We must be built up continually. We must be seeing the world from a finished work perspective and not from the perspective of the natural universe. Eternity must be in our hearts. Ezra the Scribe knew of this idea and wrote Psalm 119. His was a continual prayer; “turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity, and quicken me O Lord. My soul cleaves to the dust, quicken Thou me O Lord according to thy Word. My soul melts for heaviness, strengthen me O Lord. Stablish the Word to thy servant who am devoted to thy fear. Remove from me the way of lying, and grant me thy Law graciously. Incline my heart unto thy commandments. Let thy mercies come unto me…” Then comes many verses of meditative origin. See, we must pray to build ourselves up but then allow the Holy Spirit to lead us in the meditation of…
Tag: <span>Word and Spirit</span>
Parliament on the River On Easter comes Resurrection, although, the day may bring to a close an unimaginable period of pain in hardship, dying, burial. These are the extremes, the unexpected, the unexplained which lead up; the stuff which perplexes, shames, incapacitates. These take the limelight away from all former challenges of any sort; they ravage the mind, annihilate the soul, blow out of the proverbial water, and throw for a total loop. Have we seen them? They are not every day occurrences but may have found us. Our prayer is for God’s delicate help when it happens. Speaking hypothetically, prior to undergoing deep present distresses, life for most had a certain capacity, a confident bent, a sure system, a reliable set of rules, and a precise level of weightiness. This private, methodical, safety-network involved and normalized our coping with stress, our adapting to situations, our equilibrium protecting, our buoyancy…
If a shower of drops on our yard can represent an infiltration of falsehood into our sphere of God’s Reality, we have a picture. The sometimes flood can be overwhelming, and feelings of compromise project their self. They threaten to do a decisive final slaying of that reality. The thought of evil then seems to outweigh the good, pressing us towards its identity. Eventually, assuage and pressure-release pose themselves in the most attractive way; toward giving in. Well, we have weapons, extra- fleshy, spiritual, and powerful. One of these is the strengthening unto patience and long suffering with joy, in Colossians 1:11. The God-endowed ability to stand still, wait, and delay our impulsing emotions, looms mighty. Moses did it at the Red Sea, Nehemiah on the wall; both saw “joy” as a critical war devise, and too, the authority that comes from meekness; two supernaturals. How do we get these endowments? Well, having done all, we stand, Ephesians 6:13. What…
Storage bins: they hold stuff. They serve best when dry, unbroken. Where many accumulate, markings identify each…maybe they are color-coded or tagged. These bins survive in protected cargo space. I worked a small warehouse once, primarily because I lacked production side skills. My job was to label and categorize things previously “hit and miss.” In my case, this meant putting steel with steel, or copper with copper. Sometimes I put red with reds, and yellow with yellows. I took boxes of arbitrary screws or nails and sorted them, marked them, and placed them in individual jars on shelves. I threw out a lot of useless junk. Indexing and making things readily accessible to the production engineers started saving time on their projects. I so enjoyed the job. An outside business evaluater complimented my work, and encouraged me about how vital it was to the company. Nevertheless, she said, most employers…