Conversations, Reflections & Meditations


	Main Page \| My Articles for The Life Connection \| Prayers and Meditations \| Poetry Haida Gwaii Reflections \| Education & Home-School \| Family
Sign Guestbook \| View Guestbook Comments? Questions? [email protected]	Prayer topics Pour Down Your Fire Holy, Obedient, Steadfast Priorities and Praise Adoration Holiness: Walking With God Pray First Pour Down Your Fire Date: April 29, 2004 I just slid out of bed and onto my knees, and told You I don't know what I want except to love You and hear You and know Your voice. I have been so confused lately, and Lord, it seems like my head is full of a clatter of voices. My brain seems to have gone into overdrive, but my body and life seem to be stalled. Some of us love to study the Word, and long to hear Your voice in it, and find clear direction, too. And it would be nice if we could meet (those of us so inclined) to do that. Oh Lord, I just want to be able to share what You are teaching me, and find out what You are teaching the others, and somehow put that together to discover and enact Your plan for Your church here among us. You do have big plans. You are working out Your purposes. You do care about me, and about our cell group and our church and our city, and all the lost people, and You are going to shake us up, focus us on You, teach us to pray. Oh dear God, teach me to pray. Pour out Your Spirit - pour out Your fire, Lord. Light me aflame, Lord. Pour out Your fire on the altar of my sacrifice of my life. Burn up all the deadwood and the water that is dampening, even soaking, my ardour for You. Even the "dust" of my past, and of the things in my present that I am allowing to settle in and choke and clog up my relationship with You, and my service and my love for You. Pour down Your fire upon me, dear Holy Spirit, and upon our life group and church, dear God - like You did when Elijah faced the 400 prophets of Baal - so that we may all unreservedly proclaim with all our beings, "The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!" And not only proclaim it but commit to it totally, totally, totally, and live it! That we may totally destroy the "prophets of Baal" in our lives and serve You only and always. Return to the top Holy, Obedient, Steadfast Date: April 30, 2004 Good morning, dear Lord. Thank You for a good night's sleep. Thank You for the opportunity to sit up, turn on the light, and study Your word. Thank You for the "fourth book" of Psalms and the assurance that You are with me. Praise Your holy name! Thank You for the record of the Kings of Israel and Judah, and of Your Word through Your prophets. What lessons in obedience and steadfastness and the judgment and wrath of God - and God's incredible mercy - are contained in these records. What a mighty, holy, righteous God we serve! A loving God, totally, and yet also a God of judgment and destruction for those who walk in evil, independent of their holy Creator. Thank You for the book of 2 Peter and the reminder to stand firm in the Truth, in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and not to allow ourselves to listen to, and turn away to follow the heretical thinking of men who have turned from God's truth. Thank You for Your presence, dear God, through Your word, as Your Holy Spirit graciously and kindly reveals my God and Savior to me through the Bible, and teaches and guides me. Yesterday was a good day, but I still wasted some time watching TV. I find it hardest in the late afternoon when I am getting tired, and have a harder time maintaining self-discipline to turn it off or walk away from it. Please give me strength all day, dear Lord. Thank You. And please forgive me for my wrong choices. No excuse! I disobeyed You. I knew what I was doing, and I went ahead and did it anyway. Knowing I'd be sorry - again - afterward. I see how the Kings of Israel so easily departed from Your Word, dear Lord. A little step here, a little thing there... Oh dear God, I don't want to be like that. I want to be holy, Lord! Please help me. Return to the top Priorities and Praise Date: May 1, 2004 Lord, please help me to carefully plan my life so that I do what You want, and don't overload. I need to plan for time for myself with You, relaxation time for music and art, time for my husband, time for my kids, time for my mom and dad, time for housework, time for my business, time for friends, time for our life group, time for the "One-Eighty" ministry, time for church, time for helping in the church office and library, time for tutoring... not necessarily in that order, but definitely God, family, and a bit of self-care are priorities... Why is life so complicated? Oh, but what an adventure! I'd hate to be bored like some people. I love hearing the birds in the morning. So many, even if we do live in a back alley in the middle of town. Thank You, Lord, for Your beautiful creation! ____ and I have been reading together "The Giver" by Lois Lowry. I am enjoying the book so much, and enjoying the time it gives me with my child, doing something we enjoy together. I can see this as a type of story that appeals to the imagination and makes one think. Just reading it again has made me realize how blessed we are to have a colorful creation. I've actually been looking around me with way more interest and excitement and fresh new eyes! But also it has made me think about the value of pain, seeing the need for it rather than just the burden of it. Seeing the satisfaction and adventure of the difficult, the challenges, the unexpected. Maybe teachers should be older people who have developed wisdom, but managed meanwhile to keep seeing the world afresh as a child does. It is so cute watching my little grandson, and listen to him explain things. How he loves to talk. How smart and even wise he is for his short years. And yes, he does love Jesus! Thank You, Lord, for working in his little heart, and in his parents' hearts, too. Oh dear God, please, please, please keep drawing all my children into deeper and deeper relationship and communion with You. Thank You, Lord. Amen. Return to the top Adoration Date: May 10, 2004 Dear Heavenly Father, Wow! Thank You! Hugely, expansively, incredibly, exceptionally! I love You, Lord. I worship and adore You. I do want to live abundantly, always, before You and because of You. You are my Alpha and Omego, my entirety, my eternity, my Lord of lords, my King of kings, my One and Only God Almighty, Creator, Maker of heaven and earth. Yes, yes, yes! Praise Your awesome, fearful, totally perfect and holy and righteous name! Hallelujah! I bow before You in humility and love and adoration. I give myself, all that You have made and developed, to You, for Your pleasure and purpose alone, forever and ever. Amen! Return to the top Holiness: Walking With God Date: May 11, 2004 I heard something on the radio last night about holy living. It was that we can and should be living holy, sinless lives, if we ensure that we are constantly being filled with the Holy Spirit, because holiness and sin cannot live together in the same vessel. This really struck me. I had once thought that "I am a sinner saved by grace," that even though I am saved, I still have to constantly struggle against sin with all my being. Then I came to understand that my spirit has been made righteous and is inhabited by God, but that because I still live in my sin-stained earthly body or "earth suit", I have to struggle daily, willfully, against temptation to sin. But hearing that one sentence (and it was just one sentence at the very end of a radio program), I suddenly realized that "earth suit" or not, if I can move into a place of relationship with God such that I am being continually aware of the need for His total Presence, of the need for continual, moment-by-moment, complete and on-going filling and refilling of God's Holy Spirit, in total communion of God with me and in him - indeed the "Practice of the Presence of God's Holy Spirit" totally indwelling and controlling my entire being - then I will not sin, because the will and purpose and design and being of God will also be my will and purpose and design and being. So ultimately I do not have to struggle against sin and the devil; I have only to focus on loving and obeying and totally being filled with and walking with God through His Holy Spirit because of the paid sacrifice, the paid debt, of Jesus' precious blood. For if I walk in relationship with God, totally focused on Him in me, I will only desire to do His will. All the desires of the world and the enemy will lose their appeal, indeed, will become as abhorrent to me as they are to my perfect, holy, righteous, Jaweh God. Yes, we are to resist the devil. But I can struggle to resist him by myself (and fail), or I can resist him by the power of the Holy Spirit, not only indwelling me but filling me to overflowing - spirit and body too. Maybe that isn't a perfect theological explanation, but You know what I mean, Lord. In a sense, I knew that already, but it is a great relief to really "know" it. I'm not in this struggle alone. I think I knew I have to use the armour of God, but I don't think I really understood that using the armour of God ultimately means that the battle is the Lord's. (I'm hearing this voice within saying, "No, no! God does give you armour, it's true, but you have to do the fighting alone." But that isn't right. Sure, I have to fight with all my strength, but I also have God's strength, and I am not responsible for the victory - that's God's place.). Look at Joshua or Gideon. God gave them His weapons: trumpets, marching feet, torches in jars, and quite often, swords and spears. Sometimes they didn't have to fight at all (think Sennacherib). Sometimes they did kind of a "mopping up operation." But most of the time God provided the plan, the weapons (strange as they might seem to man), and even sometimes heavenly armies marching in the tops of the trees, but the armies of Israel still had to get in there and fight with discipline and commitment, often until they were physically and even emotionally exhausted. But God won the battle for them as they obeyed Him in faith and walked acording to His word and command. I am not in this alone! What a relief! But God chooses every aspect of our lives to be a relationship, a partnership. Imagine that. The Almighty God of the universe wanting to partner with me, a sinful little blip in the course of man's earthly existence. How incredible that God has saved me, and values me so incredibly. Amazing grace! Amazing love! What else can I do, how else can I respond to such great love, than to in return give Him my all, my time, talents, treasure, all my heart and strength and soul and mind (which all come from Him to begin with), in total obedience, total submission, total doing as well as believing. Yes. The battle is God's! God will joyfully fill me to overflowing with His Spirit. But I must walk (run, struggle, fight). I must act, do, obey. I must stay in total, loving, obedient servant relationship. If I do my part (love is a verb! Love the Lord Your God with all your heart and strength and soul and mind, and your neighbor as yourself), God will provide the victory against whatever needs to be conquered in my life. My body and mind will match up with my spirit which has already been made perfect through the blood of Jesus. "Work at conquering... God's way as if success if entirely dependent upon you. Pray, trust, and believe as if success is entirely dependent upon God. (B Ammons)" Partnership between God and me! Thank You, Lord. Make it very clear to me, Lord, clear and concise and succinct. Thank You for teaching me this right here this morning. Return to the top Pray First Date: May 12, 2004 Dear Heavenly Father, Good morning, Lord! I love You. And, oh, I do need You. Far from being in "waiting" mode, I seem suddenly to be in "snowball" mode. Dear Lord, please help me to be careful to know what is of You, and what is not in Your plan for me. And please give me energy to do what is of You. Lord, I don't want to get so swamped I burn out. Of course, if everything is Your will, You will make a way. But what if it isn't? Oh dear Lord, help me to always pray first. Im really needing to pray. Yes, I will fast today. Thank You, Lord. Return to the top
Main Page \| My Articles for The Life Connection \| Prayers and Meditations \| Poetry Haida Gwaii Reflections \| Education & Home-School \| Family


	Main Page \| My Articles for The Life Connection \| Prayers and Meditations \| Poetry Haida Gwaii Reflections \| Education & Home-School \| Family
Sign Guestbook \| View Guestbook Comments? Questions? [email protected]	Prayer topics Pour Down Your Fire Holy, Obedient, Steadfast Priorities and Praise Adoration Holiness: Walking With God Pray First Pour Down Your Fire Date: April 29, 2004 I just slid out of bed and onto my knees, and told You I don't know what I want except to love You and hear You and know Your voice. I have been so confused lately, and Lord, it seems like my head is full of a clatter of voices. My brain seems to have gone into overdrive, but my body and life seem to be stalled. Some of us love to study the Word, and long to hear Your voice in it, and find clear direction, too. And it would be nice if we could meet (those of us so inclined) to do that. Oh Lord, I just want to be able to share what You are teaching me, and find out what You are teaching the others, and somehow put that together to discover and enact Your plan for Your church here among us. You do have big plans. You are working out Your purposes. You do care about me, and about our cell group and our church and our city, and all the lost people, and You are going to shake us up, focus us on You, teach us to pray. Oh dear God, teach me to pray. Pour out Your Spirit - pour out Your fire, Lord. Light me aflame, Lord. Pour out Your fire on the altar of my sacrifice of my life. Burn up all the deadwood and the water that is dampening, even soaking, my ardour for You. Even the "dust" of my past, and of the things in my present that I am allowing to settle in and choke and clog up my relationship with You, and my service and my love for You. Pour down Your fire upon me, dear Holy Spirit, and upon our life group and church, dear God - like You did when Elijah faced the 400 prophets of Baal - so that we may all unreservedly proclaim with all our beings, "The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!" And not only proclaim it but commit to it totally, totally, totally, and live it! That we may totally destroy the "prophets of Baal" in our lives and serve You only and always. Return to the top Holy, Obedient, Steadfast Date: April 30, 2004 Good morning, dear Lord. Thank You for a good night's sleep. Thank You for the opportunity to sit up, turn on the light, and study Your word. Thank You for the "fourth book" of Psalms and the assurance that You are with me. Praise Your holy name! Thank You for the record of the Kings of Israel and Judah, and of Your Word through Your prophets. What lessons in obedience and steadfastness and the judgment and wrath of God - and God's incredible mercy - are contained in these records. What a mighty, holy, righteous God we serve! A loving God, totally, and yet also a God of judgment and destruction for those who walk in evil, independent of their holy Creator. Thank You for the book of 2 Peter and the reminder to stand firm in the Truth, in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and not to allow ourselves to listen to, and turn away to follow the heretical thinking of men who have turned from God's truth. Thank You for Your presence, dear God, through Your word, as Your Holy Spirit graciously and kindly reveals my God and Savior to me through the Bible, and teaches and guides me. Yesterday was a good day, but I still wasted some time watching TV. I find it hardest in the late afternoon when I am getting tired, and have a harder time maintaining self-discipline to turn it off or walk away from it. Please give me strength all day, dear Lord. Thank You. And please forgive me for my wrong choices. No excuse! I disobeyed You. I knew what I was doing, and I went ahead and did it anyway. Knowing I'd be sorry - again - afterward. I see how the Kings of Israel so easily departed from Your Word, dear Lord. A little step here, a little thing there... Oh dear God, I don't want to be like that. I want to be holy, Lord! Please help me. Return to the top Priorities and Praise Date: May 1, 2004 Lord, please help me to carefully plan my life so that I do what You want, and don't overload. I need to plan for time for myself with You, relaxation time for music and art, time for my husband, time for my kids, time for my mom and dad, time for housework, time for my business, time for friends, time for our life group, time for the "One-Eighty" ministry, time for church, time for helping in the church office and library, time for tutoring... not necessarily in that order, but definitely God, family, and a bit of self-care are priorities... Why is life so complicated? Oh, but what an adventure! I'd hate to be bored like some people. I love hearing the birds in the morning. So many, even if we do live in a back alley in the middle of town. Thank You, Lord, for Your beautiful creation! ____ and I have been reading together "The Giver" by Lois Lowry. I am enjoying the book so much, and enjoying the time it gives me with my child, doing something we enjoy together. I can see this as a type of story that appeals to the imagination and makes one think. Just reading it again has made me realize how blessed we are to have a colorful creation. I've actually been looking around me with way more interest and excitement and fresh new eyes! But also it has made me think about the value of pain, seeing the need for it rather than just the burden of it. Seeing the satisfaction and adventure of the difficult, the challenges, the unexpected. Maybe teachers should be older people who have developed wisdom, but managed meanwhile to keep seeing the world afresh as a child does. It is so cute watching my little grandson, and listen to him explain things. How he loves to talk. How smart and even wise he is for his short years. And yes, he does love Jesus! Thank You, Lord, for working in his little heart, and in his parents' hearts, too. Oh dear God, please, please, please keep drawing all my children into deeper and deeper relationship and communion with You. Thank You, Lord. Amen. Return to the top Adoration Date: May 10, 2004 Dear Heavenly Father, Wow! Thank You! Hugely, expansively, incredibly, exceptionally! I love You, Lord. I worship and adore You. I do want to live abundantly, always, before You and because of You. You are my Alpha and Omego, my entirety, my eternity, my Lord of lords, my King of kings, my One and Only God Almighty, Creator, Maker of heaven and earth. Yes, yes, yes! Praise Your awesome, fearful, totally perfect and holy and righteous name! Hallelujah! I bow before You in humility and love and adoration. I give myself, all that You have made and developed, to You, for Your pleasure and purpose alone, forever and ever. Amen! Return to the top Holiness: Walking With God Date: May 11, 2004 I heard something on the radio last night about holy living. It was that we can and should be living holy, sinless lives, if we ensure that we are constantly being filled with the Holy Spirit, because holiness and sin cannot live together in the same vessel. This really struck me. I had once thought that "I am a sinner saved by grace," that even though I am saved, I still have to constantly struggle against sin with all my being. Then I came to understand that my spirit has been made righteous and is inhabited by God, but that because I still live in my sin-stained earthly body or "earth suit", I have to struggle daily, willfully, against temptation to sin. But hearing that one sentence (and it was just one sentence at the very end of a radio program), I suddenly realized that "earth suit" or not, if I can move into a place of relationship with God such that I am being continually aware of the need for His total Presence, of the need for continual, moment-by-moment, complete and on-going filling and refilling of God's Holy Spirit, in total communion of God with me and in him - indeed the "Practice of the Presence of God's Holy Spirit" totally indwelling and controlling my entire being - then I will not sin, because the will and purpose and design and being of God will also be my will and purpose and design and being. So ultimately I do not have to struggle against sin and the devil; I have only to focus on loving and obeying and totally being filled with and walking with God through His Holy Spirit because of the paid sacrifice, the paid debt, of Jesus' precious blood. For if I walk in relationship with God, totally focused on Him in me, I will only desire to do His will. All the desires of the world and the enemy will lose their appeal, indeed, will become as abhorrent to me as they are to my perfect, holy, righteous, Jaweh God. Yes, we are to resist the devil. But I can struggle to resist him by myself (and fail), or I can resist him by the power of the Holy Spirit, not only indwelling me but filling me to overflowing - spirit and body too. Maybe that isn't a perfect theological explanation, but You know what I mean, Lord. In a sense, I knew that already, but it is a great relief to really "know" it. I'm not in this struggle alone. I think I knew I have to use the armour of God, but I don't think I really understood that using the armour of God ultimately means that the battle is the Lord's. (I'm hearing this voice within saying, "No, no! God does give you armour, it's true, but you have to do the fighting alone." But that isn't right. Sure, I have to fight with all my strength, but I also have God's strength, and I am not responsible for the victory - that's God's place.). Look at Joshua or Gideon. God gave them His weapons: trumpets, marching feet, torches in jars, and quite often, swords and spears. Sometimes they didn't have to fight at all (think Sennacherib). Sometimes they did kind of a "mopping up operation." But most of the time God provided the plan, the weapons (strange as they might seem to man), and even sometimes heavenly armies marching in the tops of the trees, but the armies of Israel still had to get in there and fight with discipline and commitment, often until they were physically and even emotionally exhausted. But God won the battle for them as they obeyed Him in faith and walked acording to His word and command. I am not in this alone! What a relief! But God chooses every aspect of our lives to be a relationship, a partnership. Imagine that. The Almighty God of the universe wanting to partner with me, a sinful little blip in the course of man's earthly existence. How incredible that God has saved me, and values me so incredibly. Amazing grace! Amazing love! What else can I do, how else can I respond to such great love, than to in return give Him my all, my time, talents, treasure, all my heart and strength and soul and mind (which all come from Him to begin with), in total obedience, total submission, total doing as well as believing. Yes. The battle is God's! God will joyfully fill me to overflowing with His Spirit. But I must walk (run, struggle, fight). I must act, do, obey. I must stay in total, loving, obedient servant relationship. If I do my part (love is a verb! Love the Lord Your God with all your heart and strength and soul and mind, and your neighbor as yourself), God will provide the victory against whatever needs to be conquered in my life. My body and mind will match up with my spirit which has already been made perfect through the blood of Jesus. "Work at conquering... God's way as if success if entirely dependent upon you. Pray, trust, and believe as if success is entirely dependent upon God. (B Ammons)" Partnership between God and me! Thank You, Lord. Make it very clear to me, Lord, clear and concise and succinct. Thank You for teaching me this right here this morning. Return to the top Pray First Date: May 12, 2004 Dear Heavenly Father, Good morning, Lord! I love You. And, oh, I do need You. Far from being in "waiting" mode, I seem suddenly to be in "snowball" mode. Dear Lord, please help me to be careful to know what is of You, and what is not in Your plan for me. And please give me energy to do what is of You. Lord, I don't want to get so swamped I burn out. Of course, if everything is Your will, You will make a way. But what if it isn't? Oh dear Lord, help me to always pray first. Im really needing to pray. Yes, I will fast today. Thank You, Lord. Return to the top
Main Page \| My Articles for The Life Connection \| Prayers and Meditations \| Poetry Haida Gwaii Reflections \| Education & Home-School \| Family