Psalm Sixteen

Wisdom, confidence, joy and security. As I'm going through some recent circumstances I can honestly say that I am thirsting for these things! Wisdom, "What do I do Lord?", confidence, "Where is my next step?, joy, "Will there be anything good in or from this?", security, "Why do I feel so scared?". Our minds swirl with questions and fears that almost seem to be drowning us BUT, David speaks a wonderful truth to us in Psalm sixteen, "We are safe, equipped, stable and filled with joy because we have God!" We have ALL good things because we belong to Him! He is our FULL portion, our lot is secure and God has drawn boundary lines for us that fall in pleasant places! We have a delightful inheritance!

One of our greatest fears is to be alone with a problem, with no one to guide us through.... BUT, God says He will counsel us! If we set the Lord before us and obediently follow Him, we will not be shaken. None of us like to be shaken up, it's a horrible feeling that seems to shatter our circumstances into a million pieces. What was once a big problem then seems like a bigger problem scattered all around us! Hoping for help can then turn to helplessness and hopelessness! BUT, we are not wanderers with no guide, we are the children of the Most High and because of His love for us, our hearts can be glad, our tongues can rejoice and our bodies can rest secure! We all know how circumstances can affect our bodies, our health and our abilities! The first place stress manifests itself is in our body and nothing apart from the grace of God can halt that. BUT, we can have peace through anything because we know that He will not abandon us!

Verse 11 closes the miktam with, "You Lord, have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand." Children of God, He is our guide, He fills us, He is our joy, He is present, He can make what is dark, light, what is crooked, straight, what is confusing, clear, He is our all. This Psalm reminds us that we are His, we are set apart, we are covered by His mighty wing, He is our refuge and our strength.

Exodus 3:14, ...And God said to Moses, "Tell them, I AM sent you.

I AM

I AM...God Almighty, Your Shield, The Lord, The First and the Last, The God of all mankind, Son of man, Son of God, The Bread of Life, The Light of the World, The Gate for the Sheep, The Good Shepherd, The Resurrection and the Life, The Way The Truth and The Life, The True Vine...I AM coming soon, I AM Jesus....Who do you say that I AM?  

Surface Tension

Have you ever felt like a tiny little puddle, just laying there with no control over what is happening to you or around you? Sometimes when we're stricken by pain we can feel that way, like we are powerless to maintain our old self and are forced to stop all activity that was healthy or positive and just deal with the uninvited intruder to our body! Other times there may be a circumstance that is beyond our control and we are called to rise up with a love that we feel is unattainable by human effort. Every part of us wants to scream for deliverance because our fears appear to darken any possibility of love succeeding. Hope, seeming like a red hot handle that we dare not grab because it means there will be pain involved as we are called to set our anger, resentment and bitterness down. We feel like our only choices are to remain stagnant or to free fall, and neither is really a choice, is it?

I've found that in our refusal to surrender to God, He will send more rain! Our puddle swells and as the surface tension expands to its limit, it finally breaks and begins to run off. I used to see this as a, "Come on God!, Are you serious!" moment! Just when we think we can't take anymore, we are pushed to breaking! Yet, what we call breaking....God calls expanding, because He knows everything that is to come, all the twists and turns and all the blessings they will bring! Our tiny mud puddle breaks forth and becomes a stream that now has a chance to reach beyond, a chance to know things that are deeper! The overflow is not a strike by God saying, "There take that!", rather, it's a way of escape and anyone who is stuck in a circumstance knows what even the smallest change can mean when you feel trapped!

A couple weeks ago I started a bible study by Beth Moore at our church. Each week I can see the hand of God as he intervenes in the circumstances of my life and draws a common theme....."Your puddle my precious one, will swell and flow until it flows into my ocean of limitless love." I'm finally seeing the bridge that takes me from despair to hope! I always thought of the process as being that my prayer should bring a result from God and if it didn't, well, He just didn't love me. That kind of thinking has kept me in a prison for years but through this study I'm learning how to run to my Heavenly Daddy, search the Word (Jesus) for what He wants to say to me, then, invite the Holy Spirit into all of it so He can enable and guide me to victory through my trials!

This week we learned about agape love, which is God's divine unconditional love. We can never love in that divine fashion BUT He can pour that love through us and enable us to love like He does. I needed this exact lesson at exactly this time in my life! My husband's mother is quite old and progressively getting worse in health. Her other son is Kevin, my brother in law, and he is mentally handicapped, kinda like rain-man but more talkative and funny. He has such an innocent and child-like personality, even though we are both in our fifties, that makes him easy to love! Having him here part-time has been an adjustment but its worked out fine over the years. Recently though, we are faced with the reality that he will be our full-time son and our lives will change dramatically, forever. We will be having to be responsible for another human being, his seizures and medical problems and our privacy and freedom will be gone. I was blinded by fear and anxiety this week as I wrestled with this reality.

God spoke to me though, through this weeks lesson, and revealed to me that agape love is more of an action than a feeling. Beth writes, "Agape always flows from what is right and best. We will discover that God commands us to agape. He is not commanding us toward a feeling, He is commanding us to surrender to an act of His Spirit which results in obedience.....Agape is not fueled by the desire of its recipient; it is fueled by the need.....Agape love means God did what humanity most needed." I took those words and changed the names, "Agape love means Dee did what Kevin most needed." I saw the difference between a life of doing and a life of loving. Believe it or not I never distinguished the two! Mother Theresa said, "It's not how much we do, but with how much love we do it."

In 1 peter 4:8 it says, "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins." God showed me a deeper truth into that scripture this week and He revealed to me that by loving others, God's mercy is more and more available to us! At the end of this life, when we stand before God, all that will matter is.....did you love others. That mercy given by God will expand as we let God expand His acts of agape love through us in our life! Our fears and our selfishness keep us from knowing the expansive love of God, AND, those fears and selfish choices keep others from knowing God's divine love through us! Fear happens when we step out of the moment and try to go ahead. Our peace, our service, our love is now!

I'm trusting God that if I obey His command to surrender to an act of His Spirit that He will take care of everything I'll need to get through. I want love and joy in my life, not anger and resentment. My story is a long one with many reasons to be angry but now that I finally understand that God's Spirit will help me with everything, I'm choosing to release my bitterness. Life rarely goes as planned and anything outside our plans can rattle our world! We can be overcome by feelings of panic and anxiety that separate us from God's truth about how He can put peace where there's challenge, joy where there's sadness and ability where there's crippling fear! I'm letting Him overflow my puddle into a stream, a river, a lake, an ocean of His love that will enable me to be loved and to love! Whatever comes....His grace will be sufficient.

1 Corinthians 13:7-8, Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

Psalm Fifteen

Have you ever felt shaken up? It's a terrible feeling to experience. I'm reminded of the poor little ants that I used to capture as a child and trap them in a glass mason jar for the observation of me and my curious friends. There they were hanging out with their buddies, carrying crumbs and looking for discarded lollipops and along I come and changed their world! Scooped up, and of course, like every kid who does this ritual, I had to shake the jar!

In today's Psalm David asks, "Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill?" Asking "who" assumes someone can have that honor! Wouldn't you love to dwell in God's sanctuary? Or live on His holy hill! When I was younger these things were thoughts but not desires. Now though, as I've aged and matured, those scenarios sound wonderful! Right now I could use a sanctuary or holy hill to run to and dwell with the God of all things! Psalm 14 tells me how....vs 2-5, He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart and has no slander on his tongue, who does his neighbor no wrong and cast no slur on his fellowman, who despises a vile man but honors those who fear the Lord, who keeps his oath even when it hurts, who lends his money without usury (exorbitant interest) and does not accept a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken.

How often do people complain about being short changed but when given too much they just pocket it as if they deserved it or it wasn't morally wrong.  Character is who you are when no one but God is looking. Every opportunity we have, no matter how small it may seem, is an opportunity for God to show himself through us! Give the change back, point out the item under your cart that the cashier didn't see and didn't ring up. Did you get over-payed? Bring it to your employers attention rather than say, "You know, I deserve this! I work hard and they basically owe this to me!" How about small things like...."They only charged us for one rather than two burgers." or "That guy loaded up more in the truck than I payed for." or "So and so didn't bill me this month, let's wait and see if he remembers." Our actions come from our heart which is convinced by the mind of either right or wrong doing by which ever Spirit or spirits you surrender your will to.

Can our walk be blameless? Can we be righteous? Through Christ we can! By having Him in our heart as Lord of our life, He will live through us and we can walk in His Spirit and want the things of God! From that relationship will grow a desire to change from our old behavior to a new person who is guided by a righteous indwelling! Try visualizing a set of scales before you, then put your so called free flat of flowers or extra $10. that the cashier accidentally gave you on one side and the God of the universe on the other! Pretty stupid huh? Every time we make a compromise to our values we are surrendering the right to NOT be shaken up by life! How small and petty we can be sometimes. Speak the truth from your heart, don't slander other people or cast aspersions, be thoughtful to your neighbor and don't gossip. Pivot away from the vile person but come along side those who fear God. Keep your promises, always. Don't burden people with any unfair demands and never allow your soul to be purchased with a bribe that would lead you to lie about a person. If you have to convince yourself through justification that something you did was alright....then it wasn't. Choose righteousness through Jesus.

Ask the Holy Spirit to heighten your conscience to this truth. He already pointed out some tiny incident to me this morning that I normally would have thought was nothing. But it obviously revealed a hidden entitlement in my heart that He wanted corrected. If we remain open to Him and allow Him to work through us, then just imagine how many lives He could touch through us if we asked for an accountable heart! All those "little, insignificant, unmentionable" incidents that occur all day long would become opportunities for 

God to flash His light into the darkness! I call them "O well" moments, and each seems too small for us to even consider beginning to rectify, BUT, God sees them as huge opportunities to open conversations from one heart to another! We think, "I don't want to walk all the way back into the store for just this small mistake.", "I'm not driving all the way back there!", "That person knows I didn't mean it that way."..... Make the trip back! It's about more than YOU! If you feel the prodding in your heart then be obedient and you will not only see tremendous things, but tremendous things will ripple out from that act of obedience!

Your world, my sisters and brothers, will still be shaken..........but you won't. 

Psalm Fourteen

The foolish and the righteous are like night and day, Romans 15:5b says, "Apart from Me (God) you can do nothing (meaning nothing righteous). In Psalm 14 there is a clear and distinctive line drawn that identifies each of these choices, and yes, it is a choice. We can choose to walk in the light of love, wisdom, grace, salvation....or we can choose to stumble in the darkness and try to "do life" on our own. One choice is self-focused and the other is God-focused, and which one we choose will determine not only how we go through life but where we go after our earthly life! When considering our eternal salvation it would be wise to choose righteousness rather than making a foolish decision, but on the other hand we can be saved and yet make foolish choices.

Verse 6 especially stood out to me this week, as it reads, "Evildoers frustrate the plans of the poor, BUT the Lord is their refuge." Oh, what a week I had! It wasn't horrible as far as any catastrophic or imminent trouble but it was aggravating and frustrating! In my journal I wrote, "I'm going from patience to fury in seconds as my spirit feels shaky, vexed and edgy. The cloudy day should be bringing a sense of coolness to my skin, but rather it's muggy and unsettling and my skin feels like there's a thousand tiny needles poking into it!. I feel self-conscience and my head is tightening as if it's in a vise! I'm dropping everything, bumping into and banging into everything, my bangs keep falling in my eyes, the back of my neck is hot, nothing is going right and I feel creepy and out of sorts! Where is the nice lady that I was becoming through Christ? She seems to have run off and left her ugly, angry twin behind and everything she should be praying about is spewing out of her mouth! Ahhhhhh!"

I often picture a certain scenario when I feel that way...."I'm walking down the center of a prison block, cells line the sides filled with every bad thing! In one cell is aggravation, in another is heat, then pride, discouragement, pain, anger, bitterness, resentment, fury, confusion, hunger, thirst, jealousy, envy.....They are all screaming, yelling, swiping at me and poking me as I walk down the corridor." This scene is a metaphor of life! This earthly walk takes us "through" the center isle of all kinds of trials and the spiritual enemies of God can try to torment us but we have a choice whether to walk the corridor knowing victory or knowing fear! Yes, the evildoers WILL frustrate the plans of the poor, BUT the Lord is their refuge!

Children of God....each battle is hard fought in His name and may not look to you as if it was won, BUT every battle He fights with and for us is won! Victors not victims! So, when the enemies begin a new campaign to frighten us, cause us to doubt or to bring out the worst in us, we must put on the armor of God and trust Him more and more each time. Through each struggle He will build into our characters a maturity that will less and less question His steadfast and immutable power!

Steps that can help:

• Pray daily for the Holy Spirit to enable you!
• Identify the hostile intruder as soon as possible!
• Have a scripture to battle every attack!
• Ask for intercessory prayer!
• Put on praise music or sing worship songs!
• See God as the all powerful Victor that He is!
• Rest if you are tired!
• Carry on after making sure you're hydrated and fed!
• Walk "in" the Spirit and keep growing and maturing.

When you do fall...don't be so hard on yourself. As long as you're growing, you're heading in the right direction! Due to His grace, love, mercy, wisdom....all we can do is fall less often and for shorter periods of time! Acknowledge and keep a thoughtful record of your growth so the lies of the enemy cannot take you down and make you think otherwise! Apart from Him we can do nothing and through Him we can do all things!

Read Romans 7:15-25 and chapter 8. We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us! Rom 8:37

~The Lord is our Refuge~