Christian Holiness Journal

01/19/2022

01/13/2022

My flesh and my heart fail;
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
- Psalm 73:26 NKJV

Have you ever felt like your heart was failing, like you are absolutely defeated? Have you ever felt you cannot continue, that if you go one more hour or one more day that you will die? Have you ever felt that death might be preferable? This is what the psalmist felt.

In faith, the psalmist proclaims God gives his heart strength. God is his reason to go on.

That God gives strength to our hearts is just the half of it. The psalmist continues, God, is also his “portion forever.”

Unfortunately, the term “portion” means very little to us today. To the psalmist, a Jew who lived about 3,000 years ago, “portion” has great meaning.

The psalmist, you see, was Asaph, the director of music for Kings David and Solomon, and a Levite (a member of the tribe of Levi). When the Jews settled in the Promised Land, the Levites did not receive a portion of the lands. They, as priests and servants of God in the Temple (and, before that, the Tabernacle), were to fully rely on God, not material things - not wealth - for their subsistence. Where the other tribes received a portion of the land, the portion the descendants of Levi received was God, Himself.

God was the Levites portion, their inheritance (another term used in Scripture), and their only provider. God separated them from the other tribes of Judah. They were to be sanctified holy, separated from the common. They cared for God’s House, and He cared for them. He was there “all in all.”

He should be our “all in all.”

11/22/2021

Two things I request of You
(Deprive me not before I die):
Remove falsehood and lies far from me;
Give me neither poverty nor riches—
Feed me with the food allotted to me;
Lest I be full and deny You,
And say, “Who is the LORD?”
Or lest I be poor and steal,
And profane the name of my God.

Proverbs 30:7-9 NKJV

03/12/2021

Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I fear nothing. Behind me is the mountain that was my life. It was a beautiful climb, full of love, laughter, and adventure. Ahead is another mountain, and, though I cannot see its top, I know that it too will be a climb full of love, laughter, and adventure.

At the end of this valley lies the River Jordan and beyond it - at the base of the mountain - I see the most fertile and beautiful pasture lands. This is where my next adventure begins. I will cross the Jordan hand in hand with my Savior. I don’t know if He will part the waters or if we will walk atop the waters, but my heart soars in anticipation. For He is with me... through the valley, across the Jordan and up Mt Zion. I will not be afraid.

07/15/2020

Deliver me, O Lord, of any sin that enslaves my spirit, so that Your Spirit may freely work in me in the little time that remains.

06/30/2020

Love this from C. S. Lewis

05/26/2020

My sister just reminded me that when we pray for God to move mountains, we often wake up next to a shovel. We are, indeed the hands and feet of Christ. While God is still willing and able to perform miracles, we are often called to be the instruments of His miracles. Part of the reason that prayer is so valuable is that it calls to our minds the needs of those around us so we may then ponder and discuss with our Lord how we may help.

Ministering to those around us is only part of what it means to be the "hands and feet" of Christ. Can we forget that the hands and feet of our Savior were so cruelly pierced? As His hands and feet, we should be ready and willing to endure any persecution that comes our way with the same resolute surrender to the will of the Father with which Christ gave up His life.

The unfathomable pain of my sin -
His cross!
I can never begin to repay Him -
the cost.
Would I be called to suffer and to die -
He alone
He alone, I pray He be glorified...

05/16/2020

Father in heaven, is it too much that you reveal to us the mind of Christ? Or is it a prideful request? We wish to be humble children, servants, not prideful. Your servant Paul tells us that the mind of Christ is ours, yet it is something that many of us have pursued for years. We have, though, only obtained glimpses of His mind... and those - those little glimpses - Father, are overwhelming.

We pray that you reveal all that we may bear; show us His mind. Reveal to us His character. Show us His glory, Your Glory, that we - your iniquitous children - may mature and being glory your Name.
_______
1 Corinthians 2:6-16 NKJV -

However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

But as it is written:

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”

But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.

These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.

For “who has known the mind of the the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

05/13/2020

Three times in Joshua chapter 1 we find God telling the new leader “Do not be afraid.” In verse six, God says, “Be strong and courageous.” In verse seven He says, “Be strong and VERY courageous.” In verse nine, God reminds Joshua of His words and promises him, “I am with you wherever you go.”

How I would have loved to be Joshua, to hear the audible voice of God. Or any of those people from the Bible who heard the thunderous voice of the Lord, Moses, Isaiah, Daniel, or Saul on the road to Damascus.

There is an obvious reason God doesn’t speak that way to believers today. The reason is that God’s voice has changed. Seriously. It has. Where once it was loud enough to make the earth tremble, the clouds split, and mountains to catch fire, today His voice is still and small and found in our very souls. It is heard when we pray and read the Bible. It is heard when we fast, when we turn off the screens. God is heard when we sit at home under lockdown, when we are flat on our backs ill, and when those we love are in desperate need of help. The louder our world has gotten, the softer God speaks. Until the world began to shelter in place, His gentle voice was nearly drown out.

Listen. Turn off your electronics and listen. Is your Bible found in an app on your phone? Shut it off. Find the Bible in book form. It’s sitting on the bottom of an end table under magazines and newspapers. Take it to the table, or take it on the bed. Read it as you pray. You will hear God’s voice. We have a distinct advantage over Joshua. God lives in us; His Spirit directs our ways.

Where do you begin, you ask. How about Matthew 28. If you make it to the end of the chapter, you will hear the same promise that God made Joshua: “I am with you wherever you go.”

This time, though, it is Joshua making the promise, another Joshua (Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name, Yeshua, which we we have anglicized as Joshua). Who is Jesus speaking to here? His followers. You. And me.

Listen carefully for his voice and you will hear it: “I will never leave you or forsake you” (DT 31:6).

05/13/2020

In Isaiah, our Father promises a time will come when He will do a new thing. He will create roads that carry His People. He will form rivers that quench their thirst. The wilderness will be glad and the desert will rejoice for God’s people. The lame shall walk and leap and the mute will speak and sing. Parched ground will be filled with pools of living water. His name shall be exalted.

Some scholars say these verses speak of particular time in the future, the millennial reign. But does it not also speak to our hearts and lives, now? When we abide in Christ, we travel the road He has made. We drink of His living water. The desert of our once dry hearts blooms with life and give Him praise. Pools of water form that quench the thirst of every life we touch. We exalt His name.

Many of us, though, stop there; we skip right over the leaping lame and the singing mutes. We have seen so many charlatans who overzealously “name and claim” God’s healing that we no longer pray for healing. We fear so much looking like a charlatan that we have lost faith. We feel it is safer to not speak of healing. Safer if we just don’t believe.

Do we, though, tie God’s hands with our lack of faith? Do we harden our own hearts by declaring in our minds what God can do and cannot do? Cannot the God who breathed life into our nostrils also heal us?

When we approach God’s throne, we should approach it with the faith of a wide-eyed child crawling up onto the lap of her daddy. Like that child, we should expect that our Daddy - God our Father - will act in our best interest, and that sometimes means God performs miracles. The same God Who guides us on the straight roads, Who waters our lives with Living Water, Who healed our hearts of stone... that same God can heal also our bodies.