263 - "Come, O God, Like The Rains" Hosea 7-14

A picture of life, at times.

Desolate, Drought, Devastating.

Bend Down, O God, and hear our prayer.

"Ephraim has hired lovers.  Even though they hired allies among the nations.  They multiplied altars for sin... They forgot their Maker while multiplying fortified cities."  Hosea 8:8-10.  
They played the harlot and loved the earnings. 
There's a point here. 
God's Words, His Story of Hosea and a harlot represents a welcome, a wooing, a wonderful invitation for more.  More than what this old world offers.

God yearns your way.
From the days of old, your very first days, He was there.
"Yet it is I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them in My arms;
But they did not know that I healed them...
And I bent down and fed them.  Hosea 11:4
But they were bent on turning from Me.  Hosea 11:7
Am I bent on my own will?
Do I feed on the wind? Hosea 12:1

The Lord is His name.
Therefore, Return to Kindness and Justice.
Wait for your God continually.  Hosea 12:6
Expect Him to do much.  He has.  He is.  He will.

"You will be irresistibly drawn to My Love and able to give it to others when you discover in your own experience that the love I have planted in your heart can never be destroyed by rejection, betrayal, criticism, or any other form of unlove you receive.  True love reveals itself as the strongest of all passions when your impulse to hate those who hurt you is fully felt."  66LL

Come, O God, Like the Rains.

Unannounced.

Unnoticed.

So Needed.

She followed her lovers and forgot God, even when she was married.  Consulting wooden idols.  Asking diviner's wands to inform them.  "Playing the harlot, departing from God."

God says:  He will go away until you acknowledge your guilt and seek His Face.  He does not say when you learn to be grateful or once you are doing well or when you do the right things.  No, it's when we acknowledge our guilt and seek His Face not seek changed lives/changed behavior.  He will come back when we repent not when we just recall good things, count our blessings.  

Hosea 6:1 - “Come, let us return to the Lord.

For He has torn us, but He will heal us...

Let us press on to know the Lord.

And He will come to us like the rain,

Like the spring rain watering the earth."

Hosea 6:3

Hosea 14:1-3 - "You're down but you're not out."  66 LL talks about how these verses are the model for repentance, for crying from your heart as you lay in the ditch of your sin.  "Requiring relief from your pain is wailing on your bed. 

What is the greatest good of my life?  I've so hung on to my reputation, my recognized ministry, my worth as an individual based on what others think...but, no, I must "let go" of demanding any good other than the good of knowing my God.  What is my greatest good this day?

Hosea 14: 7-8  "God is the One Who answers me and satisfies me.  Everything you need is to be found in Him."

Hosea 12:6 - What am I waiting for?  Wait and Expect God to show up.  You are waiting for God not for any man to do anything.  Don't ever give up on Him.  

May we owe no man anything but to love them.  

PHOTO: A picture of life.

262 - "A Door of Hope" Hosea 1-6

It's a Beautiful God Who pursues us when we are unlovely.

"I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness,

and speak tenderly to her."

And I weep.  

There.

I will give her a door of hope.

Hosea 2:14-15.

And I will have mercy on No Mercy.

And I will say to Not My People, You are my People."

Hosea 2:23.

So stirring.

May Hosea be ever so real in each of us.  

May we cry from our hearts for what affects us so this day.  

No wailing from our beds, O God!  

Help us to truly repent as the Great Story beckons.  Help us to find You.  

Oh! Laodicea, you thought you were doing okay.  But, no.  You talked your way right into heaven but you didn't end up there: "I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing." Rev 3:17.  And, God spits you out of his mouth.  Don't you know that you were wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.  Yet, where we are today, we cannot easily say those kind of statements or we miss the revelation of our purpose here.  The whole Bible is revelatory. 

PHOTO: Outside my classroom door for 15 years. Common Grace is always here. Redeeming Grace is forever mine. 350 

261 - "Go Your Ways to the End of Days" Daniel 10-12

White and Tried. 

This life.

Daniel 12:13 - But go your way till the end of all days. And you shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days.”

"Amid the crash of matter and the wreck of worlds,
the Lord Jehovah will preserve His own." C. Spurgeon
We need not fear.  Let us go on our way.
Find rest for our souls.  This world knows so little.
When have we truly been at rest in our souls?

White and Tried.
This life.

This we know.
This world will end.
May we live fully alive.

Go.
Rest.
Stand.
This is your lot.
This is your life.
No fiery furnace.  No den of lions.
Can keep us from walking with God.
May we become a parade of pleaders who won't let go, who will keep on.
To the end of our days.

Father, we pray the words Charles Spurgeon wrote over 100 years ago for this day:
May we live - "calm resolute in duty, brave in conflict, patient in suffering,
let us go, keeping to our road, and neither swerving from it nor loitering in it." (Spurgeon)

PHOTO:  Thinking about the end of times, the mountains laid low, the earth burned up.  And like that fiery furnace---there will be no smell of smoke on those who trusted to the end.  

260 - "May We Be Caught Praying" Daniel 7-9

Our names.  

Our Acts of Faith.  

Our Decisions to Overcome Evil with Good.  

Our Moves to Owe No Man Anything But Love.  

What We Did With our Lives---and How Aware we were of our Sin.    Daniel 7:10

Oh may we be caught praying! "While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my plea before the Lord my God, while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice." Daniel 9:21. We may never ever see an angel deliver our prayer, but we hold fast to the very Word of God for His Precious Promises are all "yes." And we wait in prayer.  Confessing our own sin.  Daniel pointed the finger at himself first.  He is dealing with what stirs inside of him---though pale in comparison to the depths of sin surrounding him. 

And the angel clarified: "At the beginning of your pleas for mercy a word went out, and I have come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved." Daniel 9:23.  And how the Promises and the Passion of being greatly loved just melts our hearts. 

This prayer life intrigues and invites.  Make me want to set a hundred Bell Tower alarms as reminders to pray.  

Oh Father, teach us to pray.  Every day, I say the "Our Father," hallowed be Thy Name.  Give us today our daily bread and forgive us like you do for the Daniels of the world who are so in touch with the darkness that lurks within---right smack dab in the middle of all the Goodness. Send your Mercy. Make us Good.  You Alone are Good!  We long for You, Our Father.  

PHOTO:  Watching the Texas sun rise in the sky. Thinking here about being "greatly loved" and what that really means for me today.

259 - "Leave The Stump" Daniel 4-6

                              

Leave the stump, bound with a band of iron and bronze. Daniel 4:15. Metaphorically speaking, the band of iron represented afflictions. There was hope that the stump might shoot forth back into life. That was my story a decade ago. Beth Moore shared this verse with me. It was a deep glimmer of hope in a very dark abysmal of a time. A verse about King Nebuchadnezzar who was a "monument of the power of Divine grace, and of the riches of Divine mercy." M.Henry He recovered from his madness. Recovered from his pride of forgetting God. "Whatever affliction God is pleased to lay upon us, may we have cause to bear it patiently, and to be thankful that he continues the use of our reason, and the peace of our consciences." M.Henry. The shoot sprang forth---that's me. 

I felt like I was about gone in 2006 January. The irons of affliction had done me in.

That summer, I started to sprout. 

Little by Little.

I came alive.

And that tree grew back again.

And I can now give shade to others once more. 

PHOTO: The stump.

258 - "Turn or Burn" Isaiah 1-3

                                                        

Ashpenaz went looking for skilled youth with a spotless record in Israel. You never know when you are living life when a knock may come on your door. Am I being faithful in the things I know, I do, I have. And Daniel makes history, not a show-stopper but a surrendered soul. May we be found faithful where we are.  

And here's a quote for all times, all moments: Dear King, we have no need to answer you in this matter of worshipping your gods with a little "g." Throw us in the lion's den. "Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of your hand." Determined---they will not serve or worship the king's gods with a little "g." Daniel 3:18.  

"And the hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them." Daniel 3:27. Blessed by the God of these 3 men.  And what this God did for these 3 servants made an indelible mark on all who watched, on all who hear 2,000 years later.  Isaiah 43:2 is true:  When you pass through the waters, God will be with you.  When you go through the fire, you will not be burned.  A metaphor of grace.  You will be taken care of.

Oh Father, When we read these beautiful stories of surrender and calm in the midst of horror, help us to walk in Your Ways, not the show-stopping celebrity world in which we live.  Whatever men may do to us, may we know You are with us.

PHOTO:  The sunset tonight.  Pondering what it means to really be alive.  To not miss the Grace of God in the midst of suffering.  To find His Presence there, here.

257 - “The Lord is There” Ezekiel 46-48

“And the name of the city from that time on will be:

the Lord is there.”
Ezekiel 48:35

This prophet.  Ezekiel.

He paid such a dear price with his life.

All for God.

All in for the people.

That Redeeming Love would restore their lives

and they would build God's temple.

This prophet.

One commentary said:  Ezekiel's words possess "such spiritual beauties and excellencies which are beyond all praise."  Proving to successive generations what heavenly wisdom Ezekiel shared.  And it still holds true for each of us this day.  

Oh! that God would restore our lives to live for Him and not for ourselves 

or anything this world has to offer.  Oh! The Unsearchable Riches of Christ!  Redeeming Love.  How can it be?

PHOTO: It's an old faithful dog in the city where all the kids grew up. I can see them in the treehouse hurling balls in a dodge-the-ball game. The Lord was there in that city where we lived. In that backyard where we loved. 

256 “Live Low in My Own Life” Ezekiel 43-45

 

"And I fell on my face." Ezekiel 43:3.  What causes me to fall on my face?  I can think of times:  cancer, betrayal, loss, grave disappointmentsx, depression.  Seems like it is when something happens to me rather than what stirs within me.  Ezekiel saw a vision concerning what God would do to the people of the city---destroy them.  And the immense glimpse of suffering and shame overwhelmed Ezekiel with sorrow.  And he fell.  Facedown.

Oh! Ezekiel! We will meet you one day. We'll worship together with You this God you so adore. "I looked, and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the temple of the Lord. And I fell on my face. And the Lord said to me, “Son of man, mark well, see with your eyes, and hear with your ears all that I shall tell you concerning all the statutes of the temple of the Lord and all its laws." Ezekiel 44:4

And here we go again. Overcome with awe! "The humblest posture of adoration and the expression of a holy awe." (M.Henry). Facedown. "The more we see of the glory of God the more low we shall lie in our own eyes." (M.Henry). And that thought explains to me how in the midst of my living life and being gravely offended, even this day, that I may make my ambition to find the glory of God and desire to live low in my own eyes. It's been a harrowing of a day and I really cannot share it with anyone, so I'll give it over to my God Who deeply cares. My roots have been twisted and turned.

And God charges Ezekiel to take extra care to observe with his eyes. A very careful observant learner. Ezek 45:5. Matthew Henry states a beautiful "In acquainting ourselves with divine things, we must not aim so much at an abstract speculation of the things themselves as at finding the plain appointed way of communion with those things, that we may go in and out and find pasture." Oh that we find pasture. Great peace have those who love God.

PHOTO: Father, help us find a gripping peace that won't let go of us.

255 - "When We Despair of Difficulties We Face ... " Ezekiel 40-42

                                                      

Ezekiel 40:1 In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after the city was struck down, on that very day, the hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me to the city." There is no mistake of the exact moment when he knew that God brought Him to that place. And our God has brought us to the place we sit this day. Dare we trust Him for more as we lift up open broken hands to His.  

This vision goes until the end of the book.  It's so hard to understand but we trust when we get to those rough patches, don't we?  Matthew Henry put it this way:  "Humbly search concerning it, get as far as we can into it and as much as we can out of it, and, when we despair of satisfaction in every difficulty we meet with, bless God that our salvation does not depend upon it, but that things necessary are plain enough, and wait till God shall reveal even this unto us." 

PHOTO:  Walking Galveston beach. Pondering how God's Hand is on our lives. Such mystery.                                  

254 - "Jealous For His Name" Ezekiel 37-39

                                     

And the Word of God came again to Ezekiel. I don't know that I've ever noticed how many prophecies came to this holy man who maintained justice and rightness before God.

And the Hound of Heaven pursues once again and forever.  Them and us.

Ezekiel 39:25 “Therefore thus says the Lord God: Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have mercy on the whole house of Israel, and I will be jealous for my holy name."

613 commands they had to obey.  How could they even remember them all.  No one could live them out every day.  Impossible.  The Jewish system and all its rules.  From 10 Commandments to over 600.  And God is moving to redeem.  Christ came.

Christ's invitation:  Come to Me.  Doesn't matter if it's just one rule.  Always breaking one.  Oh, that we live attached to the One Who can do something about all this weariness and woe.

Father, we are touched deeply by Ezekiel and his holy living and preaching and loving and prophesying.  You truly are the Hound of Heaven.  And You will never ever let us go.  Help us to know this day Your Holy Fire and Desire for each one of us.  You are jealous for me---as the song says.  May we sing it today!

PHOTO:  The Hound of Heaven comes.  From the days of Jerusalem to the days of hill country, He comes.