Reflections

"Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." 
Genesis 2:7 

I began reflecting on why our Creator chose to fashion mankind in His glorious image from the dust of the earth. Why didn't He make us from something else, something precious and rare, perhaps gold or silver? No, He chose the most common, the dirtiest, the lowest stuff that is nothing more than cast-off material. He formed Adam and breathed His Ruach HaKadosh into him, and made mankind just a little lower than angels. But there was a Fall.
Without the Father's love, grace, mercy and the revelation of all that He is and has for us, that comes only with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, what are we really?  
Before Jesus apprehends us, we are walking dead, not knowing that we aren't  really alive, never knowing what real love is, never even knowing why we truly exist.  We are just empty vessels,  a valley of dry bones. We strive to find purpose and meaning to answer the questions:
Why am I here? What is my purpose?
We are just fancy arrangements of dust, until His Holy Spirit changes everything in us.
By  Him, and Him alone, our hearts are transformed from stone to flesh.
We can live, move, and have our being, and able-no,  more than able, to reflect God's glory in all that we do, not because of ourselves, but because Christ, the Hope of Glory, lives in us.

Rerouting

"Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying,
“This is the way, walk in it,”
Whenever you turn to the right hand ,
Or whenever you turn to the left."
 Isaiah 30:21

"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." (
Proverbs 14:12, 16:25 

Most of us are familiar with GPS or navigation devices these days. When we go the wrong direction or make a wrong turn, the device will quickly let us know by proclaiming, " REROUTING", followed by the new directions to get us back on track headed to our destination. The most sophisticated systems take into account  where the heavy traffic is and avoid it, and can be tailored to avoid certain types of roads, or not, even picking the shortest distance, or the fastest time to arrive. Sometimes the path we are directed towards is unfamiliar to us and is contrary to the way we would've naturally chosen.
The Lord lays out the best path for us, and gives us his Holy Spirit to lead and guide us, who speaks to us softly, whispering to us: " This is my way, the way that you should go."  Sometimes that direction may seem like the wrong way, but as we move forward trusting the Lord with all our hearts, and not leaning on our own understanding, we eventually see a great outcome. Without the Holy Spirit GPS we would just pick another way that may seem right to us but actually leads to a dead end. Hearing His voice and following Him requires that we spend time before Him in prayer and meditation, "presenting our supplications" and "being still and knowing that He is God".
If you hear that still small voice staying REROUTING follow  it.
There is no plan that is as good as His.

Gatekeepers/ Fatherhood

Then the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, and said: “By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son — blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”
Genesis 22:15-18

Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in His sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword; you have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ Thus says the Lord : ‘Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, before the sun.’ ”
II Samuel 12:9-12

This weekend I attended an Encounter Weekend workshop. In one of the sessions the speaker spotlighted Abraham's willingness and obedience to God  even to sacrifice his son, Isaac, the angel of the Lord stopping Abraham's hand as he began the downstroke to kill his beloved son, against King David's sin of adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, and subsequent murder of Uriah, and all the adversity, intrigue, rape, perversion, near overthrow of his kingdom by his son, Absalom, (who's very name meant "Father of Peace"), death, darkness and a kingdom ultimately divided and conquered.
Abraham's descendants were blessed because of his faithfulness, but David's descendants paid a heavy price because of his shortsightedness, even though David was forgiven.
I began to reflect on my (our) personal responsibility as a father(s) to be a gatekeeper and guardian both of my (our) current generation(s) and those to follow. My (our) sins would be visited on my (our) descendants to the third and fourth generations and possibly even to the tenth generation, but so will my (our)obedience..."obedience is better than sacrifice..." 1Sam 15:22.
In the light of such impact my actions are guided by viewing the big picture. choosing today to obey God and unleash supernatural long reaching blessings on our families, those who follow us, who in turn will be empowered to obey the Lord, becoming gatekeepers, and in turn, setting up a supernatural chain reaction of blessings not curses.

Trials and Joy 186

"My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials"
James 1:2

"The Lord is my strength and my shield; My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; 
Therefore my heart greatly rejoices, And with my song I will praise Him."
Psalms 28:7

We all know James 1:2... When trials come that we are to count it all joy, right?
We all nod our heads affirming this.
We read it and say that we understand it, right up until that moment when the trial of trials sucker-punches us right in the face.  We struggle even to catch our next breath,
so devastated at that moment that tears and cries of anguish haven't  come yet.
Debilitating fear and the uncertainty of the future can immobilize,
if we do not acknowledge and activate a promise and great spiritual acknowledgement:
THE JOY OF THE LORD IS OUR STRENGTH!
I know that Daniel laughed in the lion's den, Paul never ceased to rejoice in the Lord- ever!
Enduring stonings, shipwrecks, put on trials, scourged,
these men of God had caught the revelation of God's great love and power, and God's great promises.
Trials are meant to bring joy, and joy releases supernatural strength!
Remember this beloved, and as I write this,
I too invoke these principles of promise for supernatural strength in the face of  natural weakness.

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
Romans 8:28, 31, 32, 35-39 NKJV

Transitions/Moving Day 185

I wrote this from my hospital bed today.
It seems that some heavy lifting I did while trying to hoist a couple 50lb.bags of mulch from my wife's van caused a re-injury to previous  damage to my lower back.
Apparently I'm not 29, 39, or even 49 any more.
The plain facts of mortality.
The older I get, the more I grow in maturity in Jesus as I seek after Him.
It comes, though, with the realization that my body is aging, wearing out.
Everyday is a day closer to my  'moving day" when I will finally be "clothed in my heavenly habitation".
I must decrease so that He must increase...in every conceivable and inconceivable aspect,
in every facet of my earthly life.

"For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. "
II Corinthians 5:1-8

Someday in the future, at a predestined time known only to my Father, I will be present with the Lord. This of course means that I will be absent from my earthly body, just as all who have gone before me, and those who will have their own "moving days" after mine.
Not a morbid thoughts, rather glorious ones as we consider beholding Him in all His glory!
How exciting, beloved!
So the next time you are faced with sickness, aches, pains, & tears,
remember that we are headed to one Neighborhood, to mansions crafted for us by our Shepherd/Carpenter, where illness,anguish, tears, and fears are banished.
Joy and love are standing orders in this Place of Endless Worship.
Rejoice in The Lord!

The Quest 312

"As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God?" Psalms 42:1, 2 

My days are spent in one of two modes: either I am in the presence of  my almighty Father/Abba, or I am in search of Him. The difference in the modes? My heart. Am I striving in my own strength, or resting in His? Am I looking at my circumstances at the moment, or am I gazing into His face as I sit in His lap. Am I feeling the palpitations of my own stessed out heart beat, or feeling the steadiness, love, and power of His?
"Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me." Psalms 139:7-10 
So I choose the path that leads to the fullness of life. My quest is Jesus and all that He is.
The promise of abundant life-joy, a realization that He is right here with me, that His hands are holding me and guiding me. In the remotest parts of the earth and the remotest corners of my heart..."Let his left hand be under my head And his right hand embrace me." Shir HaShirim 2:6
Jesus said: "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. John 14:27
Beloved, my prayer is that the greater the search, the more fervent the quest and hunger for Jesus, the greater the presence and in dwelling of His fullness in us all.