My God has a good and gracious purpose in all the pain and sorrow that I experience in this life.
1. He is teaching me to put less and less confidence in myself, in what flesh and blood and human wisdom can do
2. He is teaching me that here there is no continuing city and that I should seek the one that is to come whose Builder and Maker is God.
3. He is teaching me to live with a much longer term vision than I often do, a longer term vision that is frequently suffocated by my sinful desires and the pressing in of the technological and rebellious world on my internal life
4. He is teaching me that man should never live by listening to the evil whisperings of Satan, and that only the promises of the Word can drown out his lies
5. He is teaching me that all things come not by chance but by his Fatherly hand
6. He is teaching me that I have much to repent of
7. He is teaching me that without Jesus Christ I can do nothing
8. He is teaching me that he is gracious and compassionate, and that those being renewed in his image bear his likeness and imitate his ways
9. He is teaching me that in his great compassion he knows my frame and remembers that I am dust
10. He is teaching me that all that I have is really his and not mine, that he gives and he takes away, and that therefore I should bow my head before his sovereign greatness and worship him
11. He is teaching me that the faithful prayers of his people are his ordained means of lifting up my soul when I am downcast
12. He is teaching me that his grace is sufficient for me and that his power really is made perfect in weakness, even though I don't want to feel weak
And all these things he has been teaching me not while I have been sat at a desk, or in a lecture theatre, but while I have been watching the slow turning of the hands of a clock, when I have been staring into the dark in the early hours, and when I have been wrestling with my fears sat quietly by the side of a hospital bed.
Have I learned all these lessons?
Not yet
3 comments:
Hey, I just came across your blog by doing a bit of blog-surfing and I'm glad I did! I've added myself as your newest follower and I hope you'll check out my Christian devotional site as well: www.nocondemnation81.blogspot.com
Have a blessed day!
In Christ,
Dakota
Martin Luther noted 3 primary rules from Psalm 119 for knowing God and understanding his Word:
a) Oratio = prayer
b) Meditatio = meditation
c) Tendatio = trial, affliction, or temptation.
He reasoned that one of the greatest hermeneutical keys in life is pain. See Psalm 119:67 -- “Before I was afflicted, I went astray,” and again from v. 71 -- “It was good for me to be afflicted, so that I might learn your decrees.”
Luther concluded: “These afflictions teach you not only to know and understand but to experience how right and how true and how sweet and how lovely are the mighty comforting Words of God. It is wisdom supreme. As soon as God’s Word comes to be known through you, the Devil will afflict you with great affliction and make a doctor out of you! And will teach you by his temptations to seek and to love God’s Word...”
May God bless and keep you, your daughter, your family.
Not sure if this the right way to vent, but here goes. Bear w/me
#6 is my issue indeed.
BUT.... I don't seem to get to that place where I repent of my life long issue/s.
Repent and its gone - oops guess not - here it is right back at me.
Just say NO. ya right.
I go ok for awhile and then...
I guess I don't want to do warfare with it!
And it gets to where I figure that a person must not be a christian if one has a life long issue that has not been given over to the Lord.
I Pray and do things to overcome and then along comes the issue again.
But no release of it. In my flesh I don't seem to want to rid myself of it that much. OR just can't or won't do it.
Will the power of the Spirit take away the problems that seem to never go away?
or is grace sufficient even tho I am stupid enuf not to do whatever it takes to say no and eventually be rid of it.
SIN is not what I do, but what I AM!
Even if I did not do this or whatever - I would still never be able to stand before the Judge based on my own doings.
If I quit doing this or that - does it mean then that I am now OK and will make it to Heaven?
I feel this way and question because
there are so many books and programs telling me what is and what is not - that I am not sure who and what to believe now days.
One teaches this and one teaches that.
Like Romans 7:14-25 who is right?
Can't both be right!
Sure I abuse even the grace of God when I sin - I know this is wrong but I will do it anyway, be it in thot word or deed, right? be honest now.
Will have to just keep movin and hope for relief someday - or may be in Glory
Heidelberg ? 56 and ? 60
absolutely amazing - and yet... man oh man I am at a loss for words here.
Christianity is a life long struggle
but I guess no matter what??
Christ is for me; what I am not?? right.
Seems I ask the question and then have the answer but it does not take root.
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