Way Behind!

I apologize for being so behind! I've been working a lot, and it just consumes my time! But it's a good consuming of my time. God's doing some amazing, and I mean amazing, things!

January 17th talked about finding joy in the LORD in every day things. He said that we are to practice God's presence no matter what the circumstances. The given verse is Colossians 3:22, which says, "Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the LORD rather than for people."

January 18th talked about the way the Holy Spirit works. It just tends to catch us sometimes, sending us into this glorious frenzy. In John 3:8, Jesus says, "The wind blows wherever it wants...You can hear the wind but cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going."

January 19th talks about God creating us as His masterpieces. "We are pregnant with possibilities of spiritual growth and moral beauty." Hmm, interesting way of putting things! "We are called by God to live as our uniquely created selves." The alternative is to become lesss and less like the original-- or opposite of what God intended us, which would be a tragedy. Ephesians 4:15 says, "We speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ."

January 20th talks about the yearning for God in the soul, especially for those who don't have Jesus. It was Jesus Himself who taught us to pray the LORD'S Prayer, and He promises to always be with us, even in dark times that our world faces. "Part of the good news of the Gospel is that there is a Father to whom we can tell out doubts, even our doubts about whether there is a Father."

January 21st asks, Why pray? Sometimes, God's seeming silence and inaction despite the world's endless atrocities, feeds doubts further. Why would God allow bad things to happen and not change anything? So why pray? Because Jesus did. The communication between Jesus and His heavenly Father was constant. It was the source of His orders and His powerful sense of identity. We're invited to have that SAME sort of communication. While on Earth, Jesus became vulnerable, as we are vulnerable; rejected, as we are rejected; and tested, as we are tested. In every case, His response was prayer.

January 22nd says, "To pray is to let Jesus come into our hearts. It is not our prayer which moves the Lord Jesus. It is Jesus who moves us to pray. He knocks. He knocks in order to move us by prayer to open the door and accept the gift He had already appointed for us." Jesus says that if anyone opens the door, He will come in. He loves us, bringing meaning and grace into our lives. Isaiah 65:24 says, "I will answer them from before they even call to Me. While they are still talking about their needs, I will go ahead and answer their prayers."

January 23rd talks about a philosophy of Billy Graham's. "Sometimes life touches one person with a bouquet and another with a thorn bush. But the first may find a wasp in the flowers, and the second may discover roses among the thorns." Bouquets, wasps, roses, thorns--they come to all of us in strange sequences and indecipherable patterns. No one gets all flowers without any wasps, though we all hope for that. The human condition is such that sorrow and grief come to every home and every person. The worst can happen, but the best remains!

January 24th. Mother Teresa said, "All of us, you and I, should use what God has given us, that for which God created us. For God has created us for great things: to love and to give love." What makes things great? Mother Teresa says, "It is how much love we put in the doing that makes our offering something beautiful for God." Billy Graham says of her, "She looks past the physical features of every man, women, or child and sees the face of Jesus staring up at her through them. In every starving child she feds, she sees Jesus. Surrounding every lonely, dying man she cradles in her arms in Jesus. When she ministers to anyone, she is ministering to her Savior and Lord." Most of us will never pick up dying men or starving children from the streets, yet we must deal with the "irritable, the exacting, and the unreasonable" in our own lives. She demonstrated that it's a unique privilege to get beyond our frustrations and to share the joy and love of Jesus. "Love is a fruit, in season at all times and within the reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it, and no limit is set."

January 25th. "We are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place for those who do not know about God," says J. I. Packer. As we study the Scriptures and learn more and more about God's holiness and love, the more we will see from His perspective all that assaults us, all that weighs us down, all that tears apart our lives. Deuteronomy 33:26-27 says, "There is no one like the God of Israel. He rides across the heavens to help you, across the skies in majestic splendor. The eternal God is your refuge, and His everlasting arms are under you."

January 26th. C. S. Lewis says the ultimate sin is pride. "It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very center of our religious life." Lewis says that other vices, such as anger, greed, and drunkenness, are "mere fleabites in comparison" an come from our physical nature, but pride "comes directly from hell." The pride that Satan tries to smuggle into us provides not delight but a rebel spirit. Therefore, Zephaniah 2:3 says, "Seek the LORD, all who are humble, and follow His commands."