Thursday, October 27, 2016

God Will Reward Our Humility

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“Humble yourselves, therefore under God’s mighty hand
that he lift you up in due time.”
1 Peter 5:6 (NIV)

            Peter continues talking to his readers. He tells them and later readers—even us—to assess honestly, who they are in light of who He is.
            He advises us to do this in the light of God and His holiness. The result of our being honest about ourselves comes in time after that—God lifts us up.

            I see people in our 21st century who live by this passage. They do not put on airs—what you see is what you get. One of my best friends comes to mind. She trusts the Lord implicitly. She seeks His wisdom and guidance in all she does and all she faces. God laid it one her heart to start a new ministry at our church. This group started in March of 2015 and is still meeting once a month.

            As I transcribe this blog post, I am recovering from two phone conversations I had with a call center about our television service. My husband’s television, when he changes channels, would lose signal. For some reason, he has had difficulty with that set and our service since we went to it. My frustration today was the fact I could not understand either of the people to whom I talked. My first call disconnected. My second one also lost connection. I have had to stay really quiet and humble about this. Could this have been a test?

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UPDATE: Since my preparation of this blog-post, we have purchased a new television to replace the one that acted up, More recently, I realized that his old television has lots of hours usage on it. The new one works many times better.



Monday, October 24, 2016

A Discovery about Being Humble

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“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, the will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land”. 2 Chronicles 7:14 (NIV)

            Did you catch the idea of this passage? We are to humble ourselves before we pray. These are God’s words.

            As children, our parents taught us to ask for what we wanted not demand that they produce it. The message is clear when we look at a scripture from the New Testament:

            “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. . . .” (Matthew 6:33) I like the word “seek”; it is an active verb and denotes work done by someone. Several years ago, when I lost something precious to me, I would almost move anything in my way to find it.
            Jesus tells us to look for the kingdom before we look for anything else. Sometimes my humanity gets in the way. I have had times where it is easy to look to Jesus first. Then other times when the stress of the situation seems to cause me to be frightened and I react in a way that shames me. However, Jesus does forgive us when we have these moments of humanity.
            One time I had lost a dinner ring that had my son’s birthstone in it. This was something I treasured. I had a persistent thought to look on a shelf in our closet. What I found was an antique clock that my grandmother had given me when I was about 12 years old. Grandma had passed away a few years earlier. Due to circumstances, I realized I had not mourned her passing. That evening, I cried like a baby. That old clock hangs on our living room wall. It has not worked for several decades but it was something that graced the wall when she was a child. A while later I did find that ring. I believe God had to humble me before He would grant me the return of my ring.    


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 ...