Tag: Word

My Two Sons

Pencil Portraits by Billy Nicol Creative

I have two sons and they are very different from each other. Connor is the oldest and he is an engineer who recently graduated from college with good leadership skills. He was born into our family with three older sisters.

My other son is Morris and he was born into abject poverty in Liberia, Africa. He came to our house when he was six. He has outstanding coordination, Is an excellent athlete, and is very musically inclined.

Connor and Morris have very different strengths as well as different weaknesses. One of my jobs as a dad is to allow them to be unique and to adjust my expectations accordingly. Ideally I could maximize their strengths while teaching them to mitigate their weaknesses.

I believe God in this respect is similar to a good dad. He doesn’t expect the same from everyone. He actively works with our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aptitudes and abilities. That is one reason not to compare oneself to others as He has specific hopes and desires for each of us.

Likewise reading the bible like every verse currently applies to everyone is foolish. No one could possibly meet that standard. Scripture is best personally handled by asking Him what He wants you to see-to focus on-for yourself.

Jesus knows what He created. He knows your frame as David said. Rest in that knowledge and ask Him to speak individually to you about your walk with Him. He is among many other things very personal.

Your brother in Jesus,

Les

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Apples of Gold

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“The right word spoken at the right time
       is as beautiful as gold apples in a silver bowl.”

Prov. 25:11, New Century Version

I’ve been thinking about this particular verse for years.  I had an older translation and I couldn’t decipher it.  It is really good to understand what you have just read.

This verse tells us that there is a certain cadence– a timeliness for just the right word.  There is a proper sense, a beautiful art in making the situation perfect. The wisdom comes in a conversation, and suddenly everything makes sense.  There is a elegance that’s shared by everyone, and a dignity that the Holy Spirit bestows on our words. We only have to ask Him to bless what we say (or write.)

People speak wrong words as well.  Rather then edifying, they tear down.  Thirty years ago a Christian girl I was working with would always try to counsel me.  Soon, I had enough of it.  I walked up to her desk and said, “Becky (name changed), God has given me a word for you!”  She looked up at me and smiled. ‘It’s Judges 16:16’, she got out her Bible to read the verse I just had given her. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was tired to death.”

I absolutely crushed her spirit.  I had used the Word to assault her like a blunt instrument.  Tears welled up in her eyes.  It would be a time before I sought her forgiveness.  I was hard and brutally used the Bible to purposefully hurt her.  I do not suggest that you do this.  I will never forget what I did. Oh man, did I ever learn.

That day I would learn the awesome power of my words— for good, or for evil.

Let us also decide that our words will bring life to those who we meet today– wise and encouraging words!

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Making Sense of a Deep and Kind Love

Love.

In the face of doctrine, creeds and faith systems…isn’t the important thing that we just love?

Isn’t love the superior truth we should be after?

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1 Corinthians 13, “The Message”

The Way of Love

” 1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. 3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.”

About the time I have my discipleship all figured out, I come across a passage like this. It seems I continually try to move beyond it, somehow regarding love as something diminished. I get it in my head that love is a “primitive teaching”, something I’ve somehow outgrown.

8 “Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known”.

When we try to define love, we need to look at what love is not. The above list helps us make certain distinctive. Soaking ourselves in the scripture gives us limited authority in the vital area of discernment of real love. Love has a sterling quality that sets it far above everything else. Just as fine gold is valued and tinsel debased, so love is superior to all else.

8-10″Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

11When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

12We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

13But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.”

Love is the constant and an eternal security  for the believer. Get it now, dig for it. Mine deep and pull it out,  for love is the steady currency of heaven.

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Tempting Offers [Enticement]

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“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil. For forty days and forty nights he fasted and became very hungry.”

Matthew 4:1-2

Jesus was incredibly human.  We can never overlook this, or minimize this fact.  Jesus has just experienced the presence of God in a bone-shaking way after his baptism.  And instead of building on what has happened, he gets turned and directed to leave and go into the wilderness.

The Holy Spirit has initiated this.  The Spirit is leading, directing Jesus to the solitary places.  He has an appointment, and He must keep it.  Satan, the evil prince wants to test Jesus, to put Him on trial.  I believe these examinations are real and substantial.  Because of Jesus’ humanity, He is vulnerable.

Jesus fasted, “and became very hungry”.  His physical defenses were at their very lowest.  He simply could not maintain His walls in this level.  He will need to rely on the Word of God, exclusively.  And perhaps this is the lesson that the Holy Spirit intends to convey.

Jesus overcame each “real” temptation with a promise.  It was His only defense as His enemy subtly and malevolently adapted to take down Jesus.  The Word has become a powerful weapon, and Jesus wields it deftly and precisely. It was his escape hatch.

“The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure” (1 Cor. 10:13).

On the other hand, most people who want to be delivered from temptation, would still like to keep in touch. We will send it our forwarding address. This is tragic.

Why are church leaders so committed to the study of the Bible?  Because it is the modus operandi for believers in every time and every place.  The promises are truth wrapped in words.  Disciples from every age and theology have found the Bible to be a razor-sharp spiritual weapon.

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” 

Hebrews 4:15-16

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