The Longing Of The Lord

If we approach our daily scripture reading as simply mere reading, then more often than not, we will get nothing out of it. But if we approach our daily scripture reading expecting to get something out of it, expecting to meet our creator face to face, expecting to learn more about who He is, about His character, about His heart, then God will be faithful to meet us each and every day with exactly what we need to face the day’s challenges. God wants us first and foremost to set aside time for Him and only Him. He is a jealous God. He covets us and our time. He longs to spend intimate time with us, and I’m speaking of more than just 5 minutes so we can say, we read our bibles that day. Please understand, I am not speaking of a set quantity of time here. I am speaking of time spent with our loving creator where our hearts touch His heart. This time could be 5 minutes one day and 5 hours the next day. I don’t think there is a set quantity of time, but I do believe there is a quality of time that the Lord longs to have with us. Time that we can’t wait for. Time that is so precious to us that we are willing to say no to some of the other activities in our lives just to make sure we don’t miss out on that special time.

For those of us who are married, I want us to think back to the period of time before we got married. Think of the moments that we spent apart from our soon to be husband. We could not wait until we saw him again. We could not wait until we had the next phone conversation with him. We wanted to spend every waking moment we could with him. This is the kind of relationship God longs for us to have with Him. He wants us to be excited about getting back into His presence. His heart yearns for ours to be intimately connected with his each and every day. He doesn’t want us to simply read the scriptures for the sake of being able to say we’ve done it. He wants us to yearn to read His love letter written to us. Truly, that is what scripture is. It is a love letter written to the people of God, especially for them from His heart to ours.  

Lord, I pray that you show us how to connect with your heart each and every day. I pray that we come to a place where we just can’t handle being apart from you. I pray that we grow more in love with you than we ever have, that our hearts become so intertwined with you that we truly don’t even want to leave your presence. I thank you that you are a jealous God. I thank you that you covet our time, that you desire so deeply and desperately to have an intimate relationship with each one of us. Your love is more than we can ever comprehend, but it is your desire to show it to us in abundance! Fill us this week and every week with a yearning and a longing for you. Open the eyes of our hearts Lord. We want to see you, know you and love you more!

The Benefits Of Humility

Humility is something I think we all struggle with from time to time, and for some of us it is more of a struggle than others. But wherever we find ourselves in this fight to stay humble, God has promised some wonderful things to us when we put ourselves on our knees and at His feet.

“For the Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with salvation.” Psalm 149:4

The best benefit that humility extends to us is the gift of salvation. There is nothing better than the beautiful gift of salvation from our Lord Jesus Christ! Salvation is never any further than a humble prayer away. This is such a precious promise!

“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” James 4:10

Another beautiful benefit of humility is that the Lord promises to lift us up. There are many times in our lives when we dig ourselves into a deep hole and on our own accord we can’t find a way out of it. It is in these times of desperateness we have no choice but to call upon the name of the Lord. And in these moments of humility God promises to lift us up out of the depths. He comes running to our rescue and aid when we humble ourselves before him.

“He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them in his way.” Psalm 25:9

Humility brings about an ability for us to become teachable in the ways of the Lord. When we are proud we have trouble accepting the changes that the Lord wants to make in our hearts and lives. Humility can sometimes be a hard thing to bring ourselves to, but it is necessary in the process of becoming more like Christ. Humility is Christ’s roadway to changing our hearts. Humility is also the key to being teachable. Without humility flowing in us, Christ would never be given permission to enter into our most secret places of our inner most parts. And until we let Christ move in the most secret places of our hearts we will never really understand what Christ is truly capable of doing.

“...God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 1 Peter 5:5

The Lord extends His loving hand of grace to those who lay themselves at the foot of the cross. In God’s all sufficient wisdom He knew that we will find ourselves in places where grace will be needed many times in our lives. By laying ourselves at His feet, it enables the Lord to than extend grace in abundance. Praise the Lord for that one! I know I have found myself in countless positions when I have needed the hand of the Lord to be outstretched with an abundance of grace. How about you?

Lord help us to remain in a place of humility. We know that your word promises so many things when we walk in humility. We thank you that when we humble ourselves you will pour out salvation, you will lift us up in our times of need, you will guide and teach us your ways,and you will extend your hand of grace in abundance! Lord you are such an awesome God! Thank you that you desire us to become more like you each and every day.Help us to walk the roadway of humility so that we can become more like Christ. Help us to desire to live lives that are humble before you.

What If?

What if we viewed each other the same way as God viewed us? What if we saw others through the eyes of Christ? Would we judge them so harshly? Would we harbor bitterness in our hearts towards them? No, because God doesn’t see them as we do; God sees them as precious! What if we saw others as precious? How would that change the way we treated others? How would that change the way we spoke to them? How would that change what our thoughts are towards them? Wow, what challenging questions! I know I have failed at seeing people through the eyes of Christ. I so often am quick to judge and slow to listen, and even quicker to become emotional about the situations I face with others. Thank goodness God does not act this way. He is so very patient with us. He sets such a beautiful example of how we should treat others. God has set the bar high for how we should treat and view others. In fact, when I think about how God views these things it humbles my heart and I realize just how much growing I have to do in this area of my life.

God has placed people in our lives for several reasons the first and biggest reason is so that we love them! God also brings people into our lives to either learn from or to teach and train. God does not bring people into our lives to simply irritate and aggravate us, or to test how quickly we can lose our tempers with someone who tries our patience. God always has purpose for those he brings across our paths. If we learn to look at each person as a precious teacher, or a precious learner. Our outlook on them changes even if they continue to be trying. How often do we stop to think that maybe the frustrations we are experiencing from being rubbed the wrong way by someone is really a beautiful learning opportunity for us? In these times, we have the chance to learn how to be kind in the face of unkindness, to be patient in the face of impatience, and to be loving in the face of the unlovable. Besides, we want people to be kind, patient and loving with us, so we may as well learn to give out those things that we ourselves want in return. The golden rule still continues to prove itself to be relevant. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” May I suggest a slight amendment to the golden rule… “Do unto others what Christ would do unto them.”

So, what if we viewed those who rubbed us the wrong way as precious? Would we still find ourselves so frustrated? Would we still be tempted to say things we would ultimately regret? I’m guessing much of our frustrations would be eliminated and we would work on finding effective ways to work through the situation instead of allowing things to escalate. My challenge for us, myself included, is this, let’s work on viewing others around us as the precious gifts from God that they are, rather than a frustrating bother. Let’s focus on the things that we can learn about the Lord from those people that God has placed in our lives.

Lord, I thank you that you do not view others as we view them. I pray that you help us to learn to see others through your eyes. Help us to see others as precious. Help us in the frustrating times to see them as precious. I thank you that you bring people across our path so that we can learn more about you and so that we can teach others more about you. I thank you that you have created our relationships with others to be a good thing and not a source of recurring frustration to us. Help us to be kind as you are kind, to love as you love, and to be patient as you are patient.

The Image Of Christ

A friend of mine shared a blog post on Facebook speaking about how we are the image of Christ to our children and I have been unable to get this thought out of my mind recently. It truly is a profound thought to ponder. As parents we have the ability to show our children exactly what God looks like through our actions, speech and attitudes. On the flip side of that, we can also show our children the exact opposite of who Christ is. I can only pray that as a parent I am at least somewhat portraying an accurate picture of Christ to my children. I keep in mind however, that I am human, and humans have the capability to sin, this means I will inevitably misrepresent my Lord from time to time. The apostle Paul writes:

“Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 11:1

This is a goal we can set as parents, that our children will follow us as we follow Christ. I had written in a much earlier post about "The Mirror Concept." In that post I shared that our children will begin to display the things they see us doing and saying. So, if they see the fruit of the spirit flowing out of us, then there is a good chance we will begin to see some of those things appearing in our children. Let’s lay aside our humanness and fleshly nature and put on the character of Christ each morning. There is no other way our children can follow our example if we are the ones running the show. It truly has to be the Lord's leading and guiding that our children see in us. We as humans capable of sin, can not possibly portray Christ with any amount of accuracy to our children if we don’t let him have control of our hearts first. This can be such a difficult thing to do at times because I know for me, I like to be “in control.” But my idea of being “in control” is only going to miss the mark of me being able to display His image to my children.  

What a tremendous responsibility we have as parents, to be able to introduce our Heavenly Father to our precious little ones through our actions, speech and attitudes each and every day. I can only figure that the Lord must have an enormous sense of trust in order to lay such a responsibility in the hands of mere mortals. By His grace and mercy He will lead us and guide us how to accurately portray his character to our children. What a special honor!

Lord help us, because left to ourselves there is no possible way that we can accurately display your character to our children. It is only by your Holy Spirit moving within our lives that our children can see your image in us. Forgive us, Lord, for those times that  we do not show our little ones a true representation of who you are. Thank you that you trust us enough to carry this responsibility of showing our children who you are, and what you look like. It truly is a blessed honor!