"Let us acknowledge the Lord;
let us press on to acknowledge Him.
As surely as the sun rises,
He will appear,
He will come like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth"
Hosea 6:3
Rain....I could use some rain right now. Not in the dreary sense, like I am depressed and want to stay holed up in my house, under the covers hiding from the world. In the sense that rain cleanses. Rain purifies. Rain washes us clean and makes all things fresh. I read through Hosea last night. I was looking for a specific verse which turns out wasn't in Hosea after all (On a side note check out Ezekiel 16:8-9) I found this verse, that I must have highlighted sometime ago because I really don't remember ever reading it. I am going through some seriously intense stuff right now and while God is EVER present like I have never experienced before, the pain I am feeling in grossly weighty. I live as is. Daily doing what I need to do to get through the day. But when night time comes and it's time to go to bed, that is when the hard part comes. So I grab my bible, get in bed and go to my Lord. And He meets me.. OH how He meets me.
When I was 13 I went through a phase where I wanted to live in Seattle. I was in the grunge stage of life. Think Kurt Cobain, Pearl Jam and corduroy pants. I felt that Seattle would fit my mood. I was depressed all the time and longed for the rain. I felt it fit my mood, fit who I was. And felt that living somewhere the sun never shined was perfect for me. That is not why I am longing for rain now. Hosea says that that is we pursue God He will come to us like the rain, like the winter rain. The winter rain is meant for plowing and sowing. He has to plow through my life. Plow out the deadness, the decay that has taken up residence in my life for way to long. The shame that has wrapped it's binding claws around heart. He has to sow so He can make way for what comes next. He will also coming to us like the spring rains. The spring rains are what causes the plants to grow. Oh how I want my heart to be plowed, softened, broken up, shaped. So that He can plant the seeds of righteousness that He needs to plant, so that they can sprout up and grow and I can blossom into the woman of faith that He created me to be. A healed woman, a FREE woman and a REDEEMED woman. I want to stand in the pure, clean rain shower of His love, purity and clean holiness right now. His rain that washes everything sin, stain and impurity away.
In Him
Bethany
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Knowing God
I have been reading through J.I. Packer's Knowing God for sometime now. It takes me awhile to read through anything these days so when ever I get a free moment to read I relish it. I was waiting outside of Abigail's counseling appointment today reading through the chapter 9 "God only wise" This part struck me square in the jaw I had to come share it with all of you.
"Wisdom without power would be pathetic, a broken reed; power without wisdom would be merely frightening; but in God boundless wisdom and endless power are united and this makes Him utterly worthy of our fullest trust"
God's almighty wisdom is always active, and never fails. All His works of creation and providence and grace display it, and until we can see it in them we are just not seeing them straight. But we cannot recognize God's wisdom unless we know the end for which He is working. Here many go wrong. Misunderstanding what the bible means when it says that God is love (see 1 John 4:8-10), they think that God intends a trouble free life for all, irrespective of their moral and spiritual state, and hence they conclude that anything painful and upsetting (illness, accident, injury, loss of job, the suffering of a loved one) indicates either that God's wisdom, or power, or both, have broken down or that God, after all, does not exist.
But this idea of God's intention is a complete mistake: God's wisdom is not, and never was, pledged to keep a fallen world happy, or to make ungodliness comfortable. Not even to Christians has He promised a trouble free life; rather the reverse. He has other ends in view for life in this world than simply to make it easy for everyone.
What is He after, then? What is His goal? What does He aim at? When He made us, His purpose was that we should love and honor Him, praising Him for the wonderfully ordered complexity and variety of His world, using it according to His will, and so enjoying both it and Him. And though we have fallen, God has not abandoned His first purpose. Still He plans that a great host of humankind should come to love and honor Him. His ultimate objective is to bring them to a state in which they please Him entirely and praise Him adequately, a state in which he is all in all to them, and He and they rejoice continually in the knowledge of each other's love. People rejoicing in the saving love of God, set upon them from all eternity, and God rejoicing in the responsive love of people, drawn out of them by grace through the gospel.
This will be God's glory, and our glory too, in every sense which that weighty word can bear. But it will only be fully realized in the next world, in the context of a transformation of the whole created order. Meanwhile, however, God works steadily toward it. His immediate objectives are to draw individual men and women into a relationship of faith, hope, and love toward Himself, delivering them from sin and showing forth in their lives the power of His grace; to defend His people against the forces of evil; and to spread throughout the world the gospel by means of which He saves.
In the fulfillment of each part of this purpose the Lord Jesus Christ is central, for God has set Him forth both as Savior from sin, whom we mus trust, and as Lord of the church, whom we must obey. We have dwelt on the way in which divine wisdom was manifested in Christ's Incarnation and cross. We would add now that it is in the light of the complex purpose which we have outlined that the wisdom of God in His dealing with individuals is to be seen"
Knowing God, J.I. Packer Pg 91-92
It's a lot I know but it struck me right it what I am dealing with right now I just had to post.
In Him
Bethany
"Wisdom without power would be pathetic, a broken reed; power without wisdom would be merely frightening; but in God boundless wisdom and endless power are united and this makes Him utterly worthy of our fullest trust"
God's almighty wisdom is always active, and never fails. All His works of creation and providence and grace display it, and until we can see it in them we are just not seeing them straight. But we cannot recognize God's wisdom unless we know the end for which He is working. Here many go wrong. Misunderstanding what the bible means when it says that God is love (see 1 John 4:8-10), they think that God intends a trouble free life for all, irrespective of their moral and spiritual state, and hence they conclude that anything painful and upsetting (illness, accident, injury, loss of job, the suffering of a loved one) indicates either that God's wisdom, or power, or both, have broken down or that God, after all, does not exist.
But this idea of God's intention is a complete mistake: God's wisdom is not, and never was, pledged to keep a fallen world happy, or to make ungodliness comfortable. Not even to Christians has He promised a trouble free life; rather the reverse. He has other ends in view for life in this world than simply to make it easy for everyone.
What is He after, then? What is His goal? What does He aim at? When He made us, His purpose was that we should love and honor Him, praising Him for the wonderfully ordered complexity and variety of His world, using it according to His will, and so enjoying both it and Him. And though we have fallen, God has not abandoned His first purpose. Still He plans that a great host of humankind should come to love and honor Him. His ultimate objective is to bring them to a state in which they please Him entirely and praise Him adequately, a state in which he is all in all to them, and He and they rejoice continually in the knowledge of each other's love. People rejoicing in the saving love of God, set upon them from all eternity, and God rejoicing in the responsive love of people, drawn out of them by grace through the gospel.
This will be God's glory, and our glory too, in every sense which that weighty word can bear. But it will only be fully realized in the next world, in the context of a transformation of the whole created order. Meanwhile, however, God works steadily toward it. His immediate objectives are to draw individual men and women into a relationship of faith, hope, and love toward Himself, delivering them from sin and showing forth in their lives the power of His grace; to defend His people against the forces of evil; and to spread throughout the world the gospel by means of which He saves.
In the fulfillment of each part of this purpose the Lord Jesus Christ is central, for God has set Him forth both as Savior from sin, whom we mus trust, and as Lord of the church, whom we must obey. We have dwelt on the way in which divine wisdom was manifested in Christ's Incarnation and cross. We would add now that it is in the light of the complex purpose which we have outlined that the wisdom of God in His dealing with individuals is to be seen"
Knowing God, J.I. Packer Pg 91-92
It's a lot I know but it struck me right it what I am dealing with right now I just had to post.
In Him
Bethany
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Life and Justice
oa new friend of mine and I hit the road early this morning and went to Colorado Springs to the New Life Church where they were having a Life and Justice conference. I had originally heard about this on facebook and thought it might be something goofy but then heard about it again on Klove. When Holly e-mailed me about it, and I read up on it I knew I wanted to go. I heard mass amounts of information today. It was a lot of hard stuff. My heart is still aching from the hard stories I heard about girls being bought and sold in the sex trade, orphans all over the world, girls having abortions because they feel they have no other options and the lost that just need to know that they are too stamped with the image of God. I am still processing what I heard and this fire that has been lit within my soul. I know God wants me to do something, to get involved I just don't quite know how yet. I know things in my life are going to change drastically and this blog is going to be my outlet for that change. I am going to listen for His voice and do what it is He tells me to do. I know my heart is with those that are bought and sold into slavery everyday. It was good to hear this stuff though to open my eyes to the fact that it just doesn't happen "over there" it happens here, in Denver. In our neighborhoods and we MUST be aware so we can be the catalyst for change. It is time to take a stand and really live out a life that really reflects who Jesus was and have some radical faith. That is where I am going with this blog I think. To be out there being radical. This conference really lit a fire in me. And me being the type that wants to go boots to the floor I of course want to start kicking down doors in the brothels and rescuing these girls. I have to take a step back though and remember that I cannot do a cannon ball into the deep end. I HAVE to pray. I have to seek His voice and His will for what He wants me doing in this issue and how to get involved. I know I don't feel as helpless as I did before I went. It still feels overwhelming, but at least now I feel like there is the ability to make change, and be involved. I have a feeling that over the next few months things are going to get very interesting in my life and that my faith is going to start getting wild.
In Him,
Bethany
In Him,
Bethany
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