Never Forsaken***

The Holy One calls to me this morning.  Life has changed in ways I never asked for and brought situations I never thought I would ever have to face. I have come to realize there is always "one more thing" that He sees must need to be challenged in my faith walk, and after so many of the  "one more thing"  I see that where holiness is concerned we will never arrive at perfection here on earth.

The years of running on the flat lands has brought me to mountains where my faith walk has become a climb. The Holy One speaks as I find footing for my next step.  "I've got you.  Look to My Word".  He directs me back to my favorites verses as the years have passed so fast.

"Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He.  I am He who will sustain you.  I have made you and I will carry you.  I will sustain you and I will rescue you"  Isaiah 46:4 NIV

As Jesus was returning to His rightful place at the right hand of all power and authority and back to the One He told us to call "Our Father",  He said, "All authority has been given to Me, therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age".

And again He speaks through Hebrews 13:5-6, "Be content with what you have because God has said "Never will I leave you.  Never will I forsake you", so we can say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid".

His compassion for my inexcusable weakness is like a warm emotional blanket to my soul.  Days like today remind me that He is my strong tower no matter how steep the faith climb becomes.

The pain of circumstances I feel as so heavy is laced in the lies of the enemy.  He tries to convince me in my thoughts that the Lord is absent in my trial and I am left to face it alone.  Nothing could be further from the truth, but unless I recall, remember and counter the threat with God's Word and His promises the lies will oppress me and the pain will overwhelm me.

I am beginning to grasp that something so important is being worked in me as I struggle to find my footing that my Lord sees fit to risk appearing absent for a little while. 

The eruption of different and difficult things calls us to attend to and remember what life here is all about:  To seek and find relationship with the One who was sent to save us from the hell of an eternity without our Creator God and then to move us on to trust Him in our lives here on earth.  These are the beginning steps into our ultimate outrageous love relationship with the One who calls us to spend all eternity with Him.  

It is an easy thing to say we trust Him for eternity since that is a "test" of our faith in a future day.  But to trust Him in each situation we face here on earth represents a lot of trust tests in the here and now. 

My greatest desire is to see my Lord smile;  to hear Him one day say, "Well done My good and faithful servant".

I am beginning to understand that meeting the challenges with the confidence that He is always with me just like He promises in His Word pleases Him.  To live in the trust place knowing that He is faithful and will never leave me nor forsake me brings Him delight. 

I think I can even see Him smiling in the shadows.

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?
  

Remember God's Precedents***

The Holy One calls to me this morning.  Man's ingenuity is amazing and enables us to communicate with each other in real time.  Word travels around the globe at amazing speed and we know what is going on within seconds of a major event. 

Not only do we get to share the best of what is going on in each other's lives, we also can share the struggles we face and trials that come along with the journey here on planet earth.  It seems that trials bigger than our personal ability to control them are being shared and in that I find countless opportunities to pray without ceasing.  I cherish these opportunities provided not to feel the pain they represent but to come to know the Great I AM as I cry out for Him to intervene in our sorrows. 

The Holy One speaks to one such prayer need: "Remember My precedents". 

Not too long ago, the Lord started weaving me into His word, after He had spent most of my life weaving His word into me.  I began to see myself and my family's struggles on each and every page.  It is as if His word was written just for me. 

I learned that our God is the God of "precedents".  By that I realize all the amazing stories in the Old testament of His power and Presence in the lives of the ancients speak of what we can ask for and expect Him to do today.  These are the things He has already done and are written for us as a model of what He will do again. 

In the Old Testament, God:

Healed the sick: 2 Kings 20
Raised the dead: I Kings 17
Provided children from a barren womb: I Samuel 1
Ended slavery: Exodus 14
Brought His people to a land flowing with milk and honey (good provisions) Deut 6
Arranged for the rescue of kidnapped children: I Samuel 30
Traveled as a Presence with His people: Exodus 33
Protected His people from vicious curses and witchcrafted oppression: Numbers 23

The list goes on and on.  Then we see in the New Testament as recorded in the Gospels, where Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, built upon those precedents and even more, set up the model of resurrection life after death.  As He departed for His rightful place of honor, He gave us permission and privilege to ask, seek and knock for what our world needs so that in the answers provided, God the Father will be glorified.

Trials are designed to bring us to the end of ourselves.  Trials are designed to draw us to the One who Sovereignly controls all things and even our next breath.  Trials are designed to test our faith in God and His word.  Trials are designed to stretch our patience, strengthen our endurance and challenge our relationship of love, loyalty and trust in  the One who died in our place.  In all our trials we can be sure that He is preparing us for an eternity in His Presence, and that the trials are a necessary part of that preparation.

So the question is: What are we facing today that is so different than the situations we can read about that the Lord has already provided with His answers to human suffering?

Habakkuk was a prophet of old who saw the problems vexing his world and in his day.  Conditions were not unlike the ones we are facing in ours.   As I look around, see the needs and remember the precedents of His past actions, The Holy One takes me to his prayer and I make it my own:

"Lord, I have heard of Your fame.
I stand in awe of your deeds, Oh Lord.
Renew them in our day
In our time, make them known" Habakkuk  3

I find that remembering God's precedents provides hope for the trials that come in each new day.

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?     





       

Living In Light Of Eternity***

The Holy One calls to me this morning.  Temporal life is about to change and with it the need to adapt is pressing down.  Temporal life as we know it never ends well.  As hard as we try to avoid it: from dust we came and to dust we will return.  Gen 3:19

Physical death is the end of temporal life no matter how we live it.  It has been that way since the very beginning with two exceptions that we are told about in the Word of God: Enoch and Elijah. These were the two exceptions and their lives are the model for those of us who believe in the rapture (sudden taking up) of the Body of Christ when the Lord returns for His own.

Not knowing the day or time of that epic event on our earth calendar, we will be wise to live out each day as if it could be today..  Both of these men lived in Old Testament times but since our God is a precedent setting and honoring Sovereign, we can be sure that their lives and translation out of this reality has significance to us today. 

If nothing else the thought of a sudden evacuation out of planet earth should have an impact on how we live our temporal lives in light of eternity.  For me this means to see the events here with eyes on the long range of Heavenly purpose.

Paul exhorts us over and over to get our temporal lives in a bag so we can focus on the much more of the Kingdom of Heaven and God's purpose in what He allows to transform us. 

2 Corinth 4:16-17, "Therefore we do not lose heart though we are outwardly wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what his seen but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal."

Make no mistake the Lord is preparing us for life post this earth.  There is a way to live out our days here in light of eternity and I, for one, want to live that way.  Since everything that makes up this realm materially will be turned into ash one day, the focus then must be on the only thing that will survive the burn and that is our relationships.  We will not enter into eternity with things but we will enter in with people.

As a believer in Christ Jesus who is God and Savior, my relationship with Him is the top priority.  Nurturing that relationship requires time and commitment.  Then comes the relationship with others in my life and maintaining the bond that connects us heart-to-heart is made easier with the eternal mindset since time and geography can interrupt the dearest ones in earth. 

Knowing we will be together for eternity makes the distance not seem so critical and for those I love who may not have grasped the truth about eternity, it makes the time we have together here vital for sharing the love of the Father with them.

Having lost my temporal husband of 31 years to the rigors of a wasting disease, I know the loss here.  The eternal perspective of reunion is a sweet blessing and also a lesson for the struggles we had in our earthly relationship.

The Holy One speaks to the eternal, "Aren't you excited to know that the next time you see him , it will be without the cloud of sin?"

My thoughts cascade like a waterfall down into a sweet pool of God's truth.  I now see that all of our relational problems did boil down to the sin nature that will not affect our eternal relationship.  As believers the temporal pressures of life can play havoc with our relationships even as we embrace the same Lord.  But with an eternal perspective things can look different here.

From an eternal perspective we can see how unfit we are in our flesh for our next and permanent destination point.  We cannot begin to grasp what the Lord has waiting for His people, but I believe that what we are going through here has a impact on what we will be doing there.  How we will rule and reign with Christ in His Kingdom of Heaven is being determined by how we submit to His rule within our hearts here on earth. 

Living out each situation in light of eternity, knowing that our choices and decisions and the management of those things is going to impact our future should be a challenge to find the way that pleases the One we will spend eternity with.  Seizing each opportunity and trusting the long range of God's Divine purpose makes for a very different lifestyle than just getting through each day.

If the temporal things we see and experience here on earth are all there is, discouragement can run high and our reactions stoop low. If the temporal life is all there is then throwing in the towel is a very viable options when the going gets tough. Temporal perspective makes no sense because it has no good end: all die and everything turns to dust.

However, in light of eternity all things make perfect sense:  God has a Kingdom, it is called Heaven. God has opened up His Kingdom to all who would care to enter in.  His Kingdom operates on principles of Holiness and Divine order and there is only one way in.  Jesus is the doorway to the Kingdom of Heaven.  One must believe in Him as the doorway or there can be no entrance.   All of us enter in on the same footing and that is faith in the life, death and then resurrection of Christ.

There is no place or room in Heaven for rebellion as Heaven is a peaceful place in a Divine structure and order not like the chaos of this earth.   Any who would come must leave their flesh baggage and all it's contention for self exaltation at the foot of the Cross. The Kingdom of Heaven is a paradise for those who, while unique and different in personality, are one in unity with each other and the Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit. The earth realm is where we must decide where we will spend eternity. 

The Lord is calling out to each one of us to get ready here for what He has waiting for us there.  I am so thankful for the Holy Spirit in my life.   Just when I get bogged down by the temporal He reminds me of the eternal.  I see things as I should: In light of eternity.  Now it all makes sense.

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?