Levels of Confusion in the Soul?

Watching the Babies

I see the relationship between a community and their children. God gives us a trust in their hearts. We either shepherd them toward truth and right or we let them to themselves. As we give them consistent examples of well-meaning direction, they learn to trust and to follow righteousness...God blesses our efforts and solidifies our efforts in exalting our nation or degrading it.

Sometimes we think it is our responsibility to help the children by showing them the double standards and duplicity of life. That is not the job of parents and caretakers, that is the job of the devil and he will show himself to them erelong. When we prayerfully take the hand of God and work with him to mold children's thinking and imaginations it is a greater responsibility and has greater consequences than any other work that we do. The storms of life and the storms that come from the sea are nothing compared to the randomness of children who are left to themselves. Peace be still and the storm listens to God. Yet we let these children churn and whirl out of control and think nothing of letting them gain habits of destruction and anger that they will never be able to recover from. When we learn to heed our parents in being quiet, when our very souls seem to be upset and quaking, God can teach us to submit that same control to His Spirit. We submit, like the storm to the voice of God. He tells us, when to wail and when and where to place our anger and upsetment. God can use that. He doesn't miss. He always hits his targets. We are practicing so that we can be accurately and rightly used by Him in our quiet and in our loudnesses! God redeem and exalt our culture from the randomness of self directed children. Give us direction through your Spirit!

For the beauty of the sky

When I was a youngun, I complained and cackled before the Lord for every providential dissuasion from my plans. Why? Lord, don't you know that I had plans for that time that was lost to a flat tire. Oh so often, some great revelation of my children's lives would come out of the hours spent waiting for the tow truck or the help for our automotive distresses. We were privy to each other's every thought in the midst of a small car with 6 to 9 little people trapped inside on a highway or a major thoroughfare. I learned to see it as an opportunity to get to know the people that I was with, but yesterday it was a getting to know God in the sky. He has amazing moving pictures that are wondrous. I am grateful that the God of the universe entertains us in His mind and paints and designs ways to get our attention that are sometimes inconvenient, but always in His great love. Thank you Lord.

Like a weaned child...

When we wean...

Crying and fussing but it always comes too soon.  Why do we wean?  It is a graduation to the cup.  A letting go.  There aught not be fuss and fanfare because everyone must do it.  But often there is a hanging on to the sucking.  Where is my binky?   Some children are a. Little more needy of those things than others.  Does it mean they will be addictive sorts? Not letting go to anything that they latch onto.  Somehow I imagine my Junior carrying a receiving blanket down the aisle for graduation from Highschool.  No! I must be firm.  It doesn't really mean that.  It is an early opportunity to teach that every good and perfect gift comes down from the father of lights.   This is in fact a perfect opportunity to say and sing this verse to secure it into their conscious minds as they lament their loss.  God is good and is the ultimate comforter and as we let go of these creature comforts for greater freedoms we embrace the ability to comfort others and the ability to walk with God in a greater and more mature way.  "Help Lord hat I might sympathize with my child in his maturing and guide him to the God of all comforts!  Amen."

Think Again!

Praise To the Lord, The Almighty

Yes He is the king of creation. Learning to submit to His ways and His providences is sometimes hard. Everytime I hear that hymn, my mind goes back to that grieving season where everytime they would sing...

Hast thou not seen, how all thy longings have been granted in what he ordaineth?

I would cry and maybe have to leave the church. How can they all sing that? Why do they think that God has given them everything that they want all the time? That isn't true in my experience very often and especially when you stand at the graveside of your child. I couldn't sing that.

Between "Hast thou not seen..." and "ponder anew" is an entire school of learning that cannot be placed into words.

I blame Central's Choir for helping me get over that wall of the obstacle course of my faith. There was one day that they sang that hymn and the Holy Spirit used it to help me see the Amen of faith, which I had already known was there and to get to the "Think Again" of seeing the clouds of my despising the dark providence of the Lord pour the blessings of true trust in Him into my soul. It takes a long time and many people praying for you. It is a dark night that lasts forever, if you let it;but God has an exit to that dark tunnel. You won't find the exit until He gives you the jewels that He brought you there to receive. I pray that God will do that for you as well, who reads this.

Chapter 10 from Pilgrim's Progress

Questions

The Lords Day

Marketing day for the soul!

What are we shopping for?

Where do we go? 

What do we need? 

Why do we still have needs, as Christians?

Who is supplying us?

There are indeed many blessings from celebrating a Lords Day Sabbath.  Lord Sabaoth, His name,from age to age the same.  Do we believe that?

Be Glorified Today?

Oh we sing the diddies...

They are a blesssing, but sometimes misunderstood.

I think that the Hymns are like the dictionary for the diddies!

Father, I know that all my life is portioned out for me, The changes that are sure to come, I do not fear to see. I ask Thee for a present mind! Intent on pleasing Thee.

What an in depth perspective of what we are asking in "Be Glorified, Today" Help, Lord for me to keep my sanity in the midst of the crisis. Help Lord, me to keep my eye on the intention of my life that I have set for myself.

Like a pivot, on the tennis court: would you know how to do it, were it not instructed to you. Can we be sure, what we are praying in Be Glorified? I don't want to be outside of Your will, but I can't possibly know what that is. God's will isn't mystical, in terms of obedience. But we make it so, when we pray such bland and unspecific prayers in corporate worship. Help! is the prayer when I am drowning But Present mind prayers, when my soul can think to articulate my request.

Father, I know that all my life Is portioned out for me,

And the changes that are sure to come,

I do not fear to see;

But I ask Thee for a present mind

Intent on pleasing Thee.

I ask Thee for a thoughtful love,

Through constant watching wise,

To meet the glad with joyful smiles,

And to wipe the weeping eyes;

And a heart at leisure from itself,

To soothe and sympathize.

I would not have the restless will

That hurries to and fro,

Seeking for some great thing to do,

Or secret thing to know;

I would be treated as a child,

And guided where I go.

Wherever in the world I am,

In whatsoe'er estate,

I have a fellowship with hearts

To keep and cultivate;

And a work of lowly love to do

For the Lord on whom I wait.

So I ask Thee for the daily strength,

To none that ask denied, And a mind to blend with outward life While keeping at Thy side; Content to fill a little space, If Thou be glorified. And if some things I do not ask, In my cup of blessing be, I would have my spirit filled the more With grateful love to Thee — More careful — not to serve Thee much, But to please Thee perfectly. There are briers besetting every path, That call for patient care; There is a cross in every lot, And an earnest need for prayer; But a lowly heart that leans on Thee Is happy anywhere. In a service which Thy will appoints, There are no bonds for me; For my inmost heart is taught “the truth” That makes Thy children “free;” And a life of self–renouncing love, Is a life of liberty. Hymns and Meditations, 1873

Repentance

Michael Lemays book The Death of Christian Thought tells me that I let my racist bent get the better of me in my response to a book reading that punctured the vestiges of my racist mentality.  I do repent for that and realize that it is principalities and powers that are the attackers in such a battle and not racial or hair texture bents.(although I think there is some providential relationship that we are supposed to notice.). Still I wouldn't dare believe that it has been revealed yet what that relationship is.

The essence of the argument is that Christian Thought is dying in our era, some blame it on Laodicea and some on decisionism and some on racism.   I think we must untangle a woven web of different vines that are choking out Christian thought.  It is my belief that the legend of Merlin and Camelot was an expression of an awakening to the power of Christian thought.  The fact that Merlin is seen as dabbling in the magical,  contrast of the power of Lancelot,who was raised in a Biblically educated family,seems shadowed by the completely superstitious era that we are looking at there.

If we can whittle away the other characters for a moments glance, there was a family who raised their son to believe the Bible and he rose to some prominence in supernatural powers...  There was a lot of supernatural wizardry going on, but coming out of the dark ages, any of the wonders of progress would seem wizardry to those people.

My point to bring it up is that we can either return to those dark ages and allow thought to rot under the cannibalism of idolatry as we see it and God may allow us to see Camelot-like restoration or the complete annihilation of our culture, or we can recoup the ancient landmarks and pick up the pieces of Christian thought, while we have the opportunity.  Only a fool would want to go back to the dark ages, but there may be some nuggets of truth that our entire culture missed in the translations of what happened in the Rennaissance.   I don't think we need to go back there to see it.

Let's untangle the vines which are choking out the Word from our culture.  It's not mystical it takes effort and mental effort.