“He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more. He overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it.”
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: Sermons, p. 448
Depth of mercy! Can there be
Mercy still reserved for me?
Can my God His wrath forbear,
Me, the chief of sinners, spare?
I have long withstood His grace,
Long provoked Him to His face,
Would not hearken to His calls,
Grieved Him by a thousand falls.
Jesus speaks, and pleads His blood!
He disarms the wrath of God;
Now my Father’s mercies move,
Justice lingers into love.
There for me the Savior stands,
Shows His wounds and spreads His hands.
God is love! I know, I feel;
Jesus weeps and loves me still.
Pity from Thine eye let fall,
By a look my soul recall;
Now the stone to flesh convert,
Cast a look, and break my heart.
Now incline me to repent,
Let me now my sins lament,
Now my foul revolt deplore,
Weep, believe, and sin no more.
~ Charles Wesley, 1740
Full version here.
(My Friday Show and Tell post is just below this one)
To Know Him hosts Know and Tell Friday and asks this week:
Question 1
Did you eat candy this Valentine’s Day?
I actually didn’t. I did eat too many heart-shaped cupcakes, though. And I received candy from my husband and one son, so I will be having some in the days ahead.
Question 2
What is something you do to relax?
Read, watch TV, lie down and listen to music, play Boggle on the computer.
Question 3
(From Poole’s book) What is the best approach for resolving conflict?
I think first it’s best to pray about it to have the right attitude and perspective and to ask the Lord to show us what our part in the conflict may be. Then I think it’s best to approach the other person when you think they’re receptive — not when they’re distracted or upset. It’s best to come humbly, admitting and apologizing for our part, perhaps asking from clarity for the other person — so often conflict arises from misunderstanding. Then I think you just have to lay it out as clearly, simply, and unaccusingly as possible. A phrase I heard somewhere also helps: “Attack the problem, not the person.” And it’s good to avoid inflammatory statements or words like “always” and “never.”
That’s all easier said than done, and I have to admit I usually avoid it.
Question 4
(Poole’s book again) How would you define “freedom”? (This could probably be a bonus question).
Well, it doesn’t mean “doing anything I want whenever I want to do it.” That seems to be the way most people think of it, but even in the freest country in the world, one can’t live without some kinds of rules. Spiritually I think it means freedom from oppressive requirements and rituals in order to be right with God, freedom from sin and guilt though faith in Christ’s sacrifice for our sins, and freedom to do what He wants us to do by His power.
Question 5
(Poole’s book) On a scale of 1-10, how happy do you usually feel? Explain.
I guess that depends on what you mean by happy. I am quick to laugh and see the funny side of things, but I am not a “life of the party” type. I can be a perfectionist, which means a lot of frustration. I can be downright cranky. I don’t know — maybe a 7 generally? I never know how to put numbers on these things.
Question 6
If you could choose one “SIN” that you would never have to struggle with for the rest of your life what would it be?
Selfishness. That manifests itself in so many forms — pride, self-seeking, lack of self-control.
Question 7
What is one thing that breaks your heart?
Lost people trying to live without the Lord’s comfort and help and heading toward an awful end.
A Valentine may play a love song for you, but God sings you the sweetest love song in the universe.
The Lord your God…will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing. ~Zephaniah 3:17
A Valentine may give you flowers, but God sent you the most beautiful rose of all, Jesus.
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. ~Song of Solomon 2:1
A Valentine may take you out to dinner,but God has invited you to the most amazing feast ever given.
Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb! ~Revelation 19:9
A Valentine may bring you chocolate, but God provides you with something even sweeter, His Word.
How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! ~Psalm 119:103
A Valentine may be far away, but God is always with you.
I am with you always. ~Matthew 28:20
A Valentine may give you something, but God has given you everything.
God…..gives us richly all things to enjoy. ~1 Timothy 6:17
A Valentine may love you for a lifetime, but God loved you before you were born and will love you for all eternity!
Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love…with lovingkindness I have drawn you. ~Jeremiah 31:3
I’ve just finished reading the four-book set of the Homeland Heroes series by Donna Fleisher which I won at Deena’s (thanks, Donna and Deena!)
Wow! Talk about intense!
The series traces the friendship of Chris, a medic, and Erin, a trauma nurse, from the time they met as members of the military in Desert Storm.
In Wounded Healer, Chris and Erin meet and become friends, but Chris seems to hold everyone at arm’s length to a certain degree. When Erin accidentally discovers a traumatic secret from Chris’s past, Chris draws further away. Then when a rescue mission turns tragic, Chris blames herself. When Desert Storm is over, Christ volunteers to stay, and Erin loses contact with her. Several years later, Erin hears that Chris in involved in another tragedy for which she blames herself, and Erin travels from Portland, Oregon to Colorado to find her. The back of the book says, “When Chris’s fear of God and Erin’s faith in Him collide, they are involved in a different kind of war that only one of them can win. As Chris wrestles with grief, fear, and ghosts from the past, Erin fights to pull her from the brink of self-destruction.”
In Warrior’s Heart, there is a different kind of battle, but it is more of an undercurrent: Erin’s husband, Scott, wants to try to minister to Chris, but he is fiercely protective of Erin and feels that Chris is a harmful influence. Chris senses Scott’s disapproval right away, which makes her uncomfortable around him. Plus she is adjusting to a new life in the city of Portland yet misses her cabin and the open air in Colorado. Added to this are her baby steps in her newfound faith. A heavy storm blows over the area, knocking out power for days, and the Christian community pitches in to seek out those in their area who might need help. Chris is paired with…Scott.
In Valiant Hope, Chris becomes aware that a child who frequents her community gym may be abused. Chris has no real evidence to take to the police, so she decides to take matters into her own hands and visit the child’s home — where she finds more than she bargained for. Dealing with this child’s situation brings to the forefront the battle in her own heart with an inability to forgive. She’s brought to a crisis point, knowing that God requires forgiveness of her and yet feeling she just can’t face it. From the back of the book: “One remarkable man may hold the answers to help Chris sort through the agonizing secrets of her past, to help her find a road to peace. But the route threatens to take her to a place she thought she’d never again have to go, a place she swore she would die before ever seeing again.”
In the final book, Standing Strong, several friends formerly from the same military unit have come together to work in an outreach center on Kimberley Street near their church. They’re dismayed to find that an old gang has reformed and a gang from another area of town is seeking to expand its territory right into their neighborhood. Threatening confrontations with the gangs have Chris and Erin and the others in fear, wondering the best way to handle them. Chris’s romance with Jason is a healing balm to her, yet she finds that Jason has turned his back on God due to a crisis of his own, and though she loves him, she doesn’t want anything to pull her away from the Lord she loves and so desperately needs.
As I said, the story is intense, especially reading the books right after each other, both because of the magnitude and depth of the struggles faced in each book. Donna shares a riveting story with realistic struggles and believable characters.
Some time back on a message board forum for writers, one man claimed that he had to use bad language in his writing so that the characters were realistic. I disagreed, and Donna is a brilliant example of how to show unsaved people leading normal unsaved lives — even lives deliberately antagonistic to the gospel — in a genuine way without getting unnecessarily explicit.
I enjoyed the friendship between Chris and Erin, the message of redemption, and Chris’s struggles to understand and live out her newfound faith as well as her pure joy in the Lord.
I don’t know if this was deliberate — I imagine it was — but I also like that the cover art for each book successively shows a bit more of Chris’s face. That seems to parallel more of her story coming to light.
Deena has an interview with Donna here.
By Night When Others Soundly Slept
By night when others soundly slept
And hath at once both ease and Rest,
My waking eyes were open kept
And so to lie I found it best.
I sought him whom my Soul did Love,
With tears I sought him earnestly.
He bow’d his ear down from Above.
In vain I did not seek or cry.
My hungry Soul he fill’d with Good;
He in his Bottle put my tears,
My smarting wounds washt in his blood,
And banisht thence my Doubts and fears.
What to my Saviour shall I give
Who freely hath done this for me?
I’ll serve him here whilst I shall live
And Love him to Eternity.
(Photo courtesy of the stock.xchng.)
Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven. Psalm 107:28-20.
The Haven of Rest
By Henry Gilmour
My soul in sad exile was out on life’s sea,
So burdened with sin and distressed,
Till I heard a sweet voice, saying,
“Make Me your choice”;
And I entered the “Haven of Rest”!
Refrain
I’ve anchored my soul in the “Haven of Rest,”
I’ll sail the wide seas no more;
The tempest may sweep over wild, stormy, deep,
In Jesus I’m safe evermore.
I yielded myself to His tender embrace,
In faith taking hold of the Word,
My fetters fell off, and I anchored my soul;
The “Haven of Rest” is my Lord.
Refrain
The song of my soul, since the Lord made me whole,
Has been the old story so blest,
Of Jesus, who’ll save whosoever will have
A home in the “Haven of Rest.”
Refrain
How precious the thought that we all may recline,
Like John, the belovèd so blest,
On Jesus’ strong arm, where no tempest can harm,
Secure in the “Haven of Rest.”
Refrain
O come to the Savior, He patiently waits
To save by His power divine;
Come, anchor your soul in the “Haven of Rest,”
And say, “My Belovèd is mine.”
Refrain
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30.
Have you ever, during or after doing something right or something for the Lord, become conscious of a desire to be thought well of or noticed or acclaimed for what you were doing?
I’m ashamed to say I have. It’s something I battle all too often.
That’s why a quote from Puritan preacher Richard Baxter recorded in the September/October 2007 issue of Frontline magazine arrested me. I searched online to try to find out where this quote was from, and found it was from a book titled The Reformed Pastor by Baxter. It’s words are true for anyone.
Truly, brethren, a man may as certainly, and more slyly, make haste to hell, in the way of earnest preaching of the gospel, and seeming zeal for a holy life, as in a way of drunkeness and filthiness. For what is holiness, but a devotedness to God and a living to him? And what is a damnable state, but a devotedness to carnal self and a living to ourselves? And doth any one live more to himself, or less to God, than the proud man? And may not pride make a preacher study for himself and pray and preach, and live to himself, even when he seemeth to surpass others in the work? It is not the work without the right principle and end that will prove us upright. The work may be God’s, and yet we may do it, not for God, but for ourselves.
But woe to him that takes up the fame of godliness instead of godliness! ‘Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.’ When the times were all for learning and empty formalities, the temptation of the proud did lie that way. But now, when, through the unspeakable mercy of God, the most lively practical preaching is in credit, and godliness itself is in credit, the temptation of the proud is to pretend to be zealous preachers and godly men. Oh, what a fine thing is it to have the people crowding to hear us, and affected with what we say, and yielding up to us their judgments and affections! What a taking thing is it to be cried up as the ablest and godliest man in the country, to be famed through the land for the highest spiritual excellencies!
Oh, therefore, be jealous of yourselves, and, amidst all your studies, be sure to study humility. ‘He that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.’
Recently, as happens so often, I came face to face with an issue involving my own selfishness.
After confessing such incidents to the Lord, I tend to have a couple of responses. One is to just acknowledge it as one of my “besetting sins” and to forget about it until the next time. Yet deep down I know that’s just an excuse.
Another response is to decide I need to make a plan of action. That’s not bad in itself, but it usually fizzles out like New Year’s resolutions.
I may even decide to look up and meditate on various Scripture verses on the subject at hand. That’s a good response as far as it goes. Romans 12:2 tells us we’re transformed by the renewing of our minds, and one way we do that is by changing our thinking, lining it up with what God’s Word says, putting specific Scriptures in our minds that the Holy Spirit can then use to remind us.
But my problem isn’t just isolated individual sins. It’s a nature that is totally and completely self-focused, self-serving, self-promoting, self-loving. Though we receive a new nature when we become Christians, that old one is still there and will be til we get to heaven. How do we resist that constant pull? How can our new nature grow and become more like Christ?
II Corinthians 3:18: But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Beholding His glory….how little we do that. How often do we approach the Scripture just to fulfill our quota of Bible reading for the day, or even just to “get something” to carry us through the day?
We need to — I need to — remember to seek Him in the Scriptures, to behold His glory. Sometimes a study of His attributes would be more helpful than just studying about my particular sin, though both are necessary.
I read a quote once in a missionary biography (I haven’t been able to find it again: I thought it was Rosalind Goforth’s, but I didn’t see it in my last reading) that this particular person was having a hard time being loving. For years she constantly looked at herself and her lack of love and told herself over and over that she needed to be more loving. Yet she didn’t grow in love, only in discouragement. She began to meditate on God’s love for her…and without even realizing it, she began to slowly change to the point where others commented to her husband on the change in her.
We know what it is to gaze on an object of love. We smile indulgently at a young couple’s doe-eyed peering at each other. We understand a mother’s loving, wondering gaze of her new baby. We love to behold and contemplate the beauty of a perfect rose or a masterful painting.
How much more should we behold the One who loves us most, who is more beautiful than anything we can imagine, who is perfect holiness and righteousness.
Exodus 33:18-23; 34: 5-6:
And [Moses] said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.
And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.
And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.
And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:
And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:
And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.
And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD.
And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth…
One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple. Psalm 27:4.
May that be our desire as well.
Psalms Sundays are hosted by Erica of Butterfly Kisses.
1 Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me.
2 Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloody men.
3 For, lo, they lie in wait for my soul: the mighty are gathered against me; not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O LORD.
4 They run and prepare themselves without my fault: awake to help me, and behold.
5 Thou therefore, O LORD God of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to visit all the heathen: be not merciful to any wicked transgressors. Selah.
6 They return at evening: they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city.
7 Behold, they belch out with their mouth: swords are in their lips: for who, say they, doth hear?
8 But thou, O LORD, shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have all the heathen in derision.
9 Because of his strength will I wait upon thee: for God is my defence.
10 The God of my mercy shall prevent me: God shall let me see my desire upon mine enemies.
11 Slay them not, lest my people forget: scatter them by thy power; and bring them down, O Lord our shield.
12 For the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips let them even be taken in their pride: and for cursing and lying which they speak.
13 Consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be: and let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth. Selah.
14 And at evening let them return; and let them make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city.
15 Let them wander up and down for meat, and grudge if they be not satisfied.
16 But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble.
17 Unto thee, O my strength, will I sing: for God is my defence, and the God of my mercy.
Once again David is beseeching God for protection from very real enemies sent to watch his house in order to kill him, and once again, though few of us have been in that exact situation, we can draw from David’s experience.
I don’t think it’s at all hard to understand that his first words here are cries for deliverance. They remind me of Peter’s cry: “Lord, save me.” When we’re in dire straits we get right down to business.
In many of David’s psalms he either acknowledges that his sins are causing his problems and confesses them or, as in this one, he proclaims his innocence. He was close enough in his relationship to God to know the difference between chastening or an outside attack. It’s good for us to examine our hearts with the Lord’s help and confess any sin there. But sometimes we do face an enemy’s unprovoked attack, and we can go to the Lord with a clean conscience.
One aspect of the Psalms I have a hard time reconciling is the imprecatory nature of some of David’s prayers, calling for God’s judgment against his enemies. One thing to remember is that this era was a different dispensation: the New Testament teachings about loving your enemy weren’t written yet (although one or two proverbs foreshadow them). Another aspect is that every person has an opportunity to respond to God’s grace, but if they continue in their own ways, they will face His judgment. We think of that judgment coming most often at the end of life when we stand before God, but certainly many times in the Bible people faced His judgment during the course of their own lives. Sometimes it brings them to repentance; sometimes it serves as a warning to others. I have prayed that certain national enemies would be saved and brought to repentance, but asked the Lord, if He knows they won’t come to that point, to take them out so they won’t cause any more trouble. I’d be interested to hear whether others interpret or apply this differently.
Of course, since I don’t have personal enemies in the same sense as David did, I tend to apply these verses to mankind’s greatest enemy, Satan.
My two favorite parts of the Psalm and the parts that minister to and remain with me are verses 9, 16, and 17:
Because of his strength will I wait upon thee: for God is my defence.
But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble.
Unto thee, O my strength, will I sing: for God is my defence, and the God of my mercy.
Satan is stronger than we are, but he that is in us is stronger than him. We can praise God for His deliverance, defense. power, strength, mercy, and refuge.
Stray Thoughts 