Monday, March 19, 2012

Good Monday Morning Girls,
Below is a post from John Piper's Website desiringgod.com.  It is a blog post from Piper.  It describes exactly where I am walking lately which is fragile, tired and overwhelmed.  I read this this morning and it was exactly the prod I needed to press into God and His words, a little deeper and a little longer.  How blessed we all are to have His words that are there in times of victory and times of defeat.  I hope this helps and encourages you also. Love you.
Pressing On
Carrie
John Piper-
There are mornings when I wake up feeling fragile. Vulnerable. It’s often vague. No single threat. No one weakness. Just an amorphous sense that something is going to go wrong and I will be responsible. It’s usually after a lot of criticism. Lots of expectations that have deadlines and that seem too big and too many.
As I look back over about 50 years of such periodic mornings, I am amazed how the Lord Jesus has preserved my life. And my ministry. The temptation to run away from the stress has never won out — not yet anyway. This is amazing. I worship him for it.
How has he done this? By desperate prayer and particular promises. I agree with Spurgeon: I love the “I wills” and the “I shalls” of God.
Instead of letting me sink into a paralysis of fear, or run to a mirage of greener grass, he has awakened a cry for help and then answered with a concrete promise.
Here’s an example. This is recent. I woke up feeling emotionally fragile. Weak. Vulnerable. I prayed: “Lord help me. I’m not even sure how to pray.”
An hour later I was reading in Zechariah, seeking the help I had cried out for. It came. The prophet heard great news from an angel about Jerusalem:
Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory in her midst. (Zechariah 2:4–5)
There will be such prosperity and growth for the people of God that Jerusalem will not be able to be walled in any more. “The multitude of people and livestock” will be so many that Jerusalem will be like many villages spreading out across the land without walls.
But walls are necessary! They are the security against lawless hordes and enemy armies. Villages are fragile, weak, vulnerable. Prosperity is nice, but what about protection?
To which God says in Zechariah 2:5, “I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord.” Yes. That’s it. That is the promise. The “I will” of God. That is what I need. And if it is true for the vulnerable villages of Jerusalem, it is true for me a child of God. God will be a “wall of fire all around me.” Yes. He will. He has been. And he will be.
And it gets better. Inside that fiery wall of protection he says, “And I will be the glory in her midst.” God is never content to give us the protection of his fire; he will give us pleasure of his presence.
This was sweet to me. This carried me for days. I took this with me to the pulpit. I took it with me to family gatherings. I took it to staff meetings. I took it to phone calls and emails.
This has been my deliverance every time since I was first marking my King James Bible at age 15. God has rescued me with cries for help and concrete promises. This time he said: “I will be to her a wall of fire all around, and I will be the glory in her midst.”
Cry out to him. Then ransack the Bible for his appointed promise. We are fragile. But he is not.
________
Recent posts from John Piper —

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Happy Hump Day, All!!
I am gonna jump right to the point today with something that first God convicted Terry and I about and since has burned in my soul.  I just had to share my thoughts.  The sin of grumbling.  Grumbling.  Big deal, right? Very big deal.  Especially to a Holy God.  The Old Testament records the "grumbling of the Israelites" and God's response to them.  He sent Moses, manna, quail, and dry land.  Yet, still they muttered in discontent.  It was too hot, too cold.  It was too lonely, too many people, not my kind of people.  It was too hard, too boring.  On and on they bellyached, griped, grouched, groused, growled and grumped.  "Oh get it together you babies", we scream at our Bibles on our laps.  Flipping the pages, but not before we roll our eyes at their lack of trust, faith and love in a caring Father, a huge God, an awesome Provider.  We want to go to something more relevant.  Something more now.  Something that God would want to say to the "church" to "me".  But wait, over and over Christ and the New Testament speak of instructions against not murmuring.  Jesus calls out His disciples in John 6:16 for grumbling.  Can you imagine being reprimanded by Jesus?  Then in Phil 2:14 Paul says to "do all things without grumbling or disputing"  Another verse even goes so far to say to "Show hospitality to one another with out grumbling" 1 Peter 4:9.  Could Christ be telling US not to grumble??  "I don't grumble Lord"  "Besides, if you had given me manna from Heaven I never would have grumbled"  "If you had parted the Red Sea right in front of me, I would never have grumbled"  "All you gave me was.....eternal life, pardon from sins....Besides Lord you don't know my mother in law, my mom, my co-workers, my friends, my husband, my kids, my church......you would grumble too Lord."   Ooops, girls dare I say we have a grumbling problem.  So what is a chick to do??  I have come up with only one solution and it is to SHUT UP!  This week I was so tempted to blast off on some different things in the media that had ruffled my feathers, offended my convictions and just really ticked me off.  I thought about several ways and places I could go about letting my feelings be heard.  I wanted to complain of unfairness to my faith.  A while ago I was privy to a conversation where someone blasted someone for having lots of kids.  I wanted to shout that it was none of their business.  I also had the blessing of being around some "dear Christian ladies"  who belittled in a nice way what I do everyday.  I wanted to spit back that what I was doing was indeed important!  Thankfully, and O so gratefully my Jesus held my tongue.  To my soul He spoke "will these people be won by your tongue lashings?"  The answer was a resounding "No, Father"  How then will a scandalous media, carnal Christians, and a lost world be won?  Jesus says by our love, by our actions.  Yes I suppose there is a time when a holy anger spurs us to say what needs to be said.  That was certainly the point of the prophet of Old Testament days.  But I couldn't help but wonder could my community, my world be changed by them watching me show Christ's love.  What does this look like?  Well for me it is staying home on one income, it is taking my kids to the grocery store with me and not grumbling. It is adopting 1, 2, or however many children from another race.  It is working to stay head over heels in love with my husband.  It is cooking meals for a couple in need of encouragement. It is loving the hard to love.  It is giving till I am spent physically and spiritually. That is weird.  That will get the "church" noticed.  Not our programs, not our rules.  Not our standards and convictions shouted at them.  But faith fleshed out right before there very eyes!!  I just want to encourage you girls the way Christ has shown me to SHUT-UP! :)  To live Christ-like loudly.  Like real loud.  Like let your life scream...I LOVE JESUS!!!!  From the words of Ron Hutchraft   to face the hypocrisy between our spiritual image and our private (or public) trash talk.  This way is so much harder.  It is easier to talk.  To yammer.  But Christ calls for hard.  Do hard with me.  Go on, Shut up!
Pressing on,
Carrie