Aren't You Glad?!

Nothing can alter the character of God.

In the course of a human life,

tastes and outlook and temper may change radically:

a kind, equable man may turn bitter and crotchety:

a man of good-will may grow cynical and callous.

But nothing of this sort happens to the Creator.

He never becomes less truthful, or merciful,

or just, or good, than He used to be.

--J.I. Packer

Because He Only Gives Love

I'm thinking it may be time to give up.

Give up, once and for all -

give up all the fears and all that weighs heavy.

Give up the worries - and "bend the knee and be small"

and let God give what God chooses to give --

because He only gives love.

~ Ann Voskamp

The God Who Rules ALL Things Well

I'm so glad God sends me tokens of His love.

Sometimes it's just peace, complete peace, when a situation is rearing it's ugly head and threatening to destroy what I love most.

John Wesley said it well when he said, "I see God as sitting upon His throne, ruling all things well."

I've repeated that to myself so many times this week. And it reminds me to believe it that, YES, God IS on His throne, and He is ruling ALL things well!

Then there are other things - things that I thought would never work out so well, and they have. They remind me again, "Oh, ye of little faith! Why did you doubt?!"

Why do I not believe the Sovereign God to order all things well in my life and in the lives of those around me?

Why do I fret... worry about stuff that seems to big and awful to me, and yet seems so little and simple to God?

This is probably the five-hundredth time I've had to learn this lesson. I don't know why I forget so quickly. But I'm glad God never stops reminding me: "See, Mary? I'm God. I can take care of this."

Yes, Lord. You can do all things. I know that you can...

When I Don't Know What My Heart Needs

"God is beyond good to bless our lives with children!

When we don't know what our hearts need, He does!! All we have to do is let Him bless us. :-) "

-- The words of a long-time family friend,

a mommy of 14 children,

writing about her youngest child turning three.

"When we don't know what our hearts need, He does!!"

So true. So true.

2010 was a year of me not knowing what my heart needed, but God was kind enough to give me what my heart needed.

Lots of pain, lots of stretching, lots of disappointment... but He stirred up the stagnant places and the places that had grown hard and selfish and dead and just full of myself.

He broke my heart so I could be tender and compassionate instead of proud and "together".

He disappointed my fondest hopes so that I could learn to love Him more than life itself.

He led me through the fire so that I could learn what really matters and what doesn't matter at all in life - this one, and the one to come.

He gave me Himself, and His tenderness, and His nearness and compassion so that I could learn to love Him and Him alone. So that I could see that really nothing else matters much in comparison to clinging to Jesus.

He said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall SEE GOD!"

That is one of my goals for this year. To have a pure heart. Not because I can make myself have a pure heart, or even see what is ugly and defiled in my heart (I'm so blind to my own sin so often).

But it is my goal to let the Lord Jesus form in me a pure heart - a heart with a single eye, a single master, a single vision, by yielding to His Hands in my life, even when they hurt. For He knows what my heart needs, even when I don't.

I love Him for that.

Midnight Reflections From the Yard

I arrived home late tonight to a lot of housework that really needed to be done. As I was scrubbing out and re-organizing the pantry that had dissolved into a messy pile of cans and leaking rice bags and dusty jars of home-canned tomatoes, I needed to carry several bags of trash outside as the clock neared midnight. I just had to pause in the quiet, dark yard.

It's gorgeous out tonight -- the moon is huge and luminescent, shimmering off the pond where Canadian geese will soon be making their home for winter. A few of the tallest trees have lost most of their leaves in the wind of today and yesterday, and their branches stood bare and starkly contrasted against the glowing sky. A breeze whipped my hair around my face, and I stood alive, well, and yes... happy, on the brink of another birthday. Because beyond that glowing sky is the Creator of it all. He's also the Lover of my Soul, the Pursuer of my heart, and His very Presence lives with and within me. He is good, and even when life holds pain and disappointment and often times empty aches, He is drawing my heart to Him - the most valuable thing in all the world and in this life and in the one to come. He is good. Unconditionally. Because I know that, I face another year with joy and peace, knowing that a Good God sees and does all things well.

Yesterday, God was very gracious to me; tomorrow he will be very gracious to me; and the same will be true the next day, and the next day, and the next day, until there shall be no more days, and time shall be swallowed up in eternity. - Unknown, from an old book clipping

His Loving Heart

Jesus, I am resting, resting

In the joy of what Thou art.

I am finding out the greatness

Of Thy loving Heart...

It's true... when the heart is most broken and bitterly disappointed,
the Goodness and Tenderness of God's loving Heart becomes all the more precious.

Faith Does Not Know Why

"Faith does not know why in terms of the immediate,

but it knows why it trusts God Who knows why in terms of the ultimate."

- Os Guiness

On Accusing God...

I came across this quote the other day while reading "The Pursuit of Holiness" and found it so thought-provoking that I had to text it to several of my friends who have been living through many of the same things I have been.
It's one thing to say God is right. It's yet another to really feel in the depths of your heart that He IS right, no matter what He chooses to do with your life.

"To complain against God is in effect to deny His holiness and to say that He is somehow not fair and just. It is less injury to Him to deny His being than to deny the purity of it; the one makes Him no God, the other a deformed, unlovely, and a detestable God...He that saith God is not holy and right speaks much worse than he that saith there is no God at all."
~ Stephen Churnock, 17th century

None Can Ever Ask Too Much!

Thou art coming to a King,
Large petitions with thee bring;
For His grace and power are such,
None can ever ask too much.

- John Newton,
who also penned "Amazing Grace"

More Than Ordinary Morality

"...So often we simply equate Christ-like character
with ordinary morality..."

~ Jerry Bridges, "Transforming Grace"

Piety

Above:
All of the girls together, plus an extra - our friend, Suzanne

Tonight at our ladies' Bible study/prayer group, we found ourselves discussing a chapter out of an old book that we had read. The book talked about the need for young women to cultivate piety in their lives.

Hmmm... Piety. That's kind of an old-fashioned word. What does that mean? we all wondered.

So, we pulled out Webster's 1828 dictionary. I found a lot of food for thought.

Piety 1.) Piety in principle, is a compound of veneration or reverence of the Supreme Being and love of His character, or veneration accompanied with love; and piety in practice, is the exercise of these affections in obedience to His will and devotion to his service. 2.) Reverence of parents or friends, accompanied with affection and devotion to their honor and happiness. Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man.

"...love of His character..."

I thought back to a recent visit with my friend who I was trying to explain something to. I knew that she doesn't believe what I do. I was trying to explain a Biblical doctrine to her that she had asked about. She is someone who has always had a very negative view of God, and is finally taking baby steps towards recognizing that God is God and He is good, and he deserves her respect and love whether or not she likes everything that He does. These concepts seem so hard for her to grasp. She seems so easily offended by the hard truths of the Bible, and yet little by little, I see her mind opening to truth, even hard truth, a tiny bit at a time.

So, I explained the part she had asked about. I carefully avoided getting into another related subject, knowing that it probably wouldn't go over well if I told it to her like it is. She would need the "mild" version or would need to wait for another day to hear all of those hard truths... so I didn't even go down that trail with her.

But, I stopped myself this evening. I should have a love of God's character. If I LOVE God's character, why would I cringe to tell her everything of God's character? Why would I think that perhaps she wasn't ready for all of this just yet?

Somehow I believed that my human character could better portray the Truth than the way GOD said it?

I stand convicted.

I must love God's character enough to tell it like it is unabashedly not just to most, but even to my most sensitive friends.

God's character is good, through and through. There is no reason to hold any of it back.

It's GOOD. I should LOVE it! If I love it, I will find it strange if other people find it offensive.