Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens,
Your faithfulness to the skies.
Your righteousness is like the highest mountains,
Your justice like the great deep.
You, LORD, preserve both people and animals.
How priceless is your unfailing love, O God!
People take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house;
You give them drink from Your river of delights.
For with You is the fountain of life;
in Your light we see light. Psalm 36:5-9
I have a confession to make. A couple days before we started this fast from negative thinking, complaining and asking, I had a moment of panic!
Some issues came up in our family that are sure to come up again in the next month and suddenly I felt like these were urgent issues needing my thoughtful and prayerful attention. The idea of not asking God about it (to help him?) or complaining (so he'd really know the urgency of it) was giving me major anxiety!
Pretty quickly I recognized that these feelings were NOT from God and guess what?? "Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world." Am I right?
So the fasting from complaining is pretty cut and dry right? Well maybe not, but we're not going to go there right now. What about the fasting from asking? That's kind of a crazy idea right?
Some issues came up in our family that are sure to come up again in the next month and suddenly I felt like these were urgent issues needing my thoughtful and prayerful attention. The idea of not asking God about it (to help him?) or complaining (so he'd really know the urgency of it) was giving me major anxiety!
Pretty quickly I recognized that these feelings were NOT from God and guess what?? "Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world." Am I right?
So the fasting from complaining is pretty cut and dry right? Well maybe not, but we're not going to go there right now. What about the fasting from asking? That's kind of a crazy idea right?
I like the word revolutionary better:)
Personally so often when I am praying and asking God for something I am coming from a place of worry, anxiety and unbelief. Trying to muster enough faith to "help God out". Really when I'm asking I'm wanting answers and my idea of what the good result would be.
The answers are available to us when we open His word. And the one answer and the only one thing we can depend our life upon is the Word made flesh. He is the Truth! And besides His idea a good result eternally surpasses our short sighted expectations...
Our pastor is talking for a few weeks on evangelism and gave us some questions during the sermon this morning. They seemed simple but profound. He asked "Do you really believe this stuff?" (referring to the bible & Christianity).
If we are not going to the Word and believing Jesus is the Truth, where are our beliefs coming from? What are we depending on? Who are we listening to?
Worry, a false sense of control, anxiety and even feelings of worthlessness and failure can quickly turn into idols in our minds and their negative affects take place in our body and our soul.
2 Corinthians 10:5 says "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
The second question in the sermon was: Have you been changed by the Gospel?
The Israelites were freed from Egypt and when they came into the land God had promised them they were challenged by Joshua in the following verses.
Personally so often when I am praying and asking God for something I am coming from a place of worry, anxiety and unbelief. Trying to muster enough faith to "help God out". Really when I'm asking I'm wanting answers and my idea of what the good result would be.
The answers are available to us when we open His word. And the one answer and the only one thing we can depend our life upon is the Word made flesh. He is the Truth! And besides His idea a good result eternally surpasses our short sighted expectations...
Our pastor is talking for a few weeks on evangelism and gave us some questions during the sermon this morning. They seemed simple but profound. He asked "Do you really believe this stuff?" (referring to the bible & Christianity).
If we are not going to the Word and believing Jesus is the Truth, where are our beliefs coming from? What are we depending on? Who are we listening to?
Worry, a false sense of control, anxiety and even feelings of worthlessness and failure can quickly turn into idols in our minds and their negative affects take place in our body and our soul.
2 Corinthians 10:5 says "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
The second question in the sermon was: Have you been changed by the Gospel?
The Israelites were freed from Egypt and when they came into the land God had promised them they were challenged by Joshua in the following verses.
"Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” Joshua 24:14-15
I encourage you to read this whole chapter and Isaiah 52 and meditate on God's amazing grace in your life. How you've been set free, how you are being set free, and how you can walk in that on a daily basis.
Awake, awake, Zion,
clothe yourself with strength!
Put on your garments of splendor,
Jerusalem, the holy city.
The uncircumcised and defiled
will not enter you again.
Shake off your dust;
rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem.
Free yourself from the chains on your neck,
Daughter Zion, now a captive.
For this is what the LORD says:
“You were sold for nothing,
and without money you will be redeemed.” Isaiah 52:1-3
clothe yourself with strength!
Put on your garments of splendor,
Jerusalem, the holy city.
The uncircumcised and defiled
will not enter you again.
Shake off your dust;
rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem.
Free yourself from the chains on your neck,
Daughter Zion, now a captive.
For this is what the LORD says:
“You were sold for nothing,
and without money you will be redeemed.” Isaiah 52:1-3
Peace and Love,
Jewel
3 comments:
I have been struggling with some of the same questions. Thank you for your encouraging thoughts and honesty.
You are the second person who has directed my attention to Joshua in the past week. I believe this is a year for leaving the wilderness and taking ground in the Promised Land. I do not want to forget that there were still battles in the Promised Land. But I do want to remember that the futility of the endless wandering in the desert was finally over.
HaHa! By the way, my word verification was "xessedis." Said out loud, I hear "Exodus."
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