You have carried me beyond my limitations. It is like I am gliding with my feet off the ground, trusting in a heavenly harness. It is the ride of faith.
You know my weaknesses, for they are very great. Without grace I would truly be a failure and destroyer, But, you have lifted me up in Christ's favor. You turn all things for good. Faith and risk go together. What a great  risks must be taken in every Christian's life.
My feet are clear off the ground with no visible security of this future route. I must take your word for it and hope with all my heart. This is the walk of faith, where it is all by grace. What  a peculiar idea - so alien to human nature and earthly living.

"Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?"- Exodus 15:11

The Ride of Circumstance

We experience an unworldly freedom when our circumstances no longer have the power to dictate our moods, reactions, and emotions. So often, human emotions are enslaved to a ride of circumstance. It starts a cycle of behaving and living in a way that will gratify the desire for joy at all costs. It breeds a human monster of selfishness and self-centeredness, because only when things go our way, or when great things happen, can we be happy.  We get the opportunity everyday however, to walk over the defeat of our beastly flesh; yet what an impossibility in the human power!  There is always occasion for learning contentment and the ability for it in Christ. "..for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content"- Philippians 4:11. Be encouraged, that it is allowed for us to still be learning contentment; since, it is a thing that cannot come naturally, but must be learned.  

 It is a supernatural victory to have joy in suffering and great hope in hopeless circumstances. The impossible living of the Christian is so paradoxically wonderful and outer-worldly. We have the resources in God to bear fruit in drought and to remain an evergreen, even when the rains delay. Rivers of living water may flow from our hearts whenever we believe Jesus.

The root of most of my dismay and discouragement comes from circumstances that I cannot see beyond.  When I am sad, and really stop to think about why, I realize that there is someplace where my unbelief has darkened my hope and joy. I am not believing in God's forgiveness perhaps, or not believing that His love and faithfulness will conquer the mess I have made; maybe I am not believing that God has my best in mind, even in a seemingly "contradictory" circumstance. Maybe we just don't believe God will bless us, or answer a long delayed prayer. But, God blesses us because He is good and delights to show mercy. God will bless you. You dont have to be good enough for God to bless you. In fact, He may even withhold some blessings until you realize that they cannot be deserved or earned. "The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made"- Psalm 145:9.

Go Israel

12-14-12... Dear Families of the Connecticut Children,

Born for another world, they were taken in the dawn of life.

Innocent and beautiful, of whom this world is not worthy. They passed away, carried by angels into Heaven’s arms.

Mom and dad are shattered with broken hearts. grief too unbearable to speak.  

Little saints are comforted and received in the Father’s embrace. He holds them close in precious healing and very real, everlasting life. You won’t hear their sweet voices in your home anymore, but they will lift up their voices now to sing in His.

Mom and dad, brothers and sisters, no one can take this grief from you – it has wiped the wind from your lungs.  The pain is like a dagger tearing into your heart as reality hits over and over.  Nothing can remove this suffering that cannot be escaped; but you must head straight into it like a great oncoming wave. Right now it is too faint to see, but there is a glimmer of light that will grow into hope for your family. Know that “Jesus wept.”

Jesus groaned. “Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled”- John 11:33-35.  It was not supposed to be like this, men were not supposed to die. It was not supposed to be this way.

“Jesus wept.”

Your little ones are safe and loved more than you would ever be capable of loving them. Soon your heart will be able to see them dancing before the King in joy unspeakable. In a wisdom we cannot yet understand, they have perhaps been spared from greater evil to come.

 "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good"- Romans 12:21

Once the devil asked me if God was still good. but we don't speak to him. Yes, God is still good!

“Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him…”

You will survive this. And now you must seek to go to them, for they can never return to you here.  They live there! Believe God and you will be together again. He holds your tears in a bottle and not one is lost or unseen. God is there keeping all the shattered pieces together and holding you when you are too weak to breathe. 

She is blind, but sang a song that sees.

From My Upmost For HIs Highest today!

"The Great Life

Dec 14, 2012

"Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled . . . —John 14:27

"Whenever we experience something difficult in our personal life, we are tempted to blame God. But we are the ones in the wrong, not God. Blaming God is evidence that we are refusing to let go of some disobedience somewhere in our lives. But as soon as we let go, everything becomes as clear as daylight to us. As long as we try to serve two masters, ourselves and God, there will be difficulties combined with doubt and confusion. Our attitude must be one of complete reliance on God. Once we get to that point, there is nothing easier than living the life of a saint. We encounter difficulties when we try to usurp the authority of the Holy Spirit for our own purposes.
God’s mark of approval, whenever you obey Him, is peace. He sends an immeasurable, deep peace; not a natural peace, “as the world gives,” but the peace of Jesus. Whenever peace does not come, wait until it does, or seek to find out why it is not coming. If you are acting on your own impulse, or out of a sense of the heroic, to be seen by others, the peace of Jesus will not exhibit itself. This shows no unity with God or confidence in Him. The spirit of simplicity, clarity, and unity is born through the Holy Spirit, not through your decisions. God counters our self-willed decisions with an appeal for simplicity and unity.
My questions arise whenever I cease to obey. When I do obey God, problems come, not between me and God, but as a means to keep my mind examining with amazement the revealed truth of God. But any problem that comes between God and myself is the result of disobedience. Any problem that comes while I obey God (and there will be many), increases my overjoyed delight, because I know that my Father knows and cares, and I can watch and anticipate how He will unravel my problems."

"And will not be Anxious..."

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,

And whose hope is the Lord.

For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters,
Which spreads out its roots by the river,
And will not fear when heat comes;
But its leaf will be green,
And will not be anxious in the year of drought,
Nor will cease from yielding fruit"- Jeremiah 17:7-8

There is a temptation to see the walk with God as a sprint. But, truly it is a marathon that requires endurance, perseverance, and faith to finish well. There will be times of sprinting and soaring on wings like eagles. But, then we can also expect times where it will just be walking and not growing faint -perhaps in the year of disappointment, unending challenges, or drought. The life of Christ has power to overcome these times, and His waters cause us to still bear fruit in them. Perhaps the season of drought is where you may bear the most fruit and not realize it.

Those who are called to teach are usually the ones who have the most to learn. God’s faithfulness must be proven in our own lives; we must be willing to be proven. Teachers can teach others the faithfulness of God out of the Bible, but God desires His testimony of faithfulness to be real and teachable from our own lives as well. I am able to comfort with the comfort I have received, and I cannot give what I do not have.

It is the good that opposes the best, and the soul’s greatest battle is having faith for the best. Our culture is so immediate and so impatient. It has affected all of the newest generations. We forget that is it through “patience and faith that we inherit the promises.”  It may be a good time now, but it will be the best time later. I used to see the Christian life as a sprint and expected immediate fulfillment of promises. At first, all my faith could handle was marvelous displays, visible results, and quick fulfillments. Then God deemed necessary to test and stretch me. This happened with delays, disappointments, humiliations (most needed and deserved!), and seasons of drought. I must say however, that there was never a cessation of blessing. In fact, I think I have learned to be more appreciative of blessings and more able to see them in the time of drought than ever. Though I did complain and did not always pass a test graciously, I can look back and marvel at what God has done. I can rejoice that all of it was worth it - Jesus is worth it! - and I would never change a thing.

God wants to give us a strong and believing heart in prayer. He wants to enlarge our hearts to be sensitive to the Spirit, loving, and steadfast in the storm. The greatest gift is found in the time of “disappointment.” I found that gift to be Jesus.  When all else “failed,” He stayed faithful and true. When all else was “dry,” He was the river that cooled and refreshed the depths of my thirsty soul. Jesus is the exceeding, great Reward to be had in the waiting (Genesis 15:1). It takes these times for us, as it did Abraham, to know Jesus more - not just in word or in the soaring, but in the walking and not growing faint. When Jesus becomes known to us the deep, constant lover of the soul and sustainer of abundant life.

“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed”-1 Peter 4:12.

I found that in the year of drought, the greatest victories of the soul have been won. It can be a time of joy unspeakable, because you are able to delight yourself in the Lord without competition. The year of drought is a divine appointment with Jesus, where your heart can truly discover delighting itself in the Lord - without any earthly incentive attached. Being in it for God, because of God, and not for what we will get from Him (though "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits"!- Psalm 103:2). Do not be anxious in the year of drought; you are chosen and blessed to endure it with Jesus. And you will not cease to bear fruit, when your hope is in the Lord. You may not see the rain coming, but it is because your roots must instead spread out deeper to find His water. Do not give up, but lean hard onto the Lord. “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price”- Isaiah 55:1.

 Sometimes God just wants us to appreciate what we do have, and what He has already graciously and abundantly given. “Whom having not seen, you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:”- 1 Peter 1:8. 

The night is so short compared to the brightness of day, and will be soon forgotten. Rejoice, because God loves you and will perfect that which concerns you. Soon, you will be able to teach and comfort others, and you will be like one founded upon the solid Rock, tried and tested with battle scars of victory. Will you be the only person in Heaven without battle scars? I think not, but they will be a testament to God’s overcoming power and beauty of victory in the life of faith.

“Would you like to be there and see yourself pointed at as the one saint who never knew a sorrow? Oh, no! for you would be an alien in the midst of the sacred brotherhood. We will be content to share the battle, for we shall soon wear the crown and wave the palm.” –C. H. Spurgeon

12-12-12 "Streams in the Desert" Devotional

God's Mysterious Dealings

"Thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons" (2 Kings 4:4).

"They were to be alone with God, for they were not dealing with the laws of nature, nor human government, nor the church, nor the priesthood, nor even with the great prophet of God, but they must needs be isolated from all creatures, from all leaning circumstances, from all props of human reason, and swung off, as it were, into the vast blue inter-stellar space, hanging on God alone, in touch with the fountain of miracles.

Here is a part in the programme of God's dealings, a secret chamber of isolation in prayer and faith which every soul must enter that is very fruitful.

There are times and places where God will form a mysterious wall around us, and cut away all props, and all the ordinary ways of doing things, and shut us up to something Divine, which is utterly new and unexpected, something that old circumstances do not fit into, where we do not know just what will happen, where God is cutting the cloth of our lives on a new pattern, where He makes us look to Himself.

Most religious people live in a sort of treadmill life, where they can calculate almost everything that will happen, but the souls that God leads out into immediate and special dealings, He shuts in where all they know is that God has hold of them, and is dealing with them, and their expectation is from Him alone."

Like this widow, we must be detached from outward things and attached inwardly to the Lord alone in order to see His wonders.  --Soul Food

***

In the sorest trials God often makes the sweetest discoveries of Himself.  --Gems

"God sometimes shuts the door and shuts us in,

That He may speak, perchance through grief or pain,

And softly, heart to heart, above the din,

May tell some precious thought to us again."

Beautiful Song. I love these Lyrics!!

(Cover w/great voices ^ ^ )

Psalm 27

"Once I heard a song of sweetness,
As it cleft the morning air,
Sounding in its blest completeness,
Like a tender, pleading prayer;
And I sought to find the singer,
Whence the wondrous song was borne;
And I found a bird, sore wounded,
Pinioned by a cruel thorn.
I have seen a soul in sadness,
While its wings with pain were furl’d,
Giving hope, and cheer and gladness
That should bless a weeping world;
And I knew that life of sweetness,
Was of pain and sorrow row borne,
And a stricken soul was singing,
With its heart against a thorn.
Ye are told of One who loved you,
Of a Saviour crucified,
Ye are told of nails that pinioned,
And a spear that pierced His side;
Ye are told of cruel scourging,
Of a Saviour bearing scorn,
And He died for your salvation,
With His brow against a thorn.
Ye “are not above the Master.”
Will you breathe a sweet refrain?
And His grace will be sufficient,
When your heart is pierced with pain.
Will you live to bless His loved ones,
Tho’ your life be bruised and torn,
Like the bird that sang so sweetly,
With its heart against a thorn?"
–Selected (Streams in the Desert)

Beautiful Quote for Women

"The woman is uniquely designed and equipped—physiologically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually—by her Creator to be a bearer and nurturer of life."
-Nancy Leigh DeMoss

"He has made every thing beautiful in its time: also he has put eternity in men's hearts..." - Ecclesiastes 3:11

A great song with great lyrics!

"I know who goes before me. I know who stands behind. The God of Angel armies is always by my side. He is a friend of mine"- Chris Tomlin

God doesn't look for good men to use. God looks for humble sinners who will trust Him to make them into the good men that can be used.

"'When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?'

We all have faith in good principles, in good management, in good common sense, but who amongst us has faith in Jesus Christ? Physical courage is grand, moral courage is grander, but the man who trusts Jesus Christ in the face of the terrific problems of life is worth a whole crowd of heroes."- Oswald Chambers

What did it feel like when the pure hands of Jesus held my face and wiped my eyes? His love pours forth as oil over my head, mixing with my tears-  of eternal joy and happiness, of earthly sorrow and repentance. Every time I sat alone, the Lord was there in my heart, sympathizing with human weakness. He was there holding my face and speaking comfort, telling me to rise again. There is always hope for a believer. Our best days are not behind us, but ahead of us.

Jesus waited so long for me to respond, "I love you, with all my heart." To say, "I love you, I love you" with all the desire of a true bride. How long He patiently gave and pursued. How much His mercy is to be praised! The One who will never leave us, or give up. When no one else should like me at all; Jesus, thinks I am special. That is what the teacher tells us in kindergarten. "You are special." But, really, Jesus thinks that of us all our lives, perhaps the only person who will ever think so and value us as such. He is the love of the universe. The ever present God is very near, reaching out His words and hands of love to give new life. 

"If I say, “I will not mention him,
    or speak any more in his name,”
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
    shut up in my bones,
and I am weary with holding it in,
    and I cannot."- Jer. 20:9

Will you perceive His loving hands....

Did you know it when Jesus touched your face with healing hands? When He spat on the ground and put the mud on your eyes to see? When with His voice, evil was rebuked and life given to you? Did you know it when those scarred hands caught you time and time again. He pushed you out of the way to take on the oncoming bus. Jesus gave all that still gives everyday of our lives. Will you know it, when all He did all your life was to love and save you? What else or more could He do but offer His own life to be slayed in your place?

"He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth."- Isaiah 53:7

God, slay our hearts for the lost sheep; cause them to hear the shepherd's Good News.