Dear followers,

Due to recent hand surgery I am unable to post at present.  I hope to return sometime next week,

Blessings to all,

Daily Potpourri

If God’s will is perfect, as we say it is, then we should submit ourselves to that will.  We should acknowledge our own ignorance and never presume to know the will of God.  We should ask God to teach us what lessons He says are appropriate for us to know.  We should live our life in accordance with His desires and His commands.  

This is the only way that the Christian will find true blessing.  So why do we find it so hard?  

We have seen him in the past.  We have witnessed the might and the wisdom of his guiding hand all along the history of life.  He has confirmed to use the grace of his presence through the quiet recesses of our hearts.  Yet we want more.  We want him to come down in an indisputable way.  We want confirmation, on our terms, that he does indeed hold in his hands the nations of the world, and that all things will act according to his providence.  

In other words, we desire to live by sight rather than by faith.  We know him to be with us — yet our soul cries out to see him more, feel him more, and to hear him more.  But such is his love for us that faith in his presence is the true securing gift of life.  

“Thy will be done,” is a philosophy which we are quite often too anxious to profess.  Once having said the words, we sit back in a resigned manner and wait for God to take over.  While it is true that there may be many situations in life which call for full surrender, it should not come until we have sought out the will of God.  We are charged to do God’s will; and that means to act, to seek, to strive, to attempt, and to work.  Our prayer is that through our actions and our ventures, God’s will is done.  

God says that we must lay up his word in our heart.  His word alone must take possession of us and fill us.  Therefore, the heart becomes a temple which contains the word of God.  It is not a temple for the world — the mores, the beliefs, and the ideologies of societies — rather of God’s thoughts and his holy ways. 

Everyday the Christian is to faithfully open his or her heart to hear God’s voice and listen to what God says.  Then throughout the day, the Christian is to keep and carry around that same word.  

We are not to be concerned with how our good deeds are used by God.  Often in life, when we intend for one action to touch a certain individual, it in fact affects someone else.  Even when we have appeared to fail and wasted our time and effort, we may well have affected our self.  

We do not always know who is affected by what we do, but we can believe this — things which we do are not lost.  God will use our good deeds for a blessing as he chooses.   

Though we are chosen by God, it is still possible to “grieve the Spirit” as the old time preachers would say.  What was meant is understood this way: It is God’s Spirit that abides in us and with us, and by which we are strengthened and led in our daily witness of Him.  It is this same Spirit that fills us with holy life.  Why then would we choose to do that which the Spirit does not like — lying, stealing, showing disrespect, breaking promises, etc?  Each of these cause the joy of our faith to grow dim within us.  Therefore hold fast to God’s laws, and the Spirit will abide in you.  

The wound of an oyster — a grain of sand inside — is where a pearl comes from.  A single grain of sand, unable to be washed out, is the cause of a pearl growing in order to protect the oyster.  So it is with our life as well.  The Christian will know be wronged and know injury.  How are we to respond so that pearls growing in us?  

God will not allow our lives to be injured beyond what He has ordained for us, nor can we be wronged past His using it for our benefit.  The God of all the universe, who is just and righteous, will judge according to His unfathomable ways and care for those who are His own.  So our duty is to bear wrongs when inflicted, and when faced with injustice to bathe lives around us with love.  By doing this our soul becomes a pearl.    

If a person becomes fatigued by the ordinary, daily living of life that is filled with the common strains and struggles, then what is going to happen when the difficult trials come?  Things far worse than we imagine happen to us.  From relationships, sickness, wrong choices, and death, comes great pain, confusion, and sorrow into life.  The Christian has Christ, and thereby knows God, thereby having a secure faith with which to face the hard hours that will lie ahead.  

“How will you do in the swelling of the Jordan?” (KJV) -Jeremiah 12:5 

No one knows what the future will bring.  In ways unsuspected people will oppose, hurt, deceive, and ambush.  Their strength will seem great and their cunning sharp.  Fear, indecision, and despair will result.  But never lose sight of God’s promises.  He will stand between us and our adversaries.  He has given his angels charge over us, and has said that he will always be with us. 

But what if God is the rival — the one who is opposing us as he did with Jacob?  Then it is all the more important to hold on to God and to shout with Jacob, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”  And he will bless.