As we continue the College Quest!!!

 What are we learning in this world of higher education?  Is it against the will of God to use the means at hand to progress and to engage our culture, for our profit and for our usefulness in the world in which we live?  Does God want me to engage the world with the grace of God or retreat and hide from fear of the seepage of it’s indelible ink on my soul?

God is greater and can handle me in my engagement with the culture.  I believe that there is nowhere that I can go that is apart from his ability to rescue me from others or from myself.  Pastor preached against the leaven of sin in the believer’s life.  What defiles us, truly keeps us from deeper intimacy with Christ.  Asking God to keep us from the ungodliness of our culture is truly a Danielic task.  Other cultures seem to take their religion so much more seriously than we do.  They have outward adornments and they have feasts and things that everyone has to accommodate and we feel very diminished, because for the most part, Christianity has built our economy around our feasts and life.  It doesn’t seem special in comparison.   

It is, though and it doesn’t make our religion less special because we have built our lives around it.  Christmas, Sundays, Easter, etc., are beautiful and beautifying experiences that draw us into a deeper relationship with the very one who made and sustains the world! Hallelujah!  We needn’t make ourselves obnoxious and notorious for not engaging or interacting with the godlessness of the idolatrous around us.  Our God is in control,  the gods of the nations are the distraction of this world.  The idolatry of worldliness is offensive and stinky, but we know that God is greater.   

Who do we serve?  Why are we learning in an ungodly environment?  Can I stand, with all of these temptations and differences rubbing shoulders with me?

I most certainly can!  God is greater and he empowers me to do all things for his glory!  I can learn and represent Christ even in the midst of  an ungodly university around me.  I mustn’t get disappointed, when those who represent religion show no mercy for the torrents of sin that attack.  They shoot us by ridicule for choosing to represent Christ in an uncomfortable position,ie, sports, and arts and other unusual circumstances.   A man in the sports arena, is never assumed to be a heathen, but a woman, no question, she is a heathen.  That isn’t true.   We love Him because he first loved us and he will love us through this difficulty as well!

Lord, I trust you with my soul!  Lord, I trust you with my mind!  College is no match for your omnipotence and so I engage the world in which we live, with a victorious and expectant attitude for you to glorify yourself in my experiences.  For the Glory of Christ Jesus and for the betterment of his church in our age! Amen

Carowinds. July 15,2023

 

Pray for our Country!

Seventeen?

October 18th

 Tales from the Pumpkin Patch...

What a precocious little fellow you were.  Now that you are a man, we expect great things from you.  Keep trying to pick up the pieces, please.  

Just a mention of my personal devotions! Pray my strength in the Lord.

 Job 1:5  

And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.

My Dearest “son of my Vows”,

what a bright and resourceful young man you have become.   I feel that I can share more with you now because you have struggled some in this COVID time.  I feel so much in common with you, although I am eldest child in my family and you the youngest.   So much struggle has made you very sensitive and careful as a communicator and as a peacelover in the family.  I love to watch you carefully tread through the minefield of personalities that it is your providence to endure.

This morning, it was the providence of God for me to begin the book of Job.  I really think this is my least favorite book in the bible and yet perhaps the most endearing to me.  I put on the seatbelts of my mind, every time that I get to this reading.  I prayed to God to give me strength in the form of a very deep sigh! and I pressed on.  

Lord,  this is Christmas season and you know how this book will carry me through seasons of memories that are difficult for me to get up from.  Yes I was this impertinent to the Lord, all the while knowing that He can carry me if I fall from this Christmas meditation.   “You need this right now”. I felt that His silence and comfort confirmed this and I pressed on.   Of course I can choose to wriggle free from this providence and go on to a happier book.  A less personal book, etc.

We were in the book of Job as a family in devotions, when Baby Benjamin passed away.   It always carries me right back to the last day that I held him in my lap and cradled his tiny head in my hands adoringly.

I considered rushing through the book seeing that it is 42 chapters long I thought perhaps if I read 6 books a day I can get through it in 7 days instead of dragging this all through the Christmas season.  I knew in my heart that this wasn’t going to edify my soul to rush through this difficult and blessed expression of God’s heart to me.  So I am trudging through it and I intend to drink every lesson from God as He holds my hand and walks me through the many years of Job’s life and the many years of my life where there are questions and lets me see His sovereignty, even here on earth, before I face Him in the true judgment.   I trust Him to settle my soul.  I will be 59 this year and I trust that God will renew my strength in this reading as He has so many times before.  

I ask for your prayers and hope that you will grow to know and love the Lord and see Him working in your life in His wonderful and sometimes scary ways!  Love, Mom

What a mighty leap you take!

 You don't run, as I watched you on the courts this past Saturday.  You bound from one place to another. It is no wonder you get so tired so fast.  You leap in the air, as though you could get from one place to another in one leap.  

I hadn't noticed that before about you.  I would practice small step running and then go back to the leap. The speed is great and the effort is awesome, but you might need to conserve some of your energy for the long haul.  I think that is necessary for you; not just because you get tired, but for a life lesson.  Sometimes we must leap into things, but more often it takes more than one step to get from one place to the other.

Just a Thought!

choosing to remember Jesus' self control

2 Kings 1:13 

And he sent again a captain of the third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of fifty went up, and came and fell on his knees before Elijah, and besought him, and said unto him, O man of God, I pray thee, let my life, and the life of these fifty thy servants, be precious in thy sight.

Jesus met with Elijah in the mountain.  Could it be that Jesus was discussing with him the parts of his soul that were engaged when he called fire down from heaven on those troops?  Was fear a motivating factor?  Were there things that Elijah still could have learned from John the Baptist’s response in impending doom?  Jesus was truly the greatest example of not calling down fire from heaven, with all authority under heaven.  He went the final mile of the journey with no animosity against the entire earth.  Because He could see that He was saving souls and not destroying.