Sunday, February 27, 2011

I Am Thine!




1. I am thine, O Lord, I have heard thy voice,
and it told thy love to me;
but I long to rise in the arms of faith
and be closer drawn to thee.

Refrain:

Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,
to the cross where thou hast died.
Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,
to thy precious, bleeding side.


2. Consecrate me now to thy service, Lord,
by the power of grace divine;
let my soul look up with a steadfast hope,
and my will be lost in thine.
(Refrain)

3. O the pure delight of a single hour
that before thy throne I spend,
when I kneel in prayer, and with thee, my God,
I commune as friend with friend!
(Refrain)

4. There are depths of love that I cannot know
till I cross the narrow sea;
there are heights of joy that I may not reach
till I rest in peace with thee.
(Refrain)

Written by Fanny Crosby

Sunday, February 20, 2011

For Robie...


This is for Robie, who visited my blog earlier this week and left a comment: 

I was touched by what you wrote and I thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. You are indeed right when you said there is always someone a little worse off than we are. I too tell myself that quite often. While I'm not in a wheelchair, I have chronic health conditions that limit what I can do, especially since I had bilateral strokes in July of 2010.

I used to wonder 'why me' and now I say 'why not me?' Things happen to many of us that we'd rather not have to deal with. What I'm learning is that my attitude makes a world of difference when problems surface. I want to be known as someone who trusts what the Lord does in my life ... who ever seeks to give Him honor and glory for each day. May I be remembered, if I'm remembered at all, as someone who loved the Lord and loved His people.

Robie, I encourage you to keep in touch with me. I so appreciate hearing from others! One reason I write is in hopes it will minister to other people...those I know and those I don't.

May the Lord meet each need and may you come to understand your purpose in this life.

Blessings!

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Knowing God



"What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it - the fact that he knows me.  I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind.  All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me.  I know Him because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when His care falters.

This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort - the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates - in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good.  There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me.

There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that He sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow humans do not see (and I am glad!), and that He sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough).  There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and have given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.  We cannot work these thoughts out here, but merely to mention them is enough to show how much it means to know not merely that we know God, but that He knows us."

from the book Knowing God, by J.I. Packer, pages 41-42

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Devotionals...



"Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

"I will never forget the day they moved me away from 'acute care' to 'chronic care' in the hospital. As they wheeled my stretcher under the sign, I got a lump in my throat. It meant 'the doctors don't know what else to do, and I won't regain use of my body'. My condition was chronic.

Why do some hardships never go away? You and and plead until your knees are sore, yet the pinched nerve doesn't heal, the multiple sclerosis doesn't halt, the Alzheimer's doesn't regress, the marriage doesn't get better, the job promotion never comes, and the engagement ring never arrives. After decades in a wheelchair, this is my conclusion:

The core of God's plan is to rescue us from sin and self-centeredness. Suffering - especially the chronic kind - is God's choicest tool to accomplish this. It is a long process. But it means that I can accept my paralysis as a chronic condition. When I broke my neck, it wasn't a jigsaw puzzle I had to solve fast or a quick jolt to get me back on track. My paralyzing accident was the beginning of a lengthy process of becoming like Christ.

May I share with you one of my 'chronic' Bible verses that won't go away?  James 1:2-4 says 'When all kinds of trials crowd into your lives my brothers, don't resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends! Realize that they come to test your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance. But let the process go on until that endurance is fully developed' (Phillips). When that finally happens, the only thing that will be chronic is joy!

Lord, help me to embrace the chronic conditions in my life. I want endurance to be fully developed in my life. Help me to hang on."

This was today's reading in the devotional "Pearls of Great Price" by Joni Eareckson Tada and it spoke to my heart about the chronic conditions I live with. There is a good and Godly purpose to them. May her words minister to you today.

Blessings!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Sunday, February 6, 2011