Staying Humble Before the Lord

I'm going to finish up chapter 10 of Jeremiah today. It covers quite a few verses, and it's the reaction of Jeremiah to the destruction of Judea and Jerusalem, and is spoken in the language of the Nomads.
10: 19 - 25 - "Woe to me because of my injury! My would is incurable! Yes, I said to myself, 'This is my sickness, and I must endure it. My tent is destroyed; all its ropes are snapped. My sons are gone from me and are no more; no one is left now to pitch my tent or to set up my shelter. The shepherds are senseless and do not inquire of the Lord; so they do not prosper and all their flock is scattered.
Listen! The report is coming - a great commotion from the land of the north! It will make the towns of Judah desolate, a haunt of jackals.
I know Lord, that a man's life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps. Correct me Lord, but only with justice - not in your anger, lest your reduce me to nothing. Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge you, on the peoples who do not call on your name. For they have devoured Jacob; they have devoured him completely and destroyed his homeland'".
The reference to the shepherds is to the leaders of the nation, who were responsible for the calamity. We commonly refer to pastors in our day as "shepherds", and the church's congregations to the "flock". We too, have seen how some in this position in recent years have misled many people. Look back to the late 1970's, at how Jim Jones deceived so many people into believing the misguided teachings that brought them all to their death. He had put himself over these people as a false messiah, and although he used scripture in his teachings, he took them out of context and used them for his advantage and hunger for power and control over them.
We have seen others since, who were well known in the religious arena, who let greed enter their hearts and brought them down, as well as their ministries. This brought a lot of spiritual dysfunction and emotional hurt to those who had so faithfully given to their ministries, only to find out they too had been duped.
We need to pray for our pastors, evangelists and missionaries. They are held in high accountability to the Lord for the calling on their lives to reach out to the lost. I believe that Satan throws more temptations at them, so he can destroy not only them and their ministry, but cause it to have an adverse affect on the lost who these people are trying to reach, causing them to stay lost and without the desire to come to know the Lord as their savior.
We have seen in Jeremiah, where pride, selfishness and greed were the downfall of the nations, and look around - you can see it in our world today as well.
We need to re-read verse verse 23 where Jeremiah says, "I know, O Lord, that a man's life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps". That's what each of us needs to remember; that we need to turn to God daily, for his direction for our life. He has the perfect plan for us, and when we go about our day without taking the time to talk to him and read his word to find what his will for us is; trying to walk through life on our own, that's when we find ourselves in the midst of trials and upheavals that we've gotten ourselves into by our own pride and stubborness.
I close with this passage from James 4 that gives us the cure for sin: "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Greive and mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up".

Have a blessed Wednesday................Janelle

It's a Wonderful Life!

Yesterday I did some major cleaning and rearranging of furniture in my living room, and when straightening up a bookshelf loaded with dvd's, I found my copy of "It's a Wonderful Life".


My top 3 favorite movies of all time are: 1. "Miracle on 34th St" (the one with Natalie Wood) 2. "It's a Wonderful Life", and 3. "White Christmas". They all bring back warm memories from my childhood, and they just don't make movies like those anymore!

There are two critical points in "It's a Wonderful Life" - the first is when Jimmy Stewart, as George Bailey, is suicidal, and is out on the bridge in the cold. He tells the Lord, "Father in Heaven, I'm not a praying man, but if you're out there and you hear me, I need your help, because I'm at the end of my rope".
The second critical segment in the movie is when after being shown what things would have been like had he not been born. He had taken for granted all the blessings the Lord had given him. His life had been spent chasing the dream of getting out of his little town, going out into the world and searching for happiness in travel and education. He ended up having to take over his father's sometimes failing business, and was bitter about that. He didn't have all the money and material things that some of his friends had; he didn't have the honors and acclamades that his brother had gotten, and deemed his life a failure. It was when he ran back to that same bridge, realizing that he did in fact, have a wonderful life, he again prayed. He said, "God, I want to live...I want to live".
He came to the point in his life of realizing his priorities had gotten out of line. His faithful wife had been supportive of him all those years, praying for him, and the children even asked her, "Should we pray for daddy"? as he ran out of the house on Christmas Eve, in a rage.
Life is good, even when times are tough - if we have our priorities right - putting God first, then everything else will fall in line.
What blessings in your wonderful life are you taking for granted? Is God your first priority, or are you running about chasing "things" to satisfy the void?
Take the time today to sit back and think about all the goodness and blessings the Lord has surrounded you with. You might not have as much as your friends, but I bet you have more than many in the world, who don't even have the basics of food and shelter as most of us do.


May the Lord bless you and keep you


May the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you


May the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace





Janelle

Lifeblood of the Innocent

I continue on in chapter 2 of Jeremiah, verses 31 - 35. Again, we will see the Lord asking questions of his people, and then his rebuke of them.
"You of this generation, consider the word of the Lord: 'Have I been a desert to Israel or a land of great darkness? Why do my people say, 'We are free to roam; we will come to you no more"? Does a maiden forget her jewelry, a bride her wedding ornaments? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number. How skilled you are at pursuing love! Even the worst of women can learn from your ways. On your clothes men find the lifeblood of the innocent poor, though you did not catch them breaking in. Yet in spite of all this you say, ' I am innocent; he is not angry with me.' But I will pass judgement on you because you say, ' I have not sinned'."

I am so proud to be an American, but I am also so ashamed of the way we have allowed elected officials who have no room for God or his laws and standards, to take control. Our country sounds just like the statements made above. Unlike our forefathers who founded this great nation we live in, we have forgotten God, and in some cases, just outright removed him. We do have the lifeblood of the innocent on our "clothes" as its referred to in those verses - we sat back silently while laws were made to enable doctors to murder innocent babies in the womb. As it says, "we didn't even catch them breaking in". I thought doctors took an oathe to protect and save lives? Again, we say the same statements made above, "I am innocent; he is not angry with me".
How prideful our nation has become. The scriptures say in Proverbs 16:18: "Pride comes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall". We will be judged by God for our sin, when all He is wanting us to do is repent - confess our sins, and come to him for his forgiveness and mercy.
We have probably the most important of elections about to occur here in a matter of weeks. I pray that people will sincerely seek God for his wisdom as to who to cast the vote for. We need our country to get back to its roots of Judeo-Christian principles, and to remove those from office who have an agenda to replace morals with "tolerance" and "political correctness".
We as believers in this great country, need to wake up, stand up, and let our voices be heard. No longer can we sit back quietly while those who seek to remove God completely, slide in yet more laws to do just that.

The Cure

Yesterday I wrote about the causes and consequences of Worldliness, and today I'll cover James 4: 7 - 10 that speaks about the cure.

"Submit yourselves then, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up".

First things first - we are to submit ourselves to God. Until we do that, we don't have the power of his Holy Spirit to take on the second step - resisting the devil. He will knock you back down every time unless you fight him with God's power. Remember, "greater is He that is within you, than he who is in the world". Satan is NOT to be feared - he wants us all to believe that, but that's a lie, which Jesus said Satan is the father of. Once a soul is saved; bought by the blood of Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes to live in that soul, and all the power of God is available; it's up to each person to draw from that power.

The next thing we are to do is to wash our hands - in other words - repent, and turn away from the world and it's standards. Grieve and mourn for those caught up in its system and its ways.

Lastly, we are to humble ourselves before God. I have a wonderful memory involving that verse. It was made into a song in the 1980's, and here's how it played out - a memory and a lesson from God I'll never forget.

When my kids were little, we were living in a nice neighborhood, in a home we'd built just a few years prior to this one Sunday afternoon. We put them in their car seats, and decided we were going to go look at some new homes in one of the upscale neighborhoods - you know, the kind of place where everyone wants that to be their address. Well Dude was always a good sleeper, and just about as soon as we'd start off on a drive, he'd fall asleep and stay asleep until we would get back home and take him out of the car.

As we were driving through this neighborhood called "Heathrow", which is up on the north end of Orlando, we were "ooohing and aaahhing" over some really nice houses and were talking about how we could really see ourselves living there, blah blah blah..... There was no need for us to be looking at any other houses or neighborhoods; the one we were in was new, it was nice, and the kids had a lot of friends there.

As we were leaving Heathrow, Dude, who had been sound asleep, popped up, and out of that little 3 year old's mouth came the song from that last verse of today's passage. "Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord"...then he was back sound to sleep immediately! Well - we looked at each other and we knew that the Lord had just shown us how we were letting pride and the desires of the world take priority in our lives. It was an eye opening experience for sure!

We headed back home, sorrowful for letting "things" get hold of us, but also thankful that God would use our sleeping toddler to show us our sin. If it had've been someone we knew telling us that we were being prideful, we probably would've brushed them off and thought they were just jealous, but it was the innocence of a child, and that child using God's word in song, that was the tool of showing us our sin so we could repent.

Today, let us all humble ourselves before God, and to put our priorities in order. There's an acronym that shows us just how to do that - JOY - Jesus, Others, You.

Blessings,
Janelle