The snake on the pole Numbers 21 John 3 The bronze serpent and mercy

I share this post, because it is so right on!


http://shereadstruth.com/2016/04/28/moses-and-the-bronze-serpent/?mc_cid=416aba73bf&mc_eid=3064a0ebf8

superb job Erin Davis.

When is it MY turn?

I am grateful for the friends God puts into our lives at different seasons.  I am grateful that His grace has done a heart exchange and this arrogant heart is now teachable.  I am grateful that God speaks of a total work being done, all at once, but we see it "played out" little by little.  Ezekiel 36:26 "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."

A friend pointed out to me a "truth" in marriage, that when I am submitted to and doing something for my wife, I am doing it for myself, because we are ONE now and in reality there is no "myself" after we say "I do."  That thought was an imperishable seed of God's truth planted in my heart, and this morning it broke through the ground and into the light.

I took a vacation day and turned my three day weekend into a five day weekend.  I may not have the opportunity to do that the rest of the year, so in my mind, I was thinking, "Yes, yes, yes, part of this weekend is going to be "me time", I will work on the little book I have been 'writing' for a long time, I will take the dog for long slow walks, I will read or listen to whatever I want..."  Well the weekend was over half over and I was still looking for some 'me time' when God's mercy woke me up with this thought.  When you are doing something that helps take the pressure off of her, and helps her accomplish her goals, or blesses your kids in a way that she can not do (doing taxes) that is "me time" because the two of you are one, now.  Check back with her in about a year to make sure the weeds do not grow up and choke the life out of that truth, but by the grace of God it is real to me.

The prophetic word that illuminates the current political situation

Speech about God, speech that is daringly human and embarrassingly particular, regularly sounds themes that demand attention and require a revisioning of the human process. I should like to identify five such themes that are characteristic of the prophets, though many others might be cited.

1. Out of God’s unaccommodating holiness, the prophetic word is against idols, and consequently against self-serving, self-deceiving ideology. Idolatry and its twin, ideology, always want to absolutize some arrangement of power and knowledge so that we may bow down to the work of our hands. Against such an absolutizing pretension, the holiness of God critiques, exposes, and assaults every phony absolute since all such absolutes of nation, race, party, or sex will end in death.

From:

Like Fire in the Bones

Walter Brueggemann

Genesis 28:15

a prayer... "Father God in heaven, be more real...no wait...be the ONLY real thing to these people as they go through this overwhelming time."

Father make us sensitive to Your heart and
Your leading
and
Your life
and
make us insensitive to the folly of this fallen world and fallen remnants in your people.

We expectantly wait for you to come as the ruling king, Messiah in our lives, but You are coming first at the Lamb of God!

Genesis 28:15 God you leave room for our choice, "wherever you go" while still totally surrounding us with Your sovereign love.

This is a time of preparing the ground, of breaking up the fallow ground,  Read Jeremiah 4:3 and its context and Hosea 10:12 and its context.

AW Pink on the sovereignty of God....   "Bible Prophecy and the Sovereignty of God go Hand in Hand which is one reason most "churches and Christians" no longer Study or believe Bible Prophecy.

The sovereignty of God is an expression that once was generally understood. It was a phrase commonly used in religious literature. It was a theme frequently expounded in the pulpit. It was a truth which brought comfort to many hearts and gave virility and stability to Christian character.

But today, to make mention of God's sovereignty is, in many quarters, to speak in an unknown tongue. Were we to announce from the average pulpit that the subject of our discourse would be the sovereignty of God, it would sound very much as though we had borrowed a phrase from one of the dead languages. Alas! that it should be so. Alas! that the doctrine which is the key to history, the interpreter of providence, the warp and woof of scripture, and the foundation of Christian theology should be so sadly neglected and so little understood.

The "Sovereignty of God." What do we mean by this expression? We mean the SUPREMACY of God, the KINGSHIP of God, the GODHOOD of God. To say that God is sovereign is to declare that GOD IS GOD!

To say that God is sovereign is to declare that He is the Most High, "doing according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, so that none can stay His hand or say unto Him what doest Thou? (Dan. 4:35), To say that God is sovereign is to declare that He is the Almighty, the possessor of all power in heaven and earth so that none can defeat His counsels, thwart His purpose, nor resist His will (Psa. 115:3).

To say that God is sovereign is to declare that He is "the governor among the nations" (Psa. 22:28), setting, up kingdoms, overthrowing empires, and determining the course of dynasties as pleases Him best. To say that God is sovereign is to declare that He is the "only potentate, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords" (I Tim. 6:15). Such is the God of the Bible."

If you made it this far, you are a rare individual in this "give it to me in two sentences world", your reward is to join me in prayer for this family who is going through an overwhelming time and has already endured the death of a 3 year old son to brain cancer.  Let's pray for them...   https://www.youcaring.com/josh-and-linda-lieser-547109

In Christ!

Sovereignly, wonderfully, completely, irreversibly HIS! John 14:2 "In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?" ..... Sitting around the table with friends on Wednesday we noticed that the curse on Cain was to be a "vagabond and a wanderer" and by the grace of God it became clear that the blessing is to have a dwelling place, a room in the Father's house, secured by His righteousness and His promise, F-o-r-e-v-e-r!     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlzH7KQ8I2U

Simplicity

The heart of God is to have a people who reveal His heart to the world.  They are united by His love shed abroad in their hearts.  They have received mercy through the sacrificial love of God's Son.  They are now "in" Immanuel.  They work with zealous love from a place of rest and trust that cannot be shaken.  The things of this earth grow strangely dim.  They have seen the pattern of life lived by their Savior and they do not expect to be spared.  They have bowed to His choice of the Jew and Jerusalem and are grateful to be grafted into their vine accepted into their commonwealth.  "To those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ: May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you."  Jude 1,2

Apostolic sending, a sent one beginnings

The last two "labels" on this post are where I gleaned this entire post from.  Nothing original, but just looking to the body to fill up where I am lacking.

The “I Am” sayings focus specifically on Jesus’ relationship to this world as our Savior. 

He is the Bread of Life who satisfies our nagging hunger for contentment (John 6:22-59). He is the Light of the World who frees us from walking in darkness (John 8:12-20). He is the Good Shepherd who keeps us from getting lost (John 10:11-31), and He is the Door through which God’s sheep enter into the safety of His refuge (John 10:1-10). He is the Resurrection and the Life so that, even though we die, yet shall we live (John 11:25). He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life so that we might, through Him, have access to God (John 14:6). He is the True Vine so that, when we are grafted into Him, His life flows continually to us as God Himself prunes and trains us to bear fruit (John 15:1). And He is eternal in His authority—at work in a Covenant of redemption that predates Abraham (John 8:31-59).

Arriving at a thorn-bush

A man spent years and years in the desert district tending sheep. Soberly aware of every phenomenon of the dire environment, he did not reflect much when one of those thorny bushes caught fire by spontaneous combustion. Normally those appearances were gone in seconds, this one allowed for an eyebrow to be lifted in the old man’s face.

His personal preferences and categories were sorely shaken as a voice commanded him to take his sandals off in the presence of the peculiar fire. As the very same fire expressed personality, being “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”, a most holy reverence arose and was forever rooted in the depths of the herdsman Moses. The man standing on holy ground encountered the future, even eternity, in one single sequence of time – forever to be aware of a heavenly commission and the dimension of being sent.

The matter of sending produces meekness. “Moses was a very humble man, more so than any man on the face of the earth.” Apostolicity, the matter of being sent, is beyond anything else a matter of meekness. The sending involves representation, the sending means being an ambassador on heavenly terms – therefore Heaven must rule both mind and heart of the one professing this kind of comission. The categories and preferences of Heaven will cause ongoing perplexity and an obedience of the severest order.
Numbers 12:3

Another man, Isaiah, was introduced to the reality of sending by slightly other means. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne…” Led to stand before the Holy One of Israel, his experience contained the same kind of shattering of earthly categories for the sake of a seeing according to eternal measures. Isaiah encountered the reality of sending in a most holy environment far beyond the conditions of the ordinary. But his sending from beyond was never to be expressed in alluring exaggerations for the sake of attracting an audience of itching ears. The Throne of Heaven was ever present in every word delivered by him, orally or by pen.
Isa 6:1

The environment of the sending is forever determined by fire and by holiness – and the result is always expressed in terms of brokenness, truth and humility. Having seen, having encountered this realm of reality produces men of caliber, men of trustworthiness. “Rulers will rule justly. Each will be like a shelter from the wind, a refuge from the rain, like streams of water in a dry land and the shade of a massive rock in an arid land.” Apostolicity offers this kind of environment. We need to reach out for that which lies beyond. The realm of sending offers holiness, tenderness, truth and humility. This is the Davidic reality, the apostolic environment, to be preached as the Kingdom of Heaven, which holds its gates open to men and women who are willing and daring to reach beyond, far beyond, that which is marked by earthliness.