Joy and Strength (Christian life and music)

If you wait until you feel like obeying God, you never will. The feelings follow the obedience. This modus operandi works when we obey the Lord about anything. Feelings have little to do with obeying Jesus.  The majority of God's people gave in to their "feelings" of fear and dread at the end of wandering in the desert for 40 years.  Finally they could see the end of their long journey!  All they had to do was cross over into the Promised Land and they would receive all that God had promised them. What held them back?  Fear.   There are giants in the land! They chose to focus on what could go wrong, what may or may not happen if they entered in - those giants were huge!  What if they killed us?  What if they enslaved us?  They must have painted all the worst-case scenarios and they let those "what ifs" keep them from moving forward into the land of plenty - the land flowing with milk and honey.  Joshua and Caleb saw things differently....

I see it in the faces of those around me everywhere I go - even the masks can't hide it. People have been broken by the events of the past eighteen months.  They are worn out.  Humbled. How can this be good? When we reach the end of ourselves, where do we turn?  I am in the habit of turning to Jesus as the Source of my strength.  His strength remains the same during a pandemic.  Always. But for those who do not have the Lord, where do they go?  Stripped of all social gatherings, we were left to ourselves and those we live with.  If we relied on the bottle before, we turned to it even more. If we relied on reasoning and figuring out, we were stumped.  How do you figure out a pandemic, all of its ramifications, or its end date? Frankly I don't know how people do life without  the Lord.  We weren't built to "do life" apart from God. We were created to live in communion with our Creator.  But the damage from the fall left us (wrongly) t...

This morning, during my quiet time, I was thinking about how I put the Lord first.  My internal dialogue went something like this. Lord, I put You before my husband.  I felt the Spirit in agreement. Lord, I put You before family.  I felt the Spirit's approval in this, too. Lord, I put You before self.  Crickets. That is where the Spirit stopped me short.  Not so much agreement there. Oh, Lord.  How do I do this?  I do not want to put myself before You!  Help! I felt the Spirit speaking to my heart: You do this every time you don't trust Me about something or someone.  You put your human reasoning first instead of My Omniscience about a person or situation.  This, My beloved is nothing but pride. Ouch.  The deadliest of all sins.  And yet I know the Lord has humbled me through the many years I have known Him - and I let Him humble me. So is pride something we wrestle with as long as we're in this body?  And how do we even k...

Poor Job.  That is typically the first thought we have when we think of Old Testament Job. Even those most ignorant of the Bible have most likely heard of Job somewhere along the way.  They say things like, "She has the patience of Job." When we say patience, we think that we are waiting a long time for something. Patience actually means long-suffering.  And Job, above all, is the poster child for suffering. But if you know the whole story, you know that patience and suffering are not Job's entire story. And neither is suffering the whole picture for you, for me. No matter what we have been through or are going through, suffering does not have the final word.   Like Job, God can restore anything and anyone to us at His command.  God can change our story for the better.  How?  Because He is God. There was nothing Job could do to stop the calamities and tragedies that came upon him. He was helpless in that regard. Yet he continued to praise God....

 My Scripture song on Philippians  2:14-16.

A choir somewhere in the midwest recorded my song, "Psalm 145" years ago.  This was the result. It was out of my hands.  I could mark the sheet music with the tempo that I wanted it performed, but the choir director still took it at a faster tempo than I had written it. It was out of my hands. So much of what we create is out of our hands, isn't it?   As I learn to let go more, I find that the "tempos" of life may take on a speed, or slowness, that I am not happy with.  And that's ok. The song was still recorded.  The song still blessed those who heard it and is still blessing worshipers today.  The powerful lyrics based on David's Psalm are still as powerful.   The main thing is, the song is in God's hands.  How do I know?  Well, everything and everyone is.  But also, because I wrote it for Him, so I know He is taking good care of it - wherever it goes, whomever may hear it.   So when we let go and things don't turn ...

Whoa.  Wait a minute, you might be thinking.  How could this mess I am going through be a blessing ? Let us review, dear friends!   Here's a short list of how trials formed the saints of Scripture: - Daniel experienced firsthand God's supernatural power in protecting him from the voracious lions - Jesus was in  the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (and He is with us in our "fiery furnace!") - God protected David from Saul's murderous plans again and again, bringing him into his destiny as King - Job was doubly blessed - more than he had been - after he lost everyone and everything in life - Paul's letters to the churches are the most-quoted Scripture of all time; he wrote them from a prison cell - Jonah needed to learn that God's grace is for all - even for those he couldn't stand; he finally learned obedience - Joseph was left for dead by his jealous siblings; he ended up ruling over them eventually - Jesus endured severe hunger and ...