Category: Faith

Let’s Make Like a Tree…

Posted on by Dorci

I love trees, and today in the U.S. it’s Arbor Day, a day marked for celebration of trees (traditionally by planting a tree) and all the good they do for the environment around them. 

God uses trees throughout His Word, beginning and ending with the Tree of Life, and many other references throughout.

Today, though, I thought about how God tells us, in the Psalms and in Jeremiah, how we can be like a tree, sustained and fruitful even in hard times. 

Jeremiah records God’s word to His people:

“This is what the Lord says:

‘Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who draws strength from mere flesh
and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.

But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in Him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.’”
Jeremiah 17:5-8

At one point in history, God’s people demanded Samuel appoint them a king instead of looking to God as their King. The first king they put their trust in was Saul, and we know how that ended.  And for hundreds of years God’s people put their trust in, and were ruled by kings.

Even today, a lot of people (sometimes even God’s people) are trusting in men and women in office to fix things, to make bad situations good, to make wrong situations right.  And there seems to be no shortage of people willing to promise to do those things. 

But that never ends as well as we’d like because people are just people, and the world’s system is not God’s. Let the world have the world.

We have God, a Savior, a Lord, who can do much more – He can make our hearts right.

Jesus tells us “’Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’ By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive.” John 7:37-39

So, we might not be able to plant a tree today, but let’s be a tree and leave the world’s ways (sorry, I couldn’t help it!).

Let’s plant ourselves by the living water by putting our faith in Christ and Him alone and receive from Him rivers of living water, the Holy Spirit, continually moving through us, nourishing us, sustaining us, and producing in us fruit and all kinds of good things to benefit us and those around us, no matter the circumstances, with no end to its abundance.

Thankful Thursday – Pie

Posted on by Dorci

Isolation can give us a lot of time to think, and sometimes there’s nothing more dangerous than being inside our own heads.

We can start looking around, comparing our situation, our lives, to others and feel like we’re coming up short. Our piece of the pie seems like a sliver, and other’s a whopping piece with ice cream, or whipped cream, or both, slathered all over it.

And the truth is, we all have things in our lives we wish were different.  

There is much that others enjoy as a given part of life that I will never know.

At the beginning of Psalm 73, Asaph ponders the prosperity of those who are wicked. Though they live foolishly, they enjoy good health, they have no troubles, they aren’t plagued by common human burdens (he thinks).

And here he was, he thought, keeping his heart pure and his hands innocent, and yet every day brings a fresh round of pain and affliction.

Until, he says, he entered the sanctuary of God.

We he got his focus off himself and onto God, then he understood the final destiny of the wicked. Ultimately, all they had gained will come to absolutely nothing when they face God at the final judgment.

And finally Asaph writes, “My flesh and my heart may fail…”

There is much discussion about what Asaph meant by this. Did he mean his flesh and heart failed him when he fell into bitterness and envy of others? Or did he mean that eventually his flesh and heart will fail when he dies and moves on from this life? Maybe both.

“… but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Psalm 73:26

Asaph is finally able to take a wide and godly perspective and realize that because he has God in his life, he doesn’t have just a sliver of pie, or even a big piece. He actually has the whole pie. 

Yes, his own heart may fail, but God is His strength, and His portion, his inheritance, in this life and in the next.

Forever.

Yes, I may have missed out on a lot in this life, and maybe that’s a good thing because it showed me how much I needed God.

But God (Elohiym – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) is my portion. And when everything in this life is gone, I will still have my Portion. I will have my relationship with God through Christ, and the faith and character and everything else He’s built on that Foundation through the many years I’ve walked with Him.

And it will last forever.

So the reality is, I haven’t missed out on one bit. I have God and all He is! And if you know Jesus, so do you. We have the Creator of the universe, our heavenly Father, the keeper of our souls and the One is able to make all grace abound toward us and bless us abundantly, our Lord and Savior and Friend and Brother and Co-Heir in the faith, Jesus, and our Comforter and Peace Giver, the One who seals us for eternal life, the Holy Spirit.

We can never come to the end of the list of His blessings. And anything we missed in this life that He deems important He will more than make up for in the next. 

So instead of focusing inward or outward, let’s look up.  We have more pie than we could ever eat.

Path of Faith

Posted on by Dorci

Immediately Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side, while He sent the multitudes away. And when He had sent the multitudes away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray. Now when evening came, He was alone there. 

But the boat was now in the middle of the sea, tossed by the waves, for the wind was contrary (against them).

Now in the fourth watch of the night (3am-6am), Jesus went to them, walking on the sea. 

And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out for fear.

But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.”

And Peter answered Him and said, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.”

So He said, “Come.” 

And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink he cried out, saying, “Lord, save me!”

And immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
Matthew 14:22-31

The changing picture at the top of this page always has some sort of path or road which represents the paths we take in the changing seasons of our spiritual lives. 

In this scene in the book of Matthew, we see Jesus telling Peter to come to Him on some undefined, invisible path on the water while the winds raged against them.

And Peter, precious Peter, has enough faith to step out of the boat and to actually start walking toward Jesus on this invisible path.

But halfway through, his faith moves from Jesus to the wind and the waves, and he begins to sink.

I can’t blame Peter too much.  Being willing to walk on water is amazing enough, but he got out of the boat when the wind and waves were so strong they were tossing them around. And this was no gentle rocking. The word “tossed” means pain, toil, torment.

Just as Jesus called Peter to walk a path of faith, He calls us to come to Him, to focus on Him and not the pain, not the toil, and not the torment.

When storms come and the winds of circumstance come against us, we might not see a clear path, and that is when, more than ever, we need to look to Jesus, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, walk toward Him a path of faith.

  

Hope

Posted on by Dorci

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
And moan within me?
Hope in God; for I shall praise Him
For the salvation of His face.
Psalm 42:5MKJV

Anyone who’s been through even a moment of depression understands the heart who wrote those words. 

No one knows for sure who wrote this psalm, but I find it interesting that the phrase “cast down” is used to describe the deep depression of his soul.

It’s a term used by shepherds to describe a sheep that, for whatever reason, has fallen upside down, all four legs in the air, helpless and unable to right itself.  If the shepherd doesn’t watch carefully and come to help the sheep, it can suffocate in a short period of time. 

If David was the author, he knows from experience that a good shepherd watches his flock carefully, and comes quickly at the first sign of trouble.

So, he encourages himself to hope. That word hope means to wait, to be patient, to trust.

And of course our hope is only as good as the one we put our hope in. 

The psalmist knows he has a perfect Shepherd who constantly watches His flock. He knows his salvation is coming.  He knows he will be delivered again, and again, and again, as many times as it takes. 

Our hope is a sure hope.  Not an “I hope…”  But a hope that knows God is faithful. His rescue is coming, and we must simply wait for it. A hope that knows God sees us, He hears us, and He’s working on our behalf…

A hope that knows a day is coming soon when we will look back and praise our Good Shepherd for all He’s done. 

I know God’s in the midst of us, doing great things.  And the day will come when all of us who have put our hope in Him will share story after story of His goodness and grace and mercy. 

Keep hoping. 

 

 

 

 

Do Not Worry

Posted on by Dorci

 

“Therefore I tell you, do not
worry about your life, what
you will eat or drink; or about
your body, what you will wear.
Is not life more than food, and
the body more than clothes?

Look at the birds of the air;
they do not sow or reap or store
away in barns, and yet your
heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not much more valuable
than they?”
Matthew 6:25, 26