I haven't visited this blog in several years. We now live in Garland having left the Big Spring area. Mother died last Sept. We are watching the world change. I'm no longer in the TXSG. We have a grandson named Ian Patrick. What a joy.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the willingness to give up ones right for justice, revenge, or retribution of any wrong done.

Prayer for the day
Lord, Give me joy in the task you have laid out for me to do today.

Finding God's Will

FINDING GOD’S WILL

For the person that wishes to obey God and find his purpose, knowing God’s will is central to life’s pilgrimage. How does one find out what God’s will is for him or herself?

The first task in finding God’s will is to live in his will as far as you know and can. This means living according to the basic principles that God has laid out for us. Jesus answered the question of the Young rich lawyer as he asked ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus asked him if he kept the commandments. The basic principles of right wrong do not go away. The person who actively and intentionally seeks to disobey God’s law is living outside of God’s will. They are not listening to God. Jacob is again an example of one who lived so much out of gods will that he found God only in the desert when he was not distracted by his material stuff, his family, or anything else. He found himself alone with God. To find God’s will you often need to find yourself alone with God. Or to be at “the end of your rope” or “hit bottom” and God finds you.

Most of us who are regular church going types of Christians know the basics of God will. We do Gods will in being honest treating others. It really is a help in finding God’s will to do as much of it as you know trusting God to inspire you with the next step in his will. I use the word inspire thinking of the Holy Spirit of God.

The question is then “What is his specific plan and will for my life?” It is an important subject witnessed by the success of such material as The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. To trust that God has a will for you is indeed an act of faith. You may not find out his will until you are in the middle of the task or calling. Moses was in God will long before he saw the burning bush. Paul was training all his life to do God’s will though he was in direct rebellion and persecution of the church. The point of this is that God may be busy working in your life before you recognize it. Many of the persons in the scripture made serious mistakes and committed serious sins against God’s will, but God is undeterred in moving forward his purposes.

God’s will is often in the journey and the process of life as well as the goal.

The Holy Spirit will direct and show his will to those who seek it.

Paintings

The paintings in the photo are not all mine. Just the two floral painting to my right.

Praise unto the Lord

I cam across a really uncompromising web site of believe music. http://www.nocompromisemusic.org/

FAITH

FAITH

One cannot talk about the wilderness without thinking about faith. The Children of Israel had a failure of faith. That failure caused them to stay in the wilderness for another forty years so that none of the original group was able to enter the Promised Land. What is the point of faith? With out suffering there would be no need for faith. If everything made sense we believe we would have no need for faith.

We often want to make sense of suffering. It is the existential “Why am I going through this?” We are deluded in thinking that to know why our suffering would in some manner ease. We look for meaning in the suffering of ourselves or loved ones. That is the “Why?” An accident that kills a family or a 9/11 which is a national tragedy demonstrates to us our mortality. When innocent person is killed or dies with a painful illness we want to make sense of that suffering. Suffering seems meaningless to us in that we want our lives to have value meaning and purpose. Therefore we seek to find meaning suffering and death as well as life. In grief then one most often ask God or the Preacher or their own heart “Why did this happen?”

All of our logical and rational thinking never quite satisfies to answer such existential questions. The crying out “Oh why?” is not a rational question but a heart felt pray like (and often really a prayer) utterance that calls for a different sort of answer. No set of facts, enough information, theoretical propositions, or degrees of knowledge, or great ideas can answer to the “why’ of pain and suffering. It is the Job moment of saying “I wish I had never been I born?” Job 3:1-3.

It is in faith that we find the answers to the really great “Whys” of life... Jesus said to the disciples in the fishing boat after he had stilled the storm. “Where is your faith?”

Hebrew 11:1 Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. The Scripture tells the way to accept Jesus is through faith. That is because again the rational understanding as important as it is not able to understand what is beyond understanding. It is through faith that we accept and understand Jesus. It is through faith that we can find meaning in the incomprehensible such as suffering.