Words He Loves to Hear

Your lovingkindness, O LORD, extends to the heavens, Your faithfulness reaches to the skies, Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; Your judgments are like a great deep, O LORD, You preserve man and beast. How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Your wings. Psalm 36:5-7

David was a man who could not say enough good about our God. In this passage alone He eludes to at least seven aspects of God: His loving kindness, His faithfulness, His righteousness, His judgments, His presence, His protection, and His person. The Psalms are filled with many more verbalized lists of who God is, what God is like, and what God does.

It was from the psalmist that I learned God is my rock, my defense, my shelter, my sustainer, my high tower, my shepherd, my comforter, my defender, my strength, my forgiver, my healer, etc…. Our God is not a distant, abstract God. He is personal and passionate about us and wants us to know Him on an intimate level.

This morning as I anticipate tomorrow’s day of Thanksgiving I want to make sure that my prayers of thanksgiving reflect and include the attributes of my God. While I am thankful for freedom, family, possessions, health, and friendships, I am most thankful for God Himself. May I find time amidst family gatherings and travel to slip away with Him and spend some time listing to Him all that I know about Him. May the words not come fast enough as I proclaim the truth of Him and all He means to me. As His intervention and interaction in my life come to mind, may praise fill my lips and tears fill my eyes. Heartfelt acknowledgement of His presence and person fills Him with delight!

So how can I do all of this on a practical level? Here are a few ways: read through some Psalms and slip my name into the verses, list God’s attributes using the alphabet (one for each letter), review the events of my life picturing Jesus in each scene, sing songs of worship back to Him, tell Him my deepest feelings about Him. The list is endless! The practice is powerful! The result will be astounding! May my anticipation for such a meeting build and may I integrate it into my daily life.

Father, while my list will never be complete it will be proclaimed with passion! You are beyond words but I will speak the ones I know. As your child, I delight in You, celebrate You, and acknowledge You. Amen.

With Open Eyes

Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He vanished from their sight. Luke 24:31

I love the story that took place after the resurrection of Jesus. Two people are walking on the road to Emmaus which was about seven miles outside of Jerusalem. They had been witnesses to the crucifixion of Jesus. His death had been unexpected by them and the sorrow profound. While they had heard reports that He had actually risen from the dead they could not embrace it as truth yet. As they talked they were joined by none other than Jesus but they did not realize it was Him. He took the time to listen to them and then began to explain the Scriptures that taught of Him. Still there was no recognition. It wasn’t until they got to the place they were staying and invited this guest to join them for a meal that their eyes were opened. When Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them they recognized Him….then He vanished.

Hearts that once burned with sorrow now exploded with joy and they could not wait to get back to His disciples to share their experience and the truth of His resurrection! I am sure it was a story they would tell countless times to anyone who would listen. Imagine being one of the people who actually saw Jesus after His resurrection! Only His friends and followers had that rare experience. Not one enemy was given the privilege.

Jesus is still in the business of opening eyes today. Each of us who know Him as Savior, came to the point of recognizing who He was after living part of our life unable to see Him. It is a spiritual sight that is profound. Only Christ could open our eyes to the truth of His death and resurrection and then make what He did personal to us by accepting Him as our Savior. Have you ever stopped to think what your life would be like if that had never happened? But it does not stop at salvation. Eye opening experiences to who Jesus is continue to happen to us. The longer I walk with Him the more times I have of recognizing Him in new and profound ways. While He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, my view of Him is what keeps changing and that in turn continues to change me!

Father, at one time I was completely blind to You. Thank you that You continue to improve my vision. I long to see You more clearly each day. Keep opening my eyes to new dimensions of Yourself. Amen.

I CAN Get Up

There the doers of iniquity have fallen; they have been thrust down and cannot rise. Psalm 36:12

Years ago there was a commercial with an elderly woman who is remembered for her desperate statement, “I have fallen and I can’t get up!” Have you ever felt like that? I certainly have. Psalm 36:12 can be placed over the lives of many people. Pride, wickedness, and a refusal to turn to God can send them on a spiraling lifestyle where there is no recovery. How sad!
I am encouraged this morning because while there may be times that I fall and am thrust down, as a child of God I CAN rise. If I sin I can find forgiveness. If I am discouraged I can be encouraged. If my emotions have run amuck I can be strengthened once again. How? By coming to my father in humility and honesty and allowing Him to lift me up.

The Christian life is meant to be more than behavior modification and positive thinking. Those two things can pretty much be produced on our own. But it takes the Word of God and His Spirit in me to do a work that literally changes the way I think, act, and speak. It is not just an outward makeover. It is a complete overhaul! The things I change on my own result in temporary fixes at best. When God does the changing it lasts!

So I am asking myself this morning, what are the steps I must take and what is it that God does? Here is what I have learned so far:

I must come before Him in honesty. No more hiding. No more pretending I don’t have the thoughts and feelings that I have. He knows me thoroughly. Confession and repentance may be the first words out of my mouth. After that it may just be a time of admitting what is going on in my heart.
I must take time to listen to God’s response back to me. Many times it will be in recalling Scripture I have committed to memory. God’s Word has much to say about God’s thoughts toward me and how He longs for me to see myself.

Many times God will use these two things to transform my thinking and establish growth and change that is lasting.

Father, thank you for the many times you lift me up when I have fallen. Your hands hold me firmly as I continue on this journey with You. Amen.

Accepting the Gifts

Every good gift and every prefect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. James 1:17

I just finished reading today’s selection from Our Daily Bread and my mind is swimming with the gifts God desired to give me for many years but I did not know how to reach out my hand and accept them. While I was able to receive the gift of salvation at the age of 14, it took decades to realize other intended gifts God had for me. Three gifts are coming to mind that I now possess. They are the gift of fellowship that crosses over denominational lines, the gift of reading various versions of the Bible, and the gift of listening to Christian music that ministers deeply to me. I have reveled in the joy of these gifts for nearly three years now. What took me so long?!

The answer lies in two sources. For one, I did not know God was offering me the gifts. I had so cloaked myself in the garments of separation that they were not even an option for me. But I was also taught these were counterfeits of God’s actual will and I felt if I embraced them I must be backsliding. I felt like the person who possessed a ticket to an amusement park. The ticket permitted me to ride any ride I wanted, but I did not have the luxury of doing that. I was limited to the rides of other people’s choices. I was also like the person who purchases a television set but allows the salesman to program the remote to his favorite channels. I had completely missed the heart of Paul’s themes which express the ability to take our instructions from God. I was not able to look to God for direction in how to live my individual Christian life. And I was miserable!

What finally helped me to see the truth? God brought genuine Christians across my path that radiated with a love for Christ and they were free! Free to enjoy the gifts God offered. I hungered to live my Christian life in the same way. My new found desire allowed me to finally reach out my hands and receive multiple gifts God joyfully gave me. And what I have come to realize is that it is not a matter of whether or not I align myself with the boundaries, rules, and limitations others would seek to imprison me with but rather whether or not I allow God to design my walk with Him.

Father, You have been so patient in waiting for me to accept what You have been offering me all along. Thank you! Amen.

He Is Not Finished

May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ. 2 Thessalonians 3:5 NASB

I find that my personal struggles center more in my thoughts and mindsets than in any other area of my life. No wonder Jesus so clearly stated, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” I have spent a life time gathering information and yet the bottom line still comes down to what I believe in the very depths of my heart. I have come to the place where I can now divide my thought patterns into three categories….what I believe about God, what I believe about myself, and what I believe about other people. For some people they would have other categories but these are mine.

Three years ago God began to help me see where my thoughts were untrue about Himself. He has led me on a progressive journey with Himself to help me come to know Him, His character, His heart, and His ways in a manner that is encouraging and precious. I do not view Him in the same way as I did for decades. Along with that journey He has begun to help me clear up some thinking pertaining to myself. This involves finding the root causes for self-condemnation, shame, and self-loathing. It has never been His intent that I would see myself any differently than He sees me. Although I don’t fully have these two areas transformed, He has also begun to help me examine my view of others.

This part is difficult because I am so use to interpreting other people’s words, actions, and absence through the grid of my own perceptions. The more significant the person the more condemning my thoughts seem to be. Again, He will begin to reveal to me the root causes for these mindsets. Relational issues can have us in as strong a bondage as any drug. Am I free yet? No. Will I be? Absolutely! Because He has promised to finish what He starts in my life.
I do not have to succumb to the thoughts that things will never change, life will never look different. Our God is interested in my progress, freedom, and change. He is my biggest cheerleader and source of transformation. And He is most certainly the One directing my heart toward Himself.

Father, You know where I still need freedom. If it were left up to me I wouldn’t have the strength or ability to free myself. I once again look to You to do Your work in me. Amen.

Exchanging the Garments

I rejoice greatly in the LORD, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness. Isaiah 61:10

I look at this verse and it is a wonderful reminder to me of what takes place the moment we accept Christ as our Savior and are born into God’s family. Instantaneously, we receive all the luxuries of being God’s child. The day I trusted Christ, He changed my identity, my destiny, and my relationship to Himself. That was completed and unalterable. Yet I have learned He still has much to do in my internal world.

He has spent the past three decades helping me to see the areas in my life that need His healing touch. The longer I know Him the deeper He goes, the more profound His measures, and the more radical the freedom. What many times may start out as steps of fear and timidity eventually become the places in which I learn to dance! While I may cringe at the process I come to cherish the transformation.

This is exactly what took place for me this past weekend while visiting some friends in Wisconsin. God had been bringing me to a place of opening up an area embedded in my memory from early childhood. It wasn’t a repressed memory by any means. It was something I was totally aware of for the last 44 years. The incident left me frozen and unable to voice its existence. God had let me know that when this event had taken place a robe of innocence was taken from me and it was replaced by a garment of shame. In order to exchange the garments I had to expose the secret. Over the course of a three day visit I found myself in a safe haven. Safe enough to finally open up and verbalize to my friend what had taken place. She listened without condemnation and then voiced the words I needed to hear, “That shouldn’t have happened to you. It wasn’t right!” We had a precious time of prayer and then took a piece of paper with the perpetrator’s name on it over to a paper shredder to finalize the closure. Finally, that little child in me was able to exchange the garment of shame for God’s intended garment of innocence. Thus ended a 44 year internal world of turmoil. I now embrace a freedom of great proportion!

Father, You saw the first exchange when I was just four years old. You then wept for me as I wore the wrong garments for all these years. It is with joy I now don the robe You have given back to me. Amen.

*****I share this with you in order to help someone who might also be haunted by memories of shame in their own life. For some people they can simply take it to God and come away whole. For me, I needed to get the secret out. If that is you, ask God to lead you to a person equipped to listen and handle what is to be exposed. Preferably someone who has had some training. This person’s role is to allow you to speak what has been painful. Then they can tell you what you need to hear….it was wrong for someone to do that to you. Please don’t continue to wear garments that were never intended for you.

Tracing My Roots

You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of knowing from whom you have learned them. 2 Timothy 3:14

Paul knew that the roots of Timothy’s faith could be traced back to his mother and grandmother. What a godly heritage this young man had! Have you ever taken the time to review your own history of faith? If you did, from where would your roots extend?

I was not brought up in a Christian home. My early religious training of any kind came from my mother who was a Jehovah’s Witness for the first ten years of my life…..not counting my infant baptism in a Methodist church. It was from her I learned that God created the world and Adam and Eve were the first two people He created. That was the extent of my Bible knowledge but I am thankful today for those tiny seeds.

At the age of fourteen, I came to know Christ as my personal savior and God began to bring into my life a long line of individuals who had a tremendous influence on me and helped me to develop a walk with God that continues into my late 40’s. I can never review this precious list of individuals without seeing the faces of Bob and Martha Robinson…my first pastor and wife as well as youth directors. God allowed me to sit under their ministry for 9 months until He called them to the mission field of Guatemala. They not only taught me the beginning building blocks of my faith, they lived out the Christian life in front of me and served as an example I desired to follow. They were the first of many to take me under their wings and nurture my young faith.

Over the course of the next 30 some years the list grew to include Sharon, Barb, Mary Lou, Nancy, Velda, and Christine. God’s intent was that I not only learn from them but that I would one day enjoy a rich life with Him as my Mentor and Guide. Having made that transition, He is now calling and equipping me to invest myself in the lives of others. What I have been taught and what I am learning is meant to be passed on to others. What a joy and delight! Whether it is through email devotionals or one on one ministry, I take my role seriously and always under the watchful eye of my Father.

Father, You had this planned all along. Although I do not know the full extent of Your call I revel in what You are doing so far. Amen.