This morning I was reading from David Teems, one of my very favorite author’s devotional for the day, TO LOVE IS CHRIST. We Lilies had been comtemplating the wonder and incalculable goodness and wisdom of God and what He has done in just the past day or two, for us, not even to mention all through the years. His faithfulness to us is mind boggling considering the straits we get ourselves into at times. Yet His rescue is certain when we call upon Him and trust in Him.
David wrote this for today and it spoke to my heart. “Lord I have learned to trust so little in this world. I hold myself suspect to manipulate my world around me, to discern it accurately and to break it down to its more definable and recogognizable parts. Without YOU I am maddened with incertitude” and he goes on to write…”I am only beginning to walk a path of trust and altho I cannot say with certainty that I can trust (always) by reason of this mortality that doubts, I know I can TRUST YOU. You have made me kinsman, no less Your child. May innocence be in me to trust like YOUR CHILD.” And I love this part particularly, “which like an embossed coin may carry this oath, ‘IN GOD I TRUST’. May God be….your Coin of Exchange in this world of broken men.” Amen!
As we begin to really see and acknowledge God’s movement in our lives, His orchestration and arranging step which He has planned for us before the beginning of time, we are awed and humbled. When we trust & obey His His cues, He does wondrous things in our lives. He plays us like a lyre, a harp, a musical instrument of His compositions, an Orchestral Conductor, cueing each section of His orchestra for entrance and exit, for the coloring of muscial phrases, for the overature and untimately for the GRAND FINALE. Let us allow Him to be our Maestro and make beautiful music out of us.
Consider the lilies of the field… Matt 6:28
thedailylily.com 
Thankful hearts of trusting in the Lord; humbled souls awed by His majestic Being; trembling souls at undeserved compassion that He has for us; “Come ye thankful people, come.” Trust ye doubting people trust.
Every day is Thanksgiving Day when we trust and obey.
How wonderful to have God work in our lives. Sometimes it seems so incomprehensible. In our day to day work and life on this earth, God is working if only we look. I have seen Him take hold of the learning of students and take it to heights that amaze me. One day the students were reading a poem entitled “Lies”. Before another teacher and I could think, the students said “How come you park in a driveway and drive on a parkway.” Quickly two teachers were raising to capture the ideas that were flowing wildly through the classroom. A WOW Moment! We as teachers looked at each other and then pointed toward heaven declaring that he had done it all. Praise God – thank you. This is just one very small evidence of God’s wonderful workings.
If we watch with expectation, God’s wonderful movement of his hand will be seen moving from one WOW to another WOW!
When I think of Love is Christ, trusting Him, allowing Him movement in our lives, I am reminded that these are action words, tangible deeds, something others will see (or not see ) evidence of in our lives.
MG writes, “He plays us like a lyre, a harp, a musical instrument of His compositions,”.
I think I Corinthians 13:4-7 helps show me what musical notes others may ‘hear’ coming from us if we are in tune when He plays.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.”
True, Debi. Sara had asked, in response to Gary’s teaching on Sunday, to the effect….’what about you (or your Christian walk) would you desire that others follow your example, like Paul said to follow his as he followed Christ?’ I think your using the Love chapter from Corinthians is an answer that each of us as Christians would want to give. ..and an excellent response. That the agape’ love that IS God and His character, would be so evident and manifested in us that others would be drawn to that godly demeanor and would want to follow our example. Sometimes godly demeanor convicts another. When we see a godly repsonse in another person, a godly confidence of faith and reliance, a virtuous, fruitful life of integrity…we are convicted or convinced of a better way of conducting ourselves and our behavior, actions, deeds and most of all our attitudes.
And when we imitate the Christ -life , our God can then use us to conduct His orchestral symphony and our lives will be a song and a praise and a thanks to GOD.
MG, thank you for sharing ths. Many times when someone gets hurt they decide they will not go through the pain of this hurt again, so they put a wall up as a defense mechanise. They don’t get to close to others and they never trust anyone. I’ve seen this happen and have delt with this myself. It is hard to tear down the walls we so carefully built up. We can’t let this hinder us from moving forward and doing God’s will for our lives. God can help us with this. We are to have a child like heart. I love the…..IN GOD I TRUST.
Right, Wendy. To imitate Christ takes courage, trust and child-like faith. You mentioned that when someone is hurt by another they put ut a wall against gettng too involved again in a relationship, whether it is with family, loved one or a friend. Can you imagine our straits if Jesus did that to us? If every time one of His children missed the mark, chose something else over Him or just decided to break fellowship with Him because they didn’t want to obey the Word in some instance…if He threw up a wall of defense and wouldn’t forgive or allow us back into the fold even when we repent. OR: That old, “well I’ll forgive you but I ‘ll never forget” kind of attitude that keeps so many from His perfect will for our lives. In those issues we have to be like Jesus, forgive, forget and as you said above, ‘move forward’ toward our high calling. If we let that hold us back the enemy controls us and our spiritual fortitutde becomes contaminated or infected. But we must believe that the Righteous Judge of the universe will judge justly and we will be recompensed in HIS justice. We don’t have to worry that our hearts have been violated or wounded, hurt by the words and/or actions of another and not recompensed. Our Abba Father will take care of it in the judging times that belong to Him and Him alone. As David says in Ps. 56, “In God I trust…WHAT CAN MAN DO TO ME?”
My Bible’s cyclopedic index said that trust (to put one’s confidence in ) was not to be placed in weapons (Ps 44:6); wealth (Ps 49:6,7); leaders (Ps 146:3); humankind (Jer. 17:5); works (Jer. 48:7) or one’s own righteousness (Ezekial 33:13). Instead our trust should be placed in God’s name (Ps 33:21); God’s word (Ps 119:420) and in Christ (Matt 12:17-21). When we do place our trust where God instructs us to, my index said we experience many benefits such as joy, deliverence, triumph, God’s goodness, mercy, provision, blessedness, safety, usefulness, guidance and inheritance.
Yea, Debi…I like that inheritance part, especially, along with the other blessings. The inheritance of the the Lord is a sure thing, true, fair, and abundant. In God do we trust as His beneficiaries.
In reading this blog, I thought of this song: “Trust and obey, for there is no other way…to be happy in Jesus….but to trust and obey.”
Trust and obey seem to walk linked arm in arm, Needles, and that you can’t have one without the other.
That sounds like an old song, “Love & Marriage” love & marriage, go together like a horse & carriage, let me tell you brother…you can’t have one without the other”
I am reading Joel Osteen’s devotional YOUR BEST LIFE NOW. The chapter was entitled “Tear down the walls.” In order to tear down walls we must forgive. It is more for our good than the one we forgave. He says, “Do you realize that those walls will also prevent God’s blessings from pouring into your life? Those walls can stop up the flow of God’s favor. The walls of unforgiveness will keep you prayers from being answered. They’ll keep our dreams from coming to pass…You must tear down the walls. You must forgive the people who hurt you so you can get out of prison.” He goes on to tell about a man in his father’s congregation who hands were crippled with arthritis, and he could hardly use them One day he heard the forgiveness message from his father and decided get rid of (his wall) anger and resentment towards people who had hurt him over the years. “He forgave and something amazing happened, One finger after another straightened, and eventually God restored his hands to normal.” He goes on to say that “You can ignore what you know to be true and keep burying that bitterness in your life, pushing it deeper and allowing it to poison and contaminate you and those around you. Or you can make a much better choice by getting it out in the open and asking God to help you to totally forgive and let it all go.”
Those walls that Joel describe are like what Chickenfarmer was writing about in her comments above. And that resentment and unforgiveness make deeper and deeper furrows in the riverbed of life’s flow until it takes
over our lives into the completely wrong direction. The music of our lives becomes distorted and atonal. The melody shrieks instead of moving in lovely legato…smooth and flowing.
Let us imitate our Christ, our Savior, as we forgive like He has forgiven and release to others what Christ died for to bestow upon us….forgiveness. Thank You, Jesus.
In reading Teems thoughts I am reminded of one of my very favorite thoughts….Proverbs 3:6 (NLT) ” Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.”
Many of us forget to seek His will in ALL things. Maybe we seek Him when a big crisis or big decision comes up but if we had sought Him in the little things, the minor decisions, maybe the BIG CRISES would not have happened.
Seek: To try to locate or discover; search for: to endeavor to obtain or reach;to go to or toward; to inquire for, request. All action.
Many of us are seeking the perfect Christmas presents for others right now. That involves action and preparedness. If we are going out shopping/looking we get dressed, make sure there’s gas in the car, maybe take ideas, lists, etc and, yes, money. Then when its time to act/purchase we are ready.
I think that’s a lot how it is with seeking God’s will…being in a state of preparedness and moving forward so He can direct us as we are in planning and process. I have observed and tried to learn this principle from Sara, a great model, who always stays prepared and actively seeking God in all details. And He never fails to show the path to take.
Sara poses this question to us, often, ‘ Are Christians getting too lazy?” Oh maybe not that we are not working hard at our jobs, or working in our households, etc but are we laboring hard in the Kingdom? Are we witnessing for Christ in our everyday, friendly conversations? Are we praying as much as Paul encourages us to pray in Ephesians where he writes, ‘ pray without ceasing in every kind of prayer’? Are we too lazy to ask, knock and seek the Lord in the details of our lives, the decisions, great and small and in our everyday lives? Are we too lazy to ask God and then wait for the answer? It takes fortitude to train ourselves to follow after Him in seeking His will and counsel in everyday choices, decisions and acts and deeds. It takes strength of character and Christian vitality and stamina to “occupy” while still awaiting His response to our requests and petitions. It takes patience to listen carefully for the Holy Spirit’s answer to our question. And that’s WORK. That’s laboring in the Spirit. And I fear she’s hit the nail on the proverbial head. Many of us are just too lazy to work the Kingdom principles. And in doing so, we make more work for ourselves because we get into messes and bad situations, embarassing or inappropriate because we are too lazy to seek His counsel before we make a move. So we are constantly regretting and repenting and reworking a thing, missing opportunities because we were too lazy to hear Him and heed Him in the first place.