Category: Trust
Saturday Song – I Know
But you hear me when I speak
You don’t keep my heart from breakin’
But when it does, you weep with me
You’re so close that I can feel you
When I’ve lost the words to pray
And though my eyes have never seen you
I’ve seen enough to say
I know that you are kind
I know that you are so much more
Than what I leave behind
I know that I am loved
I know that I am safe
Cause even in the fire to live is Christ, to die is gain
I know that you are good
But you’re calm within the storm
Sometimes this weight is overwhelming
But I don’t carry it alone
You’re still close when I can’t feel you
I don’t have to be afraid
And though my eyes have never seen you
I’ve seen enough to say
Finally, brothers and sisters,
whatever is true,
whatever is noble,
whatever is right,
whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely,
whatever is admirable—
if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—
think about such things.
Philippians 4:8
The Spirit of Thanksgiving Past, Present, and Future
If H.G. Wells had been able to build a time machine, I wonder how many people would jump in the morning after Halloween, push the lever forward a couple of months and stop on December 25. Eh, maybe the 24th. Jump from party to party, candy to presents, and skip Thanksgiving altogether.
I’ve never quite understood why some people seem content to forgo Thanksgiving. Maybe because it’s not a commercial holiday it’s not as popular.
Maybe giving thanks doesn’t come as easy to us as getting gifts. Maybe people don’t understand how vital it is to our spiritual, mental, emotional, and even physical health to have a thankful heart. Maybe people don’t think they have much to be thankful for. And maybe that answers a lot of questions about the state of our States.
Let’s jump in H.G. Wells’ time machine, pull the lever, and travel back to October, 1863, when Thanksgiving became a national holiday.
***
We’re in the middle of the Civil War.
It might seem a peculiar time to think about declaring a national holiday of giving thanks, but maybe it was the best time. A God-appointed time.
When we’re facing trials and hardships and pain and suffering is when we most need to stop… and remember all we have to be thankful for, and most importantly, Who we have to be thankful for.
So on October 3, 1863, roughly six months after he signed a Proclamation of a Day of Fasting, and a year and a half before the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln signed his Proclamation of Thanksgiving.
Of course, that’s only the beginning of Thanksgiving as our national holiday, but not the beginning of giving thanks. Other historical moments might also seem to have peculiar timing.
Let’s travel back a bit further…
***
After seeking the Lord and fasting, King Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, appointed men to sing these words to the Lord as they went into battle against their enemies:
“give thanks to the LORD,
for His love endures forever.”
2 Chronicles 20:21b
“As they began to sing and praise, the LORD set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.” (2 Chronicles 20:22)
***
While fleeing from his enemies, David gives thanks to the Lord because of His righteousness. (Psalm 7:17)
***
In the darkened night as He faced being arrested, tortured, and handed over to be crucified, Jesus gives thanks.
***
And while in the chains of a dark prison, Paul exhorts all of us to “not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philip 4:6-7)
***
If praising God and giving thanks had the effect it did in the lives of all these who saw the Lord triumph in impossible situations, what could a heart of thanksgiving to the Lord do in our own lives?
While most of us aren’t facing a war, or prison, or death, we may be facing other, more personal trials. Could giving thanks not keep our eyes focused on our Father of the heavenly lights, from whom every good and perfect gift flows? And could giving thanks not be a gateway that would open our hearts to God’s joy and love and triumph in impossible situations?
I think so.
Another bit of peculiar timing I love is that Thanksgiving is just weeks before Christmas. Observing a time of giving thanks to God for all we’ve been blessed with might just keep us from allowing greed and materialism and self-importance to swallow up a pure and grateful heart as we (and our children) head into Christmastime, or any time.
Now, let’s time travel into the future just a bit…
***
We’re in heaven, living a life more full of love and joy than we ever could have imagined. God has wiped every tear from our eyes, and there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain.
We’ve received the eternal inheritance we’d been promised could “never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” (1 Peter 1:4-6)
Truly, we have more to be thankful for, more treasures in this life and in heaven – more than we can see with our eyes, and infinitely more than could ever be contained in this life – than we have time to voice them.
Go ahead, I dare you to try…
Heavenly Father, we are filled with thanksgiving for all you’ve blessed us with, and all the blessings you have yet to show us. Thank you for your immeasurably gracious love, for our salvation from certain death, for your continual presence, your faithfulness, and for our eternal home in heaven with You. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
Saturday Song – Holy Water
I was driving down the road minding my own business when a song I’d never heard before came on the radio. It grabbed my soul by the shoulders, shook it and said “get your eyes off the world, off yourself, and back onto the gracious, refreshing, life-giving, life-renewing Living Water of Jesus Christ.” Maybe it’ll do the same for you. God bless you today and always.
Holy Water
by We The Kingdom
God, I’m on my knees again
God, I’m beginning please again
I need you
Oh, I need you
Walking down these desert roads
Water for my thirsty soul
I need you
Oh, I need you
Your forgiveness
Is like sweet, sweet honey
On my lips
Like the sound of a symphony
To my ears
Like Holy water on my skin
Dead man walking, slave to sin
I wanna know being born again
I need you
Oh, God, I need you
So, take me to the riverside
Take me under, baptize
I need you
Oh, God I need you
Your forgiveness
Is like sweet, sweet honey
On my lips
Like the sound of a symphony
To my ears
Like holy water on my skin
(On my skin, on my…)
I don’t wanna abuse your grace
God, I need it every day
It’s the only thing that ever really
Makes me wanna change
I don’t wanna abuse your grace
God, I need it every day
It’s the only thing that ever really
Makes me wanna change
I don’t wanna abuse your grace
God, I need it every day
It’s the only thing that ever really
Makes me wanna change
I don’t wanna abuse your grace
God, I need it every day
It’s the only thing that ever really
Makes me wanna change
Your forgiveness
Is like sweet, sweet honey
On my lips (Yes, it is)
Like the sound of a symphony
To my ears
It’s like holy water…
Your forgiveness
Is like sweet, sweet honey
On my lips
Like the sound of a symphony
To my ears
It’s like holy water on my skin
It’s like holy water on my skin
It’s like holy water.
Sunday Praise and a Prayer for Miracles
Dear Heavenly Father, we praise you. We praise you for your immeasurable love and grace and mercy, and for your joy that surpasses all understanding. Thank you for the joy of our salvation that resides deep in our souls and remains no matter what’s happening at the surface of our lives.
Father, we come to you and petition for those who have been affected by storms and hurricanes. For those who have lost loved ones we pray that you would comfort them in a way that only you can. We pray you would provide for them in miraculous ways. We pray you would provide food and medicine and clothing and shelter.
We pray for restoration and salvation. We pray for wisdom and hope and healing to hearts and to the land. We pray for those first responders and those who are there in your Son’s name to bring provisions and to wrap their arms around them in love.
Father, the devastation seems overwhelming, but we are asking you, the One who is omnipotent – all powerful, and omniscient – all knowing, the One who is El Shaddai – The All Sufficient God, to do miracle after miracle in the wake of these storms.
May your powerful name be called upon over and over, and may you hear and answer those calls over and above anything we could ever ask or think. May your holy name be glorified, Lord Jesus. We trust you and we thank you in advance for all you’re going to do. In Jesus’ Holy and Precious Name, the Name above all names, amen.
Sunday Praise and a Prayer for the Persecuted
Dear Heavenly Father, we praise you, and we thank you for all you’ve blessed us with. Forgive us for the times we take those blessings for granted, and we ask that you would remind us often to be grateful to you for pouring out onto us more blessing, more freedom, more love and grace than we can imagine. I pray our gratitude will lead us to be a fountain of that love, grace, and mercy that you’ve so generously given to us.
Lord, we lift up our brothers and sisters around the world who are being persecuted for their faith, those who are in prison, who are being tortured, who are separated from their families. Father, in Jesus’ name I pray you would fill them with your Holy Spirit and your might so that all you desire to accomplish in and through them will be done. May you do miraculous things, things that only you can do.
Lord, please fill them with your peace that passes all understanding; fill them with your strength to go on from one hour to the next; fill them with your love and forgiveness so that their hearts don’t become hardened or bitter; fill them with your joy so they are a light to those around them; fill them with boldness to continue proclaiming the gospel and the name of Christ; fill them with hope as they remember their great reward is with you.
May they feel your presence with them, and may you, in the mighty name of Jesus, bind the hand of the enemy. May our brothers and sisters continue to trust you, put their faith in you, and may they see, even if only a little bit, the fruit of their labor. And may we always remember them in our prayers, and honor them with our lives, boldly and freely proclaiming the gospel and the name of Jesus Christ. It’s in His precious and matchless name I pray, amen.
Sunday Praise and a Prayer For Our Sanctification
Dear Heavenly Father,
We praise your holy and precious name. Lord, we thank you for our sanctification. Thank you for loving us enough to work with us and see us through the process of becoming more and more like your Son. Yes, it takes trials and tribulations of all kinds, and I know you hurt when we hurt, but you also see what you’re making us to be, how you’re molding our hearts into something beautiful, how you’re permanently changing our souls to conform to you. Though we can’t see it, we trust you and thank you for your perfect plan. Thank you for preparing us for our eternal home with you. Please give us courage and strength as we go through that spiritual metamorphosis, through the pain and sorrow and grief, and in it may you also give us times of refreshing, and a deep down hope and joy that act as an anchor to our souls to keep us grounded in you. Fill us with your Spirit, Lord, and as we daily nail our sins to the cross, may He flow through us as a holy river, overflowing with love and joy on all we meet. In Jesus’ precious name I pray, amen.
Lesson From a Rescue – #2
“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
Psalm 34:18
It’s been almost two years since we rescued our furry, four-legged friend, and it continues to be apparent that he rescued us right back. The last time I talked about how the Lord used Rocky to remind me that no matter what, God never tires of loving us or taking caring of us. That He will continue to rescue us until that day He rescues us for the last time and takes us home to be with Him forever. And recently He reminded me of that once again.
As much as I hate it, there are still times when the pain I’m feeling is so deep, so encompassing, so overshadowing, that I wonder where God is. Is He still there? Does He see me? Does He know what’s going on and how much pain I’m in?
Recently I’d been suddenly faced with some new health issues, on top of an already far-too-full plate of them, and I was overwhelmed with it all. They were bigger than my brain could handle and I didn’t know what to do. I’d been running to try to stay ahead of them, but they caught up to me one day and I broke down in tears.
My bedroom door was closed and Rocky was at the other end of the house.
When I was finished, I knew when I opened the door Rocky would be right there. He always is.
And sure enough he was right there, waiting for me to open the door. His rescued heart knows what pain is and somehow he understands when someone needs a comforting friend.
I immediately thought that if a dog with a brain the size of a walnut and a heart not much bigger is right there whenever I need comforting, how much more is my Abba Father who sent His only Son to die for my sins and filled me with His Holy Spirit near to me when my heart is broken? And how much more will He rescue me when my spirit is humbled?
Sometimes I just need to open the door of my heart, to look up from the cloud of confusion and pain, to see that He is there. And even in those times I don’t see or hear or feel Him, I can know He’s there, just on the other side of the door, because I am called to walk by faith and not by sight. Sometimes pain is designed to be overwhelming, bigger than we can handle, so our faith will grow bigger than our need for sight.
The Friend we have in Christ knows what it’s like to suffer, to be in pain, and even to cry out to His Father, asking where He is. He understands our pain and is compassionate toward us. I’m convinced that when we’re prostrate on the ground in grief, He’s down there with us, holding us, and crying out to the Father on our behalf.
Rocky is my furry little illustration of that.
But the Friend we have in Christ knows our heart and our pain, inside and out, and His love and compassion bring Him near and rescue us, now and forever.
The Worst Kind of Fake News
“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?” Gal 3:1-3
Paul spends much of his time writing, pleading with the new believers to not get sidetracked, but to continue to keep their eyes on their Savior, walking in the Spirit, and receiving from Him the grace and strength they need to live out their faith.
But some of them were being lured into believing that salvation was Jesus and…
That and can be anything. For the Galatians it was Jesus and the law.
People were telling the believers in Galatia they needed to follow the law to be justified. They needed to rely on themselves and their works, in effect, luring them away from the grace they received by faith in Christ. And Paul knew that as they moved toward reliance on the law, on themselves, faith in Christ would be left behind.
Paul said they’d been bewitched – to malign, that is, to speak harmful untruths about, speak evil of, slander, defame, injurious, to fascinate by false representations.
The enemy’s ways haven’t changed in 2000 years. They haven’t changed since the garden. he is the originator of fake news.
Sometimes his ways are as blatant as they were in Galatia, but oftentimes the method is more inconspicuous and gradual.
New believers can be easy prey for the enemy. The wolf enters the pen and the lambs are still naive and easily coerced. They can be convinced to do anything other than the simplicity of putting their faith in Jesus and following Him daily. Surely it can’t be that easy, he tells them.
Older believers can be led away, too, if they get lazy in their walk, let their relationship with Christ grow cold, or fall into sin, and instead of repenting, they gradually move away from their faith in Christ to reliance on their works to earn favor, forgiveness, grace, and love.
And no matter how long a person has been in Christ, anyone who lets the reading and studying of God’s Word slide and along with it discernment and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, any “inspirational” meme or thought going around social media that sounds good, but is deeply theologically flawed, can be used to alter our course of thinking and begin to lead us away from a pure and truthful faith in Christ.
And as individuals, and whole churches (made up of individuals), it’s easy to get past those early days, weeks, and years after salvation (or after church planting) and begin to go on autopilot. Instead of relying on the Holy Spirit we gradually start just doing because we’ve done it for so long, forgetting that we’re living a life of faith, a life that requires the Holy Spirit to daily move in and through us.
It is Christ’s life we live now, not our own. We cannot live it in our own strength or with our own human wisdom. We can never presuppose we know what direction He wants us to go, what He wants us to do, and when He wants us to do it.
Paul exhorted the Christians in Galatia to not go back to trying to earn salvation or God’s love and grace by works of the law. By trying to be perfect. If that could ever be the case then Christ died in vain. Trying to earn our way to God through works says we don’t need the Holy Spirit any longer and we quench Him from moving in our lives.
If we try to finish in our flesh, we forfeit the strength and courage He desires to give us to live out our lives for Him, and the love and grace and peace He wants to fill us with.
There are moments in our faith, whether at 6 months in or 30 years, where we can press in to Christ harder, or we can take a step back, and begin to rely on ourselves.
All of us will have those moments, and most of us will choose at some point, to one degree or another, to rely on ourselves for a time.
The good news is God’s grace toward His children doesn’t run out.
Anytime we’ve been relying on ourselves and looking around we realize we’re not following Jesus anymore, all we need to do is call Him.
Do the thing we did at first: return to our first love. Believe in Christ and repent. Turn our minds back to Him and His Word. Put our faith and trust in our Savior, and ask Him to fill us afresh with His Holy Spirit that He might lead us and give us wisdom to serve Him all the rest of our days.
Saturday Song – King of the World
I was driving home from a doctor appointment the other day when this song came on the radio. I’ve heard it a few times recently, and the timing on this day, at this moment, wasn’t lost on me. I had asked for prayer from friends for this appointment, half joking that this would be doctor number 5,482.
Much of my prayer life over the last 14 years and 10 months has been consumed with asking for answers to health mysteries that, so far, doctors have yet to answer. God has yet to answer. I’d love to be able to say I trusted God from the first day all the way to this, that my faith never wavered, that I never took the reins from Him and tried to steer the cart in the direction I thought it should go. I’d love to say that. But I can’t.
And as I sang along, I heard the lyrics again…
“I try to take life back right out of the hands of the King of the world
How could I make you so small
When you’re the one who holds it all
When did I forget that you’ve always been the king of the world”
And I suddenly thought about Jack standing on the prow of the ship yelling out for all mankind to hear – “I’m the king of the world!”
Don’t we all stand inside our hearts yelling “I’m the king of the world!”? We all want to the be the king of our own world. Our pride drives us to it, and our fears expand our territory.
That’s the struggle. To drive or be driven by God. Those reins are so close, sometimes so loosely held by God, and if we want them bad enough He’ll hand them over and let us steer ourselves right into a ditch. And He’ll wait, and pray until we’re ready to reach up to Him, covered in the muck, asking Him to lift us out yet again. And He’s always right there, with love in His eyes, pulling us out, washing us off and setting us right back next to Him.
Whether we’re riding a ship, a cart, a race car or a skateboard, there’s only one rightful King of the world, of our world. And yes, the ride is bumpy and confusing and painful and sometimes feels excruciatingly long, but He knows where He’s going and how to get there. We can trust Him. After all, He was King long before there was a world and you and me.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1
“You will always be the King of the world…”