God in our lives

Hebrews 4:12 (NIV)

12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

There is great help that comes from the word of God in that we can find strength, encouragement and rest. For God’s word penetrates the heart and makes us aware of our short comings.

While every analogy of the Trinity has its limitations, this picture illustrates one aspect of our Triune God—that they are all on the same team.

Say a family is trapped in a forest fire, so a helicopter team undertakes a rescue. One fireman flies the helicopter over the smoky blaze to coordinate the operation and see the big picture. A second fireman descends on a rope into the billowing smoke below to track down the family and stand with them. Once he locates the family, he wraps the rope around them, attaching them to himself, and they are lifted up together from the blaze into safety. In this rescue operation the first fireman looks like the Father, who can see the whole field unclouded from above to sovereignly orchestrate the plan.

The second fireman looks like the Son, who descends into our world ablaze to find us, the human family, and identify with us most deeply in the darkness of the grave. The Spirit is like the rope, who mediates the presence of the Father to Jesus, even in his distance, and raises Jesus—and the human family with him—from sin, death, and the grave, into the presence of the Father. Of course, like all analogies, this one falls short. The Spirit is a person, not a thing (like the rope). And the Father, Son, and Spirit are not separate individuals but the one God, sharing a divine nature and essence as one being. [Adapted from Joshua Ryan Butler, The Pursuing God (Thomas Nelson, 2016), page 122]

Gratitude

Ephesians 5:19-20 (NKJV)

9 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

This should be the attitude of Christians, to sing songs and hymns to God to enrich your heart and let the burdens of like slip away. Then we are to give thanks for all things that come our way in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The key to a happy and lasting marriage might be as simple as regularly expressing gratitude. So report researchers from the University of Georgia in a new study published in the journal Personal Relationships.

After interviewing 468 married individuals on relationship satisfaction, covering everything from communication habits to finances, they found that the "most consistent significant predictor" of happy marriages was whether one's spouse expressed gratitude. "Feeling appreciated and believing that your spouse values you directly influences how you feel about your marriage, how committed you are to it, and your belief that it will last," says study co-author Ted Futris.

 And that goes for good times but perhaps especially bad ones—when couples experience stress and their communication devolves into what the researchers call a demand/withdraw cycle (i.e., one partner demands or criticizes; the other tries to avoid a confrontation). Gratitude can disrupt this, acting as a buffer.

"What distinguishes the marriages that last from those that don't is not how often they argue, but how they argue and how they treat each other on a daily basis," says Futris. Adds lead author Allen Barton, the study "goes to show the power of the key to a happy and lasting marriage might be as simple as regularly expressing gratitude." So saying thank you is a "practical way couples can help strengthen their marriage."  [This Might be a Key to Happy Marriage, USA Today (10-24-15); submitted by Van Morris, Mt. Washington]

King David said in Psalms 71:8, “Let my mouth be filled with Your praise And with Your glory all the day.” Let’s make that a goal for our lives.

The joy of Salvation

Psalm 51:12 (NIV)

12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

There are two ill effects of sin. One there is a sadness that comes with sin. For the person who knows better and yet commits the act of sin becomes sad. Two sin weakens the person. Not only do they deal with the sadness of sin, but they must also deal with how sin weakens their spirit.

"I was years and years upon the brink of hell--I mean in my own feeling. I was unhappy, I was desponding, I was despairing. I dreamed of hell. My life was full of sorrow and wretchedness, believing that I was lost."

Charles Spurgeon used these strong words to describe his adolescent years. Despite his Christian upbringing (he was christened as an infant, and raised in the Congregational church), and his own efforts (he read the Bible and prayed daily), Spurgeon woke one January Sunday in 1850 with a deep sense of his need for deliverance.

Because of a snowstorm, the 15-year-old's path to church was diverted down a side street. For shelter, he ducked into the Primitive Methodist Chapel on Artillery Street. An unknown substitute lay preacher stepped into the pulpit and read his text--(Isaiah 45:22) "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else." [Mary Ann Jeffreys. "Charles Haddon Spurgeon," Christian History, no. 29.]

No matter what our desperation there is always the joy of salvation that comes to us through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Waiting on The Lord

Psalm 27:14 (NIV)

14 Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

So often we are in a hurry. We want to see things done quickly. We want an answer now. Yet The Bible tells us to wait on The Lord in strength and faith.

An article in The Boston Globe claims that our "demand for instant results is seeping into every corner of our lives." The need for instant gratification is not new, but our expectation of "instant" has become faster. The article states:

Retailers are jumping into same-day delivery services. Smartphone apps eliminate the wait for a cab, a date, or a table at a hot restaurant. Movies and TV shows begin streaming in seconds. But experts caution that instant gratification comes at a price: It's making us less patient …

We've come to expect things so quickly that researchers found people can't wait more than a few seconds for a video to load. One researcher examined the viewing habits of 6.7 million internet users. How long were subjects willing to be patient? Two seconds. After that they started abandoning the site. After five seconds, the abandonment rate is 25 percent. When you get to 10 seconds, half are gone." The results offer a glimpse into the future. As Internet speeds increase, people will be even less willing to wait for that cute puppy video. The researcher, who spent years developing the study, worries someday people will be too impatient to conduct studies on patience. [Christopher Muther, "Instant gratification is making us perpetually impatient," The Boston Globe (2-2-13)]

The Apostle James wrote to us saying, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

When we hurry we might miss some of the opportunities God has in store for us, but when we are patient we see all that He has planned.

Spiritual Surrender

Psalm 62:1 (NIV)

1 Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him.

This is a Psalm of King David. He opens with saying that his soul finds rest in God and then he explains by saying he knows that his salvation comes from God.

At the age of 35 Christian psychologist and researcher Dr. Jamie Aten was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer that had spread to his pelvis. Aten said:

For the first six months, whenever I asked for a prognosis, all my oncologist would say was: 'I can't tell you that it's going to be okay, Jamie. It's too early to tell. If there's anyone you want to see or anything you want to do, now is the time.'" Cancer wasn't the first disaster I faced. My family and I had moved to South Mississippi six days before Hurricane Katrina. But this disaster was different. There was no opportunity to evacuate as I did before Katrina made landfall. This time the disaster was striking within: I was a walking disaster.

Aten learned that the key to both traumatic situations involved what he calls "spiritual surrender." Aten writes:

Spiritual surrender helps us understand what we have control over and what we don't. In a research study I led after Katrina, we found that people who showed higher levels of spiritual surrender tended to do better. This finding didn't make sense to me at the time. It seemed like a passive faith response. Fast forward to my cancer disaster. I vividly remember taking the trash to the curb one winter morning while praying that God would heal me. The freezing air felt like tiny razor blades cutting across my hands and feet because of the nerve sensitivity caused by chemotherapy.

Wondering if God even heard my prayers for healing, I kept praying as I walked back inside my home. Then all of a sudden I dropped to my knees and prayed the most challenging prayer of my life. Instead of continuing to pray for God's healing, I asked that God would take care of my wife and children if I didn't make it.

This was the hardest prayer I had ever prayed. For the first time in my life, I truly experienced spiritual surrender. I finally understood. True spiritual surrender is far from passive—it is a willful act of obedience.

[Jamie Aten, "Spiritual Advice for Surviving Cancer and Other Disasters," The Washington Post (8-9-16)]

The uncertainty of life

Proverbs 27:1 (NIV)

27 Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.

Boast not thyself, no, not of to-morrow, much less of many days or years to come. This does not forbid preparing for to-morrow, but presuming upon to-morrow. We must not promise ourselves the continuance of our lives and comforts till to-morrow, but speak of it with submission to the will of God and as those who with good reason are kept at uncertainty about it. [Matthew Henry]

The hymn-writer wrote, "Change and decay in all around I see." Change and decay are enemies that most people fear. ... When we are young, change is a treat; but as we grow older, change becomes a threat. But when Jesus Christ is in control of your life, you need never fear change or decay. ... When you are part of eternity, the decay of the material only hastens the perfecting of the spiritual, if you walk by faith in Christ.  [Warren W. Wiersbe, His Name Is Wonderful. Christianity Today, Vol. 30, no. 2.]

Paul McCartney once said, “Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you, Tomorrow I’ll miss you. 

The Love of God

1 Peter 1:3 (NIV)

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

Here the apostle gives praise to The Father for the Salvation found in Jesus Christ. It is a new birth, a new life, with hope of an eternal life with God.

Kris Lackey thought he had hurricane-proofed his manuscripts. An English professor at the University of New Orleans, he had saved his fiction and papers (including the novel he had half-finished) via hard drive, flash drive, diskette, and hard copy. But as the murky waters continued to rise and he was forced to evacuate his home, he left his papers and computer equipment behind. Even so, he left them in high places—tables and bookshelves well out of harm's way. He was, by no means, expecting the 11 feet of water that completely besieged his house during Hurricane Katrina.

Returning more than a month later, Lackey found pages floating in mud, completely indecipherable, as well as what was left of his flash and hard drives. Nothing was retrievable. Nothing.

While some things are can never be retrieved, a life with Christ is every lasting. For there is nothing, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, that will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.