Ramble

It’s interesting because God has a tendency to hide his jewels and gold and depths of the Earth in Fire and dirt. Can you find gold when you see it?

It’s interesting to do a study on prayer. Christ commands us to pray for our enemies. A common bumper sticker in our area says prayer is our greatest Force against evil, but I would disagree with that. Agape love is the greatest Force against evil. The kind of love that people can hate, torture, and kill you, but when we did that to jesus, he never stopped loving us. We spit on him we blasphemed, at the cross he cried out father forgive them because they do not know what they’re doing. He prayed for Pharisees, for the prostitute Mary Magdalene, for the woman at the well who had had five husbands and was living with a man who is not her husband, amazingly enough he did not go into her City and make sure that laws were being passed that were more in line with the law of Moses about divorce and sexual immorality, no he offered her himself, he offered her the Water of Life freely because she was thirsty for a love that nobody else would give. We can have faith to move mountains 1st Corinthians 13 but if we do not have love it is nothing and we gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. We could repeat that a few times to see if we get that, it is not self-seeking. It does not Delight in evil but it rejoices with the truth. And then the Bible also says and someone will have to look it up I’m too tired, that’s a wisdom that comes from above is first of all peaceful, it is gentle, and yet sometimes we think we are so smart when we tell everybody the things they’re doing wrong and don’t lift one finger to help them. Proverbs 6 says pride is an Abomination to God as his lies. And you are correct, all too often we do sometimes pray, but when we close the door of our hearts and refuse to listen to what God has to say to us, if you will his prayers and his will for us and his desire for how we live our lives, it’s not that God doesn’t want to bless us, but that same door that we’ve closed to bless others is the same door that is closed to receive from God. Time. Energy. Money. Resources. That is what is our actual worship. Our worship is not what we do on Sundays in church, it is how we live our lives. God’s word says delight yourself in the Lord he will give you the desires of your heart. But we always have to come to him because he’s the source of all good things. We can’t come in Pride because it says that God is far from the proud. And that is really counterculture. I met a man in a grocery store that looked very stressed as he was talking on the phone and when he was finished I was concerned for him and I walked up and asked him if everything was okay. It was just a regular grocery store but he had a very nice business suit on. Oh he was just beyond frustrated because the gentleman on the other side of the line was demanding that he closed the 5 million deal right then and there in the grocery store. And so his many words over 10 or 15 minutes with some frustration with him closing the deal and apparently he succeeded and he did it. And I said well that is a great blessing that God blessed you with that. And he sort of smiled and said well I believe God blesses those who bless themselves. A common quote. Not one that is actually in the bible. Anywhere. Actually the word of God says he takes care of the Lilies of the Field in the parts of the air and that the Kingdom of Heaven is to those who are like little bitty children. And my response was well thank God and I sort of smiled back, he also takes care of the Lilies of the Field and the birds of the air, or I would be homeless. And that’s a reality anybody who knows me knows I have serious physical and mental health issues over the past years but for the grace of God and the love of many people the most ly over the past years my husband, I am nurtured, protected and cared for and when I have years of being stuck in bed or days of not being able to get out of a chair I can worship. I can worship the Living God who created us and from whom all the good things come and I can pray for many things in many people. And I am so very blessed and you are correct often when we close the door to listening to God’s word and doing what he clearly says, that same door we close keeps us from receiving of the many blessings God wants us to receive. Greed in the Bible is as damnable a sin as murder and pride and lies are an Abomination before the Lord God. But if we look in the mirror and use the Bible honestly as the measuring line, we would have to be like Isaiah and cry out Woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among the people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the Living God. I don’t believe we are good. I believe God is good. And it’s still frustrates me because people believe so many lies. They meet me and they say oh well you’re just a good person, and no matter how much I tell them that very simply is not true just ask my kids, people don’t listen. I am not a good person and one day I want to write a book of confessions. But the reason people see peace and joy in me and freedom from guilt and shame and the reason that I have Grace to be able to do kind and beautiful things at times is because Jesus really does Resurrect The Dead and he really does save Wicked people. So if we’re wanting anything from God we have to come like little children and admit we don’t have anything to give. The Samaritan woman at the well was a Samaritan and a woman. Jewish law and custom forbade the rabbi Jesus to speak either to Samaritans or women. Jesus did not abide by men’s laws but by God’s laws. And his first communication, breaking two laws of his culture, was to ask her for a drink of water. What humility, what Grace and love. He needed something that she had. She was shocked that he would even talk to her, and then he out of respect for The Godly Authority set from the beginning at Genesis asked her to call her husband, because it was not appropriate for him to talk to a married woman about things of the faith but he respected The Godly male Authority and asked her to get her husband. And she said I have no husband. And he said what you said is true you’ve had five husbands and the man you are living with now is not your husband. You see these things were keeping her from God. Adultery was punishable by Death. She was at the well alone for a reason. Women never went to the well alone in that generation they went in a group. It was a social event and a matter of safety. But she was rejected by her people in her culture. But she was not rejected by the Living God or by Jesus Christ. It’s funny because we want so many things. We are the kings and queens of this world. We are the richest I’m sure in the millennium. We have three meals a day and hot running water. Most of humanity probably could not speak of such wealth over the course of 5,000 years. Time. Energy. Money. Resources. As the kings and queens of this world, are we listening to God’s cry for the poor and the oppressed? Or are we bound, the current slave drivers and slaves in our modern world, by our addictions to whatever is shoved in front of us by the media and advertising, because Humanity wasn’t meant to say no quite so many times. There was only one choice in the garden to be obedient to God. And he warned that if you choose to eat from the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil we will surely die. This is my opinion here no more no less, but when I perceive humanity and are almost complete inability to make wise choices, I believe we were meant to be like sponges soaking in the goodness of God in Eden, not making thousands of choices a day of what is right and what is wrong. God in his Mercy hit the reset button and send his son to pay the punishment of our sin. And once again there is just one tree, but this tree is a cross. Just one decision, do we love God do we believe him are we willing to receive him and to say yes to what he has done for us, opening the doors of righteousness through this Blood of his only son. Giving us the gift of righteousness when we could not earn it ourselves. I am not good. Not of myself, I promise you there is nothing good in me, but at the point Jesus Christ Has Come Into My Life taking the death that I deserved and giving me new life, he is good. If we are in obedience to God, everything we have need of, because he is everything we need, is provided. If we are in obedience to God we allow the greed to die. Read sometimes is because people don’t trust that there’s going to be enough for tomorrow, but we can give freely today because our tomorrow is not based on our 401k but if we have been obedient to Christ and to God actually doing what Jesus Christ said not just reading it and quoting it, if we give to the one who asks and we lend freely without charging interest to anybody who asks us when it is in our power to do so, there is much blessing in emptying oneself not so that we can be rich, the Apostle Paul warns against that mentality, but rather that we can be generous. Then enter into the suffering of this world and be the hands and feet of Jesus. Hearing his cry for the poor and the oppressed. God never commanded us to be comfortable. The Lord Jesus Christ never commanded us to be complacent. No, he commanded us to love and then he showed us what that looked like. Forgiving people who hate you. I had one preacher who used to say if somebody steals your carpet buy them a vacuum. Yes. Give.

Give with wisdom. Give by the Holy Spirit. But give to those who ask of you. Do not give your pearls to swine because they’ll just trample on them and then come attack you. So we are to have wisdom when we give. But give and it shall be given to you press down shaken together and running over will men pour into your bosom. It’s crazy because it’s all true. But the motive has to come from Christ and be love. And the only way we can receive that love is to get it from him from the source. He commands us to wash each other’s feet. He commands us to eat his body and his blood or else we do not have life within us. He commanded us to baptize in the name of the father Son and the Holy Spirit teaching the people to obey all that he had commanded. I think we miss those things sometimes. It’s sort of like you get to sit down in a fancy restaurant with a seven course meal of steak and all sorts of amazing things, and every course you praise the amazingness and beauty of the meal, but if we are not acting on the word of God, it is like we have not taken one bite and then we wonder why we’re hungry and why don’t we have what we need for life? Eat, child. Eat. The father has provided so many good things. Slow down sit down and eat. Read your Bible. Turn off the TV or the video games prioritize prayer and worship. It is not easy to do it once and you cannot do it unless you ask God for the power to do it. We live in a strange generation we demand people give up their sex drives and orientation but we can’t give up our Starbucks and video games in obedience to God to take care of the poor…🤷‍♀️🙏 strong words, but all of God’s word is true. Sorry it’s after midnight and I have to go drive a U-Haul in 2 hours and whenever I get really tired and stressed I get over talkative it’s a flaw. Somewhere in the Bible it says not to talk too much. God’s still working on me on that. I always got that in school you know? Talks too much. Talks too much. Sigh. Thank God for the cross. But we have got to take seriously what is written. It’s never just about us, beloved it’s never just about us it’s about all the people we’re supposed to be reaching for Christ that have been enduring so much pain and suffering. He Longs for them to come to him for safety to be delivered and set free and healed. But it will cost. When we follow Jesus, there is suffering. But that suffering when we follow Christ is like the suffering of child labor and 9 months and then you give birth and you don’t even remember the suffering for the joy of the child you’re holding in your arms. But the suffering of the world, there’s no reward there is only destruction and death. We can follow the world and live for the moment and for what feels and seems good now and just choose it suffering and then that’s it it’s over. Or we can follow Christ into the suffering of this world, and we can do the hands and feet of Jesus wherever we go but when we are in Christ and we suffer and die, I can promise you he resurrects the Dead. In my life more times than I can count. You can suffer depression for 40 years and not want to live and be suicidal off and on for a long time but when you’re in Jesus and when Jesus is your lord and your heart is following him even though you think it’s not going to ever change, God steps in. And you worship like job worshiped when he lost everything. And you can know without a shadow of a doubt, there will be a day if you have worshiped God in the midst of your suffering that you will look back and have no regrets. You will look back and you will say I cried out to God to take me out of the fire over and over and over again but now I can look back and see that he strengthened me to walk through the flames so that now they do not harm me or burn me and I can go in and I can drag others out.

Okay comment if you want me to delete this. I suppose there’s worse things I could be rambling. I promise I’m not drunk just dead tired. Maybe it’s receiving Christ’s truth first. Sometimes we can’t give because we’re so afraid. But it’s all true beloved it’s all true. You really truly in this 3D World were worth dying for. God really did send his son to die for you. The cross is enough. It is finished. God’s peace