03

Dec

have you thought about death recently?

We are immortal beings.

We will live forever.

Just not on earth….

O Lord, make me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am!
Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths,
and my lifetime is as nothing before you.
Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah
Surely a man goes about as a shadow!
Surely for nothing they are in turmoil;
man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather!
“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?
My hope is in you.
Psalm 39:4-7

Hope: do you have it?

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
James 4:13-16

Live today like it’s your last.

Strive to do everything this day demands for the Lord.

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Matthew 6:25-34

Don’t worry about tomorrow.

Live for the Lord today.

Trust in Him to provide for today’s needs.

And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
Luke 12:16-21

What a shame it would be to go through life believing “this is it”!

Where is your treasure?

901 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Reflections/Scripture

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12

Sep

Life comes at you fast.

Life comes at you fast.

It hit me like a ton of bricks.

—

Both describe the way I feel right now.

All happening within a 24 hour period.

I am not going to use this as an opportunity to complain, because I know I am not experiencing half of the difficulties some people are undergoing at this moment.

But I would like to use this as an opportunity to vent/get it out of my system/etc.

I would also like to realign my focus. I know I can ultimately trust Christ to strengthen me to perseverance through these trials. At the end of this post, I will write a prayer I found in the Valley of Vision. It fits my circumstances perfectly.

—

Apart from the usual difficulties of the week (a.k.a. COLLEGE) – staying up till 3 am studying; getting stuck in traffic and arriving to class 30 minutes late; planning a film shoot on campus, bringing all the necessities…and then finding out the camcorder is completely dead (after a FULL charge!); having car trouble, after repairing it the weekend before….

Friendships are wonderful relationships to have. I know none of them are perfect.

Sure, I need to grow and mature…so I’m not claiming perfection (or ANYTHING CLOSE)!! But slander is a terrible thing to do to a friend….

—

Basically, the last 24 hours were meant to be a lesson in trust. I am OBVIOUSLY totally incapable of controlling my circumstances!

Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”

Refuge

O LORD,

Whose power is infinite and wisdom infallible,

Order things that they may neither hinder, nor discourage me,
nor prove obstacles to the progress of thy cause;
Stand between me and all strife, that no evil befall,
no sin corrupt my gifts, zeal, attainments;
May I follow duty and not any foolish device of my own;
Permit me not to labour at work which thou wilt not bless,
that I may serve thee without disgrace or debt;
Let me dwell in thy most secret place under thy shadow,

where is safe impenetrable protection from

the arrow that flieth by day,
the pestilence that walketh in darkness,
the strife of tongues,
the malice of ill-will,
the hurt of unkind talk,
the snares of company,
the perils of youth,
the temptations of middle life,
the mournings of old age,
the fear of dath.

I am entirely dependent upon thee for support,
counsel, consolation.
Uphold me by thy free Spirit,
and may I not think it enough to be preserved
from falling,
but may I always go forward, always abounding
in the work thou givest me to do.
Strengthen me by thy Spirit in my inner self
for every purpose of my Christian life.

All my jewels I give to the shadow of the safety
that is in thee -
my name anew in Christ,
my body, soul, talents, character,
my success, wife, children, friends, work,
my present, my future, my end.

Take them, they are thine, and I am thine, now and for ever.

(from Valley of Vision)

1713 days ago Short URL Comments

Life/Reflections

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04

Sep

a great reminder

Our soul waits for the LORD;
He is our help and our shield.
For our heart is glad in Him,
because we trust in His holy name.
Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us,
even as we hope in you.

Psalm 33:20-22

1721 days ago Short URL Comments

Reflections

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23

Oct

Recent post from safeguard4u…

Here is a recent post I made on a blog I contribute to – it is titled, “Self-Reliance: A Catastrophic Deception.”

The other day I was perusing through a book of Puritan prayers & devotions, called The Valley of Vision. I would highly recommend the owning of this book. The prayers are so deep and the language used is incomparable!

I came across the following prayer, dealing with penitence and deprecation:

Reliance, p. 176

“My Father,

When thou art angry towards me for my wrongs

I try to pacify thee by abstaining from future sin;

But teach me that I cannot satisfy thy law,

that this effort is a resting in my righteousness,

that only Christ’s righteousness, ready made, already finished, is fit for that purpose;

that thy chastising me for my sin is not that I should try to reform, but only

that I may be more humbled, afflicted, and separated from sin, by being reconciled,

and made righteous in Christ by faith;

that a sense of my sufficiency and ability in him is one means of my being immovable;

that I can never be so by resting on my own faith, but by trusting in thee as my only support, by faith;

that if I cast away my faith I cast away thee, for by faith I apprehend thee,

and as thou art very precious, so is my faith very precious to me;

that I fall short of the purity thou requirest, because in thinking I am holy I do not

seek holiness, or, believing I am impotent, I do no more.

Humble me for not being as holy as I should be, or as holy as I might be through Christ,

for thou art all, and to possess thee is to possess all.

But to make the creature something is to make it stand between thee and me,

so that I do not walk humbly and holily.

Lord, forgive me for this.”

As I read this, I realized how much this reflected my own attitude toward sin and repentance. I can definitely say that I fail to live up to God’s perfect standard of holiness, found in His Son, Jesus Christ! I can also say that many of my failings have resulted from the attitude of self-reliance mentioned in this prayer.

 

“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’”

1 Peter 1:14-16

“He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.“

1 Peter 2:24-25

And I think one of the best passages to describe this prayer is found in the blog’s theme chapter:

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.“

Philippians 3:8-9

Other verses that come to mind – Galatians 2:20; 1 Corinthians 10:13; 1 John 1:9.

jazz hands:10/23/07 from safeguard4u blog

2038 days ago Short URL Comments

safeguard4u

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19

Oct

An Eternal Perspective

 

“One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD and to meditate in His temple.”
Psalm 27:4

This passage finds itself in the middle of a psalm focused on a strong trust in the Lord. The psalmist speaks of a fearless outlook on his adversaries because the Lord is his “light and salvation.” The evil that stood against him forced him to look upward. He realized that his future was not a life of ease among evildoers, but life eternal in the presence of a great, beautiful, and glorious God!

The New Testament also provides further insight into this great future:

“Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:13-14

The goal, here mentioned by Paul, is a reflection of what David said in Psalm 27. Ultimately, the New Testament believer has the future goal of Christlikeness. The “prize” of such “pressing on” is the fulfillment of the goal – Christlikeness in heaven!

Later on, in the same chapter of Philippians, Paul tells the believer where his real home is:

“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.” Philippians 3:20-21

What a day believers have to look forward to – to meet Christ, receive a glorified body, and be made like Him! This is something we should be eagerly anticipating. John, in Revelation 22:20, shows us his anticipation for Christ’s return:

“He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming quickly.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.“

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2042 days ago Short URL Comments

Reflections

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