Scripture Prayers cont.

I am unworthy, how can I reply to You, O Lord, I put my hand over my mouth. (Job 41:4) I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. (Job 42:2).

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in you my soul takes refuse. (Psalm 57:1)

Who can make straight was was crooked?   When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider; God has made the one as well as the other. (Ecclesiastes 7:13,14)

Psalm 119:57-64 (Heth)

The LORD is my portion; I have promised to keep Thy words.

I entreated Thy favor with all my heart; Be gracious to me according to Thy word.

I considered my ways, And turned my feet to Thy testimonies.

I hastened and did not delay to keep thy commandments.

The cords of the wicked have encircled me, but I have nor forgotten Thy Law.

At midnight I shall rise again to give thanks to Thee because of Thy righteous ordinances.

I am a companion of all those who fear Thee, and of those who keep Thy precepts.

The earth is full of Thy Lovingkindness, O LORD; Teach me Thy statutes.

Jesus is our portion, He is the Cup of Blessing, overflowing with mercy and justice for Righteousness.  He is our inheritance, He is our Mercy and He is our Promised one.  We are to keep our Hope in the Promise of God’s Righteousness and guard against all other things that try to separate us from  Him.   We must guard and keep safe in our being, the covenant of God.  It is in the Covenant of Jesus that we can claim the inheritance of the Father.  Because of the Law of the Father, God of all creation, we are restored to Him.  In this we should always thank God and give Him praise.  God searched our hearts and gave us the desire to know Him.  We then should also search out God with all our hearts, seeking to be healed of all the scars of our sins.  We should cry out for His mercy for we are not worthy nor have we ever been worthy of His Lovingkindness.  We should be merciful because of His mercy and we should seek His protection from the wiles of the world.  God gives to us His unfailing love, His Salvation and His promise fulfilled.

In God we have all Good things.  The World can offer nothing to us that God has not given greater.  Can the things of the flesh give us everlasting Life with Jesus?  Can the world promise us a peace that passes all understanding?  What man can offer us an inheritance that is Heaven?  No greater is the honor than to be a part of the Kingdom of God.  When Jesus joined us to Him and the Father, we became a part of that Kingdom, a kingdom with out beginning or end.  Will every fiber of your existence to serving and praising God.  Seek first to please God before any action or thought.  Make your life a mercy offering to God because He gave you mercy first.  He promised mercy even before we sinned.  Even though we fail daily to please Him. His mercy has gone before us, His provenient Grace is an usher to His greatness.  Even as I fail, I seek to please because God knows my heart.

I’m Back

As those of you that a regular readers of my blog have noticed, I haven’t been posting much the last couple of months.  I’ve been busy with other stuff and was sick, then my wife (who is my spiritual proof reader) was sick.  Then she fell and broke a rib and was on strong pain killers and not very lucid.  And I had some construction going on so I wasn’t thinking of what the Lord wanted me to share.

Things are back to normal now so I think that I can put more effort in my prayer life and my search through Scriptures to find wonderful thing to share with all of you.  Right off the bat, I can say that the Scripture for today in my everyday living is Psalm 103. But also read Jeremiah 31:1-3, 21-23.

I also want to say that we had an opportunity go take part in a Messianic Seder in April during Passover week.  I am a strong believer in the Traditions of Faith and this is one of them.  A Messianic Seder combines the Traditions of the Jewish Passover Feast with the Promise fulfilled by Jesus. The one I went to used the Seder feast as communion and it was very meaningful and Spiritual to me.  Next year, I will seek out these Messianic Jews and see if we can join them again.

“New” Quotes

Every man’s life is God’s Plan. - Horace Bushnell

Be it long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for. -David Starr Jordan

We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there. -Charles F. Ketterling

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of  life, And he who is wise wins  souls.  -Proverbs 11:30

…If you obey me ( Says the Lord, the God of Israel) and do whatever I command of you, then you will be my people, and I will be your God.  Jeremiah 11:4b

Lazarus, part two continued

Read:  Psalm 61:1-2, Ezekiel 18:10-17

The Lazarus’ in the world are caught up in the many conflicts of the nations, but they are also victims of Natural causes; floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and cyclones and the such.  They are victims of plagues, famine and draughts.  Jesus took those to the cross as well as our sins.  Jesus became the Lazarus for them all.

In the story Jesus tell, the only ones who gave mercy to Lazarus were the dogs.  They were the ones who licked the wounds of the victim of the plights of the world.  To the Jews, all Gentiles were as dogs, so it is fitting that the Gentiles came to Jesus after the cross.  In the Lazarus story, the dogs lick the wounds but they are not healed.  We can try by our own efforts to give comfort and mercy to others, but with out the grace of the Holy Spirit, we are no better than the dogs.  Right now when there is so much tragedy in the world, we give aid to just about every cause, but without the Grace of God behind our efforts, little is done. 

We need to see Jesus as  Lazarus, because clearly, he was making reference to himself with this story.  He was rejected by the people that God had chosen to call His Own.  He was left out of their homes and their hearts.  Jesus took upon himself, the sores of rejection, abuse and neglect.  He took to the cross the woulds caused by sin.  He bore the grief of the loss of grace and He sat on the garbage heap of our wasted lives.  He took the abuse that the people laid on others and He died.

Check out the Book Store!

For those who are looking for something to read or a research book, check out the Book Store added to my site.  There are a lot of good reading material and lots of different types of books. I approve of the variety offered.  You can save money by buying on line and maybe help me earn a little in my old age.

Political Gospel?

I struggle each day trying to keep my head out of  the political jumble that is facing our election these days.  I try very hard to keep my religious principles in perspective while I listen to the pundents debate as to whom is the best “religious candidate” for the country while doing their best to tear them all down.

I pray that whomever is elected to run the country, that person will do the best job possible and hope that God helps him or her.  What we have is a country that has given lip service to the Christian majority, promising them a voice and has not done much to prove it.  We have not had a very good track record over the last few decades and I hope that things will turn around.

But what is most essential is that we pray daily for our leaders and that we seek Christ in our daily lives.  Both the Right and the Left have good intentions for our country but both have not been very successful in accomplishing what is Truly Right in God’s Eye.  We need to ALWAYS be in prayer for God’s will to be done.

Because of God, I am.

My loving Daughter (in-law), Julia sent me an email awhile ago with a list of all the things I am because of God’s Grace. There are just to many things listed, and some are repetitive but I would recommend that you go to http://www.persevering.org/perceiv and look them up. Many come from the book of Ephesians which is called the Book of Hope in my circle of friends. Remember that many of the thing that God has blessed you with call us to action and not something that is to be sat on or buried in a field for fear that the will be lost. God is a God of Action and wants His Children to be active sons and daughters.

Here’s a sample to get you started…

I am faithful (Ephesians 1:1).
I am God’s child (John 1:12).
I have been justified (Romans 5:1).
I am Christ’s friend (John 15:15).
I belong to God (1 Corinthians 6:20).
I am a member of Christ’s Body (1 Corinthians 12:27).
I am assured all things work together for good (Romans 8:28).
I have been established, anointed and sealed by God (2 Corinthians 1:21-22).
I am confident that God will perfect the work He has begun in me (Philippians 1:6.
I am a citizen of heaven (Philippians 3:20).

Lazareth, the Rich Man, and the Bossom of Abraham. Part 2

In part one I dwelt on the plight of the rich man.  Now I want to spend some time on Lazarus and the Jesus connection.

Scripture: Psalm 146, Luke 16:19-31, Isaiah 53:3-5

I will concentrate my story on Lazarus because I am concerned with the Lazarus’s of our lives., the lazarus of the World.  We have over the last few decades seem to placed our “Religion” on the “Jesus Loves ME (first)” mode and have as did the rich man rejected or ignored the plights of the poor, sick and rejected of the World.  But we don’t have to go to the far reached of the Third World countries to find the rejected and sick, they are in our home towns, or byways and under the overpasses of our highways.  They are in the streets of our cities; the homeless, the runaways and the underpaid single mothers of our affluent societies.  Just how many Lazarus are there? I haven’t a clue but I know that they number in the Millions.  The evidence of all the people that could be a Lazarus is all around us.  In fact, maybe there is a bit of Lazarus in you.

We have tried to help many of these rejected and ignored people in the World, we send workers into the refugee camps, protest civil right abuses, pass laws to protect and contribute to the needs of Missionaries.  But is this enough?  What we need to see is that there is a connection between Jesus and these Lazarus’s. We can go back in History and see how the Nations created the Lazarus’s, Starting with the U.S.A. with the oppression of the Native American, and the slavery of the Blacks to the practice of shunning and child labor.  But America was not alone in this and we have made great strides to change.  What is great about America is that we confess our sins to the World and try to make amends.  Throughout the World, there is over mounting evidence that Evil is done to the people and that whole peoples are turned into Lazarus.  People of all walks of life find themselves rejected and dispised through no fault of their own.

This is the Jesus connection.  I believe that when Jesus told the parable about Lazarus, He was speaking of Himself.  Just as the event of the death of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, was to illustrate His three days in the tomb, the Parable was to relate to how the Son of Man was rejected by the very Chosen of Israel.  As Lazarus suffered the sores of the flesh, Jesus suffered the sores of the sins of man.  As Lazarus was locked out of the home of the rich man (whom you notice is unnamed), Jesus was locked out of the Hearts of Man.  As Lazarus was rejected so was Jesus rejected.  That is why I wanted you to read the passage from Isaiah with this Parable from Luke.  And as Lazarus is carried to the Bosom of Abraham, Jesus was Lifted up to the Heavens and sits with the Father.

 (to be continued)

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King

When I was young, the Civil rights movement was also young. I grew up with “colored” kids and they were my best friends. I could not understand how people hated, feared and denied them their rights, they were the only kids that let me play games, shared their lunches with me and let me into their homes to hear Gospel music and Jazz.

I went to an all white private school, lived in an upper middle class white neighborhood and had no friends among my peers. I was beat up, rejected and hazed by these same righteous white Christians that segregated the darker skinned families, rejected them as employees and moved if one of them dared to move into “their neighborhood”. I even dated a “colored” girl for a short while and one of my best friends was french/Indian/ black descent. I could not for the life of me understand why segregation even existed in America.

Now after forty years, the problem of Black/White/Hispanic relations still exists. How, in the Land of the Free and the Brave, can we tolerate this blind and negative relationship with each other and still call ourselves Christians? Didn’t Paul say that there was no difference between the believers? Didn’t Christ Jesus come so that All who might believe in Him, be free to be assured a life in abundant Love? Then there is no difference between Black, White, Asian or Hispanic Christians. And if there is no difference between Christians, then there can be no difference between any man, woman or child. We are all born of the same flesh and we all have the as awareness of Humanity.

So on this day and every day, I remember the walks, the riots and the death of a man who sought to be as I, one with God and one with everyman. Some will say that he was not as godly as he claimed but I remember that David sinned against God and he was said to be favored. We all have our faults but God is a just God and He blesses Whom He Chooses. God blessed Martin Luther King, He Blessed Robert and John Kennedy. These men died, so that all men might be free and equal in the eyes of the law. Christ died that All may have Freedom with the Heavenly Father and equal in the Kingdom of God.