These Last Days

Well, I know it's been quite a while since I've posted anything the last several weeks.  Life being full is no understatement, but it's often the unexpected turns that test ones patience and deepens their trust in God.  Such has been the last days - and it hasn't been easy.   But through it all, we've seen fresh manifestations of God's faithfulness and His sustaining grace - and for that we are eternally grateful.

The events of last week in particular have held disappointment and challenges, but we rest in knowing that our God is sovereignly over all these circumstances and that He is indeed doing something that is for our good and His glory.

"Behold your God"

That has been God's clear word to us as we grapple with a sudden turn in direction and seek to determine what He is doing and where He is leading.  Please pray with us as we seek to set our gaze upon Him, appeal for His provision,  and expectantly watch Him work on our behalf.

Wisdom's Words: Glorifying God

“Jonathan Edwards once said: ‘God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in.’ It is not enough to say, ‘I guess he is God, so I have got to knuckle under.’ You have to see his beauty. Glorifying God does not mean obeying him only because you have to. It means to obey him because you want to — because you are attracted to him, because you delight in him.  -Tim Keller

Wisdom's Words: God's Love

“The only love that won’t disappoint you is one that can’t change, that can’t be lost, that is not based on the ups and downs of life or of how well you live. It is something that not even death can take away from you. God’s love is the only thing like that.”  -Tim Keller

Wisdom's Words: Loneliness

“Loneliness is a wilderness, but through receiving it as a gift, accepting it from the hand of God and offering it back to him with thanksgiving, it may become a pathway to holiness, to glory and to God himself.” 

(Elizabeth Elliot)

Wisdom's Words: Claiming the Promises

If you have a divine promise, you need not plead it with an "if"; you may urge it with certainty. The Lord meant to fulfill the promise or He would not have given it. God does not give His words merely to keep us quiet and to keep us hopeful for a while with the intention of putting us off in the end; but when He speaks, it is because He means to do as He has said. - Charles Spurgeon

Wisdom's Words: Perfection

"Perfection does not consist in understanding God's designs 

but in submitting to them..."

-Elisabeth Elliot

Life in the Wilderness

This week, God has brought to mind this verse from Habakkuk, and it has been both comforting and instructive at the same time.  I love what this image depicts:  life in the wilderness.

Yes, life in the wilderness.  

But logic questions, "How can there be life in the wilderness?"

The Answer

This verse from Habakkuk reveals the secret, and it is what I have been contemplating the last couple of days.

There's life in joy.  But the joy of which Habakkuk is speaking is independent of circumstances.  It is not an emotional response to the thrills of life and having everything go my way.  This joy is rooted in Someone Else and is entirely dependent upon the Giver.

True joy, the kind that remains through life's ups and downs and is constant and unwavering, has everything to do with Christ and what He has done for His people.   It is the by-product of a thriving relationship with Him.

The Choice

Habakkuk chose to rejoice in His God.

At my disposal is a lifetime full of joy, peace, and happiness no matter what happens.  It's there because God has promised it, and He never goes back on His word.  Will I avail myself of this richness and receive from His hand what He so abundantly will give me?

The trials we face, the sufferings we experience, the wildernesses into which God leads us - all these things are designed to draw us closer to God so that we experience in a fuller and deeper way who He is and grow to trust more and more His wisdom and power.  

This is the source of true joy.  This is the joy of which Habakkuk spoke:  joy in the Lord, joy in the God of my salvation. 

This is where God has me at the moment.  As God takes me through a wilderness and continues to strip away everything I'm used to and what I think I need, I realize He's leaving me with only one thing: Himself.  And I'm growing to see that's all I really need.

My joy rests in Him - and in Him alone.