Bow the Knee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrOTIu7e8Uw Please listen to this song on youtube. You will not be sorry. :-)

This is such a beautiful song and so important for me to remember these days. God has brought a couple circumstances to my attention that I know for a fact I can do nothing about, and yet those situations cause me a lot of discomfort. At first this made me mad, but God in His grace reminded me that He is God. He has redeemed me and I now belong to Him in every sense of that word. He did not promise me the "good/prosperous" life, but He has promised me Himself.
There are tons of places in Psalms where David talks about God being his portion and his reward from this life, and these have really comforted me:

"Thou art my portion, O LORD: I have said that I would keep thy words." -Ps. 119:57
" My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." -Ps. 73:26
" The LORD [is] the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot." -Ps. 16:5

So in a kinda creepy way I am enjoying this strong discomfort, because God reminds me that while this life may be pretty uncomfortable/unpleasant for me; He is a more than sufficient reward. I have given my life and my soul to Him and that means that I do not have the right to demand the pleasures found in this life. While He is ever faithful and cares very much for me, He is ever the Lord.
I absolutely must bow the knee to Almighty God in everything (including these circumstances). I also must submit my life to Him, and stop desiring/following/pursuing the things of this world. It is hard for me to write this, but I know it is the truth. And I can remember and be comforted that He is not a "hard" Master, but He is THE Master. There is nothing for me here, but my reward will only be found in God. I pray God will continue to bring me to my knees before Him and help me to submit to Him in every situation no matter how uncomfortable it is. Even though it HURRRRTS! :-)
Hope you enjoy that song as much as I did. :-)

"Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present [you] faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Saviour, [be] glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen." Jude 1:24-25

Looking up

When I hear my Dad say "Grace, you need to be thinking outside the box" (one of his favorite phrases), my heart sinks. Creativity is NOT my strong point, and that is what he wants, right? I am learning something about "looking outside of the box"; it isn't actually as hard as I used to think it was. I think my most creative ideas have come from stepping back and looking at the big picture. What are the needs? How can they be met? So basically my dad is just asking me to find the answer that works. It's there; it is just not at that moment apparent.

I love the book of Philippians (in the Bible) and it is from this book that God has revealed His call to me. He has called me to creativity or "looking up".

"Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." -Phil. 2:4-8

If you are like me, semi-normal, you have a lot to do. And things and issues crowd your day until you fall into bed exausted late at night (or early morning). For some of you, mere survival takes up most of your day, how can there possibly be any time left for one more thing? There seems to be in that kind of day no room for more attention to others or other's things. How can we be asked to look on things of others when we barely (and I mean barely) have room for our "things". This is where creativity and looking up come into play.

Actually looking on the things of others is more about the heart than anything else. Of course! I love Mark Cahill's quote "money isn't about money, it is about the heart." Is our heart right about the things we are doing? There are times when parents or

It is so natural for me to go about the day working, studying, and interacting with people in a selfish way. But God has called me and redeemed me from that way of thinking to a new life wherein I can have a new mind of selfless humility in serving, living, yea, dying for other's things. It requires creativity, because this is not natural. It requires creativity because it doesn't seem possible. We have a responsibility to be responsible. However creativity is not that hard. It is the answer that works and the answer that is already there.

So stepping back, what is the big picture? Life isn't about me. It will not effect eternity if my personal desire to one day become a nurse is not realized... All of heaven will not be shaken if I am not one day a wonderful, responsible, cheerful, good and virtuous wife and mother... And as far as short term desires: I will still be a Christian if I don't get to hear the latest episode of Wretched Radio, or Paul Washer's sermon. I will not be overweight tomorrow if I don't get the best workout today... So my plans and desires are very much interupt-able. Is that a word? That's a humbling thought, but it should be. Life is about God, His goals, His plans done His way. Life is about anything and everything that magnifies God.

And what is the answer that is there and yet not apparent? The answer seems to be in having the mindset of Christ. The attitude of a bond-servant (if you will) giving up ones own desires and dreams to serve their master because of the love one has for their master seems to be the right attitude.

In this same book, Paul talks about a selfless man who served Paul's needs without regard to his own physical needs. Wow! Paul says, "Hold such a one in reputation."

So my challenge is to "look up!" What is going on around me? .

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." -John 15:13
"And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also." -1John 4:21

Secrets!

It is August, and "Grace Every Day" has become more like "Grace Every Month or So..." It is not that I am not experiencing God's grace everyday and really every moment of my life, but rather how can I do all these stories, of God's unbelievable grace, justice in a blog?

Since I am unable to write about everything going on in my life, today, I will just write about secrets.

My family has never been good at keeping secrets from each other until recently, and now all of the sudden everyone is good at it. They don't tell me anything they shouldn't, and I don't them anything I shouldn't. We all get frustrated with each others new ability to be discreet. However, God has shown me the grace found in secrets. This is really weird for me, but I no longer HAVE to KNOW what going on or what is coming. In fact it is pretty much fine if I never know... Here is what I am learning about secrets:

There is a verse about secrets in the Bible (Proverbs 25:2) that says, "[It is] the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings [is] to search out a matter."

What kind of secrets does God have? What is He concealing? How do these secrets bring Him glory? I can think of two big things God conceals. He conceals Himself. He conceals the future.

Sometimes God conceals Himself completely from a person. They never understand salvation in this life. They never understand His power, or His Deity, or even the fact that He is the their Creator. The fact that some people will never know God as their Savior does not at first glance seem glorifying of God at all. It is a very offensive truth with which lots of us struggled. God is not mean, right? However there are even secrets the children of God will not understand this side of heaven. There are still parts of His character and many of His ways and decisions that we do not understand. Wouldn't it be nice to know NOW? How is this secret keeping glorifying to God?

One way God's secret keeping brings Him glory is that it forces me (and all people) to realize that this life is NOT ABOUT ME, it is about Him. God does not owe the understanding of His character or His ways (I thought He did until I read Job 38-42:6). He does not owe me or salvation or grace. He is above and I am below. I am His creation; He is my Creator. When I understand who He is, the Lord of all, who answers to no one, and is yet perfectly gracious and holy, I can no longer have a problem with what He has chosen to do? And yet I must continue doing what is right in His eyes though I don't know/understand what is going on. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, if only for the purpose of reminding me of my place and of His place in life as I know it. How gracious He is in reminding me of this truth.

Now God's concealment of the future is tough. There are times when I would give my front tooth to know what was coming. :-) But that isn't how it works... and lately it isn't how I want it to work. How does this concealment of my future bring Him glory? Boy, do I know the answer to this question. When He conceals my future, even the next moment of time, I am forced to cling to His promises, to His Word, to Him. This is so gracious, because I know myself. In the pride of my heart, were I to know what was coming, I would forget about God and do things my own way. I would "lean" on my OWN limited and depraved understanding of things and make my decisions accordingly.

God's concealment of things does bring Him glory, and He is worthy of that glory. But that wasn't the end of the verse, though it could have been. The end of the verse said that it is the honor (Honor spelt with an "ou" to be exact. KJV, you know :-)) of kings to search out a matter. Those of us to whom God has graciously revealed Himself, and even those to whom He has not yet revealed Himself, have the great honor of looking into the secrets of God. It doesn't mean we will understand all of these secrets (though we may), but we have the honor of a personal relationship with the Almighty God who is willing to reveal His glory/His secrets to us. What an unspeakable honor! I'll take it! :-)

So here is the moral of this blog post: Secrets can be really really good things, but only when they are kept and revealed at the right time. So don't tell your secrets and don't force others to tell theirs, until it is time for those secrets to be revealed. While we are waiting for all of those delightful secrets to come out, we have plenty to occupy our minds with looking into the deep secrets of our God.

Daniel 2:20-22 "Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his: And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding: He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what [is] in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him."