Ponderings

There are so many God things that I have been continuously pondering lately. I have been enjoying reading some of Corrie ten Booms book's and am always encouraged, ashamed, and inspired by them. What a life she led for the Lord! What great trust and peace God gave to her through her trials, allowing her to share that with the world through her experiences. One of the more persistent thoughts that have been rolling around my brain has to do with God's will in our lives and where we are serving Him. One of her comments in her book "Clippings from My Notebook" really struck me last night. "I was the same Corrie ten Boom. But in the concentration camp I was in the place where God had called me, and He was my strength. Here I was not in His will, and without Him I was nothing~ I was stupid, weak, and helpless." I have had experiences of both being empowered and used by God, full of great joy, energy and clear thinking and also times of dullness, suppression, and frustration. Do those times indicate that we are out of God's will in our lives, or that He is purifying us in our sinful nature? Believing that Scripture teaches that God is sovereign over everything I know that no matter what I do, where I go, or what happens is the will of God, but are there certain ways that He directs that we choose to be dull to? And what, then, when if you're the wife and long to honor God through submission? Hmmmm..... what a marvelous God we have to intertwine all these things to somehow still present us as righteous before Him one day.

The other thing I have been pondering a lot is the word of God itself. Primarily the reason that professing Christians are straying from it. Why it is losing it's place and value even in the church, but primarily in the believers life? Psalm 119 was such a sweet reminder to me this morning of God's word and the value God himself puts on it. Why is the word not more highly valued in our lives? Why is it that we think we can twist it? Why is it that we think we have the right to choose how to discern it and what to obey in it? When did we cross over into thinking that somehow we stand above it, rather than humbly coming below it in honor of what God has to say? Why do professing Christians not bother to even read it? I am your servant; give me discernment that I may understand your statutes. It is time for you to act, O Lord; your law is being broken. Because I love your commands more than gold, more than pure gold, and because I consider all your precepts right, I hate every wrong path. Psalm 119:125-128

And I loved this quote from Corrie ten Boom's book "Tramp for the Lord": "When the Bible interferes with man's theology it always causes a strain." And what is it that is so important in the Bible? It is the revealing of a just God, the creator of the universe and all that is in it, who will one day call all of us to account according to His standards. But the story doesn't end there. For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him may not perish but have eternal life. Jesus became the perfect sacrifice to cover the sins that we can never atone for. We were by nature objects of God's wrath, but because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions- it is by grace you are saved, through faith. He has done it all. He promises.