbs 11:28

He that trusteth in his riches shall fall: but the righteous shall flourish as a branch.

Proverbs 11:29  

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart.

Is it a coincidence that the judgment of Egypt was prefaced with "And at Midnight..." That was truly a midnight of knowledge of God

Exodus 11:4 And Moses said, Thus saith the LORD, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt:

Exodus 11:5 And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts.

A Fearful midnight upon the earth it was for God to go to such means to convince a sinner of His greatness! Pharaoh had entered a battle of wills that he had no way of winning. God was done with granting the mercies that were in the earlier battles. God was merciful all through and yet He clearly gave us His purpose or we would have considered Him a bully to have even entered the contest. He was intentional that the world would have a clear testimony of who is the greater, Pharaoh or God and that none in any generation would have excuse to miss this truth.

Proverbs 10:3 The LORD will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish: but he casteth away the substance of the wicked.

Our access to God and the blessings are not because of bloodline at all. We must always acknowledge that our relationship to God is through His Son and not through our own bloodline. That is a very clear thing that was said by God in Exodus about the Pharaoh. The essence of false religion is that all people are equally related to God. God said I made a difference between Israel and everyone else. His plagues were the public expression of that to the world and the wise of the earth got it.

Although you belong to the greatest country on the earth, Egypt, if you lift your hand against Israel or the Church in the NT time, you will be thrust down to the dust. That Pharaoh may know that God has set a line of division between Israel and Egypt he continues to mark that distinction regardless of our heedlessness. If we come in any other name, you are condemned. Jesus’ name alone is salvation!

“And at midnight” are we the foolish or the wise virgins? The bridegroom cometh! the judgment is upon us! Our children taught of the Lord, Jesus or given to the flames of the hedonism of our culture. We are delivered into the blessings of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, through the blood of Jesus alone. As a unit of the Church and no other means at all. We are not lone receivers. We are not personal inheritors of random blessings. That was the deception of Egypt. Pharaoh had dominion and was the greatest personal example of God’s letter of intention for human beings on the earth in having dominion and yet his fist was in the face of God! God said my letter of intention of man’s purpose is subjugated to the blessings of relationship, first.

What does it profit a man?

To gain the whole world?

And to lose his own soul?

To lose his firstborn son?

I say that those things are nearly synonymous sometimes??

Jesus does care about what we care about!

What God hardens he also can just as easily soften!

Exodus 10:1

And the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him:

Pray that the opposite might be said of your children in this generation.  That God himself would say that he has softened the hearts of this generation!

The dark mist of misrepresentation being upon them, still they set their hearts to seek the Lord!  And that we would find it so that God himself had softened their hearts in spite of the inconsistency of their parents and the misdirection of the media and the gaffaws of many statesmen before them.  Still they could see the will of God through the fogs of misrepresentation.  They could see the agenda of death that was set before them.  And they chose the agenda of life, not for the glory of education or any man.  They chose to glorify God in their bodies and represent the agenda of life in their homes and in their public discourse regardless of the stigma that it sent them.   In Jesus’ Name Amen.

Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel and not Pharoah? Lest I forget...

So the morning began,   Halleluiah and coffee and a private appointment with the King of Glory!   I guess I wake up early because I like to feel like I am his first patient and he truly lets me feel that.  Today it was the story of a faithless idiot, who kept trying God and brought about the global warming that stoked the flames of faith in the entire godless early world.  How could one think of himself as above the God of the universe.  He was truly trained to think of himself this way and he never departed from it.  God engaged him in several armwrestlings to warn him and he never felt inferior.  That was his catechism.  The chief end of his faith was to worship self and enjoy himself.   He challenged Gods every right.  Does God have rights over us?   The whole rest of scripture shows who believed that interaction and who did not.  

I believe that encounter was for the sake of the educated world of that time.  No one who was alive could have missed the challenge.  Like a challenge of a person on a ladder of better and worse in tennis.  Everyday Pharoah called God to challenge His sovereignty and God condescended to the challenge.  May my prowess in any arena subjugate itself to the glory of God.  May my every excellence shine to the Glory of the one and only all superior and all gifted creator and redeemer.  May humility and grace point others to Christ and not the testimony of how God had to subdue my overly exalted view of self.  In science in thinking, in sports and all else may””” ,” Jesus reign wherever the sun does its successive run”.

May our catechism get rear a generation who are other centered and not self glorying!  For the sake of the Gospel and that our world may be subdued to the love of Christ!  Amen.

Give Grace, Dear Lord to Overcome the dominion of our sin and Plagues, Please, Please, Please!

Exodus 5:18  

Go therefore now, and work; for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks.

Oh what a harder taskmaster the Pharaoh of sin is than Pharaoh himself!

Do we not search and seek for greater benefits from our sin, when our hearts are wedded to the sins??  My soul seeks to be delivered; sinner and saint alike seek deliverance from sin.  As it were we say to ourselves, Let my soul go, that I may go and serve my King and Lord.

Either a hardening happens or it doesn’t.  We are in the most dangerous situation who have heard and had our hearts exposed to the true and living Word of God.  We close our eyes and go toward the darkness with abandon.  God himself tries to stop us through His truth and we catapult headlong into our own demise.  

How long will God deal with us?  This question isn’t asked in this licensious era of the world.   How long will God continue showing us the consequences of our sins as He did Egypt in Moses’ day?  How long will we act like Pharaoh over our own souls and God not let us go unto our own way?  

His mercy restrains us.
His goodness puts up with us and gives us plagues and problems to help us know our wrong.
His faithfulness allows us eyesight to see where repentance is

And yet we still seek the straw to make sin’s bricks..Help us see and be delivered Dear Lord!

Amen