GOLDEN WORDS

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before  God?  
 
Psalm 42:1,2

As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.

Psalm 42:1,2 (NIV)



Don't get too busy. If you don't have time to pray and spend time with God, then you are too busy.

Joyce Meyer
 

Daily Meditations by Pat Nordman

January 23

"Wait for the Lord" Psalm 27:14.

"Waiting has four purposes. It practices the patience of faith. It gives time for preparation for the coming gift. It makes the blessing the sweeter when it arrives. It shows the sovereignty of Godto give just when and as He pleases." Dr. James Vaughan, Streams in the Desert, V.2, January 4.

There is also a condition attached to our waiting: "Don't be impatient for the Lord to act! Keep traveling steadily along his pathway and in due season he will honor you with every blessing." Psalm 37:34 RSV. We are to attend to the little duties as well as to the large ones. Wait and work; pray for grace and then exercise it.

It is interesting that God also waits: "Then he waited for the harvest" Isaiah 5:2 RSV. He waits for us to regard His nature which proves His intelligence and beauty and goodness; He waits for us to consider history threaded through and held together with His justice and mercy, and whose mission it is to turn sin into righteousness; He waits for us to realize that the alternates of adversity and prosperity, friendship and enmity, sorrow and joy, are but the implements of His spiritual instruction that we may finally dwell in the mansions He has prepared for us.
Much time is wasted waiting for signs and wonders. Christ told the expectant crowd, "This is a wicked generation. It asks for a miraculous sign" Luke 11:29. In our day of the Gospel, which is filled with the plainest evidence, we do not need to use a flashlight to shine it on the Son who is the Light of the world and we don't need to dump in our buckets of contaminated water to add to the Living Water. To ask a sign from God when He has already pledged numerous promises is quite sinful.

Pat Nordman ©

 

T H I N K A B O U T I T

The Folly of Human Assumptions A traveler, between flights at an airport, went to a lounge and bought a small package of cookies. Then she sat down and began reading a newspaper. Gradually, she became aware of a rustling noise. From behind her paper, she was flabbergasted to see a neatly dressed man helping himself to her cookies. Not wanting to make a scene, she leaned over and took a cookie herself.  A minute or two passed, and then came more rustling. He was helping himself to another cookie! By this time, they had come to the end of the package, but she was so angry she didn't dare allow herself to say anything. Then, as if to add insult to injury, the man broke the remaining cookie in two, pushed half across to her, and ate the other half and left. Still fuming some time later when her flight was announced, the woman opened her handbag to get her ticket. To her shock and embarrassment, there she found her pack of unopened cookies! How wrong our assumptions can be.  – John Ross Cranleigh, Surrey, England. Leadership, Vol. 12, no. 2.  Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment." John 7:24

 

January 23   Exodus 17:1 - 19:25 Linked to Bible Gaitway TM

 

 

Today's  Devotion

 

... ...and by his light I walked through darkness!    JOB 29:3 NIV   Write Protected  by Pat Nordman   "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" Ezekiel 36:26 NIV. "You show that you are a letter from Christ. . .written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts" 2 Corinthians 3:3 Christ   has written with sacred blood right across our hard hearts, "Forgiven!" We are "write-protected," to use a computer term. No one else can come along and overwrite that blessed word, "Forgiven." "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more" Isaiah 43:25. O! how grateful we are for this gift!    Once absolved, we become living messages and take on the new responsibility of being legible and intelligible. Letters are written to be read and understood. We don't want to misrepresent our Lord by a wavering and unsteady script that sends an inaccurate meaning.     A written epistle is permanent; for that reason, we especially want it to be understood. 1) Omissions can change the intention of the writer; the lack of a certain grace which is a mark of a Christian can cause a fateful translation not intended by the writer. 2) Indistinctness, where a word can be misinterpreted, can alter purposes; "How long will [we] waver between two opinions?" 1 Kings 19:21. 3) Worst of all are unsightly blots that stand out so conspicuously as to cause us to be of no effect at all: "Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice" Ephesians 4:31.     Jesus has blotted out our transgressions for His sake and ours; let us not blot out His goodness and mercy to others by misrepresenting Him as His epistles for others! © Pat Nordman We are "write-protected," to use a computer term. No one else can come along and overwrite that blessed word, "Forgiven."   More Walking Through the Darkness

 

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