Encouragement

God Whispers Things

And the LORD will continually guide you, And satisfy your desire in scorched places, And give strength to your bones; And you will be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. Isaiah 58:11

Sometimes God whispers things in the dark and silent moments between breaths…..and prayers. I was feeling so dry this morning. As dry as toast. Hollowed out. Like someone took my dreams and hopes for the future and blew them away with a puff of air.
 
I know I have Heaven…….I know what awaits me is better than anything I can imagine. I have nothing but hope there. But I need hope now, and for the rest of my life. Hope that it will all work out. Hope to fill in the holes.
 
He whispered……..”Those holes and empty places you feel? That fear of the future? Those holes are all the better for Me to fill.”
 
Sometimes He does empty us out so He can fill us with Him.
 
The reason I know it was Him?
 

It was still
It was small
It was immediate
 
And it put my fears to rest……………..as only He can.

Multitudes on Monday

I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way I have stopped physically counting. I posted gratefulness and thanksgiving, to be sure. I have said loud and long how I have remained oh so very thankful for all that God has done and has continued to do and I have……been grateful, that is. But I know now that the counting matters because each one is so important. And if you stop counting, before you know it they all run together and something is diminished…..lost in the shuffle.

It is Ann who made me realize this, in her book of One Thousand Gifts. You see, I didn’t buy it right away; even though I was captivated by her blog from the first time I happened upon it. And even though I don’t know her, I love her. The part of her that comes through her writing anyway……..

There was one copy left at the clearance sale at Borders, and I should have bought it then. When I went back it was gone. So I bought it at Barnes and Noble at full price. I can only say that by page 14, the tears were streaming. It touched some deep place in me that no book has ever done in quite the same way. By page 27 it had paid for itself.

and I will probably buy more for friends and family. This book is not one to read casually, it’s one to take when you are settling down for the night, or when you are settled and still on a rainy day, or at a corner table for one. I would keep tissues handy.

So thank you dear Ann, “without the fanciful e” for getting me to realize how important it is to keep the count alive………

“Rejoice always,  pray continually,  give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.  Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good…….” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-20

This is what stood out to me in this verse. I had always misread it! I had always replaced one word with another. God doesn’t expect me to be thankful for all circumstances, but to be thankful in all circumstances. That changes the entire meaning. All this time I had saddled myself with a burden He never meant me to carry.

The count continues again…….thankful that someone comes to collect my trash…..shoes with good soles, shoes that fit……..Never having to have my feet touch the bare ground, unless I want them to…….that I have the money to pay bills……..not losing the joy of simple things, being able to pause even while frustrated or angry to say a prayer of thanks to God for His creation, fresh brewed coffee, even better, people to share it with……a brand new book……that I can let some things slide that I never would before……elderly people around me who have not lost their zest for life or their gratitude for this good earth and their part in its joys and sorrows and last but not least, recapturing my joy in numbering these blessings #700-#713

Life is Good Because He is…….

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to Sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves……
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ,

to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory….

 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1: 3-14
There is nothing I can add to this!

Impossibly Rich

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost. ~G.K. Chesterton

I scooped them up and stacked them in a little pile, my Birthday cards from August. I had them all sitting on the top of my dresser, face out. It was like being smiled at each day. Finally I decided it was time to dust, so afterwards I went to store them away. Instead I read them again……

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t put them away just yet. Not when I read the words and felt the love behind them all. I wasn’t quite ready to let them go…..

I get cards every year and every year I treasure them. But his year, they meant more. Maybe because I needed them more. Maybe because when I stack myself up against the fruits of the Spirit, like I did this morning, I see where I am lacking.

I see how far I have to go……But when I read the words in these cards, the lives and the love behind them lurch at my heart. I read:

“You are the best sister a brother could ask for and I think of you everyday.” My brother was sweet to me when I was small. He held my hand, walked me to school and didn’t let me out of his sight….but then adolesence came and well, let’s just say, he was in the cool crowd and I was not. Now as we get older we are recapturing time lost. He has remembered what we had. That he has a sister that loves him, has always loved him.

And from my Mom…..”You are my special present in life, thank you for always being there for me.” Yet, so many moments I worry that I am 12 hours away and not there nearly enough. I worry about all those times I am not there. But she makes me feel like I am.

And from my Aunt, I would recognize her perfectly slanted penmanship anywhere. Even though she is suffering right now the sadness of a husband in the latter stages of dementia and is now rattling around in a lonely house….she writes a hearlfelt paragraph…….she has kept her postive attitude and healthy sense of humor intact.

And from Diane…..she writes with love that God has placed me in her life, thanking me for being the friend and sister she never had.

And I know my Dad went to the store and hand picked this card out, it’s a pink bicycle with a verse from Deuteronomy 14:2…..”The Lord has chosen you to be His treasured possession.” He chose the bike because one of the memories he treasures in his heart is when he taught me to ride a bike. All those hours running along behind me in case I fell….and me looking back to make sure he was still there. He says: “Now you have become the strong anchor or faith and stability for Mom and I.”

……..and I guess it means so much because too many times, all I see is how I am lacking and how I miss the mark.

But these people I love and who love me, see the fruit of the Spirit in me somehow. This amazes me. How could I feel anything other than impossibly wealthy?

I will tuck the cards away another day, probably soon, just not today.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22, 23

He is more than enough

And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2 Corinthians 12:9
I got home the other night and she was outside on the patio. My best friend of the endless positive attitude…the natural born fixer, the supervisor and mediator of people and situations, cannot fix her Mom. There is no fix for Alzheimer’s…..yet. The look on her face said it all. She was done….spent. Finished. “She drove me nuts today,” she said. “I prayed all day and it didn’t work.” I said, “Yes it did, she is still alive and so are you.” Sometimes it is all you can do to get through the day with your mind and body intact.
Everything she tried to do for her Mom ended in complete and utter frustration.
A woman who used to scream at them for getting in the kitchen while she was cooking, now stands in the middle of the kitchen as her daughter cooks, staring a hole through her. It is disconcerting to say the least.
And then the endless pacing….up and down, back and forth. In her squeaky shoes. Suggestions are met with hostility and you never know when…..It is like walking in two worlds. The regular world and the Alzheimer’s world. Applying the normal rules doesn’t work in an abnormal world.
Harder still, is when you have no good memory bank to pull from because your Mom was never emotionally available to you or for you……never nurturing. What do you do when your own supply of love and devotion is not enough, and when you feel like the sun has gone down and taken every scrap of your strength with it?
When the last thing you want is another thing you have to do.
You rest in the knowledge that
you know…… that you know…… that you know
He is more than enough
His love takes over when ours runs out
He will never, ever ignore His child who prays
Know that the power that raised Him from the grave is enough to raise you…….“Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” Ephesians 3:20

Rest……

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28
“My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Psalm 73:26 

“Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the foe. I long to dwell in your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.” Psalm 61:1

“My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.” Psalm 62:1-2

 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Isaiah 40:28- 31

I am having a bit of rest today on this little bench…….come and join me. If you don’t see me, that means I am doing some blog-hopping today. Doing a little visiting, neighbor to neighbor, blog to blog.

Get the coffee ready, I like it strong!

When God Speaks

I was going to write about something entirely different today, but then I read Duane Scott’s post over at Michelle’s place. I remembered something my Dad told me when I was back home this last time……As I read about what Duane so rightly calls, the hard hallelujah, 24 years fell away and I thought about my own period of deep grief and all the events that threatened to swallow my family whole.
Dad told me about the night that God spoke…….It was a Tuesday evening and he was getting ready for a prayer meeting he usually attended. Something kept holding him back. He chalked it up as laziness and continued getting ready. But there was a weight, a heaviness that seemed to be holding him back.
He went but didn’t participate in the prayer……He sat quietly in the back, trying to pray, but feeling like he wasn’t supposed to be there.
Oppressed by a darkness he couldn’t explain.
He says it was as if a strong undertow was pulling him back home. The voice, the Holy Spirit within him was growing louder and more insistent as the night wore on. “Go home and go quickly.”
It wasn’t audible, it didn’t have to be.
Right after he got home the phone rang. It was me calling from Mexico and to this day I don’t remember either calling, or the conversation. What my Dad did understand was that the man I had just married three days before had died in an accident and I was left alone…..in a country not my own.
On what was supposed to be my honeymoon…….
If my Dad had not heeded God’s voice, my Mom would have had to take that call alone. I don’t think she could have handled it.
So while the glow of the wedding was still bright and fresh, the bouquet still in bloom….while relatives had barely had time to get home, they had to come back for a memorial.
And I had to figure out what to do with a future I had all planned out.
The grief was so deep I thought I would never get out. It affected us all. God watched me mess up, veer wildly off the path at times. He watched me deal with the grief all wrong, and that must have been painful for Him to watch…..But in all that time, He never left me.
There are no words for sadness that goes so deep. I remember we all said, “How can the birds still be singing?” In all of our hard hallelujahs no words of comfort ever sound right. But now that I am so far on the other side of that grief, I can comfort others in a way someone else can’t and I know it.
But how to comfort when there are no words? The best thing can be just your presence, a hug….shared tears. A listening ear……..Stopping by after everyone else goes away.
You might ask the question, “Well, if God spoke once, why didn’t He speak another warning? Why didn’t He intervene in the big thing that happened…..Why didn’t He prevent it?”
There is an answer that comforts me, and I know it to be true. I know my God. There is a reason He didn’t intervene, but I don’t know what it is. Maybe it was because He was saving me or someone else from an even greater grief further down the road. That is what I choose to believe….it’s how I find comfort.
I didn’t always have peace about it, but I do now. All these years later, the “why” question matters less and less. Heaven is not nearly as far as we think. The joy that springs up in the heart even in the midst of unbearable sorrow is proof. For we know where they are…….

Though He didn’t keep the awful event from happening, I know He loves me more than anything, and I know He was with me every step of the way.

The death of a child is much harder for me to understand. I can’t imagine that kind of grief.

All I know is that He loves us so very much, even more than we can imagine, and He loves our loved one even more than we do.

Whoever reads this, please whisper a prayer for Duane, the grieving parents of his nephew and all the family. Thank you Duane, for such a beautiful and real post today and thank you Michelle for sharing it.

What’s in your cup?

“LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” Psalm 16:5-8

What’s your cup full of today? Is it full and overflowing with salvation or does it feel like it’s filled to overflowing with stuff you never asked for? Stuff you never wanted. The cup was passed around the table and you wanted so desperately to say, “No, thank you,” but you didn’t because you knew no one else would drink it. Hopefully, you looked around for someone to share it, but everyone had disappeared.

You do anything you can to make it sweeter, you smile and say, “It’s not so bad.”

We all have our cups. Some drink deep from the cup of bitterness and resentment. They have drank from it for so long they have even acquired a taste for it. Some try to help them, even try to take it away, but they wrestle it back. They like their cup just the way it is.

Sometimes I don’t like some of the things floating around in my cup. I know that even though I am holding the cup of salvation, I put other things in there that don’t belong. I hate floaters.

I strain it, but there are still some there. There’s nothing else I can do but throw it out and start over, for “What shall I return to the LORD for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD.”

I remember that awful cup you drank for me so that I wouldn’t have to.

And I lift my hands to grasp my cup of Salvation once again. Suddenly my little cup is one I can drink, for you have infused it with Your Life. I can drink this and get true refreshment.

Not only that, I know that I never have to drink alone again.
Though circumstances haven’t changed, what I’m drinking has.


“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows.” Psalm 23:5

Eden Restored

“Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it finds it’s rest in Thee.” St. Augustine
Everything the world is seeking so desperately can be found in the person of Jesus. Finding Him is like finding our forever home……
Drinking from the river of life is possible right here and now. I can stand on it’s shore, cup my hand under the crystalline waters and drink deep. Because of Him and what He made possible.
He is my quiet country lane I seek when I want peace…..my cool breeze in the sweltering heat of a desert summer. My bridge to Eden……My everything I have ever longed for, every desire of my deepest longing, even the ones I don’t know about, is satisfied in Him and through Him.
But without Him I am never satisfied.
I could ache like I do, for the pines or for the ocean swells and go to that quiet place, a closet even, and find that I have come out just as refreshed as if I had just spent time watching the waves upon the shore or hearing the wind making the pines sigh.
It is part of my oldest memory, this earth. Part of me and I cannot ever separate myself from it, nor do I want to, for He grew me out of it, this soil, this earth, and to it I will return one day.
Until such time as I reach that Eternal shore where will meet me……Restored.
 He will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The LORD has spoken.

 In that day they will say,
“Surely this is our God;
we trusted in him, and he saved us.
This is the LORD, we trusted in him;
let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”
Isaiah 25:8,9

Three Little Words

“But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.” 2 Peter 1-3

When I read this today I immediately thought of Harold Camping and his ridiculous time-stamp for Christ’s return. I thought about how much damage has been done over the 2000+ years of the church by people taking a truth and twisting it, either to make a buck or get some notoriety for themselves. This is no surprise. Jesus talked about it, so did all the apostles.

The problem with partial truths is that a half truth holds the power of the truth, but either adds something or leaves something out so that facts are confused and distorted. That was our downfall from the very beginning. Our separation from God started with three little words……..

“Did God say?”

I think an out and out lie is easier to deal with because it can be exposed for what it is. A partial truth has the power to mangle and deceive and leaves a wake of destruction in its path. Yet the light of truth will continue to shine through the darkness of every deception. Two things we know from Scripture:

There will be a time when Christ will most definitely come back, we just don’t know when.

He will come when we are not expecting it.

“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming……”2 Peter 3:10,11

Two other things we know….
The time is closer now that it was before.

There will be people that don’t believe it.

“Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”

But here is the best part of the story, if you are living and breathing, you still have time.

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9

We serve a truly awesome God!