" Sit still, my daughter. Take heed and be quiet; do not fear or be fainthearted. Be still, and know that I am Dad. Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of Dad? The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be brought low; the Lrd alone will be exalted on that day.
Mary...sat at Js feet and heard His Word. Mayr has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her. In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength. Meditate within your heat on your bed, and be still.
Rest in The Lrd, and wait patiently for Him; do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.
He will not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is steadfast, trusting in The Lrd. His heart is established.
Whoever believes will not act hastily."
A compilation of His Words to me today...I share them with you and challenge you to do as He has commanded us. Sit still....in His glorious presence!
"I appeal to you brothers, by the mercies of Dad, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to HIM, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of HIM, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Rom 12:1-2
A verse that most of us have memorized but if we are really honest, that is as far as it goes. Romans 12 is the beginning of Paul teaching the Romans how to apply the past 11 chapters of pure True Doctrine. It might be smart for us to allow these words to sink deep into our hearts and transform us.
Our Father expects us to be transformed people! I remember back in the day, there were these awesome toys to play with called transformers; one minute they were a tank and the next minute a large person/robot/thingy. I think I had a couple of hand me down transformers and loved them! And now that they have made several movies about them, they are making a comeback! The change from car to robot/person was obvious. No way to miss that transformation. His Word says, "Kendall, be different, have different values, joys, hopes, and dreams than the pattern of this world."
I wonder sometimes if other people would know that I am a Chrstn just by dealing with me? They should and I should really work at submitting myself to His Authority and allowing Him to transform me. I pry that today we are all transformed into more of His Likeness by the renewing of our minds and looking at things through His Eyes not our own eyes of flesh!
As I study and spend time in His Presence, HE lead me to this article by Piper and it absolutely encouraged me! I pry that it does the same for you, who still read this!
Why Was Jesus Unintimidated by Pilate?
by John Piper
Ponder with me the lesson of Pilate’s authority over Jesus.
Pilate said to Jesus, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.” (John 19:10–11)
Pilate's authority to crucify Jesus did not intimidate Jesus.
Why not?
Not because Pilate was lying. Not because he didn’t have authority to crucify Jesus. He did.
Rather this authority did not intimidate Jesus because it was derivative. Jesus said, “It was given to you from above.” Which means it is really authoritative. Not less. But more.
So how is this not intimidating? Pilate not only has authority to kill Jesus. But he has God-given authority to kill him.
This does not intimidate Jesus because Pilate’s authority over Jesus is subordinate to God’s authority over Pilate. Jesus gets his comfort at this moment not because Pilate’s will is powerless, but because Pilate’s will is guided. Not because Jesus isn’t in the hands of Pilate’s fear, but because Pilate is in the hands of Jesus’s Father.
Which means that our comfort comes not from the powerlessness of our enemies, but from our Father’s sovereign rule over their power. This is the point of Romans 8:25–37. Tribulation and distress and persecution and famine and nakedness and danger and sword cannot separate us from Christ because “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:35–37).
Pilate (and all Jesus’s adversaries — and ours) meant it for evil. But God meant it for good (Genesis 50:20). All Jesus’s enemies gathered together with their God-given authority “to do whatever God’s hand and God’s plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:28). They sinned. But through their sinning God saved.
Therefore, do not be intimidated by your adversaries who can only kill the body. Not only because this is all they can do (Luke 12:4), but also because it is done under the watchful hand of your Father.
Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows. (Luke 12:6–7).
Pilate has authority. Herod has authority. Soldiers have authority. Satan has authority. But none is independent. All their authority is derivative. All of it is subordinate to God’s will. Fear not. You are precious to your sovereign Father. Far more precious than the unforgotten birds.
I have been studying Romans for about a month now and HE has been revealing things to me right and left. Seriously, this book is intense and so full of so many doctrinal truths...if we will just take the time to sit and let His Spirit reveal them to us. I have so many things that I want to share with each of you but HE has lead me to write this summary of my time in Chapter 5. These are not all my own words as I am having difficulties expressing myself clearly in english, spanish, and palenquera these days. May HE bless you as you read these Truths...
When HE created the heavens and the earth, He created man in His Image. He created a man and a woman and told them they could eat freely of the fruit of any tree in the garden except of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He told them that the day that they ate of this fruit, that they would surely die.Have you heard this before? So what happens next...
Eve takes the fruit, eats, it and gives it to her husband. Adam takes the fruit and eats it as well. What just happened? In this one act, sin entered into the world and death through that sin. The very first man and woman went into exile as HE casts them out of the garden into the world to experience the consequences of their sin. But in His Nature, HE promised them a Seed Who would eventually defeat Satan, the serpent. HE provided a cover for their nakedness, by shedding the blood of an animal (the first sacrifice.)
In Romans 5, Paul takes us back to the Garden...to this first man, Adam and the first sin. We learn that because of this one single act, everyone would not encounter death. And Paul contrasts this one act with the one act of the Righteous One, Js who overturned what Adam did. HE is the promise seed that we read about in Genesis 3:15. That is right my friends, from Genesis to Revelation...it is all about HIM, this Promised Seed, this Righteous King, The One who defeats Satan. According to Hebrews 2:14-15 He died so that "through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives."
DID YOU READ THAT? Did you get that good news? PRAISE YOU JS for Your radical obedience of The Father!
Dad accomplished this great act of reconciliation as a gift to us! In GRACE, motivated by LOVE, and while we were yet sinners, HE sent HIS ONLY SON to die in our place that we might live!! "By Dad being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which HE loved us even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up by Him, and seated us with HIm in the heavenly places in Chrst Js, so that in the ages to come HE might show the surpassing riches of HIS GRACE in kindness towards us in Chrst Js!!!" ~Eph 2:4-7
Sin once reigned through death but those who receive the abundance of GRACE and the GIFT of righteousness will now reign in life through Js Chrst!!
So what do we do now that we are justified by faith?We have peace with HIM...the war is over...we are no longer enemies - we are reconciled! And what do we have to look forward to? We can exult in the GLORY OF DAD!! We can also exult in tribulations because we know that tribulations brings about perseverance, and perseverance brings about proven character, and proven character brings about hope, and hope does not disappoint! We have the Hly Sprt! We have eternal life! We will reign!! Thanks be to HIm for His indescribable gift!!!
Now if these Truths don't lead you to HIS Throne in worship and adoration of what HE has done for us and WHO this GRACIOUS, LOVING DAD is...then get on your knees and ask the HS to reveal these Truths to you in a real way that you will be lead to share these Truths with everyone!!
You are a LIGHT in the darkness...SHINE HIS LIGHT!!
I am in Romans. Have you ever been reading in Romans and not feel so completely small and undeserving of His Saving Blood and Grace? I really think it is impossible not to fall flat on your face at the Feet of This Holy Dad we serve when you read this book that so clearly presents His Saving Gospel Message! Today I am in chapter 2 and I read... "HE will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, HE will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury." I don't know what category you fall in but me...I am definitely that self seeker who does not obey Truth. How humbling to read what I deserve! And then to read a couple of verses later that: " DAD judges the secrets of men by Js Chrst!!" Are you kidding me? All of that wrath and fury of My Father for my self-seeking and disobedient ways, you took all of that and now I am judged by You, My Beloved? How do I miss this at times? How do I choose to sin? How do I choose my own way? How can I act the way I do and say the things I do, as if there are no consequences and that I have the right? Who am I? A nobody who was chosen by The Creator, bought by The King, and a bride waiting for my Bridegroom to come for me! That is exactly who I am - so why don't I act like it and remember that when I choose to be lazy, disobedient, and just ungrateful? I mean in the next verses it talks about the fact that I know HIS Will and approve what is excellent because I have been instructed by His Law...and what do I do with that? He continues by telling me that I should be a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, because I have the embodiment of knowledge and truth living inside of me! WOW...that took me back a step and I have been reflecting on how I am doing with the above portions of His Words to me through this letter to the romans years ago.
And now my question to you is the same...how are you doing? Are you a guide to the blind daily? Are you a light to those who are in darkness daily? Aer you an inst
This is the victory that has overcome the world - our faith.
Without faith it is impossible to please HIM. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of HIM. By faith Abel offered to HIM a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death. And by faith Noah...prepared an ark for the saving of his household. By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed and she bore a child when se was past the age, because she judged HIM faithful Who had promised. By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down.
All things are possible to him who believes. Looking unto Jss, the Author and Finisher of our faith. According to your faith let it be to you. Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well. If you have faith as a mustard see, you will say to this mountain, ' move from here to there,' and it will move. Do you believe that I am able to do this? Lrd, I believe; help my unbelief.
May we all be challenged by these Scriptures to walk by faith and not by sight. May we wait patiently as HE shows us what HE has for our today!
HE has been teaching me so much over the past several weeks that it is overwhelming! HIS steadfast love and grace consumes me and at times I don't know where to start to share with you what HE is teaching me. I feel as though I could spend everyday here sharing with you guys, but then who would head out to Palenque to take what I have learned and put it into practice?
So today I am reading in Acts, yes still in Acts but it has been so good especially as I seek HIS Will for HIS plan for Palenque. But I am also reading a Psalm each day and today 103 completely captivated me and I wanted to share it with you!
One of my favorite old hymns that we B's sing is Bless the Lrd O My Soul and all that is within me bless His Holy Name! All that is within us...do you get that? Everything that we have inside of us (thoughts, desires, passions, past, etc) may all of that stuff bless His Name and I stop. I have only read the first verse and already I am not able to go on without complete repentance on my knees and pleas for HIS forgiveness of my ugliness! But just like the Amazing Dad that HE is, I read:
"Forget not all His benefits, Who forgives all your iniquity, Who heals your diseases, Who redeems your life from the pit, Who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, Who satisfies you with good!"
Are you kidding me, Dad? You are All-Sufficient and know exactly what I need! I needed to be reminded of Your Goodness and just how much You love me! And it only gets better as you keep reading...
"The Lrd is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities."
Wow, how can you not praise a Dad who is all of those things and so much more! His Word says that we must pry for strength to comprehend but HE is that big! And we are that small because as you keep reading you read:
"For He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust." Oh if only I would remember that same thing, that I am here today and gone tomorrow just like the dust! That I would make the most of every moment that HE has given me today and stop living in the past or looking to the future! My days are like grass in the eyes of My Father and I know how much attention I give to grass! HE is the Lrd of Lrds and yet HE knows me...a little speck of dust and longs to be My Lrd!
So this is a little bit of where I am today with HIM and in HIS Words! Read Psalm 103 and see what HE says to you through His Life Changing Words! Bless the Lrd, all His Works in all places of His dominion! May we first start with us and truly allow HIM to have dominion over our lives as we trust Him for every little thing and stop depending on ourselves for what we truly cannot do! This is my pryr today for all of us!
Be Our Glory, Abba today! Break us until YOU are all that the world sees!
LOVE. All you need is love, right? HE has taken me back to the passage in 1 Corinthians 13 that I have not paid much attention to in awhile. I generally associate this passage with valentines day, wedding ceremonies, and relationships. Well, HE applied it to my life and revealed how still...even after all HE has purged me of and blessed me with...I still do not love! Why am I so slow...don't answer that!
How does HE teach me this lesson yet again? Through a week of me being irritated with everything that is Colombia and my life right now. And you know that I had believed the lie and convinced myself that I was justified in all of my irritations. That was until something irritated me, I was sharing it (not with HIM...oh no, with a friend who can do nothing about it or my ugly heart!). As I was sharing another friend walks up and simply says...love endures all things. Love bears all things.
BAM...that blow penetrated all the way through my hard, ugly, evil heart! Really, DAD...I am still here...not loving? So I go home and read this passage...a passage that most of us have heard a thousand times.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boas; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
And there I sit. Everything that HE has shown me HE wants to do in Palenque will be nothing if I do not love. Me being irritated was really me not loving like HE does. The truth is, I don't know how to love like HE does. I mean who, honestly, can say that they love like HIM? None of us in light of the Holy Creator of the Universe can say that they love like HE does...I mean HE sent HIS Son to drink the cup of His Wrath all for His Glory and because He loves you and I. Talk about sacrificial love, do I even come close?
So here I am, remembering what HE did for me and in light of that...nothing is really irritating! Oh that I could begin to love like HE does, please ask that for me over the next couple of months! I want people to come to know HIM, I want people to feel His steadfast love that is new every morning, and I want His Name to be glorified through my life.
So I will say that I have watched the new American Idol season this year and as I was listening to their comments/ideas, it hit me. We have taken something that should make us cringe in fear of a Holy Gd for HIS thoughts on the topic and made it into a cultural norm and source of many jokes. In fact, we really don't even recognize that they are idols in our life because it has become so normal...normal to spend lots of time on your iphone/blackberry, spend lots of time watching tv/internet, spend lots of time working to buy the perfect house/car/clothes, spend lots of time working out/dieting to get the perfect body, etc. But if we are truly honest with ourselves we know that in our Biblical culture, these are the very things that destroyed kingdoms and people. We believe that just because we have not formed a golden image of our iphone that we bow to three times a day, that this iphone is not an idol in our life!
One of the four definitions that the 1828 Webster's dictionary gives us for idol is this: An idol is any thing on which we set our affections; that to which we indulge an excessive and sinful attachment.
Now let's think back to the above norms...do you spend more time on your iphone, facebook, watching tv, working, with family/friends etc than you do reading His Words and spending time with HIM? If your answer is yes, then you must ask the HS if these things are idols in your life and ask HIM to take them away. Do not hear me saying that any of the above things are wrong but anything in excess has the potential to be harmful and lead to a sinful attachment!
For those of you who are still reading and aren't really mad at me, why am I saying all of this; because that is where HE has me right now. HE has revealed so many things in my life that were/are idols that were robbing HIM of HIS glory and precious time together. And for the most part, I have allowed HIM to convict me of these idols and I have surrendered (yet again) to HIM total Lrdship of my life and allowed HIM to sanctify me through HIS Love, Grace and Words. Yet right now, HE has revealed to me that just the kings we read about in the OT who came into power and made some radical changes in their kingdoms, the majority of them left the idols in the high places. They were no longer worshiping them but they did not take them down either.
Well what happens to those idols that we allow to remain part of our lives, they eventually reappear slowly but surely and we fade back into our worship of them. We slowly allow them to consume more and more of our time/thoughts and we once again lose sight of Our First Love. Oh what a wretched sinner I am and I praise HIM for HIS unending grace that HE showers me with each and every day.
Today I was reading in Acts and this passage really hit home for me for two reason. 1. I so desire this for the people of Palenque...that they would allow HIS Words to convict them to true repentance and watch how HIS WORD will prevail mightily! This passage follows right after the sons of Sceva are trying to do what Paul does but without the HS. And the evil spirits respond the them claiming that they know Js, they have heard about Paul, but have no idea who these guys are at all. And watch was follows this confrontation of the idols that the people in Ephesus had been worshipping for so many years!
In Acts 19 we read: And fear fell upon them all and the Name of the Lrd Js was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So The Word of the Lrd cotinued to increase and prevail mightily.
WOW...when they were confronted with THE WAY, they divulged their evil practices because they desired more than anything that HIS Name be extolled. And did you see how much it cost them financially? But did you see the result of their obedience to allow the HS to get rid of the idols in their life?
And the second reason that this passage hit home for me is that I have left several idols in the high places of my life. I really could not even see them but HE revealed to me that I had not completely allow HIM to purge and divulge all of them from my life. These idols were acting as a barrier, preventing me from seeing HIM and hearing HIM clearly and living in radical obedience to HIM. These idols were preventing me from sharing HIS Truths with these people who are dying and going to hell. What a weight lifted from me that has allowed me to drink deeply HIS WORDS and to see HIS Face in a different way. This process has been hard but it is so worth it. I truly desire that the lost of Palenque come to know HIM and no matter what the cost, HE is worth it!
What about you? Are you concerned with the lost that live around you? Or have you even noticed them? Have you set your affections on only your family/friends, material possessions, etc to the point that the very blessings of HIM have become idols, robbing HIM of HIS glory? I challenge you to ask HIM specifically to reveal the idols that are in your life right now. Ask HIM to purge them from your life. And ask HIM to give you a passion for HIM and only HIM. Ask HIM to burden you for HIS glory and HIS people.
Will you do it?
The Lrd Your Gd went in the way before you to search out a place for you to pitch your tents, to show you the way you should go, in the fire by night and in the cloud by day. As an eagle stirs up it's nest, hovers over it's young, spreading out it's wings, taking them up, carrying them on it's wings, so the Lrd alone led him. The steps of a good man are ordered by The Lrd, and HE delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down for The Lrd upholds him with HIS Hand. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but The Lrd knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish. We know that all things work together for good to those who love Gd, to those who are the called according to HIS Purpose. With us is The Lrd Our Gd, to help us and to fight our battles.
The Lrd Your Gd in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; HE will rejoice over you with gladness!
May HIS WORDS encourage you where you are as they have touched the deepest parts of my soul right now that is hurting, frustrated, and hungry to serve HIM! Remembering today that my steps are ordered by HIM and HE delights in me when I obediently walk in those steps...no matter what that looks like!
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