If You Are Only a Spectator...

 Just shut up.

You don't know what it is like to be hit in the face.

YOU DON'T KNOW NOTHIN'

A GREAT TRUTH

 Nothing is impossible when your wife loves and supports you.

Nothing.

That is all.

Nothing Without YOU

 26 years I've been married to the perfect one God picked out for me.

She is much younger than me so she has been with me more years than she was without me.

I suck at accepting help. I was single for 38 years and content to be single 4 ever.

I suck at loving people who need compassion and the unconditional love of God, the lovingkindness of God, the chesed (Hebrew word for lovingkindness) of the God of Israel.

Had I gone that route, I would have been a self-centered, self righteous, know it all.  All the work that needed done on my stony heart outside of the temple, all the work that needed done to shave it and trim it and make it humbly fit into the place selected by the sovereign God would not have been done. 

My old saying is, "The best way to stay married is to stay married."  This does not apply to abusive situations, or even addictions situations and the Bible says it does not apply to adultery, although, if you extend mercy in that situation GREAT HEALING can and does occur.

But if you run from a marriage that is stretching you, you will not be stretched, growth will be stunted and bitterness could take root. BEWARE.

But if you stay and pray, and humbly take your place in the union God ordained and gives grace and mercy to continue. You will grow and grow and grow, so much so that the Master Gardener will need to prune you to keep the growth healthy and productive. If I did not trim the bushes in front of our house we literally could not get out of our house!

Marriage is a picture of the Messiah and Messiah's community, "church" is a bit of a sucky word. (Mark Klafter taught me that and I am forever grateful.)

Marriage is a mystery.

Mystery as used in the Bible just isn't what we think it is.

Sadly, I don't fully know or understand what the word meaning is in its entirety.

Doesn't it seem like it is something we are being asked by God to seek Him about, to spend time with Him not seeking answers or a teaching, or a system (especially a system, right T. Justin Comer?). We are just seeking Him, walking with HIM in the garden in the cool of the day, and one day our hearts desire to understand what "mystery" means becomes clear.

My friend Dane who helped me a lot today. made it clear that when we pray it flows from a place of acknowledging who HE is, sovereign King of the universe, the God who delights in mercy, because Mercy is how He gets us back on track. Praise Him, worship Him and then let prayer flow from that place of rest and trust.

At Rest, In Him. 

Saved - From What?

 Thanks to John Patrick Harrigan and others, I am able to show you the words that every first century Jew would have put right after, “and you/we will be saved” from the wrath to come at the day of the Lord!

Bonus; Years ago my friend shared with me her understanding of “the fullness of the gentiles” spoken of in Romans 11:25. Just like the fullness of the Amorites in the book of Genesis chapter 15, what is being waited for is the fullness of sin. When the gentiles sins pile so high that God identifies it as the fullness of the gentiles, then He pulls the plug on this evil age and all Israel is saved!

Maranatha!

Time

 It was shared tonight at men’s group that the sacrifice of time, is a very real sacrifice that shows very real life-changing love.

A baptism and a new life in the Messiah Yeshua started today because God used the faithfulness of one of His servants to show sacrificial love. 

Time is something we all have. Are we using it for the Kingdom? Are we living in light of the Day of the Lord?

Ecstasy!

 Paul is ECSTATIC at the end of Romans 11!

The God of Israel has revealed HIS perfect plan to the apostle to the gentiles and it is beyond amazing and proof positive that the God of Israel knows the end from the beginning.  

 

³² For God has shut up all in disobedience, so that He might show mercy to all.

³³ O the depth of the riches,
    both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments
    and how incomprehensible His ways!
³⁴ For “who has known the mind of Adonai,
    or who has been His counselor?”
³⁵ Or “who has first given to Him,
    that it shall be repaid to him?”

³⁶ For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen.

 

If you don't have that reaction when you get to the end of Romans 11, you are not reading it correctly.

 

Matthew 10:23 Let’s Dive In

 

“When people realize it is the living God you are presenting and not some idol that makes them feel good, they are going to turn on you, even people in your own family. There is a great irony here: proclaiming so much love, experiencing so much hate! But don’t quit. Don’t cave in. It is all well worth it in the end. It is not success you are after in such times but survival. Be survivors! Before you’ve run out of options, the Son of Man will have arrived."the Message

 

 

Whenever they persecute you in one town, flee to another! I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. NET

 

"In the end of days, you will only have two choices, self-sacrifice or idolatry!" Art Katz