"Quietly finding my way in this new phase of life. (laugh? I know how to be quiet when I need to be.) Throughout life we are always becoming." my tweet March 3, 2012

The LORD Leads

About 14 months ago I was introduced to Tullian Tchividjian and I have been listening to his sermons and reading his blog ever since. Currently he is preaching through Galatians and he has entitled the series "Free at last." The year of 2011 had been a year of the Refiner's FIRE and like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, I am so grateful to have Jesus right there with me and we are still in the heat of the fire into the first part of 2012.

In part 4 of this current series Tullian starts off with a story of his experience and his desire to be justified and validated. The comforting thing is that whether we are aware of it or not, we all want it. When we go looking for it from people we are in trouble, we will be disappointed but if we are able to in the midst of this disappointment realize that we have been justified and validated by Jesus Christ, we are free! Jesus has already done for us what we could never do for ourselves or one another.

So what is someone like me to do? Embrace the grace of God that has been poured out upon be live in it and do my best to let it flow out of me and onto those who I have the privilege to encounter. Go to the back and not be concerned with myself.

The other thing that is required is to die. A friend of mine started blogging in 2011 and she is a hoot. On her blog she has a menu item called "How to die to self" and I have pasted in an excerpt from that particular post. It is right where I want to be and the LORD is easing me in. A slow and sometimes painful death but the kind that gives life.

~ Another step in the death of self is to seek in everything to be child-like, and extremely simple in our manners, words, dress, tastes, and interior experiences. Self naturally feeds on complexity and things grand and large and loud. Christ is the very embodiment of divine and eternal simplicity. The deeper we sink into the Christ-life, the more we become disappointing to the people. Our learning or talents will not show off to such fine advantage. We talk less. We live more quietly and interiorly. Our labors are less ostentatious. We do more hard fighting with fewer dress-parades. We bring things to pass through prayers and faith in God more than by outward showy methods. We love to live like God, a profound hidden life, in which people think we don’t amount to very much. This is one of the tests of sinking out of self. To read the full article How to Die to Self

Treasures in my hands

In every room of our home someone has a book going Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott in the bathroom,

Bible wherever I last read it, night stand, kitchen table, on the couch, in my bag

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry on the night stand along with those books that want to be read.

The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges read and waiting to be blogged about

Note to Self by Joe Thorn on the Kindle

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs keeping company with my Bible

A Harmony of the Gospels

To be edited at a later date. Just wanted to post on Leap Day.

The Drafts

(this post is from emails never sent sitting in the drafts with some decent quotes)

This was just fun and hopefully encouraging to those of you who read my blog regularly. Who knows maybe people will comment? In all seriousness I welcome conversation here. The two most popular ways that I know that I actually have readers, is 1 I have a counter on the blog and 2 people tell me in person. It would be fun to hear from some of you via the comment section.

Have a wonderful day! And thanks for reading.

"What we must do is to stop regarding unpleasant or unexpected things as interruptions of real life. The truth is that interruptions are real life, the real life that God sends us day by day. What we call our real life is but a phantom of our imagination." C.S. Lewis

If you debate for a second when God has spoken, it is all up. Never begin to say - "Well, I wonder if He did speak?" Be reckless immediately, fling it all out on Him. You do not know when His voice will come, but whenever the realization of God comes in the faintest way imaginable, recklessly abandon. It is only by abandon that you recognize Him You will only realize His voice more clearly by recklessness. Oswald Chambers

Dan just said to Katie, "I question whether Mr and Mrs Mort are really human, I think they are angels."

"There are people in AA that are not professing Christians that are more dependent on God's grace, more surrendered to God in a general sense, believe more in letting God be God in all circumstances, more grateful to be alive than a lot of Christians that I have met." CM

The Love of Christ

In my good New England second language (sarcasm) I want to start by saying, "Well, if you are a Baptist....."

I think the most important think to remember is to stay calm. Don't freak out. (no idea what I was responding to here. More than likely, addressing mothers unwilling to face the messiness of their adult children finding there way in this world.)

"A new government that tries to erase history so that they can capitalize on their power." source unknown (to me)

"Anyone God uses significantly is always deeply wounded . . . Jesus will look us over not for medals, diplomas, or honors, but for scars." Again unknown by me (feel free to fill us in and leave a comment)

"When I was coming to Christ, I thought I was doing it all myself, and though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had no idea the Lord was seeking me. I do not think the young convert is at first aware of this. I can recall the very day and hour when first I received those truths in my own soul - when they were as John Bunyan says, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron; and I can recollect how I felt that I had grown all of a sudden from a babe into a man - that I had made progress in scriptural knowledge, through having found, once for all, the clue to the truth of God ... I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was the Author of my faith, and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant confession, I ascribe my change wholly to God." (Autobiography: 1, The Early Years, Banner of Truth, p. 164-165) Spurgeon

"Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do. Every one lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his schemes will not fail. They hear indeed that there are but few saved, and that the greater part of men that have died heretofore are gone to hell; but each one imagines that he lays out matters better for his own escape than others have done. He does not intend to come to that place of torment; he says within himself, that he intends to take effectual care, and to order matters so for himself as not to fail." Jonathan Edwards

From the Gospel Coalition

Counting Sheep?

Time to be still

What does it mean to wait? To find quite in the midst of life's storms? To take refuge in the One you can not see, feel or touch? To know that the Unseen Hand is holding you in the very palm of His Hand? To trust that you are never alone?

People often comment on the Skin that I have on my laptop. Well, I got it from Gelaskins check them out! Below is their latest product but they have them for most of your mobile devices.

GelaSkins presents The HardCase for iPhone! Does this email look weird? No worries, click here to give it a gander on the web.

POSSIBLY MOVING MY BLOG

STAY TUNED

Pilgrims on an eternal journey

Some of my friends have been in their same home church for all of their Christian walk and others have changed churches for one reason or another and some of us have moved and been a part of a number of church families. In late 2011 Dan and I became members of Bethlehem Bible Church (BBC) in West Boylston, MA.

Making a decision to become a part of a local body of believers is not a decision that Dan and I took lightly. For myself, I really thought hard and long, prayed, read, researched and asked questions. As with any organization, there will be some things that we do not agree with but on the essentials we do agree. And yes, a local body of believers is both a church family and an organization. There may be a number of essentials that I could go through but for this blog post I will just talk about two: 1. The Love of Christ as demonstrated through the people and 2. The High view of God communicated by the expositional preaching of God's Word.

The demonstration of love that personally gave me the desire to become a part of BBC was the process of "church discipline." Some of my readers may think, "that is archaic" well let me explain. It was the pursuing of a dear one who was walking away from her family and the family of God reached out to her and with tears, prayers and open arms encouraged her to return and make things right. BBC as a church family had to release her, let her go, and turn her over to the LORD, with the commitment to pray that she will at sometime return to the LORD. Where else in the world do people love each other enough to say you are going the wrong way, come back, we love you, we know that life is hard? And when the person says, thanks but no thanks, those who love their dear one love her enough to let her go. Isn't this what we do as parents? Even with our adult children? Sometimes it is not clear and things get messy and we are willing to walk through the mess with one another. Is this not loving? It IS! Of course, there are many other acts of love that the dear ones at BBC do for one another, their neighbors, friends and strangers....listening, praying, making meals, helping one another move, visiting, etc. all types of family activities that demonstrate a love for one another. This is motivated by the Greatest LOVER of ALL, Jesus Christ, the LORD Most High. One other way that these dear folks love is through the preaching, teaching and heralding of God's Word. This last act leads me to the second point, which is having a High view of God through expositional preaching.

(for those unfamiliar with the term "expositional preaching" here is a good definition -Expository preaching involves the exposition, or comprehensive explanation, of the Scripture; that is, expository preaching presents the meaning and intent of a biblical text, providing commentary and examples to make the passage clear and understandable. from http://www.gotquestions.org/expository-preaching.html)

Today this very day Mike Abendroth preached about Jesus from the Gospel of Mark from Mark 1;1, 4;35-41, 6;45-52. "So yeah, he preached about Jesus. You are a Christian who else is he going to preach about?" Some might think. Today exposition of the text was with the sole purpose of again being amazed by the GOD-Man, Jesus Christ. Today, I was asked through the preaching of the Word to look up to the One who is called the Christ and see Him High and Lifted up by the lowly preacher who is a sinner just like me. He is so unlike us, yet was willing to leave His home in glory to become human like you and me.

As was said today, there does need to be more preaching on Jesus Christ so that our response is to behold the LORD and believe that Jesus is who He said he was and what the Holy Scriptures say about Him. There is plenty of preaching in today's American churches of what I would call, man-centered preaching. It is so appealing to the flesh. A "look what the Son of God has given to us" attitude instead of realizing how Great and Awesome is our GOD. It is such a subtle and fine line, because Jesus has done great things and continues to do things through the lives of His children. The point is for this Christian, I need to have a Higher view of God than I do of man. There are probably many who preach and live with too high a view of man who hold up God higher than man but it is most likely coupled with too high of a view of man. So instead of God being exalted, the gifts given to man from God are given more attention and the gifts are often manifested through man therefore man becomes the central focus of the preaching. It is the "what does this passage mean to me?" instead of "what is God saying in the passage?"

What is the crux of "having a High View of God in relations to man?" In order to get there we need to talk about holiness. A subject that I am not very comfortable writing or talking about. This past year, I took a class on growing in personal holiness A woman in Christ, currently I am finishing The Pursuit of Holiness and I have had a number of conversations with a couple of trusted friends about the topic. I believe a look at God being Holy is required in order for man to have a proper perspective. When I am able to see that the God who saved me is completely HOLY, perfect, all together pure, then I begin to understand why Peter said to Jesus "Depart from me for I am sinful man." When we find ourselves in the presence of our Holy God, our eyes are opened in that type of light to the darkness of our sin and like the angels of Revelation we go and hide our faces. Yes, the beauty, the majesty, the glory is too much for us and we cry out holy, holy, holy is the LORD God Almighty.

It is through the Light of God's Word which some call The Holy Bible that we are able to recognize that we are sinners and in the world there is no hope for us. The good news is not a cover up of the bad news. To simply say I am free in Christ without remember what HE has freed us from can be a dangerous place. A place where I am in danger of becoming puffed up. With "I am God's child and I am free to do whatever I want to do and be whatever I want to be because I am free," upon my lips and forgetting what it is that I have been freed from and therefore lacking gratitude for this precious freedom. Before I come to a resolution for this line of thinking, I must say the following. The first word about every human being is that each one is created in the image of the triune God. We are image bearers, having a likeness of our Creator. How Awesome, how humbling! The next word is that because of Adam's sin, we were born in iniquity and conceived in sin. This is very bad news. If we hope for eternal life with the Holy One then we need to be cleansed of our sins and made holy. Through the blood of Jesus Christ we are made holy, cleansed from all our sins. Jesus says COME! He will wash you and make you as white as the new fallen snow and in Him you will be made holy and righteous in order to be in the presence of This HOLY God, Creator of the Universe, Lord of Heaven and Earth. In the remembrance of what we have been freed from - SIN and DEATH, it is in this place that I am still learning to live in gratitude for the love, grace, mercy, forgiveness and this freedom from sin and death that I can see my place with the Holy One is given to me freely as a gift from the Righteous One, the LORD Jesus Christ delivering me from my sin. This is not just good news, it is GREAT News!