May our hearts and minds continue to birl away from self and move through the currents of this world, carried by His Word, to the eternal embrace of our Saviour, Christ Jesus.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Snippets from Sarah



We can all get lost in our perception and lose hope. Sarah thought just because she was 90 she couldn’t have children, that it was too late to be ‘what God intended’. We talked a lot about perspective, i.e., Sarah “fixing things” by setting up things with Hagar. It seems a bit easy to sit here with 3000+ years between us and think that she could have given God more credit than that…ahh, the benefits of perspective! ;)
We all “wait for God to show up” (pg. 69) in our lives. This is probably made more difficult by first defining what it will look like when He does show up and forgetting that He never left in the first place!
God knows each of our “points of fixed impossibility” (p73)…nothing in our lives is catching Him by surprise! The perspective, the perception that needs to move is our own…to acknowledge this to Him and then ask Him to give us His heart, His perspective for living in this world…to make HIM our starting point in everything.
~We walk by faith, not by sight.  II Corinthians 5:7
~The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him,   Nahum 1:7
~in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.   Proverbs 3:6

And oh, how we can all “laugh from the other side of the curtain”! (pg 76-) Sarah defined herself by her sorrow….she took possession of that first and foremost, over everything else. Don’t we all? Sure culture, society, circumstance may shore up our belief that we are justified in living from that perspective, but is that God’s perspective? What does our “curtain” look like when we are dismissing God’s will for us and laughing from behind the curtain?…What have we taken possession of that we were never intended to? We all know the phrase, “oh that’s just how I am”….but is that how I am supposed to be?
We erect walls that separate us (perceived protection?) from human relationships, but the huge (Hoover Dams) that we erect between ourselves and God are most often the most difficult to identify!
~ “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” Matthew 7:3

Beliefs, perceptions…dare we say, faith?...all define our steps and decisions. We are not able to receive or give grace, because we have already decided that we know what it should look like and when it will come.
One definite snippet from Sarah is to get out from behind that curtain!

Rowing on with Mrs. Noah



A little behind, but we're still rowing!!
(So, for future reference, thought we'd get a few notes in on Mrs. Noah...seeing that we were talking about her and Eve last week!)

“the continuous day-by-day relationship with God that distinguishes the child of God from everyone else.” (p57)
There is “no middle ground” here. Our roles in others’ lives can be life affirming, encouraging! We can be the supporting cast for others around us, we are pouring (good or bad) into lives all around us, sometimes when we’re not even aware of it. Mrs. Noah had her own supporting cast, her sons and her daughters-in-law. They all worked together with Noah in following God’s instructions for them, building the ark, and putting up with ridicule. There is no story line (tho’ surely there could have been) about Noah having to overcome his own family to follow God. None of us are in this life alone, no matter what our perception is.

Every culture has a template for our lives that can drive our expectations. Mrs. Noah was no different. She had raised her children and was now at her ‘grandmother’ stage…”a life of settled satisfaction”. (p55) Isn’t it funny how we can all get set in our plan, in a rut, comfy and predictable, and then POOF!, God allows our cage to get rattled and we’re surprised?
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.  Isaiah 55:8

Once in the ark, in the midst of the storm (with no windows!), they had only God to rely on (p60)….seems easy to say, but wonder what that looked like when you’re slopping up after the pigs and telling the elephants not to rock the boat!?
Or, when something’s rocking our own boat?
It is soooo easy, so human to put our “need” of understanding a situation ahead of being obedient. Society has defined obedience as, being blind, mind-numbing…cast it in a negative connotation. And from a ‘world’ perspective it is complete surrender of everything we think we are, so the world isn’t wrong from a head perspective, but the heart and soul are not involved in that definition. Our obedience to our Father, hands over any strings we may want to attach and acknowledges the HE is the one running the planet,  not us! 
~Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?  Romans 6:16

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Working Out...



Working Out, an analogy from my quiet time thoughts this morning


Something I learned years ago when our son was in physical therapy as a child, is just “how-to” engage muscles. We can work out, stretch that leg or arm, reach for the skies and never engage. All of that may be accomplished by gravity on the skeletal system and tendon moving, having never engaged muscles. So, after years of working out there may be no muscle strength, no excess weight loss, no building up of the body!

So it is with our spiritual “workouts”. We can go to church, hear sermons, be involved in ministries…ALL with no spiritual muscle engagement. We may have all the "right" movements, all the outward signs of "being spiritual", we may have the intellectual answer, the Sunday school answer, but no inside/soul changing attitude of grace.

Spiritual growth is about engagement, not ministry for the sake of ministering…growth is in the application. Being smart and intelligent are not really verbs, they are empty without action. So, I am so very happy to be ENGAGED in this book study with you, my friends!

May the God of hop fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13