I really like this Psalm a lot and wanted to share some of my favorite verses from it!
vs. 2
"My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God."
Reading this verse I try to think about places that fill me with joy and places that I can't wait to go to or I really desire to go to. I think of home, disney world, any place with beaches and the hot sun. These places do not even compare to what the Lord has to bless us with in heaevn! The writer of this Psalm says that his soul faints thinking about Heaven and being in the prescence of the Lord. Their heart and flesh is crying out constantly for the living God! God is living and I think a lot of times people forget this and that His Word is living and active as well. This world is crafty in leading us down the path of our sinful flesh but spending more time thinking about heaven, being in the Lord's presence, and how the Lord desires to bless us will keep us on the straight path.
vs. 10
"Better is one day in your courts, than a thousand elsewhere, I would rather be a door keeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked."
The author of this pslam knows how amazing the Lord is and how amazing it would be to just stand at the gate of heaven. I know that I take for granted how amazing, breathtaking, and powerful it would be to just be at the doorway of heaven. If I changed my attitude to imagine and meditate on how amazing it would be to stand in the presence of God, I would be more encouraged and excited to share the blessing God has to offer to us all!
I really like this Psalm and it makes me take a moment to think about how powerful and amazing God is and how much he loves us! Its awesome to think that every second we are closer to reaching the prize of heaven.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
The affection of Christ
So I am still reading Second Guessing God and found another cool thing that I wanted to post!
“Jesus allows us to be broken so we can feel what others feel and so we can have credibility in their eyes. He does not stop with our brokenness, though. Once we are broken, God fills our emptiness with something powerful.” – Brian Jones, Second Guessing God
I love the sentence, God fills our emptiness with something powerful! Going through hardships and reaching those darkest moments in our life are painful but just think that if God did not break us, he would not be able to bring something amazing and powerful from Him into our life! I know that if God did not allow me to go through depression and panic attacks then I would not have got involved in Campus Fellowship at Drake and I would not have gone to bible study in Herriot! I would have been out partying and trying to "live it up" as much as possible! But because he allowed me to go through this harship I am now much closer to my Savior and I have seen how more of who He is and how much he loves me and his affection for me!
The Affection of Christ is one of the topics in the book I am reading.
Philippians 1:8 “God can testify of how I long for you with the affection of Christ Jesus.”
Paul is writing to the Philippians and of how much he misses them and how he not only has affection for them, but the affection of Jesus!
What is Affection?
- Comes from Greek word splanchma which means guts
- Literally describes the chest cavity, lung, heart, vessels
- Figuratively describes the love someone has for a person in need
Think about watching a movie when your chest gets really tight, and you choke up over the pain someone is feeling = this is overwhelming compassion (splanchma)
*Paul said he had the affection of Jesus
**Christians should pray to have the affection of Jesus Christ
What does Jesus affection look like in his ministry?
Mark 6:34 “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion [splanchma] on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
Luke 7:13 When Jesus saw a woman who had lost both her husband and only son, “his heart went out to her [splanchma] and he said, ‘Don’t cry’.”
Luke 15:20 “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion [splanchma] for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” – Prodigal son
The Lord feels this for all of us! And the awesome thing is that our savior doesn't just feel affection for his children, but he acts on it by reaching out to the lost, desiring a relationship with us, and desiring to bless us and love us!
“Jesus allows us to be broken so we can feel what others feel and so we can have credibility in their eyes. He does not stop with our brokenness, though. Once we are broken, God fills our emptiness with something powerful.” – Brian Jones, Second Guessing God
I love the sentence, God fills our emptiness with something powerful! Going through hardships and reaching those darkest moments in our life are painful but just think that if God did not break us, he would not be able to bring something amazing and powerful from Him into our life! I know that if God did not allow me to go through depression and panic attacks then I would not have got involved in Campus Fellowship at Drake and I would not have gone to bible study in Herriot! I would have been out partying and trying to "live it up" as much as possible! But because he allowed me to go through this harship I am now much closer to my Savior and I have seen how more of who He is and how much he loves me and his affection for me!
The Affection of Christ is one of the topics in the book I am reading.
Philippians 1:8 “God can testify of how I long for you with the affection of Christ Jesus.”
Paul is writing to the Philippians and of how much he misses them and how he not only has affection for them, but the affection of Jesus!
What is Affection?
- Comes from Greek word splanchma which means guts
- Literally describes the chest cavity, lung, heart, vessels
- Figuratively describes the love someone has for a person in need
Think about watching a movie when your chest gets really tight, and you choke up over the pain someone is feeling = this is overwhelming compassion (splanchma)
*Paul said he had the affection of Jesus
**Christians should pray to have the affection of Jesus Christ
What does Jesus affection look like in his ministry?
Mark 6:34 “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion [splanchma] on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
Luke 7:13 When Jesus saw a woman who had lost both her husband and only son, “his heart went out to her [splanchma] and he said, ‘Don’t cry’.”
Luke 15:20 “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion [splanchma] for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” – Prodigal son
The Lord feels this for all of us! And the awesome thing is that our savior doesn't just feel affection for his children, but he acts on it by reaching out to the lost, desiring a relationship with us, and desiring to bless us and love us!
Friday, December 18, 2009
A New Beginning
It's amazing to think how God brings us to different places in our life! He is always planning something spectacular to happen to make us fall even more in love with him and I admit that most of the time its really hard for me to see these things. But I know throughout my life, looking back on the hardest hours I can see how God was working upstream in my life! He has ways of getting our attention like I have never seen before! It blows me away all the time to think about the creator of the universe desiring constantly to have a relationship and to love on everyone in the world! Why would he care about someone so small as me and why would he want to use me to do his will? This is the devil trying to distract us from the Lord, and I can say I have been distracted by the devil plenty of times but the Lord never fails! He is faithful and loves me so much that he never leaves me to defend myself against the evil in this world!
This year has been kind of a tough year for me and to be able to see how the Lord is working everything out for my good and in the end it will bring him the glory so that his light may be seen by those in the darkness. Everyone goes through hardships, its just a fact of life and I read something encouraging in a book called Second Guessing God by Brain Jones that I wanted to share.
In Joshua 3 it talks about the story of when the Lord led the Israelites out of Egypt after 400 years of captivity! The Lord was leading his people to the promise land but the journey took longer then expected because of the Israelites diobedience. So for 40 years they wandered in the desserts. Think about how defeated they must have felt to finally get out of captivity and look forward to finally be able to live in the land the Lord had promised them for so long, but know they found that they had to wait another 40 years for their disobedience! I know I would start blaming other people and become frustrated with the Lord. But the Lord did not just get up and walk away from his people! No! he still loved them unconditionally and had a plan! He still held true to his promise! The Lord is faithful!
So finally, after the 40 years were up, the Lord prepares to take them to the promised land.
Joshua 3:1,"Early in the morning Joshua and all the Israelites set out from Shittim and went to the Jordan, where they camped before crossing over."
Now ll that was left was to cross the Jordan River!
But Joshua 3:15a it tells us the condition of the Jordann river at this time
" Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest."
Just imagine all the Israelites standing in front of this roaring and flooded river. Just feet away from the promised land! There are sick, crippled, mentally disabled, and the old all standing there in awe of the situation. I would be angry with the Lord and question why he would bring me so far just so a flooded river could prevent me from reaching this land.
Joshua 3:15b-16
Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water's edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho.
Scholars found that the town of Adam was 19 miles upstream from where the Israelites were crossing, far beyond anyone's sight.
In the book Second Guessing God, I was really encouraged by the message the author got from this story about the Israelites reaching the promised land. This is what the author got from it that I really wanted to share!
"I believe the same situation occurs in our lives today. Here's the powerful truth the children of Israel learned that day: God is always at work upstream in our lives. Where's God? Whenever we face a problem in our lives - sickness, job loss, depression, tragedy, or discouragement - God is at work upstream in those situations, beyond our line of sight. The only thing the Israelites could see was the problem right in front of them. They could have concluded that since that raging river was there, God wasn't actively involved in their situation, but they would have been wrong. He was there; they just couldn't see him at work."
How many times do we get frustrated when we feel like God does not care about the problems in our lives, or that he is just leaving us high and dry! God never will forsake us! He is always there even when we can't see HIM! how awesome is that to know that we have the Savior of the universe always working to bless our lives! There is no greater thing than this!
This year has been kind of a tough year for me and to be able to see how the Lord is working everything out for my good and in the end it will bring him the glory so that his light may be seen by those in the darkness. Everyone goes through hardships, its just a fact of life and I read something encouraging in a book called Second Guessing God by Brain Jones that I wanted to share.
In Joshua 3 it talks about the story of when the Lord led the Israelites out of Egypt after 400 years of captivity! The Lord was leading his people to the promise land but the journey took longer then expected because of the Israelites diobedience. So for 40 years they wandered in the desserts. Think about how defeated they must have felt to finally get out of captivity and look forward to finally be able to live in the land the Lord had promised them for so long, but know they found that they had to wait another 40 years for their disobedience! I know I would start blaming other people and become frustrated with the Lord. But the Lord did not just get up and walk away from his people! No! he still loved them unconditionally and had a plan! He still held true to his promise! The Lord is faithful!
So finally, after the 40 years were up, the Lord prepares to take them to the promised land.
Joshua 3:1,"Early in the morning Joshua and all the Israelites set out from Shittim and went to the Jordan, where they camped before crossing over."
Now ll that was left was to cross the Jordan River!
But Joshua 3:15a it tells us the condition of the Jordann river at this time
" Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest."
Just imagine all the Israelites standing in front of this roaring and flooded river. Just feet away from the promised land! There are sick, crippled, mentally disabled, and the old all standing there in awe of the situation. I would be angry with the Lord and question why he would bring me so far just so a flooded river could prevent me from reaching this land.
Joshua 3:15b-16
Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water's edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho.
Scholars found that the town of Adam was 19 miles upstream from where the Israelites were crossing, far beyond anyone's sight.
In the book Second Guessing God, I was really encouraged by the message the author got from this story about the Israelites reaching the promised land. This is what the author got from it that I really wanted to share!
"I believe the same situation occurs in our lives today. Here's the powerful truth the children of Israel learned that day: God is always at work upstream in our lives. Where's God? Whenever we face a problem in our lives - sickness, job loss, depression, tragedy, or discouragement - God is at work upstream in those situations, beyond our line of sight. The only thing the Israelites could see was the problem right in front of them. They could have concluded that since that raging river was there, God wasn't actively involved in their situation, but they would have been wrong. He was there; they just couldn't see him at work."
How many times do we get frustrated when we feel like God does not care about the problems in our lives, or that he is just leaving us high and dry! God never will forsake us! He is always there even when we can't see HIM! how awesome is that to know that we have the Savior of the universe always working to bless our lives! There is no greater thing than this!
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