Him and Me

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I’ve really enjoyed spending time in God’s word each day. It is just wonderful growing in Him and so I’m just going to share with you various versus that have spoken to me or stood out lately.
Below is a good quote I read about the important of studying God’s word and spending time with Him.
J. I. Packer writes, “The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know God. Disregard the study of God and you sentence yourself to stumble through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.”
In my quiet time I find the knowledge of God that makes sense of life. A quiet time is like a looking glass, a sort of magic mirror, that lets me look into the deeper dimensions of life. Through the mirror I am able to see the reality of God’s presence. I can look not only at God but also at myself. Without that mirror God seems distant, and I tend to lose my Christian perspective on the world around me.”

Okay now for some versus:

Here are parts of Psalms 34 with some of my thoughts of what it said to me:
“I will extol the Lord at all times; his praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice …I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears…The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them …The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry.”

Romans 6:19-23 “I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

In my student Bible it discuss how the very best proof of the Christian faith is a believer with a changed life. Paul writes that this is possible - “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” This is because the Spirit teaches us the benefit of being a child of God. With God working in us, we can be more than conquerors and one day God will make all creation perfect again. Remember nothing can separate us from God’s love.

I hope my life is a testimony for God’s work in me. It has not been by my own strength that I’ve changed from living for my own temporary highs. I wanted to change many times from that lifestyle, just because it left me feeling empty afterwards, but I kept stumbling and falling back. It was not until I asked God to reveal to me how He saw that lifestyle and to help me to let it go that I really changed and ended up in Oslo dancing for God (crazy but cool how He changes our hearts!). Hopefully as you read this blog over the next year the changes God is making in my heart and in who I am will continue to be a testimony to the living loving God whom I follow and am love by.

Romans continues in Chapter 7 with Paul talking about this struggle. Romans 7:5 “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” My study Bible expounds on this by saying: The law (ex: the 10 Commandments) reveals a basis code of morality. So it is helpful in that sense but the ‘problem’ with it is that once it helps to show us how bad we are it doesn’t make us any better. If you stop with the law then all it really does is make you feel guilty (which that’s what comes out in what Paul is saying). It bares your weakness but can’t provide the power to overcome them. We need outside help. As it says in Romans 8 we need outside help to ‘serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” .

In Exodus I was reading about how Moses was going before God for the people and specifically in Exodus 23 how God was telling Moses all of the things He would do for the people. What caught my eye was how God told Moses that He would take out all of their enemies but would do it over a year instead of all at once because ‘the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you.” Then God explained why not to let certain people live in their land because ‘they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you.” When we ask God for things, or when He makes promises to us we expect that thing to occur right now but we forget He is over the everything. When He acts, He knows how it will affect everything unlike us who only see what is right in front of us. So there is always a reason why His promises may appear to take a long time to come to fruition.

I love all of Psalm 37 but here is versus 23-24 for your reading pleasure:
“If the Lord delights in a man’s way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.”

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