We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You.
2 Chronicles 20: 12
easeplay blockunay aymy rseaay :(((( serymiay.
“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” There is not a sin in the Book of God, even now, against one of his people. Who dareth to lay anything to their charge? There is neither speck, nor spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing remaining upon any one believer in the matter of justification in the sight of the Judge of all the earth. Let present privilege awaken us to present duty, and now, while life lasts, let us spend and be spent for our sweet Lord Jesus.
Spurgeon, Morning & Evening
Imagine if you will, that you are praying and asking God to do something important for you. It could be asking for healing or to have a serious mistake rectified. It could be to get a job or a promotion that you really wanted. Perhaps it is to start a special relationship with someone you like. Yet, after much prayer for God to intervene in your favour, He seems not there to solve your problem.
There is a comment made by our Lord Jesus to His disciples in the story of the Death of Lazarus (Jn 11: 1 – 44) that is really puzzling but yet profound. Then Jesus therefore said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe; but let us go to him.” (John 11:14-15 NASB)Jesus declared that Lazarus was definitely dead. Jesus also said that He (literally in Greek) rejoiced that He was not there when Lazarus died. We read from the passage that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, four days after he died. I think that our Lord rejoice that He was not there earlier for at least three reasons. Firstly, I believe that sometimes, God does not answer our prayers immediately because He wants to build our patience and faith that comes from waiting for the Lord to do the “impossible”. Secondly, He may have wanted to use Lazarus’ death to demonstrate that He is the Master of life. Thirdly, it would be a most appropriate time, just a few days before the Jewish Passover to prepare the disciples to accept the notion that the Messiah will be resurrected after he is crucified.
Perhaps you and I need to have a regular reminder that our Lord is glad not to respond to our prayers in an “on-call” basis so that we can continue in our life-long sanctification. The profound truth that “the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11: 25) had at a point in history gave His life for the sins of all men and women so that they shall live, should compel you and I to live for Him.
Anon
You wean their affections away from anything, everything, other than yourself, and you leave them with nothing but You. Nothing.
“If we are really seeking to serve God, we will be willing to wait on Him through the darkness, so that when it lifts, He will have turned a lump of coal into a shining diamond, so that we will have a peace, an unflappability, and a strength that we did not have before and would not have had if we had not gone through the darkness.”
Tullian Tchividjian, quoting anonymous friend in “Surprised by Grace”
Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all His energy that He powerfully works within me.
Colossians 1: 28-29
“…as the apostle Paul put it for all the saints who fight for joy in this fallen world of pain and suffering, we live and minister ‘as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing’ (2 Cor. 6:10).”
(John Piper, When The Darkness Will Not Lift)
The words are costly. And so they prove precious.
Thank You for the wonderful store of treasures You’ve given me in Your Word; and THANK YOU for restoring the joy of and giving me privilege to teach it to Your little ones.
One of the central themes to come out of the 2010 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization was “the need for radical obedient discipleship, leading to maturity, to growth in depth as well as growth in numbers.” The concluding statement of the Cape Town Commitment says this: “Biblical mission demands that those who claim Christ’s name should be like him, by taking up their cross, denying themselves, and following him in the paths of humility, love, integrity, generosity, and servanthood. To fail in discipleship and disciple-making, is to fail at the most basic level of our mission. The call of Christ to his Church comes to us afresh from the pages of the gospels: ‘Come and follow me’; ‘Go and make disciples’.”
Teach me your way, O Lord,
and lead me on a level path
because of my enemies.
Psalm 27: 11
My dad was the guru of shortcuts. He lived on an endles quest for the shortest route to all the places to which he regularly drove. My mom used to kid my dad that most of his shortcuts were in fact “longcuts.” In his search for the shortest distance to wherever, my dad would say again and again, “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”
The life to which God has called us is the ultimate straight line. This line starts with dead rebels and ends with people alive and reformed into the likeness of God’s Son. The problem is that our living is seldom a straight line. We all take daily detours of thought and desire that move us off the straight path that God has placed us on by his grace. He has redeemed us from the jungle of our rebellion, lust, autonomy, foolishness, and self-focus and placed us on the narrow pathway of His Son. The problem is that we all tend to get tricked into taking detours that get us off God’s path and into trouble.
Our problem is twofold. First, we get diverted because we are impatient. The trip to where God is taking us is not an event; it’s a process. And the process isn’t easy. God’s road takes us through the heat of the sun, through storms and cold, through the dark of night, through loneliness and confusion. So, we get tired and impatient and begin to convince ourselves that there is a better way. But that isn’t all.
We get diverted because we are disloyal. Our hearts aren’t yet fully committed to God’s glory and his kingdom. We are still attracted to the shadow glories of creation, and we still carry around in us allegiance to the small-agenda purposes of the kingdom of self. So in our impatience and disloyalty we see pathways that appear easier and more comfortable, but they only ever lead to danger.
There is no time when this temptation is more powerful that when we are facing difficulty. This is exactly what the verse we are considering recognizes. When you are being hammered by the enemy, it’s very tempting to debate within yourself as to whether God’s way is the best way. It starts with bad attitudes. Perhaps you begin to doubt God, doubt his goodness, and question his love. Perhaps you give way to anger, impatience, and irritation. Or maybe you begin to allow yourself to envy. You wonder why the guy next to you has such an easy life, when yours is so hard.
These bad attitudes lead to bad habits. You quit praying because you reason that it doesn’t seem to be doing any good. You stop reading your Bible because those promises don’t seem to be coming true in your life. You quit attending your small group because you can’t stand to hear the stories of God’s love that others share, when your life is so hard. You even begin to give yourself reasons for missing the Sunday worship service, reasons you once wouldn’t have given yourself. Before too long there is a coldness and distance in your reationship with God that would have shocked you in the early days of your faith. Your difficulty has deceived you into thinking that you have reason for wandering off God’s straight path, and your attitudes and habits have placed you on the dangerous side-paths of the kingdom of self.
Have you gotten off God’s straight path? Have you given yourself reason to take side-paths? How about praying, once again today, “Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path”?
(Taken from Paul David Tripp’s A Shelter In The Time Of Storm)
Long periods of silences
Learning how to wait
Too many tears and crumbling moments
Praying “You give and take away, blessed be Your name”
Tiredness
Sisters to walk together with
Too many late nights
Falling and getting up again and again
Father, thank You for seeing me through this past year of craziness. I know You will not turn away ever because Christ bore it all and You’ll be right with me through 2012. I know that I am never alone for You live within me. Your grace is too amazing. How do You bear with me?
Haha I was trying to arrange meet-ups for the week with my AG girls and classmates but was rather unsuccessful for Tuesday plans - then it finally occurs to me hours later as I’m running the plans through my head that tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day and I didn’t even realise it.
Praise God for the satisfaction and security He gives :)
