“The good things don’t always soften the bad, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”
“If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.”
Today I was doing my devotions-- there are a few different ones I use-- and it seems like they're all talking about light. About God being the Light of the World; the Light in our darkness and I keep think about that.
Right now, I'm going through such a dark time, that sometimes I feel like it's never going to see light again and I know that if I can just get back to God (light), to where I'm suppose to be, everything will all be okay, (and all the darkness will fade away.)
And, in my devos yesterday, the scripture was Romans 8, such a powerful reminder of who we are God's love for us-- and I really like the Message
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Romans 8
The Solution Is Life on God's Terms
*1-2With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.
*3-4God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.
***The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
*5-8Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.
*9-11But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!
*12-14So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
*15-17This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!
*18-21That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
*22-25All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
*26-28Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
*29-30God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.
*31-39So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture: ***
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you. We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
I was encouraged by this and I hope that you are too. Love to all. Be safe.
We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin. ~André Berthiaume
just considering the fact that matt is super-famous... Most of you are pobably already aware of this... But just in case:
On thanksgiving day our pastor, Matt Chandler suffered a seizure. They found a mass on the frontal lobe of his brain.
In approximately 50 minutes; 10:45 my time (cst). He will undergo surgery to remove a large portion of his right frontal lobe.
As part of the surgery they will also do a biopsy to determine whether the tumor is malignant.
Please pray for Matt, his wife Lauren, their family, and our church family.
You will never meet anyone with a greater passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ, for seeing the lost come to know Him, for seeing strongholds broken in the lives of believers and non-believers alike, and doing everything for His great glory.
He has had an enormous impact for Christ here in Texas, throughout the US, and all over the world.
I honestly don't relate that much to that casting crowns song because of the beautiful biblical community I have at the village church. I am surrounded by a group of believers who love me in my struggles, encourage me through them.
Matt posted this on his blog this morning: http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/blog/hvpastor/?p=357
it's really short, but it really touched me.
“The good things don’t always soften the bad, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”
“If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.”
It's weird, considering what I wrote this morning, how fast things change. Why can I be so hopefully and light one moment and the next, all I want to do is cry. I'm still hoping, trusting, waiting, but it's like someone poured despair on me and that's all I can feel...
What's wrong with me, seriously?!
We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin. ~André Berthiaume
I feel really out of place sometimes. Not just because of my beliefs but my values as well. I don't believe in doing drugs, drinking all the time, sleeping around etc. I have never used illegal drugs, have not had excessive alcohol since I was a teenager and I've been married since I was 21. I might sound like I'm living in the 50s but I'm not going to apologise for what I believe in. It's just sad that people don't appreciate such values anymore.
"For those who fight for it, life has a flavour the sheltered never know"
-Pinned to a noticeboard at the US Command Post in Khe Sanh.
When the quiet joy of the period before Christmas makes itself felt on every side, many factors can make it especially hard to be sick... But perhaps Advent can nevertheless become a medicine of the soul... Even when it is difficult for us, we should at least try to understand the days of our illness in this way: The Lord has interrupted my activity for a time in order to let me be still... To keep an inner diary of good things would be a beautiful and healing task...
Nothing shows more clearly than a period of illness that man is one who waits... When the time is not filled with a meaningful presence, waiting becomes unbearable... waiting is an intolerable burden when it remains completely uncertain whether we actually dare expect anything. But when time itself is meaningful and each moment contains soemthing valuable of its own, the joyful anticipation of something greater, something still to come, makes even more precious that which we already experience...
I can speak to [Jesus]; I can utter lamentations in his presence; and i can hold up my sufferings, my impatience, and my questions to him, aware that he always hears me.
If God exists, then there is no meaningless time, no time devoid of significance. Every moment has its value, even if all I can do is to endure my illness in silence.
If God exists then there is always something to hope for, even where no human voice can any longer summon me to hope...
[Advent is] a time of joy, a joy that dwells within us and cannot be driven away by suffering... It may be difficult for us to accept this joyful music when we are tormented by questions, when we are afflicted by bodily illness and psychological problems... but this child is a sign of hope precisely for those who are oppressed.
“The good things don’t always soften the bad, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”
“If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.”
Matt made it through the 7 hour surgery, and was responsive and answering questions, and making everyone laugh in recovery. He'll stay in ICU at least another night.
The tumor's pathology report will be available early next week.
Please continue to pray for matt & family. And pray that God would be glorified through the situation.
Ps. One young woman came to know the Lord as the result of this situation!
“The good things don’t always soften the bad, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”
“If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.”
it basically said Jesus be the lord of all the kingdoms of my heart, because if you're not lord of everything then you're not lord at all, and I was only fooling myself when I said I gave my all, but in the secret corner of my heart there was a kingdom that didn't fall yada yada yada talking about how if we don't surrender everything, all our habits, all our hearts, everything that we hold on to if we don't make him lord of everything we're basically telling him he's not our lord at all
^paraphrase of some hymn my friend sung tonight @ her church ><
“The good things don’t always soften the bad, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”
“If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.”
I've been trying to get my faith back for such a long time now... gah I know I shouldn't force it, but I miss having the support. I'm 19 and it was a full year after I lost my faith that I realised it. I'd been praying every night and going to church and I couldn't understand how things had changed, and then I realised I wasn't BELIEVING. I want to believe again. I don't know why I stopped. I WILL get my faith back, I just have no idea how to begin.
*cuddles with* i dont have any advice, but you know where i am if you wanna chat <3
“The good things don’t always soften the bad, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”
“If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.”
I feel really out of place sometimes. Not just because of my beliefs but my values as well. I don't believe in doing drugs, drinking all the time, sleeping around etc. I have never used illegal drugs, have not had excessive alcohol since I was a teenager and I've been married since I was 21. I might sound like I'm living in the 50s but I'm not going to apologise for what I believe in. It's just sad that people don't appreciate such values anymore.
the world will keep getting worse, remember we ARE out of place in the world as Christians and that's what it's supposed to be like.
I feel really out of place sometimes. Not just because of my beliefs but my values as well. I don't believe in doing drugs, drinking all the time, sleeping around etc. I have never used illegal drugs, have not had excessive alcohol since I was a teenager and I've been married since I was 21. I might sound like I'm living in the 50s but I'm not going to apologise for what I believe in. It's just sad that people don't appreciate such values anymore.
I am 16 and all those things are important to me. (I am straight edge)
Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!"
Thomas Parke D’Invilliers
Somewhere in the bible (ive forgotten where - i'll try to find it) God says that the world is our tent and that heaven is our home/ our house. Therefore surely it makes complete sense that we don't feel like we fit in here, it's not our home, it's only temporary.
Somewhere in the bible (ive forgotten where - i'll try to find it) God says that the world is our tent and that heaven is our home/ our house. Therefore surely it makes complete sense that we don't feel like we fit in here, it's not our home, it's only temporary.
Are you perhaps referring to the beginning of 2 Corinthians 5?
" 1For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. 6So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 10For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil."
Love it.
on another note... pray for me. it's gonna be a hard day.
nothing big or horrible is going on, I just only got 2.5 hours of sleep, and I have a calc test, and... yeah basically, I'm an emotional mess over finals next week...
I'm just clinging to the cross to pull me through
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