On my walk this evening.
The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy
(Psalm 65:12 ESV)
Creation and creatures applaud you, God;
Your holy people bless you.
(Psalm 145:10 The Message)
Pasture
Category: Fields
Wanderings
You have taken account of my wanderings;
Put my tears in Your bottle.
Are they not in Your book?
Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call;
This I know, that God is for me.
In God, whose word I praise,
In the Lord, whose word I praise,
In God I have put my trust, I shall not be afraid.
What can man do to me?
(Psalm 56:8-11)
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Presumptuous
I hear the people calling, “We want more of you, God!”
I hear God whispering, “I want more of you, people.”
Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults.
Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins;
Let them not rule over me..
(Psalm 119:12,13a)
Presumptuous sin: Calling on God to fulfill our plans instead of our being willing to lay down all we have to fulfill His.
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Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
Some people are so encouraging. Sometimes we don’t even notice how gifted they are until after we walk away feeling more capable and built up by their ability to see what God sees in us. It is then that we feel a bond of love and appreciation toward them.
Here’s a secret for those of you seeking mates. We tend to fall in love with people who help us like ourselves. We long to be around those who respect us and who let us see our own beauty reflected in their eyes. The fun part is that when we learn to bring out the best in people, amazingly, they tend to see the best in us.
When we need to correct our children or our employees or the ones we are privileged to mentor the goal is not to impress them with our competence, but rather to give them an enhanced vision of their own capabilities. This is building people up rather than tearing them down with harsh criticism that comes from a need to prove ourselves.
The reward for winning the game of King of the Hill is possessing the mound alone. The reward for lifting someone else up the hill is that they ask us to join them in their rejoicing on the mountain top. This is the fruit of grace.
Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. (Ephesians 4:11-16)
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All I Have Needed
All I have needed Your hand has provided.
Great is Your faithfulness, Lord, unto me!
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In a dream, in a vision of the night
The Byzantines left a structure to mark the spot in the field where Jacob/Israel is said to have had his dream of an open heaven -or at least somewhere in this area that looks like an ordinary gently sloped hillside. (Dare I say I was somewhat relieved by the absence of a huge edifice or gift shop?)
Dreams are significant enough to be mentioned at least 121 times in the Bible. I’ve learned to pay attention.
Have you had a significant dream that changed your life?
Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold,the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
So early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel. (Genesis 28)
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Resting, Resting
The dream began when my grandmother gave me a sparkly star pin. She brought it back from Bethlehem when I was a teenager and every Christmas when I took it out of my jewelry box I remembered how she talked about her trip to Israel and how much it meant to her. I wanted to go too.
There are so many needs in the world. Frankly, I tend to be the over-responsible big sister type who feels the need to rescue and fix. I also grew up with a fear of not having enough. I justified my ability to pinch a penny so hard it screamed for mercy by giving my reserved squashed coins to charity -widow’s mite and all that.
A couple of years ago someone encouraged a group of us to remember dreams we had relinquished, thinking they were not practical, or were meant for people who needed them more. I realized I had not asked my good heavenly Father for things because I thought, that like my earthly father, he was on a tight budget, and that his resources were limited and had to be carefully meted out to fulfill the great commission of making disciples of all men. It felt selfish to ask Abba if he would give me a trip to Israel like the one my grandmother took. Maybe for someone else, but not for me.
But I dared to ask. And he answered.
The whole time we were in Israel for the past two weeks this song ran through my head:
Jesus, I am resting, resting
in the joy of what Thou art.
I am finding out the goodness
of Thy loving heart.
I know the word in the old hymn is “greatness” and not “goodness”, but that’s the word that kept showing up in that half-sleep time while dawn lightened the skies.
So many things seemed to make the trip look impossible -and up until two days before departure we thought we would have to cancel, but my health improved, our son-in-love came out of his coma and encouraged us to go, and people stepped in to look after things I had assumed were my responsibility alone.
Every day was a gift from a good Father. I thought that nothing could top the feeling of standing on top of Mount Carmel and realizing this was the place where God showed up for Elijah and sent the prophets of the false god, Ba’al, who demanded appeasement, running in ignominy. I thought that would be the highlight, but it just got better.
“Rest,” He said. “Sit down and let others do the running for a while. Rest and let me love you.”
One day, in a lower room below the busy streets of Jerusalem, perhaps on the very pavement where Jesus stood, where the soldiers humiliated him and put a crown of thorns on his head, I sang. I sang with tears and a heart full of gratitude,
I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow.
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus ’tis now.
When we came home a couple of days ago, we immediately went to see our son-in-love, who has been on his own journey in the valley of the shadow of death. He is out of ICU, and starting to walk and rebuild his strength in a rehab hospital. The hospital staff are calling him “Miracle Man.”
God is good. So very, very good.
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How Wide
And may you have the power to understand,
as all God’s people should,
how wide,
how long,
how high,
and how deep his love is.
May you experience the love of Christ,
though it is too great to understand fully.
Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power
that comes from God.
(Ephesians 3:18, 19)
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Dreadless
He refreshes and restores my life (my self); He leads me in the paths of righteousness [uprightness and right standing with Him—not for my earning it, but] for His name’s sake.
Yes, though I walk through the [deep, sunless] valley of the shadow of death, I will fear ordread no evil, for You are with me; Your rod [to protect] and Your staff [to guide], they comfort me. (Psalm 23 Amplified version)
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Let the banners wave
“There’s something in you that wants to applaud creation and the reason is because God stocked the whole of the Earth with delight. He put it in people, in situations…it’s EVERYWHERE!” -Graham Cooke
Charis: Subject to Change 