Jehovah Shammah, He is the God who is always there.
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, more wonderful than knowing that God is always there. Always! I was reading a book on studies of the Bible that my dad gave me. I really enjoyed the part that spoke of God’s character. In summary, it said, “We know from the Bible that God loves us and is holy and all powerful. If we know this, then why do we assume that the God who loves us will leave us in confusion? He will guide us and show us and give us understanding because He loves us.”
When we hit hard times, we become confused. Terribly confused sometimes. We become confused about life, about ourselves, even about God and who He is. But God is always with us even in our confusion. He helps us and guides us. He will show us His path and will help us take it. He is not surprised or annoyed by your confusion, He gets it. He understands that when we are confused we are also frustrated. He gets that we need help. He let’s us know the He always with is because sometimes we forget that He is here. Sometimes we face great enough of pain that we think He has left us. Sometimes we think He is angry and is ignoring us. Sometimes our confusion and frustration blinds us to Him. He knew that would happen, so He let us know that He is always with us.
God’s names all contect. He is our provider, our healer, our banner, our shelter. Every name God calls Himself is a name that shows us His love and security. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He is our peace. And He is our righteousness. He is the great I Am!
Category: searching
Even the flowers grow tired.
Even flowers have days when they are tired. Even the strong and resilient daisy has times when her petals droop.
Whenever a hard time comes, I think of the verse in Matthew that says
Matthew 6:28-30 ESV
[28] And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, [29] yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. [30] But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
But there are days when even the flowers look tired. They have no though or feeling, yet circumstances make them droop. We we think when we come to know jesus that all of the hardship will be gone and will never suffer again.But that’s just not the way it is. We forget that we have an enemy and that our enemy is like a prowling lion and will attack and devour. We feel like if we were just a little bit more diligent, if we just prayed a little harder, maybe we we’d be better off.Emprayer does help but hard times will come.Because God has warned us that they will come. The earlier verse ends with, “O you of little faith.” Whenever we listen to the Bible read aloud, the speaker will more often than not quote the O you little faith versus with an angry tone or a disappointed tone. But I don’t think that that’s what jesus is saying, when he warns us of having a small faith, it’s not because he’s mad that our faith is still small and it’s not necessarily because he’s disappointed, he knew we would have a small faith.Why else would he have said with faith like a mustard seed. When I read Jesus saying you of little faith. I hear it with a tone of that of somebody correcting perhaps a small dog. I’ve had this experience with my own dog where he will do something and I will try and help him or stop him or save him. And he will fight against me, and then he will hurt himself and i’m not mad at him, but I will say, why wouldn’t you have just trusted me and listened to me?Then you would’ve been fine. That’s what I hear when jesus says you of little faith. You of little faith, if only you would have trusted me.If only you would listen to me, I can help you and take your anxiety, your fear and your pain away. Jesus is called.
He is our peace.
Jehovah Shalom.
When the monsters come around at night, it’s Jesus who protects us. It is because of him, we lie down in safety. That doesn’t mean there won’t be times when something evil crashes through your gate. I recall a great missionary speaking on a time when he was in.I believe it was africa, but it might have been india. He was sleeping in a tent like they all did, and in the middle of the night he woke up with a crazy need to pray and he spent the entire evening lying in his bed, praying the blood of jesus, the blood of Jesus. In the morning, he woke up and there was a deep trench around his bed, and if I recall what he said correctly, he said the lord spoke to me and said the devil came to attack you.But because you spoke, my name, all he could do was pace.Around you all night. It’s only in the blood of Jesus that we are safe and protected. The devil can come, but he can’t get through when we are covered in the blood of Jesus. Gods angel, that’s swept through and took the first born child in Egypt. It was the blood on the door that made it so that the angel passed that house by. There will be times later on where the same people who had been under that blood would then doubt God or deny God and maybe some of them were ones that were killed in the desert by disease or by the sword because of the way they had turned from Jesus and God knew full well when his angel passed. Them by. That they would turn from him later and that they would possibly die in the desert, but it was still the blood of Jesus, the blood of the lamb on the door now, I should specify that that’s symbolic and not every lamb’s blood is the blood of Jesus, however, God still permitted those people to be. Left to live when his spirit went through because of the blood on the door. The blood did not blind him to who was inside. He knew full well and he also knew what the outcome would be later, but the blood of Jesus protects you. It’s once you let go of his hand release the hem of his garment and are no longer washed in his blood, but then the monsters can come through. But while you are with him and you have him by your side. And you trust him and love him and speak to him daily. The monsters might show up, but god will give you a safe place where they cannot get at you and that safe place.He’s in the palm of his hand. I speak of monsters, but what is a monster? The monster might be the new diagnosis from your doctor the monster might be the terrible thoughts or horrifying dreams that come in the middle of the night. The monster might be an addiction. The monster might be a person. The monster might be a fear or even a desire. And they will come because the devil doesn’t want you belonging to his enemy. But Jesus is your friend and he is fighting on your side, and he will never let you go.
How do your bones grow?
I have been nose deep in textbooks lately and that has reduced my time for prayer and Bible reading, which usually ends in these Devotionals. It’s funny though. Even in an anatomy textbook it is easy to see God. Last week we learned all about bones, muscles and the nervous system. (Hang in there. I have a point.) We learned that babies are not formed inside the womb with bones, babies ‘bones’ are cartalidge that slowly fuses together (I won’t go into more detail) to create the strong bones of an adult. That’s why children are more delicate.
Here’s the thing. Yes, that’s amazing, but get this. There’s this verse in Ecclesiastes where God says:
Ecclesiastes 11:5 KJV
[5] As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.
Back then there is no way that they already knew that inside the body of the mother, her baby’s cartilage was fusing together to create bones. Yes I do realize that much of our initial understanding of medicines and chemistry came from the East in the early days, but not this early of early. God speaks to the writer of this book about a concept that the writer would have no way of knowing without a Devine God who told him. Imagine God saying to a person who would have known many things about what was ‘modern medicines in that time and brings up a concept that he couldn’t even fathom. “Grow God? What do you mean, grow?”
Now. Before you say God might have been meaning that the bones would grow in length inside the womb as though I did not understand that. I know they grow longer. Guess why? The cartilage forming together to create an actual bone. You know how doctors say that babies can’t sit up because their spines are not yet fused? This is that. It counts for all bones from the big long bones to the tiny irregular bones. God made it that way so the baby could come out of the mother without harm to it. Now. I don’t think it’s that way with large animals. Puppies and kittens yes, but cows and horses I believe are already semi fused bones, but you would need to ask your vet. Here is my point. God is crazy amazing. He thought of everything! He even scolded a man using medical knowledge years beyond his time. Every detail from the cilia in your lungs to the autonomic beat of your heart, has been planned and counted and cared for. Even in the bad days, God is still I’m charge and knows what He’s doing. Stop doubting Him! He loves you, always. Just copy your parasympathetic nervous system and relax in knowing that Jesus has hold of you, every inch, and He knows what He is doing.
Come as you are
We all speak of come as you are. We speak of it as though it is written right there in the Bible. The thing is. Those words are not exactly there, but the idea is. Come all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Mathew 11:39
Some want to stand and say ‘God does not say that!’ Because we have had people who claim that God does not care what they live like because He says to come as you are. But that is not what God is saying. He is saying come to me and let me change you.
If the leper had chosen to heal himself before going to Jesus He would still be sick.
We cannot heal, clean or save ourselves. Only Jesus can.
Now. Come as you are does not mean ‘stay as you are’. We come to Jesus, not so we feel all good and fluffy, we come to Him because we are broken amd need healing. Because a battle rages within us and we need saving. Because we are lost and we need finding. We come to Jesus so we can be changed. He is the great healer and defender. I feel all of us want to come to Jesus. If you look at what people chase after in this world it is clear that their souls are trying to find their way back to the savior. But the devil gets in the way amd distracts and pulls away those who chase Jesus. He throws shiny things on the ground for us to follow and we forget that true treasures are buried deep and do not simply shine on the surface. It makes me think of a geode. The surface gems are pretty and sometimes quite large, so you spend all your time cleaning them up and polishing them. But under the surface there small gems you must chip away at the stone to reach, small gems that do not sparkle as brightly and harder to reach, but are worth so much more than the large surface gems. Don’t settle for shiny scatterings on the ground, seek for the Treasure that only a few find.
When I’m gone
Sorry that it has been awhile since my last Devotional. My grandfather died and we have been very busy getting things together.
His funeral however, was where my inspiration for today came from. What do you want people to say about you after you are gone?
I will tell you what they said about him. He was a friend to strangers (and that caused is trouble on a few occasions 😅) he would serve quietly without being asked. He loved God and knew Him as a friend. He prayed for family, friends and people he never knew with the same fervancy. He loved to work and create but mostly loved to serve Jesus. He gave of himself. In the end. He was the example the Bibles give us on how to live lile Christ.
Not every day. Not every moment. There were plenty of times he was just as human and emotional and led by self as the rest of us. But the times he was like Christ in his actions and words greatly outnumbered the times he was not, so that’s what people remember.
We will never be perfect in our service and walk with God. But are we trying? What do we want others to remember when we are gone? If they think of us and see Jesus in our life then we have truly won the race.
You never stand alone
Do not forget that we are an army.
Legions upon Legions of angels stand alongside us, beating their sword on their shields, marching out unafraid.
We have a shield too. As well as a sword.
We match forward in boots and helmet that are a little too big because we are still growing into them, making Jesus smile. He bends down and lifts our visor, looking into our eyes with a huge smile.
Then, as the leader He is, He stoops low and tightens our boot laces before taking our hand and leading us forward. He knows we cannot fight alone.
He knows we are broken and scared. He surrounds us with His army of angels and sends us forward despite our weakness. But not alone. The King and His army fight with us.
Bridges
We are all walking along a long, wood plank bridge. A chasm stretches out under us and as we strain past the lurch in our stomachs to see the bottom we find that all we see are the tops of whispy clouds. A gust of wind blows and the bridge sways, causing us to grasp the sides and close our eyes.
But who made the bridge? Where did it come from? It is the only way to travel unless you go back, and you know that you can’t go back. Someone must have built it.
The bridge is the path we follow. God made it. It began in Genesis 1:1. Then came the snake in the garden and pieces were lost from the bridge. But God would not let our path to Him be fully destroyed so He made a way. He was always making a way everytime we broke a part of the bridge. But those sections that were replaced were quickly old news as a new section was destroyed. It was never enough. So finally God made a stability chord that ran the length of the bridge from one end to the other. A chord that could not be broken. A chord that looks very much like a cross.
People still break sections out of the bridge, but the chord holding the bridge to the other side will never be broken.
Now that the chord is there to keep the way secure God let’s the travelers repair the broken slots. Where the world has thrown a rock that breaks a plank from the path and creates a pitfall, God has provided is with the way to repair the hole. The deciples began by reinforcing the rope sides and adding stable blocks that connect the path to the chord. But people have tried to break away those blocks. They have tried to destroy everything that connects the path to the chord, to Jesus who is the stabilizer and strength and hope and purpose of every path. They knew they couldn’t break the chord, they could never destroy Jesus. So they have tried to destroy everything that connects to Him and leads to Him. But we as Christians have the task of repairing all that the world has destroyed. We wear our tool belts as we walk this narrow way. When we see a hole in the bridge or a Crack in the bonds, we kneel down and take out our tools. The Bible has equipped us with all we need on our journey, not only to help ourselves but also to help others.
As we repair the places where people have tried to destroy the path we kneel on sections already repaired by others, knowing that someday someone will step on the repair we have made and find it solid.
We are all sojourners together and the devil attacks us all in different ways making pit falls in our path, but God has given us the blessing of each other. We pray for each other, guide each other and help each other, even if all we do is quietly hold hands in the presence of Jesus. Sometimes we can’t fight the wind. Sometimes we have fallen through the cracks and cannot pull ourselves back up. Sometimes our questions and doubts are too loud. But Jesus is the chord stabilizing our path and our walking companions on the road are there to repair the gaps and to take our wrists and pull us to safety.
You may never see how the work you have done for Jesus has blessed or helped others, but nothing you do for Him is ever a waste. Keep repairing the wounds and the gaps and the needs in the path before you. Someday, someone will be able to keep going because of what you have left behind for them.
Dear Fathers
Dear Fathers.
Recall in the horse and his boy by CS Lewis? All the things that saved Shasta in the end, Aslan (the Jesus figure) says. Those were me.
The cat who protected you from the jackals in the desert by the tombs. The Lion who scared you away from the cliff edge. And the Lion who gave you strength of fear to run the last few miles. And the lion you do not recall, who pushed the boat to shore when you were a baby. That was always me. – Paraphrased
This makes me think of a story of Papa. When I got my first horse at 13 years old, I thought I knew everything. Papa knew an awful lot about horses and was constantly trying to help with him but you know it teenagers are like. In an old video I found of when I first had River and was saddling him, you see me put on all of his tack and then you say papa very quietly step up behind me and tighten the saddle. I never knew that he had done it until I saw the video. We don’t always see the things you do for us dad’s, but we will see it if they ever stop, because we have taken for granted a lot of your protection and your caring. Sometimes we don’t thank you for the times we woke you up a quarter to 1:00 because we had heard a big noise in the house. Sometimes we don’t thank you for taking time out of your meetings to help us figure out how to multiply decimals. Sometimes we don’t thank you for the days off work you took to take our pets to the vet’s appointments. Sometimes we don’t think to thank you for all those Christmases you lifted us up so we could put the star on top of the tree, a spot we could have never reached without your shoulders. Like our fathers quietly and constantly protecting us and caring for us we don’t always notice that God is. He’s always there protecting us guiding us comforting us and we don’t always notice and we don’t always remember to thank him but we should remember to thank him.
God is called our good Father because that who He is. He loves us enough to direct and discipline, but He also loves us enough to protect us at all cost. It takes a strong man to be the imitation of God as Father within the home.
Rise up men, daddy’s of courage, strength and Valor! We need you! And if we haven’t said it yet. We love you, thank you for all you do.
A whale of a time
Jonah 2:4, 7-10 NIV
[4] I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’
[7] “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. [8] “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. [9] But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’ ” [10] And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Okay. I know we all have read Jonah probably several times over. But tonight I read it and learned something new.
Jonah said that he felt God had banished him from his sight because he had run away. He thought he had gone so far that God had actually turned His back on him. Don’t miss this. His answer to that feeling was to pray. He called out to God. Even though he though God had cast him from His sight, Jonah’s answer we to pray. What faith!
Here’s the best part. When Jonah prayed, God answered. He heard Jonah and listened even though it had take a storm and a giant fish to get Jonah to pay attention to Him, as soon as Jonah turned his heart to God, God responded.
It doesn’t matter how far you feel, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. God will listen when you repent. He is not angry with you. Even if you’ve made it so He has to put you into the belly of a whale, God is still with you. He hears you. He loves you. All you have to do is call out to Him.
No turning back part 1
I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back. I do not believe that once you say I’ve decided to belong to Jesus you can then just go off and live however you please and when you face God at the bema seat you will be as saved as you were the first day you confessed it. Once you’ve made a choice to follow Jesus your life has to change. We love that whole God loves you where you are statement. And He Does. But he also loves you too much to leave you where you are. If you remain the sinful, worldly person you were when you first accepted Jesus, then you have not truly accepted Jesus because when you accept Him He changes you. We have tried to make God soft and panda like. Rolls with the flow and doesn’t care. But God loves you 💯. He did not die so you could stay the old man. He died so you could be changed.
The stupidest thing I have heard recently was a person who claimed that now that they had accepted Jesus he no longer saw their sin. That now that they had accepted him they could live however they please and the blood of Jesus blinded him to their sin and it was not sin in his eyes anymore. There is nothing more ridiculous on the planet than that. You think Jesus can’t see your sins? You think he doesn’t see what you’re doing? If you give your life to Jesus then you are going to change to live for him. Does that mean we’ll never sin again? No of course not. But it means that like Paul said I beat myself daily. Does that mean that Paul stood there and took a bull whip and flogged himself physically daily? No. It means that daily Paul beat down his sins, he rejected them he prayed against them and he fought them all to serve the savior he had learned how to love. Just because there was blood over the door of the house did not mean that Jesus didn’t know who was in that house. When the spirit of God swept through Egypt and killed off the first born child, he didn’t simply look at the blood on the door and go oh well I don’t know who lives there but there’s the blood on the door so that’s all good. He saw the blood on the door and left the house alone but he knew fully who was inside and what kind of people they were. Jesus forgives our sins. But we have to be repented, we can’t just stand there and go about our lives sinning and go oh well I belong to Jesus now I raised my hand one day in church so I can do whatever I please. Today at my church we’ve had a baptism. And baptism is the public Declaration of a person who does decided to follow Jesus. A person who stands there now and says I wash away my sins I Repent of the person I was and I reject the person I would be without him, and now I will live according to God’s word. Being baptized is kind of like being knighted. You watched the other Knights in their flowing robes and shining, dented armor amd wanted to join them. Now you have gone through part of your training and have been knighted by the King. Now the real work begins.
Carried in the cross 