the Silence of AWE!

 The Silence of Awe!

Words can capture many things.  They say that a picture is worth a thousand words.  But there are things that neither pictures nor words can capture.  “The silence of Awe!”

It seems that we have lost the sense of the silence of awe.  People gab incessantly and write incessantly over the wires and wireless systems that we have created.  Do we stop?  Can we stop to observe the awe?  Do we listen for the awesomeness of the silence of God?  God spoke a simple sentence that continues in procession to this day.   We speak many words that fall to the ground in their ineptness.  We listen to words and silliness that has absolutely no value, whatsoever.  God’s word is alive.

God’s Word is worthy to listen to in awe.  The awesomeness of God is amazing and we should spend some time in silence to respect it, at least on occasion.

Syllabus to acquire and establish my own helmet of Salvation!

 Put on the whole armor of God!

How many days do we go out into the battlefield of the Lord with pieces of our armor on and pieces of our armor left at home?

I know that I hate it when I get caught with my pain medication in my pocketbook.  I step on my arthritic knee and it says, "nope". I am not going another step.   I often imagine myself strewn on the floor of the Commons.  Why didn't I anticipate my recurring pain?  Worse yet, is getting hit by the fiery darts of the enemy of our souls.   He targets you with your own knowledge of scripture.  He knows you left your helmet of salvation home today and it will do its most significant damage to your soul, if not catapult you right down to the deepest hell.

Jesus has given you instructions and you ignored them.  Put your coat on!  It is snowing!  Put your earmuffs on you will catch cold and there you are on your deathbed lamenting your own ignorant sad negligence concerning your health.  More sad the condition of the soul in hell who has had a closet full of God's Complete Armor and left it home in the heat of battle.

Eternal, is the sense of lamenting.

I think about it daily concerning myself!

Lest I be a castaway

Happy Easter

 

Will you do that which is GREAT in the eyes of the Lord? Happy Birthday

2 Chronicles 25:1  

Amaziah was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jehoaddan of Jerusalem.

2 Chronicles 27:1  

Jotham was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was Jerushah, the daughter of Zadok.

2 Chronicles 29:1  

Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and twenty years old, and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah.

2 Chronicles 36:5  

Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD his God.

God is truly the author and finisher of our faith.  Each day and especially each year that God allows us is the beginning of something.  What are you reigning over?

I have just a few meditations to share with you on the celebration of your 25th birthday in the light of scripture where my devotions were during this week and my own experiences. 

We ought to pray with Moses, “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

I was 25 years ld when I found the delight of motherhood.  I had spent much time sharing myself with children but it was at age 25 when I met Elyse. (actually 24.9)  I never thought that I wanted to do this for my entire life, but it became the calling of my life.  

I challenge you to find the thing that delights you to commit to and to reign over.  I challenge you to find the hope and expectation that God has for you in your purpose and shine that light wherever you are.  Be the one that God sees has completed that which was right in the eyes of the Lord.  That is a challenging thing.

The challenge is to take the things that crop up as ungodly and use them for the glory of God.  Sometimes it is our job to cut down the trees of ungodliness and sometimes it is our job to make food out of that which might have ordinarily been discarded.  We have much to dig into for the glory of God to rectify.  I challenge you to find a problem and do what you can to clean it up.  don’t get distracted by all of the messes that are around you.  Find God’s purpose for your life and pursue it, to God’s glory! Run to the end of the Highway and enjoy the marathon of life! 

I really thought I would never dissuade people from the use of headphones!

 I was a headphone maniac as a child.  It was my only privacy, growing up.  I believe that the wonder of learning to listen happened to me as I spent hours and hours borrowing my father's wonderful earphones.  I got homework done and escaped arguments and cooled down from arguments in my wonderland of musical delight.

We didn't each have a device, like people now have.  So all of our music and entertainments were shared.  That is a real loss, I think and trying to find common ground musically and entertainment wise is a real effort now that each person has his or her own device and entertainment playlist.

I have been thinking about how this builds walls of gaps in our communication.  We must try to bridge those gaps and grow together, in spite of the difficulty.  One of my dearest memories of my father, who is long gone are the trips in the car and the long and not always desired speeches about this and that topic.  I didn't really ever want to hear what he had to say.  But these many years later, the memory of them is all I have of him.

I am only saying this to you because you are missing a great amount of delightful providence of having your daddy carrying you to and from work.  You can close your ears and go into your mental prep for work and that is great, but every once in a while stop and smell the roses of a moment with a man who loves you deeply and always has something to say to you that is just for you!  Don't miss it! 

Are you listening to God when you pray?

 Prayer is an expression of my heart.  Why should I listen to God when I pray?  Some prayers don't take that much thought, it is true, but all too often we are praying just to hear ourselves commit something to God.  That is a superstitious effort.

I am not sure that superstitious prayer is heard in Heaven.  God is sovereign and I am not Him.  But the Bible talks about Elijah who was a man of like passions as we are and God answered Him to shut up Heaven to His normal provision of rain to the people.  God was showing off to the people of that time that He had Elijah's back.  What an amazing relationship to have with God that He wants to show off for you?  

He was a regular person and he was not our Lord and Savior.  Jesus is our intercessor and He takes to primitive grunts of our prayers and makes sense of them to the infinite God of the Universe.  God has no impurities and cannot even look at impurity, but He carried our sins and our griefs on the cross to pay the penalty of sin and open a pathway for our prayers to be heard and answered from Heaven.  Not for our glory, but for the Glory of God!  What a Savior!

Do I take this infinite truth into consideration enough, when I am praying to God?  Do I consider the infinite cost that my privilege of prayer cost our Savior?  Do I think about my desires in the light of what God has revealed from Heaven about Himself and His purposes for all His people?  I want to fullfill your plan for my life, Lord.  Help me through prayer to be one who advances your kingdom and not one who is a stumblingblock.  In Jesus' Awesome Name. Amen.

keep your tongue from evil?

The problem of gossip!

Getting it off my chest!

Because of my father’s antipathy for gossip, I have always been aggressive at trying to keep my tongue from that one horrible habit that is a feminine stronghold.  I have found it impossible to keep my tongue as though my entire womanhood is dependent on having to talk about somebody to somebody.   I often talk in myself to myself and correct myself for talking about myself and others in such ways.  It is impossible to keep my tongue from gossip.

I remember the very first woman that I heard gossip to God in prayer.  She rehearsed for a half an hour in my hearing the real problems of everyone of our brethren and close friends and when she finished I surprisingly felt a weight off my chest.  although I wasn’t sure if I should have said amen or “oh really” at the end of the prayer.  i admired her ability to confess the sins of herself and others so proficiently before God , but i felt very tainted with the knowledge of everybody’s business.  I loved that she cared so much about us to carry all of those burdens to the throne of grace, but it also made me very careful, what I shared with her.

2 things always haunt me, when I gossip.  The thought of my sharing private information and the knowledge of how that information will be repeated in the telephone game that is friendship and motherhood and sisterhood.  I hear them repeating and saying Jayne said… and my heart is smitten with grief and embarrassment.

A free feminine heart to bear these burdens to the Lord was stolen from me in an ultra self righteous attempt to “please my father?” in this area of my life.  He is long dead, but I hear him repeating my stories to him about my friends to the friend, which meant that the gossip that he was weeding out of my mouth was just as a part of his dna as it was mine.

“There is forgiveness with God, that He may be feared.”

I believe that verse with all my heart and it is just as sinful to exalt one sin to the highest level, without as much care of the many other sins that we engage in as it is to gossip.  

I want my friends and sisters to say to me, this is okay to share with anybody. or Share this with God and I will forgive you when you share this with your daughters, but nobody else, okay?  I never can tell at this age, what story will come out in what context and how it will haunt me in my own conscience.  Be careful how you raise your own children that you dont shackle them with a conscience that sees only one thing.

Carry your gossip to Jesus, both in confession and in reality.  He is the best gossip buddy you could ever have.  I am so grateful to the sisters in Christ who have taught me what to do with my besetting sin on that regard!  I am learning not to carry suffering in silence but to go boldly to Jesus with my sins and the gossip that I would say about someone else.  

I would give you that freedom as a gift.  Gossip to Jesus and become a great prayer