HOW BIG IS YOUR GOD?

Psalm 108
[The Message]

A David Prayer
1-2 I'm ready, God, so ready,
ready from head to toe.
Ready to sing, ready to raise a God-song: "Wake, soul! Wake, lute!
Wake up, you sleepyhead sun!"
3-6 I'm thanking You, God, out in the streets, singing Your praises in town and country.
The deeper Your love, the higher it goes;
every cloud's a flag to Your faithfulness. Soar high in the skies, O God!
Cover the whole earth with Your glory!
And for the sake of the one You love so much,
reach down and help me—answer me!
7 That's when God spoke in holy splendor: "Brimming over with joy…...."

I love how God will use anything - even the cover of another children's book - to speak His truth to my heart!

How big is YOUR TRUST in this HOLY GOD?

Choosing JOY, Stephanie

FROM SIMPLE HUMILTY

James 1:18-21 (The Message)
So, my very dear friends, don't get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all His creatures.

Act on What You Hear
Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God's righteousness doesn't grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life. [emphasis added]

I don't study with The Message paraphrase, but since going to Jerusalem the Lord has directed me, for a time, to read this as a 'story' - about Him - and about my life in Him. I believe it is to gain a deeper clarity of life in our own modern times. God took me to several chapters this morning from 1 Corinthians - to Hebrews - to James. When I read this line in the last part of the above passage it blew me away.

Ponder that thought: Our gardener is God - landscaping us with His Word - making a salvation-garden of your life.

How does this speak to your life today?

Choosing JOY, Stephanie

EYESSET - Are Yours?

Hebrews 12 [NIV]
1Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

And then....go out and........

1 Corinthians 13 [Phillips translation]
Christian love - the highest and best gift
If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal. If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all. If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing. This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance. Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails. Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.

All gifts

except love

will be superseded one day

For if there are prophecies they will be fulfilled and done with, if there are "tongues" the need for them will disappear, if there is knowledge it will be swallowed up in truth. For our knowledge is always incomplete and our prophecy is always incomplete, and when the complete comes, that is the end of the incomplete. When I was a little child I talked and felt and thought like a little child. Now that I am a man my childish speech and feeling and thought have no further significance for me. At present we are men looking at puzzling reflections in a mirror. The time will come when we shall see reality whole and face to face! At present all I know is a little fraction of the truth, but the time will come when I shall know it as fully as God now knows me! In this life we have three great lasting qualities - faith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love.

After reading this passage from 1 Corinthians 13 this morning as quoted in a book I'm reading a second time called:
A Treasury of God's Virtues
I was posting a comment on my friend Beth's blog and up popped these letters before I could send my comment. Usually those letters make no sense and you're lucky if you can even read the letters at all. But this was a clear picture of what God wanted me to know for today. I hope God speaks to your heart today through it - as He did mine. Let's 'fix our eyes on JESUS' first - and then seek to clothe ourselves in the same LOVE that He wears!

Choosing JOY, Stephanie

Like a Shepherd - Lead Us

Do you know The Way?

Psalm 23

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness
for His name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me;
Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of mine enemies:
Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy
shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

Please click the link [below] and watch the slide show:

http://s937.photobucket.com/albums/ad217/TRUTHSHARER/Birds%20of%20a%20Feather2010/?action=view&current=12fe3e80.pbw

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or view it in the Header - above this post

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Can you quote some other Scriptures from Exodus, the Gospels, Ruth, or other passages after watching this slide show? This is a tiny creek not far from my home where God led me after visiting several shut-ins today.

Oh the JOY to be young and FREE!
But then... in Christ... we are FREE INDEED!


Choosing JOY,
Stephanie