Posted in Life Inspiration

Is God a Journaler?

psalm 139Psalm 139

In the darkness of my room this morning, as the sun contemplating coming out from beneath the covers, I opened my Bible app on my phone and began to read in Psalm 139. Darkness messes with my mind… I start pondering things I shouldn’t ponder, my imagination takes me down dimly lit pathways where the future is uncertain. Silence is not always golden… praise God for technology that allows me to read in the dark!

He knows me

1O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.

Not the “me” that my family and friends know, God knows me. The part that He created, and the parts that I messed up. God know that me, and yet He loves me. Yet, He desires to commune with me and I trail off down dark path…

Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.

Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

As I lie in bed this morning and read those words I smiled. How awesome God, that in this dark hour, You know my ways. You know the concerns of my heart and the troubles that beset me and You understand! You walked this earth and defeated the foes that I fight, so why am I fighting them? Because it’s a dark time we live in, and I, more often than not, am content to lie in the darkness rather than turn on the light of the glorious gospel that expels the shadows. Silly me.

For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.

Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

Nobody knows me like God, and in spite of it He laid His hand upon me and anointed me with purpose and so I understand the Psalmist when he says “Such knowledge is too wonderful.” I know that I do not deserve the blessings that God has poured upon and through me and allowed me to work in the ministry of the Lord, the very thing that I desired in my heart but feared because it was a path I could not see down. Oh, great God… “I” cannot attain to it; but through Christ Who strengthens me, I can do all things! So it says in Philippians 4:13.

He Is With Me

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

10 Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

11 If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.

12 Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

Loneliness, like the darkness, can have me feeling lost. I’m my own best friend and worst enemy all packed into one. But God knows that. There are times when the Holy Spirit of God is pushed and pushed and pushed into the recesses of my mind so that I can spend more time with me; the good, the bad, and the ugly me. But He patiently waits for me to tire of my company. It’s usually about the time that I fall to Satan’s lies that “nobody really cares about your problems, Shari, they’ve got plenty of their own,” when I feel God nudge me and say… “I’ve never left you. I’ve always cared.”

He Leads Me

I don’t know how I got into Psalm 139 this morning. I hadn’t been reading there… but it was a path that God laid out, just as He has my life.

13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.

14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

Oh wait… I do remember how I got to Psalm 139! I was scoping out a bible journaler on Instagram and a verse from 139 was there. Her thoughts were not mine. God had an entirely different plan for her, another path. But it was wonderfully made like mine.

He Writes of Me

15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

17 How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!

18 If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.

I love to write. And what sweet words those were to my heart to see that God is a Journaler too! I have to wonder if on the pages of His book, in living color, is not an image of me. The word says that “all my members were written.” That sounds like pictures to me! That may or may not be stretchin’ it, but this is my blog and my thoughts… and that’s the way it went.

Search Me, O God

19 Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.

20 For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain.

21 Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?

22 I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:

24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

On this Election Day 2016, there has been much blaspheming of the Lord’s name. It angers me and causes me to want to travel down a dark path with a ball bat… just sayin’. I’m not violent. I hate that too, but when I think about the destruction on this world by words, my flesh rises and I want retribution for my Lord. But it’s not my fight. He won that won too. So for today, at least for this minute… I ask the Lord to search me. Those are the thoughts that I have control over.

Heaven help our nation… please.

[contact-form-7 404 "Not Found"]

Posted in Life Inspiration, Uncategorized

An Anti-Memorial Day for your Enemy!

I’m generally not a whiner. Really I’m not. At least not out loud. In my head I’m a radical whiner, God knows. And over the past week or so, I’ve been on the verge of whining on multiple occasions; a lack of rest, coupled with concern and stress over the new early arrival of grandbaby Parker and multiple job and ministry related things on my plate have left me somewhat discombobulated spiritually. In a weakened condition as they say. A prime time for Satan to attack. Little things that I would normally fluff off suddenly aggravated me. It wasn’t until this weekend when I came into church with such an attitude of frustration over a Facebook post for crying out loud, that I realized I needed to check that attitude at the door and see what the Lord had in store for me. Woah! Was I ever glad.

Our services on Sunday were beyond. The songs, and testimonies were just what the doctor ordered to fix me up. An opportunity to lift a brother up who’s facing major surgery next week brought back to remembrance that life is fragile, and we need one another. We need an army of God’s soldiers around us to guard our back when the enemy is on attack.

Then came Amalek… Exodus 17:8a

Amalek is the nation that attacked the weakest among the Israelites as they fled from Egypt, when Israel was in a weakened condition; and God didn’t forget, He performed somewhat of an anti-memorial. When, through the power of God, Joshua in verse 13, discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword, God told Moses that he needed to write them down in a book, because otherwise nobody would know who they were.

Exodus 17:14

And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.

That’s my God! He makes a note of the enemies of His people. I don’t believe it’s changed. It is believed that the book that Moses referred to was the Book of Wars written of in Numbers 21:14 ~ Wherefore it is said in the book of the wars of the Lord, What he did in the Red sea, and in the brooks of Arnon,

So the attacks that I’ve felt over the past few weeks didn’t catch God off guard. I believe He’ll use it for His glory when He allows me to minister to another child of God in the future, going through a similar battle that I just went through. And then I can say, “I understand,” and I will because I fought that battle and won! And I may not have seen what God did to the enemy, perhaps nothing as of yet. But there will come a day when God takes care of it. He may still be writing in the book of wars when He tells the scribe, “Make a note of that battle Shari fought today, because there’s coming a day when that enemy of hers, won’t be around to remember.

Glory!!!! I just wrote myself happy.

How about you this Memorial Day; is there an enemy you’d like to forget? It’s coming.