Tag: Jesus

The Saturday Song – Give Me Your Eyes

Posted on by Dorci

If there’s anything God shows us about Himself in His word it’s that He is a personal God. Yes, He loves the whole world, but He also sees and loves the individual. 

He saw Hagar and her son a distance away, alone in the desert, waiting to die, and had compassion on them. 

He saw Hannah, alone in the temple, weeping and praying for a son, and granted her request.  

He saw Mary, a humble worshipper of God, and made her the mother of the Messiah. 

He saw the Samaritan woman, sitting alone by the well, and gave her hope through the greatest message of all time. 

He saw the man with leprosy, and having compassion on him, healed him, restoring his life.

He saw the woman who had bled for twelve years when, in faith, she touched His cloak and was healed.

He saw John, alone on the island of Patmos, and gave him a vision of the Son and of His coming kingdom to give the world.

He sees you right now, too, and whatever you’re going through He has compassion for you.  

 

Father, give me your eyes. 

 

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.

Crucify Him!

Posted on by Dorci

They all answered, “Crucify him!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ultimately, it was our sins that shouted “Crucify him!” that morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And when Pilate told the crowd “I am innocent of this man’s blood. It is your responsibility!” they answered “His blood is on us and on our children!”

All praise and glory to God, it is.

His blood covers us, forgives us, purifies us, so that the penalty of sin – death – passes over us. 

From Gray to Living Color

Posted on by Dorci

 

Do not be anxious about anything, 
but in every situation,
by prayer and petition,
with thanksgiving,
present your requests to God. 
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7

 

There are times when we are inundated, either with our own personal experiences or through the outside world, with so much that’s going wrong.  

And when we enter into prayer it’s easy to jump right into those prayer requests, like we’re giving God our grocery list.  

But prayer is so much more.  

It’s sitting with and communing with our Heavenly Father.

Paul reminds us to pray with thanksgiving. In the Greek that word for thanksgiving means gratitude, or a grateful language, to God, as an act of worship.

Yes, we thank God for the things He’s done, but even more than that, we need to come to Him with an attitude of Thanksgiving. Of worship.

And that takes me back to the beginning. How do we pray with thanksgiving when everything around us feels like it’s crumbling? When all the world seems gray with empty shelves and unpaid bills and isolation and sickness and death?  

How can we see the good?  

We ask Jesus for His eyes. He sees the good, and when we see through His eyes we will see the good all around us – the things He’s done for us, the blessings we still have in the middle of it all, the beauty and kindness around us, like the kindness of a boy taking the time to stoop down for a minute to rid a yard of an ugly weed.  

And when He fills our hearts with His goodness, we can sit in communion, with hearts of thanksgiving, in worship.

With Jesus’ eyes, the world will go from gray to living color and we will be overcome with thanksgiving, just like this man who is suddenly able to see the beauty all around him that was there all along. 

 

 

Oh Lord, help us to see with your eyes…

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.