God's Patience and Faithfulness

Good Morning! If you are getting this, then you know it's Starving Second Saturday where we set aside some time and fast and pray for our friends and family who so desperately need Jesus.

I am reminded this morning of just how desperately they need Christ as I think of the great sermon delivered by Jonathan Edwards in 1741 called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." It is a very powerful message at just how precarious the lives of men are who are not covered by the blood of Jesus.

Most of the sermon's text consists of ten considerations:

1. God may cast wicked men into hell at any given moment.
2. The Wicked deserve to be cast into hell. Divine justice does not prevent God from destroying the Wicked at any moment.
3. The Wicked, at this moment, suffer under God's condemnation to Hell.
4. The Wicked, on earth - at this very moment - suffer the torments of Hell. The Wicked must not think, simply because they are not physically in Hell, that God (in Whose hand the Wicked now reside) is not - at this very moment - as angry with them as He is with those miserable creatures He is now tormenting in hell, and who - at this very moment - do feel and bear the fierceness of His wrath.
5. At any moment God shall permit him, Satan stands ready to fall upon the Wicked and seize them as his own.
6. If it were not for God's restraints, there are, in the souls of wicked men, hellish principles reigning which, presently, would kindle and flame out into hellfire.
7. Simply because there are not visible means of death before them, at any given moment, the Wicked should not, therefore, feel secure.
8. Simply because it is natural to care for oneself or to think that others may care for them, men should not think themselves safe from God's wrath.
9. All that wicked men may do to save themselves from Hell's pains shall afford them nothing if they continue to reject Christ.
10. God has never promised to save us from Hell, except for those contained in Christ through the covenant of Grace.

I was certainly moved by the sermon after reading it at its full length. God's grace alone had kept me from that eternal destruction, and it is his grace that keeps our lost and rebellious ones out today.

For the last couple of months, as I wrote about the passage from Jeremiah 29:12-13 has been on my mind. I think the Lord is saying simply just keep seeking me, give it all you have and I will be faithful to respond. He is there when I'm seeking him, when I am in prayer and in worship. It's amazing! We have an amazing God.

This week the Lord brought back to my mind the passage of 1 Peter 5:10 that says "And the God of all grace who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast." Piece by piece and day by day He is showing himself to be faithful to this promise that I had taped to my dashboard for nearly a year.

Today if He asks me "See I am doing a new thing, can you not perceive it?" I can answer with a definitive "Yes, Lord I see it!"

Hey it's Starving Second Saturday!

Just a quick reminder this morning. I am anticipating some great things this weekend! My sons and I have been invited to spend tomorrow morning visiting with some of the families affected by the Missouri River flooding. For most it will be a service of thanks giving as the water did not rise to it's expected depth.
It should be a great service at Grace Church of the Nazarene near downtown KCMO. I pray that some of the visitors will be encouraged by the stories of God's faithfullness.

I will be found by you

I have been praying with a friend who, like me, over the last couple of weeks had been observing a recurring verse of scripture.  One night, I had managed to make it to our Wednesday service and heard a story about a little boy who was learning about his new bible and was challenged to look up the scripture.  Then about twenty minutes after the service, I had a telephone call.  It was my friend who is going through a very dark time and he started quoting the same scripture though he wasn’t at the service.   Then it was in my devotions again on the 5^th.  So I have been thinking about it and reading it over and over. 

I am not sure if it was necessarily meant for me, or my friend whom I’ve been praying with.   My mind has been routinely drawn to the whole passage particularly the following verses where God says “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you,” 

The verse preceding that, the one I have encountered several times in the last several weeks is one of the most quoted scriptures, especially when we talk with someone feeling hopeless.  If you haven’t already guessed, it is from Jeremiah 29:11.  “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

I will admit I have seen that scripture many times during the last couple of years.  I have also accusingly asked God “so this is your plan to prosper me?”  I wonder if he maybe would have sighed and rolled his eyes for a second each time I asked him.  Sometimes I would think the Lord was teasing me with that scripture and instead of feeling faithfully lifted up, it made me feel even worse.  Talk about a disincentive to read the scripture and pray; feeling poorer for reading the very words meant to lift you up. I guess that’s where a step in faith comes in, when it seems like there are no steps to be taken at all, but you keep praying and keep reading anyway.   

Lately, my heart is greatly lifted up as I see his faithfulness to me.  I am more and more intrigued by the verses that follow where he says “you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.”  What an amazing promise!  “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you . . .” 

How astounding to me that our God, our perfect, Holy, and almighty God would choose to love me and speak to me and answer my prayer—but he also gave me a road map to find him!  Lord my prayer is that you will take away from me the things that might get in the way of me seeking you with all of my heart. 

So Saturday the 10^th is Starving Second Saturday.  I want to seek the Lord with all of my heart and find him on Saturday!  I want to tell him about the burden I have on my heart for my broken home.  I hope you will be able to meet him in prayer too.

Half-time

Well first of all, I wish to say praise God!  I am as of 8/1 officially out of the ranks of the homeless!  God has shown me mercy, and I am grateful.  I am also grateful to each of you who have been kneeling with me in prayer and in fasting.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to express what your prayers have meant to me and my family.  Secondly, as many of you hopefully noticed (a few of you called me about it), I did not post last month.  I apologize.

I did not forget, but had some strangely overwhelmingly busy weeks prior and during that week.  I was helping the company to play catch up to our seasonal volume and for a period of several weeks I had been working nearly 18 hour days and during the second week of the month I was particularly busy.  I had originally been planning my return here for the beginning of July, and a few days before my planned switch, I was asked to remain where I was for an additional month.

At first, I was a little disheartened to be honest; after all it had already been 12 months.  But I would soon discover later that I was intent on making plans that the Lord was saying no to at least for now.  He placed a big 30 day long stop sign in front of me, and it took me 20 days to realize what it was.  But it gave me some time to affirm my trust that He has the right plan for me.

As I was thinking of what to post last month, a thought came to me that I have been holding on to.  I am still trying to make sense of “why did this happen?” and a football analogy came to mind from my recent post.  I had called it “Homecoming” in anticipation of my return to a more normative life.  As I have been able to reflect on it, I realized it might be something more.  In my life, the first half has been spent living as far from Christ as I could.  So in the often used analogy, “the game of life,” I had been losing miserably, failing at every attempt and plan.  I’d been losing the Super Bowl because I’d been running the wrong plays.

Finally, the Lord called me in to correct my life.  It is as though these past 13 months or three years have been half-time.  The Lord has been training me and scolding, and giving me the pep-talk of an eternity.  It is now, I hope, that the Lord is sending back out for the second-half.  After my big red stop sign, I am confident He still says, keep praying for her till He gives her and the others I’m praying for the eternal assuredness or rest in redemption that he has given me.

So, tomorrow 8/13 is Starving Second Saturday.  Keep praying and again thanks for your faithfulness.

Homecoming!!!

Good Morning!  I am sorry for not getting this reminder out sooner, but this week has been a whirlwind of activity.  To say the very least, this week the cup bearer remembered me.

Back in October, I had written on a notecard a bible verse that seemed to be coming my way several times at the end of September.  It was 1 Peter 5:10, “And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.”  I had taped that notecard to my dash and would try to say it out loud when I would feel discouraged.  It stayed there until about a month ago, when my dog knocked my coffee over on it and I threw it away.  I had kept it as a promise from God.

Sometimes in my prayer time, I would ask, “Lord, how long is a little while?”  Thursday, his answer came.  Twelve months, almost exactly to the day I had to place my things into storage and live on the road, he has kept his promise.  I was called by my EVP to a meeting to talk about my future here.  What he offered me was shocking.  Unbelievable! 

They gave me my former position with guaranteed income and safeguards I never imagined possible.  But that was just the start… after I return from San Francisco in just about 2 weeks, I will be home.  And it gets better still!  I asked him why they would place so much confidence in me, knowing that most companies would distance themselves from an employee with so much volatility in their personal lives.  He replied, “we have been watching you go through all of this for the last couple of years and we are amazed that somehow you have managed to keep going and not given up.  You’ve kept your faith in your Christianity and we need that kind of persistence in here.”  That is God at work!  I know that it is certainly not me, but I thank God for showing me a part of his purpose. 

But it’s better still!

As I was preparing to enter the meeting, I received a text about a church in Craig, MO that was in need of help in moving its things and the pastor’s things from the parsonage due to the impending flood of the Missouri River.  I had asked for permission to take a day off because I knew some of the people affected and thought I could at least help.  Instead of just permission, they donated the use of a tractor-trailer to help!  I was and still am overwhelmed! 

When I arrived in Craig with the trailer, I was met by a pastor there who said, he didn’t know what he was going to do.  They were hoping to get a small rental truck and make a few trips but they assumed they would have to abandon most of their own belongings and some at the church.  He kept saying, “this is just an answer to prayer.”  Then about an hour after I arrived a team of volunteers from all over the state showed up, maybe 20 in all.  With their help, we not only moved the pastor and the church’s items, we also were able to move an elderly women with no means of her own, and we also moved a neighboring church!  WOW!  Praise God!  What an awesome, awesome 2 days! 

In a decisive move, He has restored me, He has strengthened me, made me firm and steadfast.  I am reminded of a speech that Winston Churchill gave to a school he visited during WWII. On October 29, 1941, U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited Harrow School to hear the traditional songs he had sung there as a youth, as well as to speak to the students. When he was invited to give a speech, Churchill stood before the students and said:

But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period—I am addressing myself to the school—surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson: Never give in.  Never give in.  Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.  Never yield to force.  Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

The Lord has commanded me to pray for my loved ones and to never give in until He declares victory.  I hope you are encouraged and able to join me today in prayer and thanksgiving and praise to the King. 

If I would listen, I could hear his voice

Good afternoon!  So it is that time again, tomorrow is Starving Second Saturday May 14, 2011.  I feel guilty as I have not posted some of the amazing things I have seen in the last month as they have been occurring all around me.  This posting if I did it correctly, would be pages long, but …. I want you to read it so I will highlight.

A few weeks ago, I was able to attend a church in Albuquerque with a friend.  I was amazed at the fact that there were so many people at the services in the AM that they had to open an outside amphitheater and it was filled.  As it turned out, Rebecca St. James was there that morning to lead the praise and worship, so I asked my friend if the church was that crowded because of that.  No—its always that crowded.    At the end of the service 15 people came forward to receive Christ!  That is awesome!  I think there is a growing hunger for the truth.  I think the pot is just beginning to boil.

I have been reflecting on the past year and the things I have been privileged to see and do.  I have been able to see friends and family that I have, in many cases, not seen for years.  I have been able to share my testimony and share in theirs.  I often felt guilty for not sharing the message of the cross with those I knew in the past, but God has shown me that he works in their lives anyway.  It has been sort of a release of guilt for me.  Thank You Lord.

I have also seen that the Lord is working in the lives of friends at home.  A friend from Church called me one day and was telling me how the Lord has opened his eyes and ignited his heart with a passion for Christ!  Wow—a direct answer to prayer.  Lord help us burn hotter and hotter and spread a contagious fire!

School has recently been in session for me.   As many of you know, I had applied to Samaritan’s Purse and was being considered for the position of Japan Program Manager in Japan.  When I was asked to provide additional information and offer a testament to my personal relationship with Christ, I just knew I had to be a shoe-in for the job.  I met every qualification.  I have the language training.  At the exact same time I was told I was being considered, my company had scheduled me to go to North Carolina.  This seemed like all at once God would answer nearly every prayer I have breathed in the last year and fulfill a dream I had way back when… but so far they have decided to keep looking.

I knew that it would be a long-shot as I consider the talent pool they must draw from, but… if God ordains it, it must be so.  So I was perplexed and a bit disappointed when I received the news.  I had been thinking all week, “ I will either know exactly how Joseph felt when Pharaoh called him out of prison, or how he felt when the cup bearer was freed and forgot him.”    As you can imagine I have been asking God that why question again. 

Yesterday, I finally seemed to get it.  God has been speaking, but I wasn’t listening.   I had submitted the final bit of information to Samaritans Purse on Friday am the 6^th and was expecting to wait for a few days to hear back.  In the mean-time as we were praying, the Lord began to speak.  On May 8^th I received in my morning devotional a poem based upon scriptures;  part of it here begins a theme…

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Me, and I will make your paths straight. "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing." Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by your behavior, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.

On Tuesday, I received from a good friend the following devotional….

Consulting First With God

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

If Jesus Christ is Lord of your life, you are going to give Him the first consideration in every decision you make. You will ask, “What is the will of God? What is the purpose of Jesus? What will glorify my Father?”

Have you ever worked for a company and they decided to transfer you? So many people, because of their financial obligations, discuss it a little with family and friends, then make plans for the move. Sometimes the transfer happens so quickly, prayer has sometimes been forgotten.

ACTION POINT:

Friend, if God wants you to go, then go. If God doesn’t want you to go, then you need to stay. But you’ll never know until you get alone with God and let Him tell you what He wants.

And on Wednesday I received this for a morning inspirational devotional:

Trust The Lord - He Knows Your Future!

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil.  Proverbs 3:5-7

Will you trust your Lord every day for your entire life, marriage and future? Are you trusting your Lord to provide for your emotional, spiritual and physical needs while your spouse is gone or you are having marriage problems?

O Lord Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in you.  Psalm 84:12

The Lord wants you to trust Him completely! Regardless if your spouse is home threatening to leave, or living in sin or you are divorced. Trust the Lord daily and thank Him that He is speaking to your husband or wife. While you wait, ask the Lord to direct your every footstep. Your Lord is wanting your husband or wife to turn from their sinful habits and lifestyle in which they were seduced, deceived and tempted by the enemy.

So I had received an answer from the Lord before I had even heard back from Samaritan’s Purse, and again afterword as I kept asking “why did you do that to me?”   I had ignored it because I have read those passages so many times I knew what they said.  My problem—I wasn’t listening. 

 So, He says again to “trust him, no matter what.”

Keeping track of what God is doing.

These last two or three months seem to have flown by…. Though we just changed the calendar, tomorrow is Starving Second Saturday.  I pray that you will be able to take some time in earnest prayer for someone that the Holy Spirit has laid upon your heart.

I have been complaining that it seems like nothing has been happening lately.  I am ashamed to admit that I often find myself accusing God of either not caring or just abandoning me here.  Even as I was preparing to write this, I was sitting with a completely blank mind.  Since Monday, I have been asking for some help.  “But Lord… nothing’s happening… what am I to say?”

As I have searched my memory for some clues from the last month a common thread developed for me.  Early last month a good friend has been sharing with me how God has moved in his life to provide some clear direction in his career.  I remembered saying to him… wow you should journal that!  Then I was reading some testimonies from people who had gone through some difficult circumstances and were led through it.  Nearly all of them said that writing in a journal was significant in helping them discern the hand of the Lord in their lives.

So as the thread appeared so did my complaint… but nothing is happening!  What am I supposed to write?  “Today was gloomy, cold, wet… Today was gloomy, cold, wet…. Today was gloo….”  But as I was complaining He brought back to mind some things I had failed to take note of.  In particular, I used to pray often Psalm 128 inserting personal pronouns and names in the scripture as I prayed it.  I had not prayed that Psalm for a very long time, but for some reason a few weeks ago, I started to pray that again.  I hadn’t realized or failed to note rather, that only a few days later that same Psalm was sent to me in an email devotional with testimonies from people about God’s work in their families. 

As I finished writing this, that song from Chris Tomlin(?) “How Great is Our God” is playing and in my heart I can’t help but agree.