Saturday, May 30, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Release May 26/09
VERSE 1:
Take my life I lay it down
At the cross where I am found
All I have I give to You oh God
VERSE 2:
Take my hands and make them clean
Keep my heart in purity
That I may walk in all You have for me
CHORUS:
Oh here I stand
Arms open wide
Oh I am Yours
And You are mine
VERSE 3:
Take my moments and my days
Let each breath that I take
Be ever only for You oh God
BRIDGE:
My whole life is Yours
I give it all
Surrendered to Your Name
And forever I will pray
Have Your way
Have Your way
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Your Love Never Fails
Brought to my attention by Ryan Detzel's devotional here. It is really simple...all about Love (Jesus) and as he does I love the last line .... believe it!
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
A Tool in the Hand of God
Good ole Walking Church/Meeting of One sent me this (well this is part of what was sent) .....how timely indeed!
A Sparkling Gem from Sparks, himself.
"What we want to say is, that God Himself will do His work. It cannot be done through our trying to do it. To ask Him to help us to do His work is a great mistake. If it is the Lord's work, then it is HE who is doing it.. He never gives His own work into our hands. The Lord does not give His work to you or to me. We are but His employees, like the workman who uses his tools. A tool never thinks out what it should do. It simply yields to the hand of its master. He has the plan. He has the skill and the strength, and the tool is only expressing what is in the mind of the workman. The responsibility lies with HIM. The tool is only allowed to do what the master wants to do through his instrument. Imagine an instrument getting up in the morning determined to do this or that, hoping the master would help it. This is not the right attitude. Let us think of the tool which takes this attitude and says: "Now Master, you know what you will do. You have the plan. You know how you will work, and at what time You will do it. I am here at Your disposal. I am willing to serve You in any way You please. I am altogether consecrated to You and Your purpose. I look to You concerning the work which lies before us. You must be the wisdom, the strength and the power of endurance behind me. If I should become blunt You can sharpen me again. Everything depends upon You, but I am One with You."
(I have always liked the watering can illustration, myself, given to me by one of my very first real and Truth-based mentors, but this works just as well.)
A Sparkling Gem from Sparks, himself.
"What we want to say is, that God Himself will do His work. It cannot be done through our trying to do it. To ask Him to help us to do His work is a great mistake. If it is the Lord's work, then it is HE who is doing it.. He never gives His own work into our hands. The Lord does not give His work to you or to me. We are but His employees, like the workman who uses his tools. A tool never thinks out what it should do. It simply yields to the hand of its master. He has the plan. He has the skill and the strength, and the tool is only expressing what is in the mind of the workman. The responsibility lies with HIM. The tool is only allowed to do what the master wants to do through his instrument. Imagine an instrument getting up in the morning determined to do this or that, hoping the master would help it. This is not the right attitude. Let us think of the tool which takes this attitude and says: "Now Master, you know what you will do. You have the plan. You know how you will work, and at what time You will do it. I am here at Your disposal. I am willing to serve You in any way You please. I am altogether consecrated to You and Your purpose. I look to You concerning the work which lies before us. You must be the wisdom, the strength and the power of endurance behind me. If I should become blunt You can sharpen me again. Everything depends upon You, but I am One with You."
(I have always liked the watering can illustration, myself, given to me by one of my very first real and Truth-based mentors, but this works just as well.)
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
My PBA Story -
Go here for more from Joel's brilliant idea!
Yea, I spent a life-time trying to "do" the right thing. "Live" the right way. "Say" the right thing. It started when I was a kid and tried to earn the love and acceptance of parents and family and friends. It didn't work then and it didn't work later on at school either. It didn't work in my marriage and it doesn't work raising kids.
Then came in MY trying to do everything right for God. I tried to do what I was supposed to do for years as a Christian. The thing is ... everyone had a different perspective on what that thing was. Denominations swore they had the answers and I pretty much tried them all. None of them were very consistent or even knew what they believed most of the time. It was just always about rules and ways to act and be and becoming holy somehow by doing this and that. It was tough looking around at the plastic people around me and thinking they had it together when my life was crumbling around me and I was trying and trying and trying. Imperfections made me crazy...in others and in myself. I walked away for a loooong time. I am just so glad that He loved me so much that He never walked away....you know what I mean...from me.
It has been in the last 5 years that I have come into an understanding first and foremost of the Love of God that I finally began to understand. There were lots of instrumental people that God put in my path to direct and help me understand how much I was loved by God .... never having felt this truly by anyone ....it took a while to internalize. This understanding, real understanding of unconditional love was key for me. When I was introduced to the Exchanged Life or the Grace Walk or whatever label you want to put on it....it was like freedom ...it was like heavy stones lifted from my heart and shoulders. Could it be? I could rest for a while and just let Jesus minister to me and through me. It has been an awesome journey and I have never been more passionate about living this Life. I think it was easier to fall into the performance trap and doing because it is organized and orderly and makes sense in a warped kind of peculiar way....rather than falling into love with Jesus and having a real relationship with Him because being real and vulnerable and open was never a part of who I was....I still have a long road ahead but appropriating my identity in Christ and really getting it, you know... and realizing that I was loved NO MATTER WHAT and so was everyone around me, and He could love through me to others ....even those that I never thought I could love....it has been the biggest thrill and adventure of my life....but it is hard getting past the thoughts of old and the way things have always been. I just love finally coming to the place where I know that I am a new creation and just loving to Read Romans 8 regularly to be reminded .... nothing....can keep me from His Love. How could it? His Life is in me. My mind needs to be renewed constantly to keep the evil out....but I think I have come to a comfortable place of recognizing that and not letting it overcome me. I focus on the Truth and that is Jesus to me. Jesus will never allow anyone to make me feel less than who I am....anymore....and Jesus would never let me "try" to win over all of those sad souls....He has everything in His Hands and I don't need to do anything but know the One True Thing and there are no unrealistic expectations ....He knows me and still He loves me!
How cool is that? Sometimes the Love piece is what I find needs to happen first and foremost in the hurting people around me who are trying so hard to "do" the Lord's work. Living loved allows Him to love through you to others. Top of my list anyway was to recognize the Love that is freely given. Grace .... is He to me!
Yea, I spent a life-time trying to "do" the right thing. "Live" the right way. "Say" the right thing. It started when I was a kid and tried to earn the love and acceptance of parents and family and friends. It didn't work then and it didn't work later on at school either. It didn't work in my marriage and it doesn't work raising kids.
Then came in MY trying to do everything right for God. I tried to do what I was supposed to do for years as a Christian. The thing is ... everyone had a different perspective on what that thing was. Denominations swore they had the answers and I pretty much tried them all. None of them were very consistent or even knew what they believed most of the time. It was just always about rules and ways to act and be and becoming holy somehow by doing this and that. It was tough looking around at the plastic people around me and thinking they had it together when my life was crumbling around me and I was trying and trying and trying. Imperfections made me crazy...in others and in myself. I walked away for a loooong time. I am just so glad that He loved me so much that He never walked away....you know what I mean...from me.
It has been in the last 5 years that I have come into an understanding first and foremost of the Love of God that I finally began to understand. There were lots of instrumental people that God put in my path to direct and help me understand how much I was loved by God .... never having felt this truly by anyone ....it took a while to internalize. This understanding, real understanding of unconditional love was key for me. When I was introduced to the Exchanged Life or the Grace Walk or whatever label you want to put on it....it was like freedom ...it was like heavy stones lifted from my heart and shoulders. Could it be? I could rest for a while and just let Jesus minister to me and through me. It has been an awesome journey and I have never been more passionate about living this Life. I think it was easier to fall into the performance trap and doing because it is organized and orderly and makes sense in a warped kind of peculiar way....rather than falling into love with Jesus and having a real relationship with Him because being real and vulnerable and open was never a part of who I was....I still have a long road ahead but appropriating my identity in Christ and really getting it, you know... and realizing that I was loved NO MATTER WHAT and so was everyone around me, and He could love through me to others ....even those that I never thought I could love....it has been the biggest thrill and adventure of my life....but it is hard getting past the thoughts of old and the way things have always been. I just love finally coming to the place where I know that I am a new creation and just loving to Read Romans 8 regularly to be reminded .... nothing....can keep me from His Love. How could it? His Life is in me. My mind needs to be renewed constantly to keep the evil out....but I think I have come to a comfortable place of recognizing that and not letting it overcome me. I focus on the Truth and that is Jesus to me. Jesus will never allow anyone to make me feel less than who I am....anymore....and Jesus would never let me "try" to win over all of those sad souls....He has everything in His Hands and I don't need to do anything but know the One True Thing and there are no unrealistic expectations ....He knows me and still He loves me!
How cool is that? Sometimes the Love piece is what I find needs to happen first and foremost in the hurting people around me who are trying so hard to "do" the Lord's work. Living loved allows Him to love through you to others. Top of my list anyway was to recognize the Love that is freely given. Grace .... is He to me!
Friday, May 08, 2009
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Saturday, May 02, 2009
So dang good.....
Jesus said...."you're going to be identified as His disciples, not because of your church-going, Bible-toting, or song-singing. No, you'll be identified as His by one sign only: the deep and delicate respect for one another, the cordial love impregnated with reverence for the sacred dimension of the human personality because of the mysterious substitution of Christ for the Christian." ~Manning~
And again....
Manning would swap every word for the words that follow - by Hans Urs Von Balthasar
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"I say to you. Blessed is he who exposes himself to an existence never brought under mastery, who does not transcend, but rather abandons himself to my ever-transcending grace. Blessed are not the enlightened whose every question has been answered and who are delighted with their own sublime insight, the mature and ripe ones whose one remaining action is to fall from the tree. Blessed, rather, are the chased, the harassed who must daily stand before my enigmas and cannot solve them. Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who lack a spirit of cleverness. Woe to the rich, and woe to the doubly rich in spirit! Although nothing is impossible with God, it is difficult for the Spirit to move their fat hearts. The poor are willing and easy to direct. Like little puppies they do not take their eyes from their master's hand to see if perhaps he may throw them a little morsel from his plate. So carefully do the poor follow my promptings that they listen to the wind (which blows where it pleases), even when it changes. From the sky they can read the weather and interpret the signs of the times. My grace in unpretentious, but the poor are satisfied with little gifts."
Share
"I say to you. Blessed is he who exposes himself to an existence never brought under mastery, who does not transcend, but rather abandons himself to my ever-transcending grace. Blessed are not the enlightened whose every question has been answered and who are delighted with their own sublime insight, the mature and ripe ones whose one remaining action is to fall from the tree. Blessed, rather, are the chased, the harassed who must daily stand before my enigmas and cannot solve them. Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who lack a spirit of cleverness. Woe to the rich, and woe to the doubly rich in spirit! Although nothing is impossible with God, it is difficult for the Spirit to move their fat hearts. The poor are willing and easy to direct. Like little puppies they do not take their eyes from their master's hand to see if perhaps he may throw them a little morsel from his plate. So carefully do the poor follow my promptings that they listen to the wind (which blows where it pleases), even when it changes. From the sky they can read the weather and interpret the signs of the times. My grace in unpretentious, but the poor are satisfied with little gifts."
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