Had it not been for the Goodness of the Lord!

 The Goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living

God’s sit in in my life these past three years of an antilegalistic stance on the issue of Sabbath keeping has been learning to see the mercy and truth in the promises of God in Isaiah “If you turn your foot from the Sabbath…” promises.  I believe God’s word and I believe to see the answer of the Lord in the land of the living on this regard.

Am I remembering the Sabbath on the Sundays that I work?

Was I keeping the Sabbath on the Sundays that I haven’t worked?

Is God a promise keeper, more than we imagine?

I will take these questions individually.

God has established a “sit-in” on my life in quite the way that I would never have expected him to.  In our history of America, the racist injustices that my people have endured have evoked a personal response of “Sit ins” to attempt to call attention to the reality of hypocrisy that has certainly been a part of our National Life.   My relationship with God began in my mid teen years where I turned my life over to him and attempted to become more acquainted with him by searching His word for answers as to who He is and what he requires of us.  My family didn’t share my understanding of the importance of Sabbath keeping through out my life and I gained many an intellectual and spiritual debate about the importance or lack of importance of evangelical Sabbath keeping.  This was piled on many a disagreement of spiritual priorities.  I will only address the question of Sabbath keeping because of limits of attention in this season and it’s application to my personal “Sit In” experience.

“I see the Lord’s train fill the temple…”  was a song that we sang as a family and crowned our personal and familial experience from the time of Grandma Ruth’s passing until this day.  The vision of God’s train expanding outside of the temple of the Lord to invade such unwelcoming places as higher education was beyond my imagination until lately.  We have so many god-fearing people who have by necessity had to make their Sabbath rest a part of their sacrifice to feed their families.  The warfare of culture against the godly had come to this and I saw that I am not the only one who has experienced this financial dearth and coverage dearth, etc.

Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!  I believe that you are concerned about your glory on the earth and I believe that you intend to break in on the godlessness of our culture, but I don’t necessarily want to be the vehicle of bringing you into the higher education realm, for sure!  

I am not the only Christian struggling with this argument in my job expectations on Sundays.  It seems that God has chosen many a very intent praying person to spend their Sundays praying and praising and putting their convictions aside to simply pay for shelter and food.  Jobs are less and less accepting your convictions for Spiritual things as an influence and yet they will make accommodations for other things, like furthering your education, and other things.   I am concerned about this.  How I got into this mess is not applicable as much as what God has shown me there.   

His train is overflowing the temple, even in a hostile time of antichurch sentiment in our country.   God is discriminated against and He is staging a sit in in my life and in higher education! 

God grant me strength to see and to amend.   And may His great mercy bring us to the other side without having completely ejected Him from our borders!

Thank you God for a season of an intact heart! "Praising with an intact heart"

 God’s worship is an expression of the heart!

The busily pumping heart is regular and consistent, but not very loud, because the work it does puts it in a place where only the technical devices and the closest proximity can allow it to be heard.  This is the air I breathe, this is the pump of our souls, true worship.

Let us, as it were, take the stethoscope to our loudness and to our silence and see if the reality of the pumping heart is truly doing the work, or is the noise we are hearing or the silence we are invoking is allowing the circulation of our life in Christ to continue to exist.  

Remember the Sabbath Day…

The regularity of our consistency in remembering our Savior and all that he has done is one of our.

Everyday I will bless thee…

Is there a daily time, set aside for the reality of recognition of His greatness?

Lord, you have been my dwelling place in all generations…

Is the remembrance of His greatness, where you live?

Is it a coaxing or a chore to remember his holiness?

Is your praise and worship waxing or waning?

Growing or fading

Do you enjoy a sense of His presence in your prayer and praise?

Are you utilizing the tools God has given to grow your faith and worship, ie  God’s Word and the Hymns?

Is your mind engaged in the process of growth or are you on autopilot?

Is your motivation other’s gaze or the eye of the Lord?

He's an on time God

 I woke to a delightful surprise of a white suit jacket, bought for me by my Benjamin.

It was very cold when we finally got outside.  It wasn't surprising that the haste had cost us the battery of his car.  It had died because the lights were left on all night.   After having gotten Ezra from his friend's house they were rushing inside and the oversight was costing us time.   We had to take my car.  My car needs a fresh gallon of water to make it that distance, But what an amazing providence to have a spare car to get to church.   We haven't always had such a precious alternative.  We did this morning.   One of those mornings that the pressing our way was a precursor to the expectation that God would meet us in our worship.  He did meet us.   God was there the fellowship was delightful and the worship was refreshing, but God's word was the salve and the motivation to take us through the week.   We were instructed and encouraged to expect more from God than we do from the devil.

Genesis 48!

Not fiction.  Jacob blessed both of his grandsons from Joseph.

This was a verse that was my meditation when I was working at Allstate.   I remember sitting on the bench on my lunch hour and it was as though Jacob was sitting right there telling me jokes in my sad moments there.   I missed my children.   Ethan and Christina were most in my minds, although Ezra was just a toddler.  I wanted to bring them with me and show them what I was learning, but there were other things for them and for me.  All of the children are grown now and my meditation of that moment when I realized that Jacob had learned from God that there was more than one blessing from God for his children and that God intended to use his life to bless each and everyone of them in His own way.  

I see God's blessings.  I see God's weaving my prayers and expectations into his answers to my prayers and overruling my shortcomings in his omnipotence.   His word is a light and a lamp and our prayers are the threads in his hand, combining and making one new man out of broken pieces and nuanced threads.  He has been faithful and continues to be faithful.  Halleluia!

Are we following his plans like the geese were, this morning?

Worship is More Than Words!

Worship is More Than Words! God is beyond words and words are needed, but there are some experiences with God which are beyond the expression of words. God’s worship in sobriety is sometimes very quiet and sometimes it is very loud. Scripture gives us examples of both circumstances. By the grace of God, He gives us catchable glimpses of His glory. Some of them we can explain and express their magnitude and some of them our calibration of words haven't caught. Jesus is magnificent and His work in our lives is beyond belief, to have delivered us from death, hell and the grave, is beyond our comprehension. We haven’t experienced enough to truly describe it! Jesus paid His entire life into our empty vessels. Halleluia! I am indeed speechless about it!

Seeping into the "Ish"!

 Seeing the Train of the Lord Fill the Temple.

Praise and worship are the clouds with which the Lord of Glory has said that his presence would inhabit and dwell among his people.  I find it no wonder that God would answer prayer and be so present in the midst of His people, and that worship and praise would be the most spontaneous in some places and so controversial in other places.

Worship is often quiet.   Sometimes I miss the sobriety of silent worship.  Not so much that I would move to the “Be Quiet” Church,  but the entreaties to prepare your hearts for worship to those, so many people whose wagging tongues are the entry and exit of the sanctuary, sometimes, just sometimes mind you are the vehicle of Satan to distract and disturb the sobriety of the Worship of God.   I would love to hear reminders before worship that God is present and let us prepare our hearts to meet and to receive HIm.  It is woefully absent in the delight that we have come back to nearly full attendance after COVID.   I am praying for restoration of the sacred sense of worship that comes in the silence.   

We have a very disciplined and very skillful choir, which usher us from our gregarious entrance into the presence of the sacred worship of God, without us even noticing the transition.  Not every church has this convenience.  Our very skilled choir helps us prepare our hearts and minds, without the need of many exhortations and reproofs.  They, as it were, grab our attention and drag it into the presence of God without our having to learn the importance of it.

Still, I miss the exhortation and am offended by the gregariousness of the preworship season.

It is my aging that makes me so sensitive.  I love worship.  I love silent worship and I love loud worship and my silent season of using my words, very sparingly has made me more observant of the need for exhortations to worship in silence and worship in loudness.   God is the God of exuberance and the God of sobriety and silence.   We need a balance.

Goodbye to Psi year Hello to "'More' from God'" in 24"{

 2023

“Goodbye to the Psi in the Sky year”

We started the year, so much anticipating good things.  God didn’t leave us hanging, of course.  He had planned many new acquaintances and many new discoveries as we walk with him into the lands of Glad Adoration.   I do realize that Glad Adoration was just a figment of my imagination for so many years.  It is hard to write about an amazing discovery with so many facets.   The adoration of God’s inhabiting the praises of his people is something that makes you want to stop and just observe in silence.  His praise is always glorious!   He is far more glorious than his praise, but to see him allowing his train to spill outside of his sanctuary into the most uncanny places.  Perhaps that is the folly of the uninvitedness of his presence in so many places today.  The fact that he isn’t accepted or wanted in the same way that so many kinds of people were uninvited in days of yore.  Signs that say for any other kind of person but God.  We don’t want him here.  Yet, to be working on a Sabbath and sense that he ignores the imperatives of exclusivity people place on some establishments and stages a sit in, right in front of his own enemies.  The Elitists,  The Exclusivists, The amazing educated “Ish”, simply step over his amazing provisions for them, as though he were a leper, when he is the one who gave them such lavish.  What does God do?  He lends them more breath, more stuff, more opportunity to praise him?

It is an enigma to me!  Three years of sacrificing some Sabbaths to the “ish” has blessed my soul in a couple of ways that I have seen in the land of Glad Adoration.

1. Seeing the Train of God’s Glory seep into the ish

2. Seeing my growth in worship and praise in a wordless season.

3. Seeing the truth of “if You turn your foot from the Sabbath…”

4. Seeing the mercy of God in the Land of the Living

5.  Seeing God resisting the pride in me

6.  Seeing God exalting the humility in me

    

Dec 30, 2023......4:48am