UPDATE May 1, 2023: I wanted to delete this post, but deleting doesn’t undue for anyone who might come back to it to reference. So I have decided to simply update it here at the beginning. This post was written in 2011. I was a 35 year old wife and mother who had only been walking with the Lord for about 10 years and was so desperate to be obedient to Him and to honor Him with my life in every way because I was so broken and hurt and I didn’t want my girls to ever experience what I had been through. In my open heart to God then, I have since realized that I was wide open to toxic teaching as you will see if you choose to read the original post.

>After submitting my second book to my publisher and realizing that maybe, just maybe, there was another way to do this… I have decided to not go through with a second publication.

Having recently discovered the “blog world” I have instead chosen to take my vision of a devotional series through the Torah, the books of the Law, and turn it into a blog that will go past the Torah and all the way to Revelation:

Devotional Studies Through The Bible

I hope that you will join me on this journey as well, and that you will share this blog with your family, and friends, and all those you meet in your own blogging communities, and outside them as well.

As much as it thrilled me to receive that “yes, we would love to publish your manuscript” my desire never really was for a royalty check… but that God might use me to open eyes to the beauty and relevance of the Old Testament.
The pressure of wondering if people will actually buy the book is more pressure than I want to bear at this time. It is a weight I need not carry, for my joy is in sharing the gospel, teaching the Word, and simply not leaving all that God has shone me in my study time in a notebook in the attic, but getting it out there in the world so maybe it will help someone else.

Devotions From Genesis is out and books are still selling and there even is another book signing coming up in October, I of course, would be overjoyed to have everyone purchase a copy of this book, but the dream is not to just sit at a table and sign a book, but to tell of the glory of my Creator God and leave someone with a tangible thing to take with them that will hopefully help them to persevere through all the begots and cubits and names that are almost impossible to pronounce. 

Maybe someday I will pursue the publication of Devotions from Exodus Part 1 and Part 2, and then Leviticus, and Numbers, and so on, but then it will simply be turning the blog into books and not the books into a blog.

So my friends I invite you to join me on this journey through the Bible, one devotion at a time, beginning today…  🙂

>There is something about a rainy Sunday that is so calming. It’s days like this that I wish we had a open building with a tin roof with a hammock hanging close to the opening yet still under the shelter of the roof…

This Sunday begins a new time in life. A new church year, a new class… for both me and my husband. We have shared our Sunday morning class for the past 10 years, either as attenders or teachers. This season I am teaching one class, the Precept study, Spiritual Gifts, and he is attending an all men’s class. He has said today that he very much enjoyed the class.
I love couple classes, but I agree that there also are times that certain needs cannot be met in a couple’s class that can be met in an all men’s or all women’s class. It’s also good to be able to switch up your class in order to get to know more of the people in your church. I am glad that our church has chosen to take the steps that we have in order to open the door to do exactly that.

[and yes if you live in my area this is an official invite to join me in worship at Shiloh 🙂 if I have even just managed to make you a little bit curious about this man our Biblebelt South calls Jesus, then come and allow me to introduce Him to you as I know Him… it would be my pleasure]

So this rainy Sunday has been a good day. We enjoyed a wonderful time of fellowship with other believers. Our pastor was rushed to the hospital in the early morning with a possible appendicitis, but he is good now, no appendicitis. In the meantime our youth minister brought an excellent message on how it is time for the church- me, us, you, to live differently.

It reminded me of another quote from Dr Martin Luther King Jr:

For so many Christians, Christianity, is a Sunday activity having no relevancy for Monday and the church is little more than a secular social club having a thin veneer of religiousity. Jesus is an ancient symbol whom we do the honor of calling Christ, and yet his Lordship is neither affirmed nor acknowledged by our substanceless lives… We need to pledge ourselves anew to the cause of Christ. We must recapture the spirit of the early church. Wherever the early Christians went, they made a triumphant witness for Christ. Whether on the village streets or in the city jails, they daringly proclaimed the good news of the gospel. Their reward for this audacious witness was often the excrutiating agony of a lion’s den or the poignant pain of a chopping block, but they continued in the faith that they had discovered a cause so great and had been transformed by a Saviour so divine that even death was not too great a sacrifice… Where is that kind of fervour today? Where is that kind of daring, revolutionary commitment to Christ today? Is it hidden behind smoke screens and altars? Is it buried in a grace called respectability? Is it inextricably bound with nameless status quos and imprisoned within cells of stagnant mores? This devotion must again be released. Christ must once more be enthroned in or lives.    

So as I sit here in the comfort of my home and listen to the rain fall, and dream of listening to it rain on a tin roof while I lay in a hammock and watch it fall, I also contemplate the reality that I am too comfortable and I am indeed reaching the point that I am uncomfortable in my comfort and I have an ever increasing longing to be one who is called strange, even a fool, by the world because I “am intoxicated with the wine of God’s grace” as I boldly proclaim the gospel of my God.

Please watch this video before you read the rest of the post:
What would you do?

Well, I discovered what I would do as I was in New Orleans. I discovered that I would walk by, not making eye contact. I was more brave with my husband and would offer a smile, but my heart was gripped with the “what if they approach me?”

There is one instance in particular that is seared in my brain and heart forever now. When my husband was in meetings I was on my own. I was not comfortable at all on these streets without his presence beside me. So as I ventured out one day to get lunch I thought I would be brave enough to go past the Arby’s that was right next to our hotel.

I ventured out, but I ventured out in fear. Trying not to make eye contact with anyone. (My shoulders sag now in defeat as I remember that I was to be strong and courageous.) There was one woman that was sitting up against a building shoeless. As I walked past she asked me for money for shoes. I kept walking as though I never heard her. I did not even acknowledge her existence.

How very cruel of me.

I could use the excuse that I was a woman alone on the streets of New Orleans following my husbands instructions to be careful… but that just doesn’t seem to justify the situation in any way does it? I could use the excuse of email after email that claims that rapist and murderers and thieves use the “female in distress” tactic to lure in victims, but even this does not make me feel any better about my action… or rather my lack of action.

What I wished I would have done is to have sat down against the wall with this obviously broken woman and asked her what her story was. I wish I would have looked this woman in the eyes and showed her compassion. I wish I would have taken the time and opportunity to discover who she was. How did she end up her on this street, with no shoes, asking strangers for money?

Oh how I regret that I did not do this.

She asked for shoes… and I should have told her of the shoes of the gospel of peace.

Apparently my beautiful feet were left in the comfort zone of my hotel room. My feet were not beautiful at all on these streets of New Orleans. I left my room not with the prayer of  “God use me today to share your good news.”  I left my room with the only thought of “God, let me get something to eat and make my way safely back to my room.” 

God sometimes seems to put us in the vise, and then He tightens it and tightens it more, until we think, in the pain of His sovereign squeeze, “What’s He trying to do to me?” We walk closer to Him and even closer to Him. We don’t see how we could walk any closer, but still more tests come, one on top of another.

That’s where Elijah is, but he doesn’t waver. He stands tall and silent in the shadow of God, grounded in faith, confident of his Lord’s power. That’s humility at its best. He doesn’t question God. He doesn’t fall apart at the seams. He doesn’t lose control.
~ Swindoll

If you walk with the Lord long enough, you will discover that His tests often come back-to-back. Or perhaps it would be even more accurate to say back to back to back to back to back. Usually, His preparatory tests don’t stop with one or two. They multiply. And as soon as you climb out of one crucible thinking, “Okay, I made it through that one,” you’re plunged into another, where the flame is even hotter.
Crucibles create Christlikeness.
~ Swindoll

I don’t know about you, but I have come to realize that I usually attempt to determine whether or not God is pleased with me according to what “good” things are happening in my life.

If I am going through test after test and trial after trial I tend to feel as though I am doing something wrong, not pleasing God in some area of my life, that I am just not getting the point.

I have a tendency to judge my own life the way Job’s friends judged his. “Well there must be some sin that God is trying to get me to confess, some sin that is separating me from Him so he’s putting me through this, something in my flesh that must be crucified, something I am blind to, and He must be trying to open my eyes…”

So reading these quotes by such a great man of faith as Chuck Swindoll, well it helps. These words shared by Swindoll are really truths that I already know, but somehow in the midst of the vise, the test, I forget them.

This is why God tells us to not forsake the assembly (Hebrews 10:24-25). We need each other, we need to encourage each other, we need to surround ourselves with a cloud of witnesses to the truth of God and the solid foundation of His Word, and to build up one another’s faith. We need a Aaron and a Hur to hold up our arms when we grow weary in this battle of life (Exodus 17:12).

A little poem I just penned…

Sometimes the fire is to burn off the dross of sin,
sometimes the fire is to purify the silver within,
but every time it is God who controls the flame,
so no matter the force of the furnace the fire will not be in vain,
the test we might not understand,
the trial may make no sense to man,
but God is He who tightens the vice,
and in His grip we must not lose sight,
that our eyes on Christ must always be fixed,
for this is the reason for our own crucifix,
to take up our cross and follow Him, 
to be conformed to the image of the One who conquered death and sin
let us not view our new life through old eyes of flesh
let us walk by the Spirit that we now in Christ possess
let us not grow weary of doing good
nor prejudge God when He doesn’t do what we think He should

>Forgiveness.
This is where we can see the true picture of a believer.
Do you have the ability, even the desire, to forgive another. 

In our humanness we want a limit. We want to be able to say:
“You’ve crossed the line”
“You’ve gone to far”
“I’ve had it up to here”
“That’s the final straw”

What I love here in Matthew 18 as Jesus answers Peter question on a forgiveness limit is that Jesus gives him a limit.
Why?
What is it about this limit of seventy times seven?

When we were potty training our girls we had a sticker chart. The chart had set of boxes. There was a beginning and an end to the chart. The stickers had a limit. Every time our girls went to the potty they got a sticker. The goal of course was to be a pee-peeing in the potty pro by the time the sticker chart had reached its limit.
The point of this potty sticker chart was to get our girls in the habit of going to the bathroom. We didn’t wait for the girls to “feel” like they had to go to the potty. We made them go whether they felt like it or not.
Do you know that neither of our girls reached that end limit. Both of them had made going to the potty a habit of their life before they ever reached the sticker limit.

This I believe is the point of Jesus’s limit.

“…forgiveness is not a matter of quantity, but of quality. A man cannot forgive up to four hundred and ninety times without forgiveness becoming a part of the habit structure of his being. Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.” ~ MLK Jr

So precious one, who are you struggling to forgive?
How about making yourself a Forgiveness Chart for whoever that person is. Give your chart 490 boxes. Everytime you ask God to help you forgive this person, put a sticker in a box. Don’t wait until you “feel” like forgiving them, just do it, say it, ask God to help you obey His Word, whether you feel like it or not.

Then also, make a Forgiveness Chart and put your name on it. Give your chart 490 boxes. Everytime you ask God to forgive you, put a sticker in a box. This will help you keep things in perspective.

Here’s the thing… I will almost bet that you won’t finish either one of those charts before forgiveness becomes a part of your character. Practice will make perfect. You will learn to forgive as you have been forgiven.

>God is neither hardhearted nor softminded. He is toughminded enough to transcend the world; he is tenderhearted enough to live in it. He does not leave us alone in our agonies and struggles. He seeks us in dark places and suffers with us and for us in our tragic prodigality.
At times we need to know that the Lord is a God of justice. When slumbering giants of injustice emerge in the earth, we need to know that there is a God of power who can cut them down like the grass and leave them withering like the green herb. When our most tireless efforts fail to stop the surging sweep of oppression, we need to know that in this universe is a God whose matchless strength is a fit contrast to the sordid weakness of man.
But there are also times when we need to know that God possesses love and mercy. When we are staggered by the chilly winds of adversity and battered by the raging storms of disappointment and when through our folly and sin we stray into some destructive far country and are frustrated because of a strange feeling of homesickness, we need to know that there is Someone who loves us, cares for us, understands us, and will give us another chance.
When days grow dark and nights grow dreary, we can be thankful that our God combines in his nature a creative synthesis of love and justice which will lead us through life’s dark valleys and into sunlit pathways of hope and fulfilment.
— from Strength to Love by Martin Luther King Jr

So many times people try to only pick one side of God. When someone has hurt us we want Him to be a God who deals with that person, but when we are the one who has done the hurting we want a God of mercy. I agree with Mr. King, I am thankful our God is both toughminded and tenderhearted. Toughminded enough to give us truth and discipline but tenderhearted enough to give us a second chance when we have went away from that truth.
This is the example that Jesus gave us when he came to reveal God to us in the flesh.

Jesus was toughminded. He could not be “handled” no matter how hard the people tried. He could not be influenced or swayed or deceived or stumped. He could not be emotionally manipulated or intimidated by popular opinion. He used his mind. He knew how to think. He knew truth and the lie can never stand up against the truth.

Jesus was also tenderhearted enough that he felt compassion for all. He didn’t use His knowledge to condemn another or beat them further down into their sin. He didn’t see Himself as more superior and walk over the one who was dead in their sin. Jesus rolled up His sleeves and got right down in the muck of another’s life in order to use His tough mind to pull them up.

We are called as believers to be “shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16), “to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil.” (Romans 16:19) We too must be both toughminded and tenderhearted. Our minds must be strong enough to hold up against all the lies of the enemy and all the philosophies and false doctrines of man. Yet we must also be able to give compassion (not pity) and mercy and grace to those who in their soft mind and weakness have become a prey.

I believe this can only be accomplished in and through Christ in us. We have not the ability to do this on our own… we will either be tenderhearted with no toughmind, allowing all sorts of sin and corruption with no rebuke, calling it tolerance or even love. Or we will be only toughminded and will love not. We will be cold and heartless and show no compassion to those who live below our standard.

As I parent my children I can see the need for both the tenderheart and toughmind. I must be toughminded so that I know how to lead them and set a standard and expect it to be kept. I have to be toughminded enough to not allow my children to “handle” me. My children will not control me by emotion. However, I also need to be tenderhearted with my children showing them love and mercy and grace. They need to know that they are loved because they are mine, not because they are perfect.

My parents use to tell me that they loved me with one hand and the other hand was for my backside when I got out of line. And it was true. I knew they loved me no matter what, but I also knew they would discipline me no matter what.

Hmmm how interesting it is that over and over as we discover the truths of the character of God we find the greatest illustrations of Him (other than Christ Himself) in the family, either through marriage or the raising of our children.

No wonder Satan works so hard to destroy and distort the family…