Friday, July 23, 2010

On Seeing The Lord

“My ears had heard of you


But now my eyes have seen you.”


Job 42:5 (NIV)



We often yearn to see God. Whether it is through another’s deeds or watching His workings in nature, we get a miniscule glimpse of what He does.



Job, with his ordeals, came away wiser than he was before. He lost everything but his life. And he could still say he saw God. He goes further and repents of his doubts and his questioning.

Do we have doubts and questions about what God is doing in our lives? Sometimes. We have times of uncertainty because we still have a tiny bit of humanity in our hearts.

How can we overcome these times of disbelief?

We can go to the Lord and listen to what He has to say. We then choose either to surrender our concerns to Him or keep them in our hearts and allow those issues to color our lives in bad ways-choosing the latter avenue will harden our hearts, cause our outlook to become grim, and could allow our health to deteriorate.

What we decide allows us to grow in the Lord or to lose ground spiritually. The choice is ours. If we decide to follow the Lord’s leading, we please Him, learn more about Him and very possibly see Him.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Praying for God’s Will

Not my will, but what Thou wilt. Mark 14:36(KJV)



From time to time a prayer request comes to our ears that is so serious that we fell compelled to ask the requestor how he or she wants us to pray.

Usually, the word’s we hear are,” Pray for the Lord’s Will.” But have we ever analyzed what that means?

Praying for God’s Will means we pray unselfishly. We take ourselves out of the picture. The principals in the prayer become the Lord God and the subject of the request.

As we pray for God’s Will, we pray patiently. God works on His own time table. As human beings, we want things to happen right now. People are impatient by nature.

We pray obediently, when we pray to allow His Will for our lives or for those on our prayer lists. Jan Karon’s loveable character, Father Tim Cavanaugh, spoke often of the prayer that always gets answered. The prayer “thy will be done.”

When we pray in God’s Will we pray with confidence that our supplications are heard by God. Therefore we can pray expecting answer. However, we have to be spiritually mature enough to understand the possibility that God’s Will may not be the same as our will.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Rejoice

“Rejoice in the Lord always. again I say, rejoice!” Philippians 4:4



Paul tells the believers at Philippi to rejoice. He wants them to get the message; he tells them again.

Do we have times where life gets tough? Yes, we do. Do we grumble about the latest issue that has beset us? We might, after all, we are still human.

Recently, the scripture at the top of this entry appeared at the bottom of the page in my journal. I wrote on it as it related to my life. I went to sleep and later that morning, I went to my devotional book.(I choose one to use each year.) Guess what the day’s scripture reading was? Philippians 4:29. Did this get my attention? Yes.

What does Paul say? Should we be happy for the problems and setbacks life seems to place in our path. No. As I see it, we are to look for something in that situation that could have caused the circumstance to be worse than it is. We are to be thankful that the problem is no worse than it is.

Several years ago, my dad and stepmother lived in a mobile home. He’d had heart bypass surgery that spring. I receive a call that the electricity in the front part of their trailer was out. I drove over there not knowing what to expect.

A couple, friends of some cousins, were there. This man was searching out the source of the problem. While we women sat and waited. The man’s wife brought up a good point.

My stepmother was on oxygen, 24 hours a day. Her electric concentrator sat in their bedroom at the back of the trailer. This woman I had just met pointed out the fact that the situation could have been worse-the power issue could have involved the back part, including the concentrator.

I read my Life Application Bible every day. As I read it that day I found this scripture two times, I saw in the verse notes something I had always found hard to practice. “Paul’s attitude teaches us an important lesson: our inner attitudes do not have to reflect our outward circumstances. Paul was full of joy because he knew no matter what happened to him: Jesus Christ was with him.”

When we face unimaginable issues in life, it is difficult to keep a positive attitude. We have to rely upon the Lord Jesus to guide us through. He calms our hearts, shows us ways to handle certain aspects of the situation, and speaks gentle reminders as we proceed to the solution.

God Alone

  Jesus and the children at our church's prayer walk.          I will both lie down in peace and sleep;  For You alone, O LORD make ...