Happy Canada Day!

Our God is an AWESOME God!

2nd image www.pericat.ca
3rd image www.mccullagh.org
4th image www.seattlest.com

On Intercession

I have read these verses many times .... today they tenderly have come to me afresh. What a treasure we have been given in Jesus!

Romans 8:26,27
In the KJV

26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

27And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

Romans 8:26,27
In the NASB

26 In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;

27 and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.





first image www.mariannedorman.homestead.com
second image www.getreligion.org

What am I saying today?

No explanation. Exactly!

photo: www.cheshiredave.com

In due time...

Willing to Weep
Artwork by Bobby Horowitz

God values me when I am broken... brokenness is a good thing... as I humble myself under His hand, He will lift me up.... in due time.... The plan is set... The waiting is hard....How long...??

Unchanging One

I looked for love in every single situation,

For something, for someone

That would last a lifetime, a love that never dies

And I find

You know when I wake, when I rise, when I pray, when I curse You

And You love me the same

And You know when I stumble and fall

And You're there through it all

The only Unchanging One

I looked for faith on the edge of my roof

No fear, Daddy's here

Still I struggle to trust You with the rest of my life

When I could just fly

You know when I wake, when I rise, when I pray, when I curse You

And You love me the same

And you know when I stumble and fall

You're there through it all

The only Unchanging One

I looked for You

You know my inmost being

You know my deepest scars

You know my darkest secrets

You know and You love me the same

The only Unchanging One.

Todd Agnew

My Cave, my refuge.

I have been thinking of moving. What do you think?

Romans 8 : 35-39

Contrite and broken

Psalm 51:17

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,

A broken and a contrite heart -

These, O God, You will not despise.

Isaiah 57:15

For thus says the High and Lofty One

Who inhabits eternity,

whose name is Holy:

"I dwell in the high and holy place,

With him who has a contrite and humble spirit,

To revive the spirit of the humble,

And to revive the heart of the contrite ones."


James 4:8-10

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

Cleanse your hands, you sinners;

and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Lament and mourn and weep!

Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord,

and He will lift you up.

Hey Dad

So it would be Father's Day today.

Went over to visit with my parents today. My dad is not this dad in the picture. Not even close.
It has taken me a lifetime to understand this. It will take me the rest of my life to understand this. My dad is having some serious health issues right now. He is passing out, falling and hurting himself when he falls. Right now he sports a shiner from a fall. This man is too proud to let us know this is going on. The evidence is hard to hide as of late. He is an isolated, lonely man who pretty much has been angry and bitter all of his life. He lives in his world unwilling to show emotions. He has always had a critical, judgemental, demeaning spirit about him. Growing up was difficult with such a man. Add alcoholism and an abusive nature....this is the picture. You get it, right? Tough man to love and trust and honour needless to say.

I have asked God to change my heart about this man who is my earthly father. Today, I saw the results of those prayers....He is older and tired and sad and scared and I felt Christ just showing me a new kind of love for this man today. As with all relationships ...... if they do not end up being what you long for, desire, expect and pray for.... they disappoint, tear apart and leave wounds that never heal without a holy balm. This is what I have to own...accept and know that in this and through this life with this man who is my father... he never would ever have measured up to my heavenly Father, anyway, and I could never have been the perfect daughter for him. God knows his heart, and God knows my heart on this ... My dad needs some help to see God.... he needs to see Jesus now, in this one simple vessel....and he needs to see Jesus reach out to him through this vessel.

It has taken way too long for me to come to this.

I like what Malcolm Smith says in his book, "Let God Love You".

"Once God's love has been communicated to us, we no longer need to look for approval from others or seek after their love to fill the emptiness and loneliness of our soul. We now know and understand that He is the love we have looked for all of our lives. His presence alone can satisfy and fill us at all times.... It is apparent as we live in the knowledge of God's love that the sadness, crabbiness, and meanness that is exhibited in people either arise from their ignorance of God's love for them or because they have rejected God's love. They do not know they are loved. However we do and treat them as such. We are able to love them because we are loved. We actually become God's love to them.....Living in the love of God through Jesus Christ is the life of a whole person. You rise each day knowing the meaning of your life and joyfully go about your business with a purpose. Your complete reliance on the One who supernaturally fills the limitless, eternal cavity in the center of your being makes every day a miracle!"

Interestingly enough, this is something that extends into every relationship in our life... parents, spouses, kids, friends and those people that are so difficult to love in our own strength. How cool that God brought this to me after talking to a good friend and sister in the Lord about the brokenness in our marriages and then today after seeing my dad....He knows just what I need to hear and when.

Jesus can do the loving of these people through me. He is changing my heart.... it is His heart within me that sees these people in the light of His love. In Him, this is possible, even when I think it is impossible.

Happy Father's Day! To my Heavenly Father, Abba .... and to my earthly dad....I pray he will come to an understanding of the love of the One True Father through this circumstance. Pray with me to this end, saints of God. Every day He brings me closer. Thank You, dear wonderful and loving Father.

www.twainquotes.com

The Gate Seldom Found

Thoughts and quotations drawn from a historical, fiction novel...THE GATE SELDOM FOUND by Raymond Reid. This book is a keeper and I am finding that it is a gem that God pointed out to me alone although the interweavings of this revelation are far-reaching. He is an amazing and wonderful Father.

Are we not simply Christians following the path set down by Jesus? Part of a brotherhood of believers. Free to serve God without any tradition. The New Testament believers never took a label. Do we need one?

"Jesus' last prayer was a plea that His followers might all be one. Having a label promotes a sense of ' I'm different than you' or even I'm better than you. That kind of thinking leads to divisions. If people would abandon their labels and dogmas - and come together in the Spirit of Christ - we'd have unity."

More on this book to come, for sure. Not quite done reading but it is for me, not fiction to me but a Truth inspired work on living this life that is Christ.

Gotta love this one....

I needed a smile and found this one today. Enjoy!

And Furthermore

Can you see it?
Why is it that what is good is always shadowed by that evil one prowling around like a lion. There is not one...not even one ....except the Holy One. I delight to see Him in His children, and rage when they fail to let Him shine through the muck. Unbelievers have an understandable and sad excuse. Those who know Him..... He is able to save to the uttermost. Perfectly, eternally. We are secure in Him and He will show through our limited earthen vessels. He continually represents us... when we really know Him. Do you really know Him?

Ranting is done (for today). I see I am so not willing to give up that looking at others. He can do this through me. Why will I not let Him?

Ranting

You know what .... I am not under any code of conduct, behaviour, style, methodology, list, rules to live by.... and that means I am gloriously free to rant today.

Some people really rile my unusually calm demeanor and today is one of those days. I shall not go into any particular detail because Jesus has asked me not to .... but I am weary of stupidity in and around my life. Sorry.... that is the way I feel at this particular moment in time today.

I shall continue to stomp my feet and lift my voice in total and absolute frustration for a little while longer and then, I know He will gently and lovingly remind me of who I am in Him, and how the things of this world....shall pass away.... and I shall accept again how forgiven I am for being so human and all will be well.....again, soon.

Gleanings in the Fields of Boaz

This is a poem written by a friend of Watchman Nee and a saint deep in the Lord (his words).
I happened upon it while reading 'Gleanings in the Fields of Boaz' by Nee. The book is a short compilation of some letters, revelations to and thoughts by this man who I have come to love and admire. His understanding and love for God was great. This book I came upon after reading about this passage in the Word and finding this title..... I love it when Father weaves together the next thing and the thing after that. May this poem affirm and bless you as it did me.

If the path I travel

Lead me to the cross,

If the way Thou choosest

Lead to pain and loss,

Let the compensation

Daily, hourly, be

Shadowless communion

Blessed Lord, with Thee.

If there's less of earth joy,

Give, Lord, more of heaven.

Let the spirit praise Thee,

Though the heart be riven;

If sweet earthly ties, Lord,

Break at Thy decree,

Let the tie that binds us,

Closer, sweeter, be.

Lonely though the pathway,

Cheer it with Thy smile;

Be Thou my companion

Through earth's little while;

Softless may I live, Lord,

By Thy grace to be

Just a cleansed channel

For Thy life through me.


M. E. Barber

This is way too cool!

This is my webpage as a graph.... I don't understand it all but it is very interesting...Sort of reminds me of wildflowers...and yet it means something to someone out there. I really am a flower child of the decades of the past. Hard to teach an old dog new tricks...but I appreciate the trick, for sure.


Check out....
http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/

Colissians 3:11 Amplified

ME AND YOU

[In this new creation all distinctions vanish.] There is no room for and there can be neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, (nor difference between nations whether alien) barbarians or Scythians [who are the most savage of all], nor slave or free man; but Christ is all and in all [everything and everywhere, to all men, without distinction of person].

www.planetperplex.com

The coffee's on!

From an awesome blogger's site ... back a few days... Hey Pastor Mike... you don't know how much what you share on your blog inspires my thoughts, makes me laugh and makes me think ... thanks!

"john o'keefe @ ginkworld
was watching "ghost whisperer" tonight and heard a line that i think is the coolest line i had ever heard - it dealt with forgiveness and the actor said [winging it], "not forgiving someone is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die" - oh, how cool is that?

I think I heard Neil Anderson say that on his beta series

The source is not what's important, but the priority of living and walking in forgiveness. Jesus said that if we do not forgive others, God will not forgive us. Or in other words, forgive, or your unforgiveness will kill you."

Like the poison, unforgiveness eats you from the inside out. Oh so true!

A Butterfly on a Rock

I like this picture.
Make your own analogies.
I have mine.


picture :
www.kestan.com

Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire

More on Cymbala's book.

We are like the church of Laodicia. In fact, we have so institutionalized Laodiceanism that we think lukewarm is normal. (OUCH {my word })

The early Christians began dynamically in power. They were unified, prayerful, filled with the Holy Spirit, going out to do God's work in God's way, and seeing results that glorified Him.

Then came the first attack. Jesus had warned that difficult days would come. When under attack, when facing a new challenge, in all seasons, in all times, call on the name of the Lord and He will help you.

The work of God can only be carried on by the power of God. The church is a spiritual organism fighting spiritual battles. Only spiritual power can make it function as God ordained.

When we get serious about drawing upon God's power, remarkable things will happen.

It is totally unbiblical to insinuate that people must travel to a particular church anywhere to receive what God has for them.

The name of Jesus, the power of His blood, and the prayer of faith have not lost their power over the centuries.

No church, should be measured by its attendance. What the disciples wanted was not numbers but an essential quality that would keep them being the church God intended. The Bible does not say we should aim at numbers but rather urges us faithfully to proclaim God's message in the boldness of the Holy Spirit. This will build God's church God's way.

Just as the Israelites were warned not to mingle with the Canaanite gods called Baal or Asherah, we must beware of a god in our time called Success. Bigger is not better if it comes at the expense of disowning the truth or grieving the Holy Spirit.

People have lowered the standards in a vain attempt to make churches look more successful than they really are. When He says to do His work in His way, we can be assured that He will produce His results for His glory.

A basic sign of revival is that the wind is allowed to blow where it will. We don't need technicians and church programmers, we need God.

photo by www.ptialaska.net

Fresh wind, Fresh Fire

Sharing Jim Cymbala's words.....because we could all use a dose of what he shares from what God has spoken through him.

"God is attracted to weakness. He can't resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need Him. Our weakness, in fact, makes room for His power.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of prayer. Only when we are full of the Spirit do we feel the need for God everywhere we turn.

The apostles had this instinct: When in trouble, pray. When intimidated, pray. When challenged, pray. When persecuted, pray.

The British Bible translator J.B. Phillips, after completing his work on this section of Scripture, could not help reflecting on what he had observed. In the 1955 preface to his first edition of Acts, he wrote:
It is impossible to spend serveral months in close study of the remarkable short book... without being profoundly stirred and, to be honest disturbed. The reader is stirred because he is seeing Christianity, the real thing, in action for the first time in human history. The newborn Church, as vulnerable as any human child, having neither money, influence nor power in the ordinary sense, is setting forth joyfully and courageously to win the pagan world for God through Christ... Yet we cannot help feeling disturbed as well as moved, for this surely is the Church as it was meant to be. It is vigorous and flexible, for these are the days before it ever became fat and short of breath through prosperity, or muscle-bound by overorganization. These men did not make 'acts of faith,' they really prayed. They did not hold conferences on psychosomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick. But if they were uncomplicated and naive by modern standards, we have ruefully to admit that they were open on the God-ward side in a way that is almost unknown today.

.....doesn't that stir your spirit......the secret of power in the early church, a secret that hasn't changed one bit in twenty centuries.

If a meeting doesn't end with people touching God, what kind of a meeting is it? We haven't really encountered God. We haven't met with the only One powerful and loving enough to change our lives.

Wherever there is pain, suffering, and desperation, Jesus is. "

More to come....

Today

God creates out of nothing.
Therefore until a man is nothing,
God can make nothing out of him. Martin Luther

.... I may not agree with this prayer in whole....but alas.... it touched me today.

A Puritan Prayer

Lord, High and Holy, meek and lowly.

Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision,

where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights;

hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox

that the way down is the way up,

that to be low is to be high,

that the broken heart is the healed heart,

that the contrited spirit is the rejoicing spirit,

that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,

that to have nothing is to possess all,

that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,

that to give is to receive,

that the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,

and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine;

Let me find Thy light in my darkness,

Thy life in my death,

Thy joy in my sorrow,

Thy grace in my sin,

Thy riches in my poverty,

Thy glory in my valley.

The Kingdom's News

Well, I was reading a brother in Christ's blog this morning and if you are interested take a look at his bird-brained ideas .... (that is a joke) about believers and how passionate they can be....NOT! ( walkingchurch.blogspot.com )
Acquiring the new nature as I have understood.... I am a new creation and recognize my identity (exactly who I am in Christ) ... this is a done deal....but I am still embracing this truth. Along with this I believe that I have the mind of Christ..... I do not utilize it all the time...but He will prompt me ....give me understanding, discernment, compassion....etc...if I focus on Him. Many things will get in the way of this .... so many things that try to keep me from that passion...that new nature's desire to care for others as Christ calls me to....
In my humble opinion.....when that passion or concern or desire to share personal stories of faith...of what is happening in our lives...or in the lives of the saints and unbelievers around us...people are so focussed on themselves and on their own life situations, on their own relationship with Christ (and that is not always a bad thing :) ) ...critical and negative results follow...and coming alongside as He would do... is left so quickly and what happens...the passion gets sucked out of the passionate one.....like a balloon being released untied.... deflated...disappointment and unChristlike reactions occur. It is hard enough to get by in this world...full of those who do not share the Truth...with all the selfishness and greediness in all things...including welcoming others experiences into our own little box of a world... without finding this same response from our brothers and sisters in Christ. It is there, however, and it is rampant....yep, we know that He calls us to and moves within us to that agape love for others...and as with all things...we get in the way....our story is not shared....our focus on ourself is ignored or passed over.... and we become....sometimes....hurt and feel overlooked....even if it is not so obvious...we need to listen to others...we need to be able to share and be listened to... and in some ways this passionate and compassionate sharing ...and sharing of the wonderful and marvellous things that our Holy God is doing in our lives and in the lives of the Body of Christ around us is inhibited...squelched....smothered and others miss the blessing of hearing of the news of the King's Kingdom activities.
I like what Preston and Anabel Gillham said in a small booklet given to me by a saint of God that said.... "walking in the Spirit...or being under Christ's control is not an emotional or 'feeling' concept; it can be, but most of the time it is not. Walking in the Spirit, is something we choose to do and then set our mind on." So when we do this....we can share freely....or not if it doesn't work at the time... He will make it work if we continue to press on with Him in us and as He lives through us...but we also have within us the Ultimate Listener...the One who understands...the One who is all-compassionate and knows our hearts....He leads us to listen to each other and share....and put our thoughts aside. We seldom do this....we need to ...we need to hear each other and give each other time.... a commodity that is not easily had today. How effective is hearing and listening in God's economy.... it is everything....it is what sharing each other's burdens and joys and trials and victories is all about. So many more things I have running through my mind on this train of thought....but I will stop here and think some more on this....I will ask Him to bring some clarity and revelation to me on this....
I guess the truth of the matter is that there are few who hear His voice and follow His instruction as to how to treat others....and hear others and share....we are so detrimental to each other unless we truly act out of His prompting.....
So when my brother over there at walkingchurch....says
"Do we give a 'rat's *ss' or do we even have a pulse on Abba's Kingdom - meaning does this type of dialogue turn our cranks? Don't get me wrong. I am not trying to create a hotline. It bothers me. We claim to be passionate believers (active disciples) but our actions seem devoid of demonstrative dialogue and action."
I have to agree...and suggest that the reasons behind this lack of demonstrative dialogue and action is the same answer as in most things....our self-centeredness and lack of focus on Him...because if we were listening....you gotta think He would be directing us to have a pulse on His Kingdom, and coming alongside of and being passionate about the Holy Hotline of what He is doing in our fellow believers....the Body of the Beloved....and sharing what He is doing in ours....a dialogue that sometimes does not need our voice but our ears....His ears.
May He bring this forward in my life. To hear more than I speak....to come alongside the ones who are desperately trying to share...to find a brother or sister who willingly...with His prompting would listen and rejoice with or weep with them at a time when they need this most.
To be the Church.
Always in love....His love.