Daily Archives: March 17, 2012

Confessions of a Christian Wife, Thirty-three Day Challenge

Running The Serpent Out

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Ladies, today is it.

The last day of the challenge.

I would love to know how you did… not through this challenge per say… but as an awakening. I would love to know how this challenge helps next week or next month or next year… so would Dannah Gresh and so would Shannon Ethridge.

So please comment below, or if it is more personal than that shoot me an email.

I would love to hear from you.

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Day Thirty-Three

I believe that we live in a sexually confused day and age, and many hearts and spirits cannot perceive or know God. Like so many in Solomon’s day, we’ve missed the beauty of yada, not only in our human love relationships but also in our interactions with God. So many long for something deeper and richer, but they don’t know if it’s even possible. ~ Dannah Gresh

I want to end this challenge with a plea, a plea for you to run to your Savior with everything. A plea for you to recognize that your sexuality is intricately connected to your spirituality. Your sex life matters. Your view of sex is connected to your true view of God.

1) Sexuality is designed by Christ as a way to know God more fully; and 

2) knowing Christ more fully in all His infinite supremacy is designed as a way of guarding and guiding our sexuality. All sexual corruption serves to conceal the true knowledge of Christ, and the true knowledge of Christ serves to prevent sexual corruption.

~ John Piper

So what does your sex life reveal about your knowledge and heart for God?

Has what you have learned, in your media fast and in your seeking God this past month, opened your eyes and heart to the possibility of a relationship with God that you didn’t even know you could have?

Have you truly been busy running the serpent and his lies out of your life, out of your heart, out of your mind? Are there permanent changes you are going to make in your life now that his lies have been exposed?

Here’s the thing, you can’t stop today.

You have to keep weeding. When you have a garden you do a huge weeding and tilling when the garden is first ready to plant… but that does not complete the job. The weeds will come back. You have to keep weeding that garden. You can choose to weed it daily and the weeding is easy… or you can choose to be lazy and ignore the weeds until you see they are beginning to choke out your fruit and vegetables and flowers… when you wait to go out and weed at that point… it’s harder. It’s even seems almost impossible to destroy all the weeds. 

Weeding out the deception of the serpent out of the garden of your soul is exactly the same way…

 Then the LORD God took the man

and put him into the garden of Eden

to cultivate it and keep it.

Genesis 2:15

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Awake, O north wind, And come, wind of the south;

Make my garden breathe out fragrance,

Let its spices be wafted abroad.

May my beloved come into his garden

And eat its choice fruits!

Song of Solomon 4:16

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And the LORD will continually guide you,

And satisfy your desire in scorched places,

And give strength to your bones;

And you will be like a watered garden,

And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.

Isaiah 58:11

Oh precious one… weed daily. Don’t let that old serpent’s weeds of deception grow up and choke out the beautiful blooms of your Creator’s truth.

Ladies, it is my heart’s desire that you not just know God as your Creator, that you not just know God as your Redeemer, but that you also know Him as the Lover of your soul.

Devotional Studies Through the Bible, Proven Path Ministries

When God Comes Down

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So it came about on the third day, when it was morning,

that there were thunder and lightning flashes

and a thick cloud upon the mountain

and a very loud trumpet sound,

so that all the people who were in the camp trembled.  

Exodus 19:16

 

As you study through the Scriptures we learn that the third day is very significant to God.

In Genesis it was on the third day that the waters were gathered into one place and the dry land appeared and began to sprout forth life with seed in it bearing fruit.

It was on the third day that Jonah cried out to God from the belly of a fish and God then commanded the fish to vomit him out onto the dry land.

It was on the third day that our Lord arose from the grave victorious.

Here in Exodus it will be on the third day that all the people will hear the voice of their God.

I cannot even begin to imagine the awesomeness of this day. In this account we read that the Lord descended on this mountain in fire. We read that smoke rose like that of a smoke furnace and that the entire mountain quaked violently. All of this on top of a trumpet sound that grew louder and louder.

Then Moses speaks and God Himself answers him with thunder, God’s words to Moses, “Go down, warn the people, so that they do not break through to the LORD to gaze and many of them perish.” (Exodus 19:21).

My husband works in a steel mill. His company melts down metals in huge furnaces to produce steel. When the smoke is rising up out of the furnace you can see it from miles away. When water is found in the furnace it will explode with a force that shakes homes for miles around. He has taken me to his worksite to see these furnaces and to watch their power. I watched in awe at these furnaces and could feel their strength, even from the safety of the inside of my husband’s truck. I cannot even begin to imagine the awestruck fear that was upon this people as they stood at the foot of this violently quaking mountain that was so simply because it had been descended upon by the One True Living God.  

The earth quakes when God comes down. What in the world makes us think we could ever stand in His presence? Only the blindness of sin and the pride and arrogance of a deceived heart can make us this ignorant…

God’s warning to the people is not from being power hungry or to show them He’s boss. It is a true warning out of concern for their very lives. This One True Living God was not one of the gods of Egypt that they had grown accustomed to. This God, the I AM, was and is holy.

They could not approach Him and live because they had yet to learn how to approach this holy God. We in our sinful flesh can have no part with this God. He is not the works of man’s hand nor is He a fallen one. He is Elohim, the Creator God.

Our sin separate us from God. Our sin brings His righteous wrath. Sin and holiness do not mix just as water and hot melted steel do not mix. Just as that water in the furnace at my husband’s work naturally brings the wrath of the steel and is consumed in its fury, so our sin naturally incurs the wrath of the holiness of our God and is consumed in His righteous fury.   

Oh, how thankful I am that this holy God, our Creator, made a way… when there was no way.    

Oh Father,

How thankful I am for Your mercy. My sin is ever before You, but in Your mercy You have made a way for those who seek You to find You. Those who submit to You will not be consumed in Your fury, but You have always made a way for Your people to commune with You. Now in Christ we have not come to that mountain that can’t be touched, but we have come to Mount Zion. Let us not refuse Him who is speaking (Hebrews 12:18-29). 

My Jesus it is in Your name I pray,

Amen