Thinking On Scripture

 

I usually like to put things in context on my blog, but this time I’m just going to list a couple of verses, and encourage you to go read them, in their context for yourself.

 

What is our conclusion, brothers? Whenever you come together, let everyone be ready with a psalm or a teaching or a revelation, or ready to use his gift of tongues or give an interpretation; but let everything be for edification.  (1 Corinthians 14:26, CJB)

 

Instead, keep on being filled with the Spirit - sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to each other; sing to the Lord and make music in your heart to him; always give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah. Submit to one another in fear of the Messiah.  (Ephesians 5: 18b-21, CJB)

 

let the Word of the Messiah, in all its richness, live in you, as you teach and counsel each other in all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude to God in your hearts. That is, everything you do or say, do in the name of the Lord Yeshua, giving thanks through him to God the Father. (Colossians 3:16-17, CJB)

 

These verses (and their surrounding chapters) are talking about how we are to conduct ourselves when we meet together as believers, when we gather for “church”.  How often are these things happening where Christians are meeting together?  Is everyone ready with something to share?  Are they given the opportunity to share?  Are we teaching and counseling each other?  Or do we leave that type of thing up to the professionals?

 

Just some food for thought…  Something I’m thinking about… Our services are so passive.  We just sit and listen, sing when we are told, stand here, read this.  Where is the interaction?  If I am building a relationship with God and with my fellow believers, I need to be interacting with them.  Some could say to me, well, that should be happening during the week.  Yes, I agree and “cell groups” or Bible studies are great for that.  But what about our corporate worship… should something change there?  I don’t know.  I don’t have the answers, just questions.

 

Digging deeper,

Why pray?

 

Been thinking some more about this and re-reading Chapter 5 of In Constant Prayer.  Here’s some more from the book:

Do no misunderstand me; I do not believe that saying these prayers is about our salvation.  Saying theses prayers is not about qualifying to be in that number when the saints go marching in or out or wherever it is that we are headed for eternity.

But going to church on Sunday, bringing our kids to church, paying our tithes, feeding the poor or taking care of the orphans in South America are not about salvation either.  Those things are about the way we live our lives, here and about whether we do the things that we are given to do to help be sure that Christ, through his body can actually be seen here on earth at all.

When I say that these prayers are not elective, I mean what if some of us are being drawn to say these prayers not to save ourselves but to save the whole world? Or to save the Church? what if we are being called to help restore this ancient prayer as a way to strengthen and sustain the Church in our time, as it strengthened and sustained the church in its earliest days? {page 69, 70}

 

And continuing in that line of thinking {page72, 73}:

I am increasingly convinced that if the Church is to live, and actually be alive, one of the reasons, maybe the most important and maybe even the only reason, will be because we have taken up our place in the line of the generations of the faithful who came before us.  It will be because we pray the prayer that Christ himself prayed when e walked among us and now longs to prayer through us.

 

Still diggin',

A New Book and Topic

I know it’s been a while since I posted here.  I finished a couple of books on the topic of Sabbath.  Now I’m continuing in the Ancient Practices series with a book on Prayer.  I look forward to sharing with my readers what I am learning.  I’m just 10 or so pages in and I am enjoying the book and the topic already.

In Constant Prayer (The Ancient Practices)

Still diggin',

The Coming Celebration–Passover and Unleavened Bread

 

The more I study and read and learn the more I see how God’s plan for his people works for me in my life and in today’s society!  I’m just going to share some thoughts and tidbits of information.

 

Passover requires a ridding of leavening from our homes.  Crumbs hide everywhere!  God commands a spring cleaning.  So neat!

 

Earlier I shared a passage from Exodus that gives the command and instructions regarding Passover.  I didn’t realize it was a seven day celebration “wrapped” in two Sabbath days.  I didn’t realize it was for all generations, forever.  (gonna do some more digging on that – the forever part – is the same word in the original languages as when Jesus talks about never changing, etc)

 

Leading up to the Passover were the nine other plagues of Egypt.  Passover is a time of remembering the Israelites being set free; this is a freedom celebration.

 

I have not rid my home of leavening; I will not be able to do so before Passover starts unfortunately; I need to set myself a reminder for next year because it will take quite some time for me to accomplish this.  For this year, I am taking a baby step.  I am learning about Passover and what it means and the traditions around it.  I plan to teach my children about what Passover is all about.  I plan to connect Jesus as our Passover Lamb and why Easter is celebrated during Passover.  I want to move to celebrating Passover and not Easter.  Passover is the celebration of freedom, not just for the Israelites but for us as well; freedom from our sinful nature through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.

 

Traditionally, the first day of Passover would be the feast day.  I have not yet decided when we will have our Easter / Passover dinner.  Jason may be away that weekend, so having our special dinner on the night of the 19th might not a bad idea.  It works.

 

Lent is done when Easter begins.  Lent is a time of fasting or abstinence or giving something up, in preparation of the celebrating of Jesus’ resurrection.  Lent is instituted by man.  Passover is instituted by God.  Jesus’ death and resurrection happen during Passover that year.

 

Still diggin',

Is she reading my mind? Is she living my life?

“Funny, this.  Yesterday morning, the morning before, all these mornings, I wake to the discontent of life in my skin.  I wake to self-hatred.  To the wrestle to get it all done, the relentless anxiety that I am failing.  Always, the failing.  I yell at children, fester with bitterness, forget doctors appointments, lose library books, live selfishly, skip prayer, complain, go to bed too late, neglect cleaning the toilets.  I live tired.  Afraid.  Anxious.  Weary.  Years, I felt it in the veins, the pulsing of ruptured hopes.  Would I ever be enough, find enough, do enough? But this morning, I wake wildly wanting to live.  Physically feeling it in the veins trembling, the hard pant of the lungs, the seeing it in the steady stars, how much I really want to really live.  How I don’t want to die.” 

~~Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, chapter 2.

Still diggin',

God’s Secretive Plan

From the very beginning, that Eden beginning, that has always been and always is, to this day, His secret purpose – our return to our full glory. Appalling – that He would! Us, unworthy. And yet since we took a bite out of the fruit and tore into our own souls, that drain hole where joy seeps away, God’s had this wild secretive plan.  He means to fill us with glory again. With glory and grace.

~~ Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, Chapter 1.

 

---

We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature,

but not the wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age,

who are coming to nothing. 

No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom,

a wisdom that has been hidden and that God

destined for our glory before time began.

1 Corinthians 2:6,7

 

 

 

Still diggin',

What If Your Best . . .What is God’s best for us

 

I used to find this song annoying when I heard it on the TV, until I listened to the words and got thinking about it a little a lot.

What if HIS best for us doesn’t look like we expect it to look like?

What If Your Best by FFH

I'm trying hard to keep from falling off this wheel
Trying hard to keep so still
As you’re shaping, and remaking
Something new is bound to surface
Something bound to bring you fame
Something sure to make you great
Something you can use
But I am only clay and clay doesn't get to choose

I want your best but what if your best is brokenness
Would I be broken?
I want your best but what if less than what I ask
And what I'm hoping?
What if your best is here in the waiting, here in the going thru the motions?
I'll still be trusting all I am, and all have, and nothing less to Potter's hands

I'm trying hard to keep from giving you advice
It’s like teaching Shakespeare how to write
Or Monet, the way to paint another scene
But there's just something in this amateur that thinks
That my opinion's what you need
On how to work in me
But I am only clay, and clay probably shouldn't speak

Chorus

Take my life and let it be consecrated just to thee
Take my voice and let me sing for you my King
Take my moments and my days and let them flow in ceaseless praise
For You always, for You

Chorus

Only here for you to mould, I'm holding on, because I belong in Potter's hands

---

The part that got me the most was this:

I want your best but what if less than what I ask And what I'm hoping?
What if your best is here in the waiting, here in the going thru the motions?

Maybe, just maybe, HIS best for me is “going through the motions”.  It is going through the day by day by day.  My life may be a lot of work.  My life may be a lot of dirty diapers and scrapes and bruises.  My life may be sticky fingers and runny noses.  On the days when my day to day to day takes over my JOY and my anger rides to the surface yet again, I try to remember that HE is in control and that HE wants the best for me.  I try to remember that I am the clay, being moulded into the person, the woman, the wife and mother that HE wants me to be; I will be HIS best for me, if I remember.

 

A close friend of mine and I were talking the other day.  She doesn’t often share lots from her past but the little snippets of her history that she shares always amaze me.  She came from a world of abuse and neglect.  I have nothing to compare the experiences to in my own life.  I see the woman she is today and I think to myself, “if God can change that woman . . . if God can show Himself through her . . . if she can show so much JOY and LOVE to those in her life after all the horrid things she experienced . . . if she can love herself, and be happy with who she is . . . if she can, then surely, I can!”  If God can do such a great work, and create such a beautiful person from those experiences, then surely, I can allow Him to work in me and do similar in my life and in my family.  Surely, I can be willing clay, in the Potter’s hands.

 

 

Still diggin',

Here’s A Question to Ponder

I believe the Bible to be God’s Word.  But . . . is the Bible a complete all-inclusive “tale” of God’s existence?  For instance, is creation as revealed in Genesis the complete version?  Or did we get a “Cole’s Notes” version?  Did we get just enough?  And all that we need to understand and believe?  (Probably.)  But could it also be only a part of the whole story?

 

Still diggin',

Mary was a MOM; Jesus was a BOY.

When I think of Jesus' mother, Mary.  I think she is some "god", some amazing woman, but not a real person. Know what I mean?  Until I really think about this person, this mother of God.  She was a mom.  She probably did a lot of the same things we as mothers of babies do.  She talked silly.  She tickled when she changed his pants.  She cuddled and disciplined.  Yeah, I do think she disciplined.  Just because Jesus was perfect, does that mean that he never caused her any grief?  I mean, he was a boy.  And those of us with boys, know how they are.  They are BUSY.  They get into everything.  Wouldn't He have the same learning that our boys have?  He had to learn to walk, as a human.  That means with a human body, he fell and got bumps and bruises.  Right?  Jesus may have been (was) God, but Mary was all human.  She fretted and scolded and fussed I'm sure.



I was thinking about this as I'm "pullin' your leg off" with Matty while I change this diaper.  We have this elevated view of the mother of God and really she was just a mom like me and you.



Last year at our woman's Christmas dinner and silent auction, I spoke about Mary riding on the back of the donkey for all those many miles (I forget exactly how far, but it was a long-ish drive in a car and she did it on the back of a donkey at 9 months pregnant and she was young (we suspect, right?).)  Anyway, I think it was last year that Mary (and other Bible "characters") became REAL PEOPLE to me.  Not just people in this book we call the Bible.  Back to Mary.  Not only did she ride on this donkey, but then she didn't even have a real bed to give birth in / on.



I didn't go to our ladies Christmas dinner this year and apparently I was asked about.  In the course of the conversation, one lady stated that "she's a better woman than I am".  I don't get statements like that.  I don't understand where that sentiment comes from.  I'm just a mom trying to do the best I can with what I have and what I know. At this point in my life, what was best for me was not going to the dinner.  It doesn't make me a better or worse person.  I'm just a mom who at this point in my life was needed at home - by my hubby and my family.  There will be time for me to be with the ladies for their activities, maybe.  Maybe not.



Back to making Mary more human.  She had to day and night toilet train that boy.  She had to live through him learning to use the carpentry tools.  This summer I was gifted so many handfuls of dandelions.  I sit here and think about the things Mary would have been "gifted" - chairs that toppled when she sat on them because he didn't quite get it right.  And her praise of his efforts.  Or when he came in her nice clean kitchen for lunch with muddy hands and feet and face after making mud pies in her flower bed (or whatever the equivalent would be).  Or Jesus pulling "weeds" has he helped his momma in the herb garden.



Of course I'm just thinking out loud and I don't know what happened or what kind of things they had around.



I just think we get too carried away with thinking these Bible people were so superior to us in today's society.  And really they are PEOPLE.  We only get to "hear" what is written in the Bible about them.  The rest we have to fill in the blanks.  We have to remember that they are people.  :)



That's just me rambling my thoughts.



Still diggin',