Amazing hesed love!

Romans 8

It is astounding!

My God has bound himself to me, in hesed love - so much that he not only commits to die for me to save me from my sin, but he goes further and adopts me into his family! 

He knows me - before anything in me; he foreknows, he purposes (with purposes that shall not fail nor be thwarted), he justifies, he glorifies.

He chooses. He plans. He saves. He brings Home.

How can I not live in amazed joy, regardless of circumstances? "This God - his way is perfect..." And none of his purposes can be thwarted. No circumstance can man his love has been taken away from those whom he has committed himself to; rather, everything at every moment has to be subservient to His purpose: to make us like Jesus, and to bring us safely Home.

Who can be in a safer place, than one to whom the God of the Universe, the Lord of the Ages, has bound Himself?  Every event says to that person, "I love you, child, and this will synergize into joy for you!"

Worthy!

King of kings

Lord of ages

Lamb who was slain

Ruler of time

Almighty, all-seeing, all-knowing

You are worthy of all my moments

Worthy of all my praise

   all my thoughts

   all my words

   all that I am 

   all that I have

It all belongs to You who made me

You who rule over all of me

Who made me for Yourself

Who redeemed me for Yourself

That I might live

   no longer for myself

   but for You who lived and died and rose again for me

That I might display Your glory to the world

That I might proclaim the praises (excellencies) of Him

Who called me out of darkness 

   into His marvelous light!

(Revelation 4-5. 2Cor.5:15. 1Pet.1:9.)

The LORD is my helper

Out of my distress I called on the LORD;

   the LORD answered me and set me free.

The LORD is on my side; I will not fear.

   What can man do to me?

The LORD is on my side as my helper...

I was pushed hard, so that I was falling,
   but the LORD helped me.
The LORD is my strength and my song;
   he has become my salvation.

(Psalms 118:5-7, 13-14)

Rejoice in the LORD

Though the fig tree should not blossom,

   nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
   and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
   and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

God, the Lord, is my strength;

he makes my feet like the deer's;
he makes me tread on my high places.

(Habakkuk 3:17-19)

hold on to Truth

We beg God for mercy when someone we love is going through pain. In our human short-sightedness, we cannot think of anything more loving than to take away their pain. When God does not answer, eyes lacking faith see Him as a cruel God, unloving, unmerciful. "If You are loving, why would You NOT relieve this terrible situation?"

We cannot imagine the "something better" that God is working for those He loves, by not taking away their pain. Yet faith must hold onto God's revelation of Himself as "merciful, gracious, abounding in lovingkindness and faithfulness", and as being all-wise and all-powerful - while at the same time it is enduring the pain that He chooses not to remove.

Faith reaches behind the veil to lay hold of what it cannot see, to trust what human sense cannot make sense of. It grasps for the eternal while the flesh can only see what is now and present. Faith must fasten its grip on the Word of God that never changes, never ceases to be true, never fails to be Truth from God. 

Truth says that God has a greater good for us than release from our trials:

"And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son... What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who [or what] can be against us?"

(Romans 8:28-29,31)

Truth says the trials of Christians are temporary:

"For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

(2 Corinthians 4:17-18)

Truth says that the ultimate expression of God's love is in Jesus' death for us:

"...God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

(1 John 4:8-10)

Truth says God will provide all that we truly need to make it through trials:

"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?"

(Romans 8:32)

Truth says that one day, God will take away all pain and sorrow:

"And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” "

(Revelation 21:3-5)

Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!

pray for Peter

Please pray for a solution to Peter's seizures. They can be violent and happen almost every day, multiple times. We have never had good seizure control from drugs, and we have tried many drugs. The neurologist has nothing to offer but to try more drugs, which we are doing.

There is a possibility of Peter being in a clinical trial for a different "drug" (a special oil, really). Pray that if this would be good for him, that they will approve him for it, and that he would get the real thing and not the placebo for the first 2 months.  (After that, all participants get the real thing.)

Two great blessings recently though:
1) Peter got approved for CAP/C, a program that gives us an aide in the home for him every morning. It also gives him medicaid to help pay for equipment and medical expenses!

2) We did finally get the aide, and she is awesome and even comes to our church.  It is an answer to many prayers!

Suffering and God's love

Rom.4:24-5:11

"... Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation."

The second paragraph above is part of the first. We rejoice in our sufferings... how? why? The human tendency is to say, "God must be angry with me, and therefore I am suffering." Paul is saying, God shows His love for us in that Jesus died to save us while we were still ruined sinners. If Jesus' death paid the punishment for my sin and reconciled me to God, much more will Jesus' life now in Heaven interceding for us save us from God's wrath in our life presently.  God cannot have His anger upon us now, because the Son He loves, whom He always listens to, is on our side and pleading our case before Him. Therefore nothing in my life can negate that. No circumstances can be construed to be evidence of God's wrath upon me, if I am in Jesus.

Therefore - I can rejoice in sufferings, because I can be sure that in Jesus, God's love is resting upon me. Therefore He must mean good by giving me trials. He will use those trials to produce the endurance of faith, which will yield character, which gives me hope that I am truly His, that I am truly being made more like Jesus, which is the most loving thing God can do for me! And this in turn gives me more assurance of His love for me, love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

Suffering then - rather than being evidence of God being against me - is an evidence of His love, if I am hidden in Jesus.  It brings me closer to the Father!

tears

There are tears for what will never be

Sometimes it is better not to think of such,
not to grieve
not to take note of the pain, the loss,
only with blinders to live
to see what is
to focus on where I am placed -
present duty
just-for-this-moment grace

to stay away from the children
mine never will be
to forget for awhile
their normalcy

At least with a death
it is done
someday you'll adjust to them gone

but not this -
it is fresh every time,
a reopened wound
and I cry

tears for what will never be
Jesus bottles them for me