The Sin of Murmuring

It is a shame how the week or two after Christmas is the worst time of murmuring and complaining. Just last month, not even 3 full weeks ago, we were rejoicing in the beauty of the gifts of and to oneanother and here we are, looking at the specks and spots in oneanother. Shame on me. I am so very blessed with loving family and I wake up on the wrong side of the bed and I am pecking at them something awful. I miss my family and I miss NY. But, that is no excuse for jumping all over my loved ones about their flaws and foibles. Thank God for His grace and mercy with my sinful tongue. I love my family and my husband and trust God's mercy upon us. Help me Lord to express my gratitude for them, more than my disappointment in their deportment and embarrassments to me. Lord, You are the only faithful and true friend, help me to draw close to You in this very painful time. In Jesus Name. Amen.

Who's side are you on? They would ask the apostle Paul.

Romans 1;14

He answered them, I am a debtor to the Jews and to the Greeks. I have a place in my heart to see my people saved, but the Gentiles also, have made a contribution to my soul and I wish to see them redeemed, as well. What a hard place for Paul to be in the first century, it was. He articulated, in the book of Romans, a desire for the Gentiles to come to Christ. Paul had seen the children of Israel squander the inheritance of godliness and the brains that God had given them and he had been privileged to make full use of his brain and his faith. He had a vision that in Christ we could use our brains to find solutions and pray for God's intervention, with furvor. I think the closest that we have come to the vision of that fruition of blending of faith and study came before the World Wars. There was a quote that God has given us the tools in our minds to problem solve, for His glory. We plunged into the midnight of thought and faith going to opposite corners and I think that we need to pray for the dawning of the dance of thought and faith. ie. We have let the devil have much of the entertainment realm. We have not sought to wrestle godliness into our youthful enjoyments. The spiritual battle is fought for the development of the minds and disciplines of my children. Today, I am thanking God for the many, who wrestled truth and faith into my thinking.

Dear Lord, Help our nation!

Our President, Our Senate, Our Congress. Lord, we need You in our nation. Financially, leadershipwise. We need You to intercede for our nation, Lord. We are walking in pride. We are unrepentant, for the most part and accept these difficulties as fruit of our sins. Still, we don't turn from our sins. We have put You out of our schools. We have put You out of our elective process. We have put You out of most of our public forums. God, we want You. To us belongs confusion, as Daniel observed. We are reaping the confusion of our own making. You, alone have wisdom and solutions to our pride and our confusion. Lord, deliver us from our sinful confusion, Lord. Meet us in this end of year, new year seam. Be with us and give us direction for recuperating from our vast disregard of Your standard and Your ways. Your Name, is not honored and regarded. Your day is not experienced by many. Your honor is disintegrated and we think that the fiscal cliff is a problem. We live in the mud of our own floundering away from the Honor and Glory of the Creator of the Universe, who has given us of His heart and we are discussing the confusion that has resulted from this and not the condition of hellbound souls. We live with a thin breath between us and eternity and we consider a financial situation as more lamentable. Help us, Lord. Deliver us and give to us a heart of loyalty to You, in our hearts and in our souls. Help us have a heart of forgiveness for those who have guided our nations ship against these rocks that we experience at the present time. We forgive them for their consideration of their own provisions and not for the provisions of the needy and less fortunate. Help us to love oneanother through this dark and painful time of repentance that we have at hand. Lord, You have been merciful to us. You have been our dwelling place in all generations. We have sinned against light, Lord. Give us not up to our own sinful choices. Give us light and set our feet on Your road, Lord.

My Redeemer has been faithful through 2012! He is amazing to rescue me from my boggs.

He Does Rule the World with Truth and Grace!

"Joy to the World the Lord is Come!" No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground, He comes to make His blessings known, Far as the curse is found, Far as the curse is found, far as far as the curse is found.

Christ has come to bring deliverance from the curses, as a result of the fall.

We cannot mortify the deeds of the flesh alone.

In these days, where access to the gospel is so prevalent over the internet, we have a tendency to minimize the effect of fellowship and attendance onto the means of grace. Listening and hearing the Word is not enough. "Confess your sins one to another and pray one for another, that you may be healed." I am still waiting for my mental healing, but in the meantime I am confessing and walking in the trusting that God cares for me, even in my distresses. Sometimes, I hear people exhorting people to walk in obedience to God as though they have the ability to do so. We walk by faith and not by sight and we walk in the fellowship with other believers. We must unite fellowship and comradery in the mortification of sins, or we are not in fellowship with God's people. God uses one-another to help us grow up into Christ in all things. We are entitled to victory in Jesus, but we often live far below our privilege, because we are not enjoying the family of Christ in fellowship and praying for oneanother. I know that there are many who are praying for me. I pray for my brothers and sisters in the flesh and in the Lord. I pray for my neighbors and friends and enemies. I am hoping that I will live to see my mind restored, but until then, my heart will go on trusting God's mercy and help in my weakness.

They Have Moses and the Prophets... {The Rich Man and Lazarus?} A Christmas Carol?

Thank God, many believe at the testimony of Moses and the Prophets. A Greater, Greater, Greater than Moses is with us. Jesus has come that we might have life and have it more abundantly. Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol took the hearty wish of the rich man and penned it, to the benefit of all who would hear it's true message. Christ is come to the healing of the soul. Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal. Sin has no hold on the soul so deep that Christ cannot break its clutches with His mercy and grace. He has given power to the Church to do the work of loving people to Him. We are born clinging to our sins and we grasp and clutch them, until they are replaced with the love of Christ. He is truly the stronger than the strong man. I like to believe that behind the scenes of the Christmas Carol, there was a church praying diligently for the spiritually disenfranchised, the Scrooges of the world for whom the bell tolls. I like to believe that God dispatched a supernatural visitation to draw the sinner to repentance of his sins. It happens in different ways to all who believe. That is the real miracle of Christmas. The truth that Christ has come that we might have life and have it more abundantly. Whatever the riches that we enjoy, physical riches or spiritual, that in Christ we can know that there is far more delight in Christ that we haven't tasted, nor will we, till we see Him face to face.

Jesus, what a friend for sinners, Jesus, lover of my soul, Friends may fail me, Foes assail me, He, my Savior, helps my soul, Halleluia, what a Savior, Halleluia what a friend, Saving, helping, keeping, loving, He is with me to the end