Writing Through the Bible in a Year

Shine

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Tamar

Song of Praise: Free by Dara MacLean

Come Holy Spirit, fill me with Your fire so that I can be more like You; help me, I trust You. Father, open my eyes so that I may see You clearly, open my ears so that I may hear You soundly, open my mind so that I may understand you plainly, open my hands so that I may give generously and receive humbly, in Jesus‘ name, Amen.

Today‘s reading: Amos 4:6-7:17

For behold, He who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is His thought who makes the morning darkness and treads on the heights of the earth – the LORD, the God of hosts, is His name! Amos 4:13

Well, as you can imagine, after eating funeral comfort food for four days I‘ve gained a pound or ten over the long weekend our family had. I just keep looking at myself sideways in the mirror and wondering how in the world it could be possible to look like this again. Until finally last night while judging myself in the mirror God asks me, “Who made you?“

“You did Lord.“

“And did I make a mistake?“

“No Lord, You don‘t make mistakes, You make miracles.“

“So do you think that maybe this is how I want you to look right now?“

“Apparently! But maybe I don‘t want to look like this right now!“

“You used to be happy to look like this, you were comfortable in your skin just the way it was.“

Smiling, “Yeah, I was. And my husband liked how ‘soft‘ I was.“ (Meaning not boney) “But then I lost thirty pounds, I really liked being skinny Lord.“

Over the years I have learned that I have to be happy where I am, no matter where I am simply because, it‘s where I am. God has placed me precisely where I am for His purposes and for His glory. Sometimes I‘m in a comfortable place and it‘s easy to be happy where I am. But then there are other times when I am in a dark scary place, those places are much harder to be happy in.

All my life, since Kindergarten at least, I have wanted to be a teacher. I‘ve never wanted to be anything else; I‘ve never wanted to do anything else, teaching is just in me. It‘s part of who I am, it always has been, and it probably always will be. During my time in college, I learned something about myself, I was much less excited about teaching the kids about math facts and much more excited about teaching them test taking skills and other life techniques that would last with them throughout their entire lives. After I graduated and we moved back to our hometown I wasn‘t able to get a job at the Elementary school because A) I was in the hospital having our first child on the day my interview was scheduled and B) by the time I got out all the positions had been filled for the year. It looked like at least for the first school year God had other plans for me. And low and behold, He did! I started working as a daycare teacher in a newly opened daycare. I absolutely fell in love with the kids and I began to ponder if maybe I had perhaps missed my true calling as a pre-school teacher rather than an elementary school teacher. When I got my very first classroom I lit up! My parents actually said that I glowed when I was teaching those little ones. I was teaching them life skills that they would use for the rest of their lives, I had found my calling! At least for that season anyway.

Then God called me back into the dugout for a time to kind of reboot a bit. I became a stay-at-home mom who babysat for a while. During that time I learned more about having an actual relationship with God and spent a lot more time studying His word and getting to know Him more. And that‘s when He started drawing the gift of writing out of me. I had always had it; just, I had never really used it. The call to write was absolutely insatiable, and still is! I‘ve gone three days without writing and I feel like I‘m about ready to explode with all the words that God has bottled up in me ready to burst out onto this page! Through the last few years of being a stay-home-mom/nap-time writer God has helped me define the next phase of my life. For a season He called me to teach children how to function in this crazy world of cups without lids and forks with sharp tips, how to blow their own noses and wipe their own bottoms. But that season is quickly drawing to an end as my youngest is entering her first year of Kindergarten this fall. *Sad forlorn siiiiigh…* And with that transition He has been preparing me to enter a new phase of teaching. A phase where, I will be teaching His children how to function in this crazy world of darkness without light and words with sharp meanings, how to blow their own horns and wipe their own tears. Life is hard, no matter what age you are, no matter what stage you‘re in, no matter what season it is. But a life without Christ is harder and darker than I can even imagine! And I believe that it‘s about to get even darker.

We each have been called to be the light in the darkness, to be like The Light so that the darkness cannot dwell with us. We each have been called to be who God created us to be. When I was in Kindergarten and dreaming of someday becoming a teacher I have to admit that it NEVER entered my mind that I would someday teach adults. Not once. And yet, that‘s what God had planned for me all along, I truly believe that. Because when I look back on my life and everything that has happened to me, I can see God‘s hand grooming me to become the very thing He is now telling me that He created me to be. It‘s absolutely amazing!

Just last night I sat on our back porch step with my husband and shared with him my views of my calling as a teacher through writing. How it‘s just something inside me that I can‘t deny. I can‘t push it aside. And I can‘t help but think about it all the time. It‘s simply the way that God created me and I can‘t deny that. God is the one that created my “inmost being“ by “knitting me together in my mother‘s womb“. My friend, we have been “fearfully and wonderfully made“ by the One who‘s “works are wonderful“. (Psalm 139:13-14) HE is the one who created each and every intricate part of our bodies and our personalities so that we would fit perfectly into His plan for who He has called us each to be… ourselves. He has called us to be who He made us to be, nothing more, and nothing less.

There are things

Only you can do,

And you are alive

to do them.

In the great orchestra

We call life,

You have an instrument

And a song.

– Max Lucado (from the front of my birthday card last year that I just found last night while cleaning! Thank You Lord! It‘s as if You knew…)

The gifts that God has given you are His light placed within you for the purpose of shining brightly in this very dark world. Those gifts are uniquely yours in the way that you use them as only YOU can. Other people may have the gift to teach like I do, but they won‘t ever be able to teach exactly like I do, because they‘re not me. Others may have gone through many of the same life struggles that I have gone through, but their stories are uniquely their own, just like mine is uniquely mine. We each have a song to sing in this “orchestra“ called life, but although we may each be singing the same song, our individual voices are what make the song special. Sure multitudes of people have sang “Somewhere over the Rainbow“ over the years, but no one has sang it just like Judy Garland, that‘s her song, and we all know it. We each have our songs to sing, it‘s just making the choice to sing them.


One of the things that I‘ve noticed in these early morning hours with God alone in my rocking chair is the song the birds sing. They are up and singing long before the sun hits the horizon. They are up singing God‘s praises while the darkness of night is still heavy and permeating… but they don‘t seem to care. They simply sing on, as though the sun were already up. They know it‘s coming, even though none of us can see it yet, in their bones they feel it approaching the edge of the horizon and so they sing. In the fall, they feel the winter approaching and though they can not see it they follow the stirrings in their breast that God placed there through instinct to guide them South where there will be plentiful food and hospitable conditions for them. They leave trusting that God will provide for them when they get to where they are going. And upon arrival they are met with the fruit of their faith, warmer temperatures and food to fill their bellies. God calls the birds South in the winter, and then He gives them the wings with which to get there and the stirrings in their breasts to guide them along their journey.

If God is willing and able to provide for the birds of the air; how much more is He willing and able to do much more for us? God has placed the stirrings of a calling within each of our breasts. He has called each of us out of our comfort zone in order to guide us to where the conditions are much more hospitable for us to live in, but we have to launch ourselves from the safety of our nests, raise our wings and fly in order to get there. When God called Abram to follow Him to the Promised Land Abram never would‘ve gotten there if he hadn‘t packed up and moved out. Sometimes we just have to follow the light in our hearts in order to get to where God is guiding us. It‘s like the children‘s song says:

“This little light of mine, I‘ve gotta let shine. (x3)

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Won‘t let Satan blow it out, I‘m gonna let shine . (x3)

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Hide it under a basket, NO! I‘m gonna let it shine. (x3)

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Shine it all over this dark world, I‘m gonna let it shine (x3)

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.“


Jesus is the light of this world; the faces of those who look upon Him reflect HIS radiance and shine brightly in this dark world for Him. You reflect His light through your dark circumstances. Don‘t hide that light, His light, under a bushel and don‘t let Satan blow it out! Hold it high so that it not only lights your own face, but all the faces of those around you! It may be the only light some people will ever see.

God made you to be YOU, embrace that, be joyful about that and use that. God placed the light of His talents within you so that you would use them for His glory. So use them and shine that little light brightly for Him today… no matter what your circumstances are! Because after all, we serve the God who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning! (Amos 5:8)

Songs of Reflection: Long Way Home by Steven Curtis Chapman

Shine by the David Crowder Band

Shine by Newsboys


 

Categories: Amos, Writing Through the Bible in a Year

Fire of Affliction

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Tamar

Song #1 of the day: Good Morning by Mandisa

Come Holy Spirit, fill me with Your fire so that I can be more like You; help me, I trust You. Father, open my eyes so that I may see You clearly, open my ears so that I may hear You soundly, open my mind so that I may understand You more, open my heart so that I may love you completely, open my hands so that I may give generously and receive humbly, in Jesus‘ name, Amen.

Today‘s reading: Amos 1:1-4:5

So I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the strongholds of Jerusalem. Amos 2:5

Thus far in Amos the phrases “I will send fire upon _____“ & “it shall devour the strongholds of _________“ has appeared seven times. Now I don‘t know about you, but when God says something once I do my best to listen, but when God says something more than once, well, I do my best to pay close attention and obey! When I saw this phrase seven times (which is the number of completion) I knew that God was trying to, not just make a point but to send a message. The fire of affliction was coming, HE was the one sending it, and it would destroy all the strongholds of the people who were receiving it.

All too often we think that as Christians our afflictions come only from the Enemy that our pain is all from him. But that just is not the truth. God‘s word testifies against that theory over and over again and today‘s passages are proof of that. Like a spanking from a father who lovingly corrects his child so that their dangerous behavior doesn‘t happen again, this fire of affliction is from the hand of our Heavenly Father because He wants to destroy our strongholds. He wants to obliterate the things that hold us back from a perfect relationship with Him. Above every instance of the mention of the fire of affliction is the phrase “I will not revoke the punishment“, the affliction is a punishment. And for Judah, it is a punishment for following the Law of Moses over the Law of the Lord, Love.

God‘s Law was given to His people as a commandment to them to love one another more than they loved themselves. That Law hasn‘t changed one iota from day one! The Law to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself“ (Deuteronomy 6:5 & Luke 10:27), that hasn‘t changed at all since it was first spoken thousands of years ago.

In these passages God explains to us through the prophet Amos what the purpose of the fire of affliction is for, to “devour the strongholds of Jerusalem“. The Israelites (and us) tended to find themselves depending more on their own strength, their own power, their own might, than on God‘s. But God wants us to “lean, not on our own understanding (or abilities) but in all our ways to acknowledge Him“ (Proverbs 3). He wants us to place our faith in HIM and not in ourselves. He wants us to trust His ability to keep us on the straight and narrow and not our own. The fire of affliction is intended to take away the thing that we are trusting more than God. If we are trusting in our savings to keep us from financial ruin, then God will devour those savings so that we are forced to once again place our trust in Him alone to keep us from begging for bread. If we are trusting in the medicine and doctors to heal us of our infirmities then God may take those doctors and that medicine away from us so that we have to remember that HE is the great healer. If we are relying on other people to bring us happiness and fulfillment then He may take those people out of our lives in order to bring our focus back to where it belongs, on Him.

The fire of affliction has its purpose in our lives. It is not sent to torture or to merely bring us pain, if it were then it wouldn‘t be from the LORD it would be from the Enemy. No, An enemy multiplies kisses, but wounds from a friend can be trusted (Proverbs 27:6). God is our friend, and the wounds from Him are given in love. “Does disaster come to a city unless the LORD has done it?“ (Amos 3:5)

God gave me the most beautiful picture of how He works in our lives through physical pain. My husband gave me a package of Godiva chocolates for Valentine’s Day this year. Each yummy caramel-filled chocolate was wrapped in beautiful gold foil. God had me hold one of those chocolates in my hand and stare at it. He said “While the wrapper is beautiful, it‘s not the best part of what‘s in your hand. If that wrapper gets dirty, or torn, or thrown away, you‘re not sad as long you still have the chocolate that was inside that wrapper. It‘s the chocolate that matters the most, not the wrapper. And if the wrapper needs to be sacrificed so that the chocolate survives, then it‘s worth the cost of that beautiful gold wrapper. That wrapper is your body, the chocolate is your soul, and it‘s your soul that matters the most to Me.“ If our bodies need to endure a “Light and momentary affliction“ (2 Corinthians 4:16-18) in order to save the chocolately goodness of our souls, then He is willing to do that. It‘s not that He doesn‘t care about that beautiful gold wrapper that surrounds and protects our souls; He will do everything that He can to keep it from falling into the mud and getting ruined. But sometimes, the wrapper just has to get sacrificed to save the chocolate.

And even when we are going through the fire of affliction, we‘re never alone. Daniel chapter three shares with us the story of Shadrack, Meshack, and A-bed-ne-go. These three men of God were exiled to Babylon where they served King Nebu-chad-nezzar they had been appointed over affairs of the province of Babylon. The king had built a giant golden statue and decreed that when the music played everyone in Babylon was to bow down to the statue and worship it. Shadrack, Meshack, and A-bed-ne-go refused to bow down and worship the statue because they would only worship the LORD. When they were confronted of this the king commanded that they be thrown in to the firey furnace that had been heated to seven times its normal temperature. To this the three men of God replied, “If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.“ They declared their faith in God‘s ability to save them from their circumstances, but they also pointed out that even if God chose not to save their bodies, they would still be delivered from the king‘s hands and safe within God‘s. They didn‘t know HOW God would choose to save them, whether He would snatch them from the fire completely or simply use it to burn off their gold wrappers and take home the chocolate, but either way they were trusting God completely to deliver them in His way of choosing.

What happened next is one of the most amazing things in all of history. When they were thrown into the fire, bound with their cloaks, tunics, hats and other garments on, the men doing the throwing died from the heat of the furnace, but Shadrack, Meshack and A-bed-ne-go did not die when they fell into the furnace. However, the cords that bound them burned off immediately allowing them to walk around in the fire. The king saw them walking around and said “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?“ They answered “True, O king.“
“But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.“ In the darkest, most dangerous, terrifying, death-defying moment in these men‘s lives, someone with the appearance of a Son of God was WITH them in that fire. That fire served its purpose of burning off the cords that bound them from living freely and allowed them to walk with God in a way they had never been able to do before the fire.

King Nebu-chad-nezzar called into the fire “Shadrack, Meshack and A-bed-ne-go, servants of the Most High God, come out and come here!“ and when the men came out of the fire the king and his officials gathered around them in amazement to inspect these men who had survived the deathly fire. They saw that the fire had not had ANY power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them. Nebu-chad-nezzar answered and said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrack, Meshack and A-bed-ne-go, who has sent His angel and delivered His servants, who trusted in Him, and set aside the king‘s command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God. It was when they were willing to sacrifice their own bodies to glorify God that God chose to save every single hair on their heads and kept even the smell of fire off of the clothes they were wearing. The fire burned off the cords that bound them, but did not TOUCH the clothes that covered them. If they had not been willing to completely sacrifice themselves, if they had held their bodies in higher esteem than God‘s glory, then they would have saved their lives, but they would have lost so much more in the process. More than anything, they would have lost the experience of walking with God within a fire that killed the other men who even got close to it let alone IN it! We simply can not be afraid of the fire of affliction, it will not kill us. It can only make us stronger and faster by removing the things that are holding us back from a closer relationship with God.

God wants what is best for us, and what is best for us is HIM. King Nebu-chad-nezzar said it best “for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way“. Only God is able to save us so completely that the fire of affliction can‘t harm us. Yes, it brings pain, sadness and hardships that make us uncomfortable – you know that fire still had to feel hot to them – but it did not harm them. We may suffer pain and possibly even lose a physical limb in the process, but we have to believe that that limb was worth the cost of potentially losing our souls!!! God would rather have us enter heaven with limbs missing than into the pit of hell with our bodies completely intact.

So I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the strongholds of Jerusalem. Amos 2:5

I baptize you with water, but He who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand, to clear His threshing floor and to gather the wheat into His barn, but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire. Luke 3:16

Suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Acts 2:2-4

When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that He will take what is mine and declare it to you. John 16:13

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him, “If you abide in My word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.“
John 8:31-32

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete. 2 Corinthians 10:3-6

Allow God‘s Holy all-consuming Spirit of Truth that came in fire come and consume your strongholds today. Take every thought captive. Obey Christ. Love the Lord your God with EVERYTHING you have. He was with you before the fire, He is with you through this fire and He will be with you after it‘s over.

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.
Philippians 4:13

The fire of affliction has come, God is the one who sent it, and it will destroy all the strongholds of the people who receive it. Praise be to God!


Song #2 of the day: Through the Fire by the Crabb family


Categories: Amos, Writing Through the Bible in a Year

Prisoners

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Tamar

“Come Holy Spirit, fill me with Your fire, so that I can be more like You; help me, I trust You. Father, open my eyes so that I may see You clearly, open my ears so that I may hear You soundly, open my mind so that I may understand You more, open my heart so that I may love You more, open my hands so that I may give generously and receive humbly, in Jesus‘ name, Amen.

Today‘s reading: Acts 26:1-28:30

And Agrippa said to Festus, “This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.“ Acts 26:32

Paul didn‘t have to stay in custody, he didn‘t have to remain a prisoner, yet he did anyway. Yesterday, in Acts 23:11 the Lord stood by Paul and told him that He wanted Paul to testify about Jesus in Rome, so in Acts 25:10-12 Paul lets the court know that he wants to go before Caesar and appeal to him about his innocence, which is granted him. Then today in Acts 26:32 we discover that had Paul not asked to go before Caesar he would have been set free! Paul could have been free from those chains that bound him… if he had not done what the Lord suggested. But because he obeyed Jesus he also remained in the chains that bound him to his quest.

As Christians we see chains and imprisonment as the opposite of the goal of our faith. We see them as a hindrance and a lack of freedom. But sometimes, the things that we think are hindering us are the very things that are allowing us to do God‘s will. Paul didn‘t have to stay where he was, he didn‘t have to continue on the journey he was on, but he did. And he did it willingly.

I‘m reminded of Acts 16 where Paul and his companion, Silas, were in jail. They were placed in captivity because they had freed a slave girl from the evil spirit that bound her. While in prison they were praying and praising God in the night and an earthquake came and broke open the prison doors! But even then they didn‘t leave; they stayed where they were until the jailer came and found them. Most people would run at the first chance they got, but not Paul, in his spirit he must have known that God had him there for a reason. Kind of like today‘s story. Huh! Paul had one of the very first prison ministries! Because Paul stayed where he was in those jails the people in them and the people who ran them were all exposed to the story of Jesus and the fact that He forgives us for our sins and desires a relationship with Him.

I have to wonder if Paul felt a bit like Joseph in these jails. He just adopted the attitude of “Hey, if I‘m going to be a prisoner and slave, then I‘m going to be a really good one!“ Joseph made the best of every situation he was placed in, whether it was being sold into slavery by his own brothers or being wrongfully accused of rape and sent to prison, he took it all in stride and trusted that God had his life in His hands. God had told Joseph through a dream that he would be in a place of authority over his brothers, and Joseph believed that dream. And we have to understand that even through the slavery and imprisonment Joseph continued to believe that somehow God would still fulfill the dream that He had given Joseph so long ago. Surely Joseph had his moments of doubt, we all do don‘t we!?! But overall, Joseph chose to trust God and His goodness and His plan for Joseph‘s life. You can guarantee that Joseph never would have planned slavery and imprisonment as a way to get to the end result that God had promised, but God doesn‘t follow our plans does He?

I have learned that God‘s plan rarely looks like my plan… but I simply have to TRUST that it‘s the right plan, because it‘s God‘s. His ways are not our ways; they‘re better and much more effective in the long run. Would I have chosen the kind of rain and storms that God chose for my life in order to water little ole‘ me and make me grow? Probably not, but without the strong storms of life that bring with them powerful winds of opposition, my tree trunk weak and I would uproot easily. And without the cleansing water of life that those storms bring I would dry up and die. Do I like them? Not usually. Are they good for my spirit like spinach is good for my body? Yes. And so I will take the unpleasant with the pleasant things in life. I will choose to praise God through the storms of my life and thank Him for being with me in the fire, because He certainly doesn‘t have to be there with me through them. But that‘s where He chooses to be, right next to me. And right next to you my friend. All because He loves us.

I have to share this story with you that I just received from a family member. Before grandma went home to be with Jesus she was very sick. She had Parkinson‘s and several strokes which caused paralysis in both sides of her body. She was completely incapacitated for a very long time. During that time Grandpa was right by her side. He spoon fed her. He took her to the restroom. He went to every doctor‘s appointment, every therapy session, he was right there for all of it. He didn‘t have to do that; he easily could have put her into a nursing home and let the professionals take care of her. He could have dropped her off at the doctor‘s visits or the therapy sessions and gone to do something else, but he didn‘t. He stayed right there with her, right by her side. And when asked WHY he would spend all his time taking care of his wife like this he said:

“When I stood in front of two preachers years ago with this little cutie by my side and said in sickness and in health, I meant it“.

Jesus has promised to never leave you or forsake you, and he meant it. He doesn‘t have to take care of us like a flock of helpless sheep, but He wants to because He loves us that much. And as His sheep, we have to trust that He is taking care of us the best way that He knows how, His way.







 

 


 

Categories: Acts, Writing Through the Bible in a Year

Immortal

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Tamar

“Come Holy Spirit, fill me with Your fire so that I can be more like You; help me, I trust You. Father open my eyes so that I may see You clearly, open my ears so that I may hear You soundly, open my mind so that I may understand You more, open my heart so that I may love You more, open my hands so that I may give generously and receive humbly, In Jesus‘ name, Amen!

Today‘s reading: Acts 22:22-25:27

The following night the Lord stood by him (Paul) and said, “Take courage for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.“ Acts 23:11

I have to admit to you, I wasn‘t really sure how this Bible in a year challenge was going to go… I get excited about things easily, start them, and then burn out about as quickly as I start them. But already I can tell that this is different. For the last ten days I‘ve gotten up at five in the morning, stumbled sleepily out to my kitchen to pour myself a cup of hot water for tea and then trudged to my faithful rocking chair in my library where the daisy blanket my Mommy made for me when I was little, my Bible and a pen are waiting for me to join them. I set down my steaming cup of tea to allow it to cool off a bit before I drink it; one morning I learned that lesson as I took a big gulp right away and was forced to spit the scalding liquid back out of my mouth, thankfully I was still next to the sink in the kitchen when that happened! My tongue was numb for three days after that! Anyway, I set my drink aside momentarily while I pray the prayer above in preparation for what God has in store for me today. Then I kid you not, every day as I crack my Bible open to read my heart gets titillated with excitement as I anticipate what God is going to say to me through His word today. I read those words with joy as I wonder how He will apply them to my life in some way, how He will use them for the blog today, how He will weave them into my existence and yours. When that feeling first started I really expected it to wane quickly, it is still five am after all. But as my nights have managed to get shorter throughout the last week, making me even more drowsy in the morning, it hasn‘t mattered how tired I am when I crack open that Beloved book, it happens every time; the excitement, the anticipation, the joy, the love, He is there, waiting for me between those pages! It‘s nothing short of awesome.

This morning, I noticed something new, something that I haven‘t felt before. At least not like this anyway. Love. But not just any love, it‘s an overwhelming sense of love. When my husband woke up and got around to go for his morning run, the moment his face appeared at the door and our eyes connected my heart was filled to overflowing with a love for him that was not my own. And honestly, I didn‘t think too terribly much about it because I passed it off as a little bit of sympathy for him in his current state of mourning for his grandmother. But then later it happened again! As I was sitting in that same rocking chair holding my daughter in her pajamas and crazy bed-head hair I wrapped my arms around her and again my heart was just overflowing with a love for her that wasn‘t my own, it was God‘s!

His word is doing something to me, something that I‘m pretty sure it will do for others too, it‘s filling me with love and compassion for the people around me that is not my own. Sure, I‘d love to pass it off as my love for them, except, it‘s not. It feels completely different! It‘s deeper, and wider, longer and higher than anything I have for these people. It‘s an all encompassing love for them that I simply can‘t explain or understand, and yet it‘s there all the same!

In ten days I have read twenty-five short chapters of one book of the Bible, that‘s it! And yet already the change in me is intense and obvious, at least to me anyway. You see, I spend the vast majority of my day telling God what I want, what I think He should do, what‘s going on in my little corner of His universe. But in that hour from five to six, when the birds are singing their praises and the sun isn‘t even up yet, that‘s His time to talk to me uninterrupted. That‘s His time to pour His living water into my pitcher and tell me, “OK, you‘re all filled up, now go fill them up.“ With “them“ being whoever He‘s chosen to interact with me today, mainly my family and friends. Yes, I have been amazed in one short week how God has used this challenge in my life… and if this is what the first week has looked like, well, it just makes you wonder what He will do with the rest of the year!

This weekend was my niece‘s birthday party, while we there my brother told the story of a guy who traded a red paperclip for a house! No, it wasn‘t right away, there were several trades in-between, but still! The guy started with one red paperclip and fourteen trades later had a house! In today‘s reading I was reminded of this story. I know, it seems like a bit of a stretch, but hear me out for a minute. In all of today‘s reading Paul is under arrest, he is in legal custody because back in chapter 21 he created such a riot with the local Jews that they‘ve all sworn to fast from food and drink until he is dead! Now, if you will remember this came as no shock to Paul as the Holy Spirit (in chapter 21, verse 11) had a prophet, Agabus, come and show Paul how he would be bound hand and foot and turned over to the Gentiles by the Jews. So because Paul was forewarned, I don‘t think he‘s too panicked about the death threat at the moment. I‘m sure he‘s taking it seriously, don‘t get me wrong, but at the same time, I‘m pretty sure that he‘s taking it all in stride. I say that simply because of the manner in which he handles each successive “trade-up“ in the courts.

He starts in Jerusalem with the Jews when he is arrested by them in the temple because they have “supposed“ that he brought a non-Jew into the temple and defiled it. The mob carried him out and were beating him when the “town sheriff“ (so-to-speak) came along with some of his deputies and arrested Paul simply because he couldn‘t understand the charges that the mob was holding against him.

As the soldiers were carrying him away, Paul mentions that he is a citizen of “no obscure city“, meaning I‘m someone important, and then he asked if he could speak to the people. He is granted permission and then turns around, holds his hand up and they all quiet down to listen to him. Then he starts sharing his testimony with them of how Jesus appeared to him and saved him; the very people who were just beating the pulp out of him!!! If that‘s not God‘s love pouring out of someone I don‘t know what is! I mean, talk about using every opportunity that God gives you to witness to someone right??? Wow! So then after that, for the next four chapters (and more, we‘re just not that far yet) Paul‘s situation escalates. The Jews plot his death; while Paul appears before higher and higher judges with larger and larger audiences until by the end of today‘s reading he was sent on to speak before Caesar himself! But this didn‘t come as a complete surprise either because in chapter 23 verse 11 Jesus (also known as the Word) comes to Paul and says “Take courage for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome“, again Paul is forewarned about what is to happen before it happens.

Paul might not have known that he would speak to Caesar himself, but he did know that he was headed to Rome in all this fiasco. Paul knew a few bits of information and he knew the end destination, and that was enough for him to take courage and continue on in his fight for not only his innocence, but his mission. And the beauty of it was that because he was in captivity, he was also heavily guarded from the enemy trying to take his life, all of his travel costs and room and board were paid for by the government. All his speaking engagements were booked for him with packed seats because of all the attention that he was gaining through all the turmoil and chaos. I‘ve heard it said before that “even bad press is still press“. It‘s still free advertising. And that‘s what Paul was getting, free advertising for him to go and preach to these unsaved Gentiles and tell them the good news that Jesus saves! And he did it all through his own personal testimony… his own story.

Funny how we seem to so often come back to that isn‘t it my friends? Did you know that the Enemy will do anything to keep you from sharing your own personal testimonies with the people around you? He will send people to beat and attack you, to tear you to shreds all to keep you silent. But if God is for us, then who can be against us? Satan may try to knock you down, but you have to allow God‘s soldiers to lift you back up so that you can turn around to the crowd that beat you and tell them who Jesus is. Don‘t let fear scare you away from the opportunities that God gives you to proclaim His love to His people. I‘ve lost count of how many opportunities I‘ve lost because I was scared. We can‘t let the fear of even death scare us out of preaching the good news, from doing what‘s right in a situation where everything is wrong. Sure, there may be some punches that hit their mark and some stones that get thrown, but you know what, we have to live like we‘re immortal… because we are.





 


 

Categories: Acts, Writing Through the Bible in a Year

Tomorrow’s Worries

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Tamar

Come Holy Spirit, fill me with Your fire so that I can be more like You; help me, I trust You. Father, open my eyes so that I may see You clearly. Open my ears so that I may hear You soundly. Open my mind so that I may understand You more. Open my heart so that I may love You more. Open my hands so that I may give generously and receive humbly, In Jesus‘ name, Amen!

Today‘s reading: Acts 20:1-22:21

And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, Acts 20:22

If you‘re like me, the future is a scary place. I know I am going there, whether I like it or not, but I don‘t know what will happen to me there, and that can be a scary thing! Today is a difficult day for the Knochel family; this afternoon we lost a dearly loved member of our family, my husband‘s grandma. She was a beautiful woman who loved God dearly enough to spend her summers out west working as a missionary and living out of their RV. As a family in this moment, we don‘t know what the future will look like without her in it; it looks a little darker and sadder right now. However, while those of us here on earth will be crying tears of sorrow and loss, her family in heaven will be crying tears of joy. We can‘t be sad for her, she‘s not missing anything, she‘s gaining everything. So our tears are obviously not for her benefit. If they‘re not for her benefit, then for who‘s but our own? And isn‘t that nothing but selfishness? Yet, when someone dies how can we do anything but cry? How can we do anything but morn? How can we feel anything but sorrow? How can we see anything but our loss?


Her salvation is secure, so what does she have to be sad about? Nothing!

The other day I told you about finding solace in photography and looking closely at the things that God alone created, and that‘s what I‘ve spent the morning doing today. As the kids and I were getting ready this morning it was a dreary dark morning, the feeling of the day was simply depressing and it was permeating our moods as well. But shortly after I dropped my daughter off at her play date and my son off at school God made my plans take a sharp right turn. I had planned on spending the morning in prayer with friends at the school, but that wasn‘t God‘s plan for me in this day, He knew what was coming for our family. So He canceled Mom‘s in Prayer for the morning due to our leader‘s sickness, then He sent me in His direction with a phone call from a friend. In that brief call I shared with her my current struggle with a “glass-half-empty“ attitude that I‘ve picked up somewhere. And God used her to shake some sense into me (He uses her a lot for that, I‘m tellin ya, everybody needs a friend like Kelly in their life)! And then God used the Holy Spirit and Kelly both to give me my new plan for the day, go take pictures.


For the last year I‘ve been struggling with this idea that “nothing good is going to happen to me“ in a worldly sense. Sure, I totally get that everything works for the good of those who love the Lord (Romans 8:28), but I‘d lost the hope that… oh, I don‘t know, maybe God would cut us a break! It seems like all we ever do is struggle. Struggle to manage our time, our money, our kids, our house, our jobs, sigh… it‘s exhausting! And so I‘ve been praying that God would show me His goodness in the land of the living. That I would get to SEE those blessings He promises in Deuteronomy 28. My flocks (or finances) becoming abundant, my bread pan (food) overflowing, you know, those kinds of things. Please don‘t misunderstand me, spiritually I am so blessed it amazes me… but physically… well, maybe I‘m just spoiled and I‘m not seeing things the way I should, but I want more!

OK, just reading that sentence makes me cringe, total selfishness! But, it is the truth. Honestly, right now I feel like I‘ve just been so beaten down by the world that I don‘t feel like getting up to get beaten back down again. But then, God speaks, and you really can‘t argue with Him, try as you may! This morning during my quiet time with Him, while I was reading today‘s passages, He says to me “Times of refreshing will come.“


This winter I kept expecting the snow to just dump on us and bury us like it did last year and yet it never did. And then about three weeks ago when it really started looking like spring was really here to stay I began to adjust my thinking and realized that just because the snow buried us last year doesn‘t mean that it will this year… and maybe God gave us this winter to make up for last winter! I held on to that thought pattern for a few days while it was in the sixties. But then it got up into the seventies the very next week and little Mr. Bad Attitude on my shoulder started whispering in my ear, “If it‘s in the seventies in March, what‘s it going to be like in July? It could be like a thousand degrees!“ And I started accepting those thought patterns and spitting them back out as my own!!! Ugh! What was I thinking? I was failing to realize that maybe, since God gave us such a mild and wonderful winter, and an early spring, that perhaps maybe He would also choose to bless us with this very weather for all of the summer as well! Maybe. Who knows?

You see, my dread of the future “bad“ weather was stealing my enjoyment of the current beautiful weather. And that‘s exactly what my attitude has been doing for my life as well. I have been so caught up in worrying about the future and what it holds that I‘ve been missing the beauty of the moment that I‘m in right now. I‘ve missed so very much.




Do not be anxious for tomorrow and let tomorrow‘s worries steal today‘s joys!

Categories: Acts, Writing Through the Bible in a Year

From “They” to “We”

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Tamar

“Come Holy Spirit, fill me with Your fire so that I can be more like You; help me, I trust You. Father, open my eyes so that I may see You clearly. Open my ears so that I may hear You soundly. Open my mind so that I may understand You plainly. Open my heart so that I may love You more. Open my hands so that I may give generously and receive humbly. In Jesus‘ name, Amen.“

Today‘s reading is: Acts 17-20

And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.“ And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. Acts 17:2-4

Yesterday I shared with you the idea of writing down your own gospel story of how God has worked through your life. Did you know that that‘s exactly what Luke was doing when he wrote Acts! I want you to look back at Chapter sixteen, up to this point in the story of Acts all we‘ve read is things like “they went through…“, “the next day he…“ & “As they went on their way…“ but if you take a close look at chapter sixteen you‘ll notice something special.

So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.“ And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. So setting sail from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace… (Acts 16:8-10)

Did you catch the shift? It‘s subtle, but it‘s there. It is at this point in the book of Acts that Luke himself joins the story! It‘s the part of the story where their journey became his journey. The entire Bible is a story; it‘s the story of God and His interactions with His beloved children. Today, right now, God is inviting you to join His story. He‘s inviting you to be part of His life, to be part of the journey, to be part of the family, the family of believers. And just like the believers in Casarea (in Acts 10), there is nothing required of you for you to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit in your life, you need only to hear the word that God is speaking to you today. You know, He‘s always been there for you, you may not have seen Him, He often finds Himself cast into the shadows of our lives. But He‘s there, waiting for us to turn around and notice Him. You may be thinking that you need to say a prayer to be saved, that you have to repent of all your past sins and get right with God before He will accept you into the kingdom of heaven and give you the gift of the Holy Spirit living within you, but you‘d be wrong. Just look at Acts 10:44

While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. For they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God.

While Peter was still speaking the Holy Spirit came, not when he was done, while he was still talking! And in Acts 11:15-17 when Peter is reporting to the church about what happened there we see that he wasn‘t even close to being done!

As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.‘ If then God gave the same gift to them as He gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God‘s way?

Romans 3:23 tells us that we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, we all make mistakes, we all screw up, and no one is equal to God. As humans we want to do something to earn God‘s favor and grace. But we can‘t. Period. We feel like we need to do something to make ourselves right with God that we need to spend a long time saying some prayer that goes through all the bad things we‘ve ever done in our entire lives before God will accept us. But that‘s just not the truth. Look at the proof in the word of God! The people listening to Peter‘s message in Cornelius‘ house never had an altar call, they never got down on their knees and told God they were sorry, they just listened and accepted the story that Peter was telling them. You know, Peter never even said anything about repenting in his speech. The closest he comes to that is in his introduction

“Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him.“ (Acts 10:34-35)

According to this, as long as we revere God and from this moment on make the choice to sin no more and instead do what is right then we are acceptable to God. And He can not only read our minds, He can read our hearts. He knows when we are truly repentant, He knows when we have accepted Him into our lives and He will honor that. God knows you, for better or for worse, He knows everything about you, and He adores you. Not only that, He cherishes you and He wants to spend more time with you; all day every day in fact. NO! You don‘t have to become a monk and turn to a life of prayer and study alone, to spend all day every day with God is to simply make the conscious effort to acknowledge His presence in your everyday life. Basically, you just have to pay attention to Him during the day. When the traffic light turns green just as you‘re pulling up to it, you say “Thank You Lord!“ and drive on. When you see a beautiful sunset on your way home from work, you say “Lord, thank You for painting the sky for me to enjoy! I love it!“ God doesn‘t usually call you to change your entire life overnight, although sometimes it does happen that way but usually He just wants you to make Him a part of the life that you‘re already living. He loves you and He wants to be a part of you. And when you fall in love with Him you want to become part of Him. When we get married it‘s because we want to be part of each other forever. That‘s what being a Christian is all about, getting married to God, being part of His life forever, and allowing Him to be a part of your life forever. Your two separate lives becoming one life, joined for all eternity.

Amazing things happen when you get married to Jesus, you start to change from the inside out. It‘s like I‘ve been saying, spending time with Jesus changes you! Being a Christian is so much more than simply going to church and singing pretty songs. Just like being married is so much more than simply living together and having sex. It‘s all about having a relationship with one another. It‘s about spending time with one another, talking to each other and doing things together. The beauty of being married is the promise that you‘ve made to one another. You‘ve promised that you will both make the conscious choice to fight for your marriage and never give up on one another; that you will cheer each other on and lift one another up. God does that for you. Not because He has to, but because He wants to, because He loves you.

Being married to Jesus means that you don‘t read the Bible because you want to know more about Him, but because you simply want to know Him. The Bible is the Word of God and Jesus is the Word of God, while we may not have Jesus in the flesh sitting right next to us right now, in a way, we do! Every word in that little Bible has been written down through the Spirit of Jesus (aka the Holy Spirit).

When you‘re married to Jesus you pray because you want to talk to your heavenly husband; not just because your religion tells you to. You pray because you want to spend time with Him and tell Him about your day. Sure, He went through that very same day with you and saw everything that you saw, but He still wants to hear you talk to Him about it. Did you know that God likes to hear the sound of your voice? While your earthly husband may get annoyed by your constant talking, God loves it! However, He does enjoy it when you stop talking long enough to allow Him to have a side in the conversation too. That‘s usually where the Bible reading comes in. He will speak to you through your daily Bible reading. It‘s amazing to me how I can sit down to read my Bible with my head filled with questions and somehow I‘ll read something albeit completely unrelated to my own situation and God can still use those words to speak straight to my spirit about His will for me. It‘s nothing short of miraculous to be honest! I have no clue how He does it, I just know that He does it! And not just for me, but for everyone!

Jesus is calling us to a GENUINE relationship with Him. He doesn‘t want to be our acquaintance; He wants to be our husband!

Categories: Acts, Writing Through the Bible in a Year

Just Write!

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Tamar

“Come Holy Spirit, fill me with Your fire so that I can be more like You; help me, I trust You. Father, open my eyes so that I may see You clearly. Open my ears so that I may hear You soundly. Open my mind so that I may understand You plainly. Open my heart so that I may love You more. Open my hands so that I may give generously and receive humbly. In Jesus‘ name, Amen.“

Today‘s reading is: Acts 14:8-16:40

And when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them, and how He had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. Acts 14:27

Well, it‘s been seven days of getting up an hour early to spend time with God and I‘ve got to say that it‘s just been amazing! I‘ll be honest, it hasn‘t been easy pulling myself out of bed in the morning, but the reward has certainly been worth it. God has used His word in amazing ways for me and the people around me! Yesterday while I was writing I kept thinking about a friend I‘ve been praying for and how the scriptures really applied well to her situation. By the time I was done writing I was completely convicted that I was supposed to take her one of the Jeremiah 29:11 cards I told you about, with the verses from yesterday‘s blog written on the back. And the best part was that I was already planning on seeing her later in the afternoon! Talk about God‘s perfect timing!

So this morning after I‘d read for the day and I was meditating on the scriptures and what God would like for me to talk about today I was marveling at the stories. The four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke & John) and Acts are the story or the adventures of the apostles and their lives with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I am a lover of the Original Testament; I love to read the stories of the patriarchs and their wives. I‘m not so big on the war and battle stories as much, but I can still get a word from them when God points me to them. There‘s just something about a story that pulls you in. And these stories are especially so, they make you want to know more about the people, who they were, and how God interacted with them in the lives. And when you think about it, that‘s really what Christian fellowship is all about! It‘s Christians sharing their life stories with other Christians and glorifying God by telling people how He helped them through a certain situation. It‘s what life is all about, God helping us, leading us, loving us, and saving us.

In today‘s reading most of it focused on different journeys that the apostles took to places that hadn‘t heard the gospel news yet. In Acts 14:24-28 Paul and Barnabas are basically coming back to home base for the disciples and they‘re reporting to the church all that God has done through them for the preaching of the good news. “They declared all that God had done with them“, they shared their own personal story of what God was doing in their lives… kinda like this blog!

You know, it never fails to amaze me how good it feels to sit down at the computer with the intent of writing something for the LORD, even when you really aren‘t sure what the two of you will talk about… and you‘re the one starting the conversation. Do you know what I mean? Like when you‘re going to meet with a friend you haven‘t seen in a really really long time, what are you going to say to them? Have they changed, have you changed? What will the two of you talk about? And yet, when you do get together, it‘s like you had only been apart for a moment and nothing more. The conversation just flows like it always had. That‘s what it feels like for me when I write. It just flows. Even when I have no idea what I‘ll write about when I sit down, it just flows out.

Writing is one of those things that I started doing simply because I had an insatiable yearning to write, but I didn‘t know what I was going to write. The yearning became so unbearable that I started to write down bits and pieces of my own life story, places in my life or milestones where God had made His presence oh-so-obvious. Then my husband and I started our True Intimacy fast and that‘s when all the pieces started falling into place for me. From then on I knew what kind of writer God wanted me to be; a teacher of sorts, His scribe, delivering His messages of hope and teaching His children how to have an intimate relationship with Him and with His other children, their brothers and sisters in Christ.

I find that the more I write about God, the more I get to know God. And the more I write to God, the more I hear from God. But the really amazing thing that I can hardly wait to share with you is that I have discovered that I‘m not the only one that feels like this! This last weekend I made a new friend, her name is Maurya (“Mar-ee-ah“ isn‘t that a beautiful name???), and she‘s a writer too! She writes for work, technical writing mostly, but it didn‘t take long before she shared her love of devotion style journaling with me. Together we discussed how amazing it is to write to God, or pray with your pen. And how it draws you closer to Him than you expected, perhaps because you can see what you‘re feeling through your own writing, but whatever the cause, the effect is apparently universal! Through journaling your thoughts and feelings to the Lord Almighty, you are drawing nearer to Him, He bends down to read over your shoulder and whispers His sweetness into your ears. Things that you can not hear out in the busy world that you can hear in the stillness that is conducive for writing. The scratch of a pen or pencil on paper, the tap of your fingers on the keyboard, it‘s music to His ears and eventually your own. And although it may sound different to us, it‘s not all that different from singing praises or playing them on the piano. To Him it‘s all praise and intimacy.

The more we write the more we discover Him. The more we search the scriptures for things to write about, the more we write them on the tablets of our hearts. I usually visualize it while I am inscribing the scriptures onto my rainbow colored index cards; like a feather pen writing the very words of God in supernatural permanent ink onto the flesh of my heart! They may not be drilled into my brain yet, but they‘re certainly in my heart instantly; stored there for the Holy Spirit to be able to call them forth whenever He desires to comfort or correct His children (especially this one). His words are like a refreshing balm to my soul and a cool drink to my throat. They hit their mark every time; they never miss their target simply because they are the words of God.

God‘s word is like a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. He uses it to guide and direct us when it‘s dark and we‘re lost. And that‘s when we read it! When we write about it, we start digging even deeper into the depth of God‘s love and mercy and grace. It takes time to write out a scripture, and as you are writing you are focusing on each individual word as you write it. The time it takes you to write them neatly allows you time to meditate on each word‘s purpose and function in the verse surrounding it. It allows you to ponder about its meaning and how it applies to your life. To let the word of God pour over your heart like honey allowing it to soak in and cleanse you from the inside out, well, there‘s just nothing like it. As Christians we need to be studying His word like a student studies for a test… because we‘re in the test, it‘s called LIFE! We need to be taking notes on the scriptures, whether it‘s in your bible‘s margin, your journal, or both taking notes is critical to understanding and applying the scriptures to your life. My friend Brenda shared a trick with me that I just have to pass on. She writes the date next to scriptures in her bible when they touch her. She told me once that there is a particular Psalm that is completely covered in highlighter and dates… looks like she doesn‘t have a life verse, she has a life Psalm! By keeping the dates in my Bible I have found that as I read it each day I will come back across those dates and I‘ll remember some of them, and what they meant to me on that day. God just loves when we remember what He‘s done for us throughout our lives.

Our life stories are the stories of lives filled with adventure, romance and drama. We are the main characters of our own real life Christian fiction book! Admit it; the life of a Christian is never dull. At least mine certainly hasn‘t been anyway. I know several people whose lives would make the best seller list in a heartbeat if they took the time to write it all down. And that‘s what I‘m challenging you to do today! No, not necessarily write a best seller, but to write your own story down, and to do however the Spirit leads you. Write whatever parts you think God is calling you to commemorate, and anything in between. The Lord our God is the author of our lives, He has written our stories with such tender loving care, the least we can do is write them down with pen and paper (or with a keyboard and a screen) so that our children and grandchildren can read about them some day. Did you know that no one in all of history or the future will ever live in this very time right now except you and me? So for that very reason alone we need to be recording what it‘s like to live in this day and age.

Life is an adventure, start writing it down!

Categories: Writing Through the Bible in a Year

Impossible

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Tamar

“Come Holy Spirit, fill me with Your fire so that I can be more like You; help me, I trust You. Father, open my eyes so that I may see You clearly. Open my ears so that I may hear You soundly. Open my mind so that I may understand You more. Open my heart so that I may love You fully. Open my hands so that I may give generously and receive humbly, in Jesus‘ name, Amen.“

Today‘s reading: Acts 11:19-14:7

And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer. Recognizing Peter‘s voice, in her joy she did not open the gate but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate. Acts 12:13-14

So, you know how yesterday I was talking about my personality and how when I get my sights set on something I just bulldoze through things to make sure that I get accomplished what I have set in my sights to accomplish? Yeah, I no more than finished writing about that, and then I did it! It was a good thing, but still, it‘s just who I am. Yesterday I was Rhoda, my Lord knocked on the door of my heart with an idea for a new photography branch for my ministry and I was so excited about it that I forgot to open the door and let Him in!!!

I have always loved photography, especially landscapes. I took photography in 4H when I was younger and that was pretty much the extent of my experience until my husband and I moved to the Chicago-land area so that he could go back to school. We just aren‘t city people. Both of us were raised in the country, we love large fields blowing in the breeze and quiet dirt roads. When we moved to the big city I missed the wild-life and the flowers, but mostly I missed the large trees. All my life I‘ve loved God‘s creation, but during that time in my life when I was so surrounded with cement, metal and glass I really found out just how much I love nature. And that‘s when I picked up my camera and started taking pictures of God. I had to search for Him in that place, not that the people I worked with weren‘t great, because they were, but because the natural creation that was made with God‘s hands alone was so scarce. I longed for the openness of home and was amazed at how, through the lens of a camera, I could catch glimpses of home through nature. I photographed flowers, the few I could find, mulch, shapes in the cement, wooden table tops, but mostly I photographed the sky!

The sky was the one thing that even in such a foreign place; it was the same there as it was at home. The clouds were puffy and white just like at home. Or it would be dark and looming just like at home before a rain storm. The wind blew them the same and the sun streamed through them down onto me the same as at home too. I found so much comfort and solace in staring at the sky during that time. That was a very dark time in my life; I was putting my husband through school by working as a daycare teacher. At the same time we discovered that I had a thyroid problem and figuring out what dosage my medication should be was proving extraordinarily difficult. I was absolutely exhausted ALL the time, so much so that I could barely walk up the three flights of stairs to our apartment at the end of the night. I‘d get to the top and I could barely breathe and could see stars. Because my husband was working and going to school I really never got to see him, so our relationship became more of a living arrangement than a marriage. We didn‘t live through that situation, we survived it. And we brought a lot of scars home with us when his schooling was over too.

Through that dark time there were two things that brought me great joy, photographing nature and music. At the time I was working in a church daycare and one day several men (a rarity in a day care) came downstairs to the classrooms where I worked. They went into one of the empty classrooms and came out with an old battered piano. Curious beyond measure I asked them what on earth they were doing and they replied “Pastor asked us to carry it out to the dumpster.“ I almost cried at the thought of an almost perfectly good piano getting thrown in the trash! I had always wanted a piano of my own and here was one they were going the throw away! I asked them to give me ten minutes, and they happily agreed. Go figure, it was a piano after all; they weren‘t looking forward to carrying it up the stairs to remove it from the building! I literally raced up to the pastor‘s office to throw myself at his mercy and ask him to allow the neglected piano to stay in my room. I knew I didn‘t have space in our apartment for a piano, but I had PLENTY of space in my giant classroom, which was almost the same size as my apartment! Plus with the addition of a piano I would be able to play songs for my kids to sing along to! How cool would that be??? (I was overestimating my abilities as a piano player at the time, but I was excited and really didn‘t care that much about the kids at the moment, God was doing this for me!) Although the pastor was a little disappointed that he wasn‘t getting rid of this old piano today, he was happy to see my enthusiasm about it and simply couldn‘t refuse my passionate request. I practically skipped back down the stairs to tell the men that they got to deliver it to my classroom instead of having to carry it up the stairs and outside. I think they were about as excited as I was! In the days to come I spent an hour every day playing that piano after work. I was finding music online and printing it off at home, then bringing it to work and practicing on the piano after the kids left at night. During that one quiet hour of my day, I didn‘t pray with my mouth or even in my head, but I‘m pretty sure I was praying with my fingers. The music penetrated my soul; it calmed me and soothed away the stress. I was by no means a good pianist, but it wasn‘t the success of my fingers that brought me peace, it was being alone with God. It was taking the time for myself, in that period when I was living everyone else. Photography and Piano were the only things that I did for me. They were what brought me joy and peace, and when I didn‘t do them, I was agitated and frustrated.

Since then it‘s always bothered me that I haven‘t done much with the pictures I took during that time. For the most part they‘re just hanging out on my computer. There are three that have successfully made it from my computer into my life. One I turned into a postcard for friends going through a rough time, it has Jeremiah 29:11 on it. Another I turned into a poster that has the “worry section“ from Matthew, it hangs above our bed as a constant reminder to me that if God clothes the lilies of the valley with more splendor than Solomon then how much more will He provide clothes for me? And He has! The third photo is the photo that was at the end of yesterday‘s blog, For nothing is impossible with God. When God first gave me the itch to write and planted that dream in my heart of becoming a missionary mom He had me pull that photo off my computer and onto the wall right in front of me while I sit at my desk and work. Constantly reminding me to resist the doubt that the Enemy throws into my life to try and convince me that something isn‘t possible for me or our ministry. A while back we got some new-to-us furniture and rearranged our library where I was working, in the move that picture got taken down and lost. And ya know, I‘ve felt the difference! During that time I struggled to fight the Enemy‘s attacks against me, I lost a lot of hope that our ministry would ever take off. I was forgetting to remember that NOTHING is impossible with God!

In today‘s reading, Herod had just killed one of the apostles and taken Peter captive in order to kill him as well. Peter was in what most of us would consider a fairly impossible situation. But not for God! God had Peter‘s brothers and sisters in Christ praying earnestly for him. And I have to point out that Jesus Himself had also let Peter in on a secret, that he would live to a ripe old age where others would have to dress him and take him places he didn‘t want to go, remember John 21:15-19. So we, as the readers know that Peter‘s gonna get out of this no-win situation, but HOW is the real question. I love how Acts 12:5 starts to tell us about the situation that Peter was in: So Peter was kept in prison, BUT earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church. I just love those “buts“ in scripture! You know, where there‘s this really hopeless situation and then it gets followed with a BUT GOD. There was Peter, not just in a prison cell alone in the middle of the night, but he was guarded by FOUR squads of soldiers, he was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison. Now, that‘s what I call an impossible situation! There was honestly no human way to escape. Peter could never have done it alone, and even if his friends had attempted a prison break, they most likely wouldn‘t have been successful.

BUT GOD!

His friends knew the real way to get him saved from this life and death circumstance, prayer! Appeal to the only force that has the power to help us out of impossible situations. Just like Mary we may be looking at the things God has told us and at our situations and thinking “How can this be since I am a virgin?“ And that‘s when God answers us “Ahhh, but my Beloved, NOTHING is impossible for Me! Trust Me, I can handle this.“ Which leaves us with only one response “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to YOUR WORD.“ (Luke 1:34-38)

When we surrender our impossible situations over to the Lord, He makes them possible! Peter‘s friends prayed, and while the scripture isn‘t specific about the fact that God heard their prayers, it‘s evident in the manner in which the information is shared with us. The simple evidence that their prayers are mentioned tells us that God heard them. God hears our prayers, all of them, all of the time. God hears them, and He sends the help that we need. Keeping in mind that it might not take the form that we want or expect, but He always answers our prayers with what we need. And what Peter needed was a miracle! God sent the help that he needed to get out of that impossible situation in the form of an angel.

One of my favorite verses in this story is verse seven: And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.“ And the chains fell off his hands. There was no toil involved, no searching for the keys, or “be quiet, don‘t wake the guards“, just a smack to the side to wake him up and then an abrupt “Get up! Quick!“ and the chains that bound him to this impossible situation just fell off! They just fell off!!! My friends, prayer does that, it makes the chains binding us to our own impossible situations simply fall off, in Jesus‘ name! Hallelujah! What is impossible for man is possible for God! No, it‘s not just possible for God, it‘s EASY for God, because, well, He is GOD.


Categories: Acts, Writing Through the Bible in a Year | Tags: , ,

Rise

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Tamar

“Come Holy Spirit, fill me with Your fire so that I can be more like You; help me, I trust You. Father, open my eyes so that I may see You clearly. Open my ears so that I may hear You soundly. Open my mind so that I may understand You plainly. Open my heart so that I may love You more. Open my hands so that I may give generously and receive humbly. In Jesus‘ name, Amen.“

Today‘s reading is: Acts 9:1-11:18

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.“ The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank. Acts 9:6-7

I started “Live Boldly“ with the words “Being with Jesus, well, it changes you.“ And truer words could not be spoken over today‘s passage! Saul was a religious zealot. He was obsessed with stopping these people, who were calling themselves “the Way“, from speaking blasphemous things. And by the looks of it he was willing to go to about any lengths to stop them, including murder. But, it‘s impossible to have a personal encounter with Jesus and not be changed from the experience. Saul was just walking down the road, minding his own business, when BOOM! Jesus stops him in his tracks and the sudden appearance of the glory of God knocks Saul to the ground, as it should. Saul was so overwhelmed from his experience with Jesus that he was blind for three days! While Peter accepted Jesus‘ messiah-ship immediately, Saul took a while. I‘m sure some of us can relate to this!

Personally, I‘ve accepted Jesus‘ role in my life as Savior immediately and easily; but His role in my life as Lord (or leader) has been much more difficult for me. I don‘t know if I was a strong-willed child when I was younger, but I certainly am now, just ask my husband! When I get something locked into my sights, I go for it, and I don‘t stop until I get it. When we took the Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage seminar by Mark Gungor we took a great personality quiz called the Flag Page. The symbol for my secondary personality was a bulldozer; that describes me to a “T“! I am unable to leave things alone. If I‘m in the middle of a project, it‘s next to impossible for me to leave it unfinished before I move on to something else. I get very stuck holding on to an idea or a thing just because it‘s what came along first. When I first started writing my husband and I wrote a book about Godly sexual intimacy in marriage (True Intimacy). And for the longest time I thought that we would be doing ministry work together and it would be all about marriage and sex. It took two years for God to wrangle that concept out of my grasp and get me to open up to the idea that maybe God had an even wider scope for our ministry. I was so focused on what I thought His plan was for us that I couldn‘t see His actual plan. I thought I knew what it was and I was pushing everything else aside. On top of that, because I knew that He has called me to be a writer for Him I had this concept of being a “published author“, you know, someone with books in print. I have held on to that dream and image of myself for three years. But as the director of the local library told me “You have to get into the modern era! E-books!“ It‘s taken me three years to give that one up to God too. But I think I‘ve actually gotten to that point… I hope so anyway. God helped me with that the other day by making sure that I heard on the radio that Encyclopedia Britannica is no longer printing their books anymore, they‘re going totally digital. That made me feel so much better!

You see, GOD knows the plans that He has for us (Jeremiah 29:11), and those plans may not look like the plans we have for ourselves. And they might not look like the plans that we even think that God has for us. But I can guarantee that His plans are WAY better than our plans, because unlike us, He can see the whole picture. He can see the whole plan from “In the beginning“ to the “Amen“. He‘s helped me realize that my dream of having printed books was severely limiting my own creativity. You can‘t put links to other websites, songs, other bible verses, pictures etc into a printed book. You generally can‘t put color text or color pictures in the interior of a printed book either. But with a blog/website the sky is the limit, with the internet there are no rules, no “trade standards“ and no denominational guidelines to follow. I can write precisely what He leads me to write and I don‘t have to worry about someone telling me that I‘m not allowed to post that. Sure that opens me up to plenty of criticism from every side, but that‘s just part of ministry. Someone will always tell you that you‘re doing something wrong. (Like Saul.) But we‘re not supposed to be following the direction of the people around us, we‘re supposed to be following the directions of the Holy Spirit. And when we do that, we are truly living according to the Spirit!

When I was reading this morning there was a word that caught my attention. It caught my attention because it kept coming up, over and over and over again in the reading. It first appeared when Jesus spoke to Saul on the road, “rise and enter the city…“, and then “Saul rose from the ground“. I was so taken by the repetition of these two words that I actually took the time to go back through and count them, fourteen in all! In these three short chapters the words “rise“ and “rose“ appeared fourteen times in the ESV translation. Now I‘m a big believer in the idea that if God says something once you listen. But, like I said, sometimes I‘m a little hard of hearing. Thankfully God is patient! He knows that usually He has to tell me things over and over again before I will hear them let alone listen. By the end of the reading I was starting to get the picture, but I‘m a digger, I love to dig deeply into the fertile soil of the Word and see what treasures I can find. Each and every word in scripture is important and can hold a treasure within it. There is this wonderful site www.biblos.com in it there is a WEALTH of knowledge and the tools to discover it on your own as well! My favorite tool on this site is the lexicon, where you can look up any verse in the bible and click on the word that you want to learn more about and it will tell you the original Greek or Hebrew word and what they mean. It is amazing to me how the Holy Spirit has used this tool in my life. Knowing all the possible translations of a word gives that word so much more depth and meaning within the verse, which then gives the verse itself more depth and meaning as well.

Of course, I‘m telling you all this to tell you about the word “rise“ that Jesus speaks to Saul on the road. In Greek the word rise is pronounced “anistaymee“ and according to biblos.com means: “I raise up, set up; I rise from among (the) dead; I arise, appear“. Did you catch that my friend? It means to rise from among the dead!!! Up to that point in his life Saul was DEAD. His body was animate, but his soul was dead… until he came face to face with Christ. It was from that moment on that he was truly alive. When Jesus said “rise“ he was commanding Saul‘s soul to LIVE.

While I held on firmly to my own plans for my writing and ministry they were dead. But the moment I encountered His glory and released my plans to the grave, that‘s when God was able to breathe life into them. My plans hindered God‘s plans, and who am “I that I could stand in God‘s way?“ (Acts 11:17) Do you have any idea how many times I questioned if God was really blessing my ministry? I don‘t know for sure, but it was a lot! And it wasn‘t because He wasn‘t blessing my ministry either, because He was in huge ways, it just wasn‘t in the one way that I wanted Him to bless me. The ways in which He was blessing my ministry didn‘t line up with my plans, so therefore they weren‘t blessings in my mind. Thankfully, I couldn‘t stand in God‘s way. Oh, let me say that again! You can‘t stand in God‘s way. Period. Who are you to think that you can? He‘s GOD. And, I‘m sorry, but anyone who says otherwise is underestimating who God is.

He is God ALL-mighty,

He is ALL-powerful,

He is ALL-knowing,

He is Yehovah God, the maker of the heavens and the earth.

WE were made by Him from the dust of that earth. We are worms compared to Him. And yet, not only does He love wormy-little-ole-us, but He tells us His plans for us in Isaiah 41:14-16 to

Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I am the one who helps you, declares the LORD; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. Behold, I make of you a threshing sledge, new, sharp, and having teeth; you shall thresh the mountains and crush them, and you shall make the hills like chaff; you shall winnow them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the tempest shall scatter them. And you shall rejoice in the LORD; in the Holy One of Israel you shall glory.

We may be mere worms, and we are, HOWEVER nothing is impossible with God (Luke 1:37). While we are fragile and weak worms unable to defend ourselves in any way, He is the one who helps us. He is the one who has redeemed us and made us so much more than worms! A threshing sledge, NEW and SHARP, not only are we alive and made new in Christ, we are also made powerful and strong. With the baptism and indwelling of the Holy Spirit comes the power to turn “impossible“ into “possible“, “weak“ into “strong“. Jesus told Saul to “rise“ because he was on the ground; he was a dead worm in the dirt. But because Jesus had plans for Saul, just like He has plans for each and every one of us. He told him to rise and go into the city where He would instruct him further at the proper time. And until that time those instructions would have to be sufficient for Saul. So Saul rose from the ground. He got up! He came to life for the first in his life. No longer a weak worm, but a tool used for harvesting!

Oh rise up my friend! Have you been like me? Clinging to plans that are getting you nowhere fast? Give those plans a fast burial! Cast them aside and empty your hands so that they are free to receive the plans that GOD has for you! Get rid of those black and white paper and ink dreams and allow God to dream for you in full and living color! The sky is the limit.

Categories: Acts, Writing Through the Bible in a Year | Tags: , , ,

Mouth

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Tamar

Today’s reading: Acts 7&8

But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” Acts 7:55-56

Today has been an interesting day so far. I had this post started before I went to Parks & Prayers this morning and now I’ve come back to it and I’ve just got to go in a whole different direction than what I started with. First I suppose I’ll start with Parks & Prayers, it’s a group of moms of all ages that get together once a week to lift one another up in prayer. We meet at a park or an indoor play-place so that the kids have something to do so that there’s no childcare necessary. While the children play we moms are free to share our burdens with one another. We’re all reading through the bible alphabetically so when we are finished sharing prayer requests and praying we talk about that as well…but generally we never get there in the two hours we set aside for our group time.

Listening to all these beautiful ladies’ requests I was amazed at how many were dealing with words. They were asking God for the right words to say to this person or how to deal with that situation and it struck me how wonderful God is to answer those prayers! Follow along with me on the rabbit trail that God lead me on this morning through the scriptures!

Stephen, in Acts 7, saw the heavens open and saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. As the stones were being thrown at him the heavens opened up and he could see into the throne room of heaven! He could see the Father, he could see Jesus, he could see it! Isaiah saw the throne room of God while still alive as well. In chapter six we read:

“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.” And he said, “Go, and say this to the people…” (Isaiah 6:1-9a)

God apparently called for Isaiah, because Isaiah was suddenly whisked away to the throne room of God Almighty where he encountered angelic beings and God Himself. And what was Isaiah’s reaction? I’m not good enough! But God had a solution for that and the angel brought the coal to remove the sin from Isaiah’s mouth. How incredible is that? While Isaiah had a hot coal brought to his lips, we have the blood of Christ to atone for our sins. And with that God follows up the coal with a question. To whom He is asking the question is unknown, perhaps He is simply pondering the question out loud for Isaiah’s benefit. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Kind of like when I want to tell my kids that we’re going to the park, but I want them to think that it was their idea, “Hmmmmm…. I wonder who would like to go to the park with me?” Both kids jumping up and down with their hands in the air reply, “OH, OH, OH MOMMY! I’LL GO, I’LL GO!” I don’t know, maybe He was actually thinking about whom He would send, but it kinda makes sense to me that since He had already called Isaiah up there it was pretty obvious who He really had in mind to do the job to begin with. So when Isaiah offers to be a part of God’s plan God then starts to explain the plan to Him. “Go, and say this to the people…” God GAVE Isaiah the words to say. Isaiah didn’t need to come up with them on his own, he didn’t have to be educated or a brilliant speaker, he only needed to be available to do God’s bidding.

What about Moses? God called him to speak for Him too. God brings Moses into His presence by luring him with a bush that is on fire but isn’t burning up. I like in Exodus 3 & 4 where it says “When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!‘” It wasn’t until God noticed that Moses was taking an interest in the bush that He actually spoke to Moses. It was at this point that God starts to explain to Moses part of His plan, that He has seen the suffering of His people and heard their cry for help and… I want you, Moses, to go talk to the most powerful man in all the world and tell him to let my people go. Now, for Isaiah it was when he realized that he was in the presence of God that he felt unworthy, for Moses it was when he was given this mountainous task that he replies to God:

“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel…“

Both Isaiah and Moses were given huge tasks to do in the name of the LORD, and both questioned their own ability to accomplish those tasks. Both men were face to face with the holiness and majesty of God and asked themselves “Who am I that I would be called to do this?” And yet they are who GOD CHOSE to do those tasks. Both men were called to be God’s spokesperson and neither was able… on their own.

After a slew of questions and semi-reasonable arguments that Moses offers God to try to “help God” understand that He’s picked the wrong guy for this job Moses tries one last resort.

“Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” Then the LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” Exodus 4:10-12

Who has made your mouth? Who has called you into His service to be His hands, His feet AND His mouth? We, like Moses, can offer up a page full of excuses as to why we are ill-equipped to fulfill the calling that He has given us; but just like Moses, it won’t do us any good. God has chosen YOU for this, so you might as well get used to the idea. God chose YOU, probably not because you were the best prepared or the best educated person for the job, but because you weren’t. I find it no small coincidence that God chose a man with a speech impediment to be His spokesperson. Because it is through our imperfections that God’s perfection shines the most brilliantly. Don’t dwell on your own inabilities; instead dwell on God’s abilities. Don’t stare at that mountain that you can’t seem to climb, stare at the One who MADE the mountain. HE is able. And because He is able, you don’t have to be. HE is perfect. And because He is perfect, you don’t have to be. HE is equipped. And because He is equipped, you don’t have to be.

The Sovereign LORD has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. Isaiah 50:4 (NIV)

I am the LORD your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar – the LORD of hosts is His name. And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, “you are my people.” Isaiah 51:15-16

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. Psalm 19:14

Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad. Proverbs 12:25

Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body. Proverbs 16:24

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Proverbs 25:11

Every word of God is flawless; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Proverbs 30:5 (NIV)

Categories: Acts, Writing Through the Bible in a Year | Tags: , , , , ,

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