Isaiah 4-6; Matthew 23

I know the Lord is good and you may rightly respond – all the time.

So why is it that I step away from Him, try to find my own way, enjoy my own pleasures and even find spiritual words, tasks and behaviours to justify such behaviour?

Have I really stopped thinking about Him?

I am the Lord All-Powerful! Israel is the vineyard, and Judah is the garden I tended with  are. I had hoped for honesty and for justice, but dishonesty and cries for mercy were all I found. At your drinking parties you have the music of stringed instruments, tambourines, and flutes. But you never even think about all the Lord has done. – Isaiah 5:7,12  CEV

I have run into many followers of Christ who say they would never do what the Israelites did crossing the desert to the promised land.  I have said – how could they have forgotten and so quickly, what the Lord had just done one day before?

The words are hardly out of my mouth and I have done the very same thing on the very next day.

There is one secret though that I have found, and it is the most real I can get in my relationship with Jesus.  I fess up right away, I get clean right away, I set things straight and ask for forgiveness.  There is one thing I do not want, will not tolerate and will not accept in my life – the absence of the Holy Spirit.  A hard heart will turn Him away every time.  At some point I would be afraid that I actually might not let Jesus rule my life one day should I keep rejecting His love.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Your people have killed the prophets and have stoned the messengers who were sent to you. I have often wanted to gather your people, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you wouldn’t let me. – Matthew 23:37  CEV

Father, I know you care for me, You tend to my heart and whisper to me during the day.  You set up so many different ways to protect me in my walk.  Your love is felt as sweetly as the wind that blows around me when I walk and spend time in silent prayer with You.  I cannot believe though that I can, the very next day, not even think about You as I find myself busy, occupied, caught up in something so meaningless. But the beauty of it all is that I notice.  In noticing I can come and ask You to forgive me and You do.  Thank You for being so gentle and so present.  I love You.

Erwin (evanlaar1922)

 

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Numbers 10; Psalms 46, 47; Song of Solomon 8; Hebrews 8

  I am a thinker.  It feels good when I plan for the future, solve that problem,  mend a torn relationship, fix the broken thing, put chaos into back into order. I think. I think HARD and I like to get things right. Sometimes I keep myself up at night.  The brain rumbles on like a freight train headed into the night, destination unknown. It can be exhausting…until God whispers words of peace:

This new plan I’m making with Israel isn’t going to be written on paper, isn’t going to be chiseled in stone;  This time I’m writing out the plan in them , carving it on the lining of their hearts. I’ll be their God, they’ll be my people. They won’t go to school to learn about me or buy a book called God in Five Easy Lessons. They’ll all get to know me firsthand, the little and the big, the small and the great. They’ll get to know me by being kindly forgiven, with the slate of their sins forever wiped clean. Hebrews 8:10-12  from The Message.

I don’t have to depend on myself to be good enough or smart enough to figure a way out. I can fall back into the arms of the loving God who has taken up residence in this heart of mine. I am not frozen in time with eyes cast downward like poor Rodin’s Thinker, stuck in endless thought.  I am alive, forgiven and free.  Thanks be to God.

Kathy