"the earth is full of His unfailing love." Ancient Wonders, Present Phenomena and outright Natural Wonder.

 

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The above meme from the New International Version says, "the earth is filled with God's unfailing love".  We could but marvel if we tried to take it all in via our senses, and be overcome by the experience of nature.

We see Hawaii and other situations around the world, and see some miracles unfolding, each with their own impetus, each with their own unknown purpose.  California soon to get massive Hurricane flooding, too.

Miracles and wonders unfolding in the world today, such as it as ever been, in some ways, such to give us a sense of awe at the scope and scale of various things.

Elsewhere, I wrote that God also created Light so we could take it all into our senses, and for the unsighted, they too have ways to sense the world around them.  No one is without--even prisoners behind thick walls know the wonders and perils of nature.

People tend to go back and forth, that God works through nature, and yet others that God "is" nature, and back and forth, ad infinitum, with never a clarifying moment afforded to either.

What we do know, God created nature, whether it is called a "part of Him" or a "tool of His".

Right now, we are suffering our own wonder in the Southeastern USA: heat and humidity, along with almost daily thunderstorms, but this pales compared to things like tornadoes and typhoons in other parts of the world, and we here know we've been served comparatively well by nature, as we watch our crops come to fruition, the corn crop, and the later cotton crop, and other things.

In our own region, thunderstorms generally bring a temporary drop in the heat, and also most times bring rain as well.  This has served us well, so far, and the crops have had a nice bit of rainfall, even if the peak heat of the day chafes those same crops.  On their own with the rain and heat, some Sunflower seeds I planted have came up nearly a meter tall each, though the specimens are crowded and could use a more regular regimen of food and water.

One can look with the usual alarmism at nature, but nature has been somewhat random in the past, with even the largest mightiest rivers said to have frozen and points in antiquity, or the Hanging Gardens of old, residing in what is now desert land.  Or the ancient written record of giant grape bundles in the comparatively barren region of Israel and surroundings.

What was the very Garden of Gethsemane in which Jesus prayed to God, seems now to be a barren plantless crag.

Things change.  The port of Alexandria, along with much of its ancient coastline, underwater today, with people having lived there as late as 800 AD, but again, now underneath the Mediterranean Sea.

Such also, man made wonder of the Inca and Maya, large cities built of stone, that could, themselves, stand the test of time, and yet the builders and administrators falter and their stories are lost in the fog of centuries, their names forgotten, their cities abandoned, and their reasons both lost and forgotten.

Some memes from the book of Romans.

 

"Consider it all joy...."

"Consider it all joy" James writes, "when you fall into temptation, for temptation works patience, and patience will have its own fruits."

What does this mean when we're "dead to the world"?

We are at once, spiritually separated, but also in fellowship with believers, and then, sometimes at our own peril, reaching to others with the Good News.  

St Anthony was one that completely separated himself from the world, taking to a cave in the desert.  One would think he might become bored or discouraged, but no.  He found variety, and even alone in a remote cave, there were temptations that assailed him.

You see that he removed himself from the world, stuck out alone, and could work in no way for others.  That's the different with some of us, that some are more busy in their own sandbox, while yet others take to the field: as the Bible points out, we all have our own unique talents, some for reaching out, and some for other things.

In removing himself from the world, St Anthony made a difficult decision, and indeed, history doesn't inform us as to why he made that choice.  Only Anthony knew what difficulties came to him in his regular life, what he had to flee when he chose to go into complete solitude.

But for us?

"Consider it joy."

The rewards of patience mean that we've played the game and seen how the world comes at us, and to an extent, we learn to be unflapped, unphased, by so much of the world's trickery, we become partly sullen and strong in the face of some of Satan's wiles.

The work of patience is a kind of spiritual armor that the believer takes up, a toolkit or a defensive weapon that we use to protect ourselves from the temptations and trials of the world around us.

"strength and beauty are in His sanctuary" Psalm 96 and the church.

 "strength and beauty" are in there.  Not because only perfect people go to church, but because we find our own spiritual strength and beauty there.  We come in broken and humble, perhaps humiliated or impoverished, and the love of God comes to us and strengthens us; forgiveness strengthens us.

Psalm 94, and some NIV memes.

 

Spurgeon on the very thought of Christ being a healing thing.

The Christian knows that God looks upon him as standing in union with Jesus. Union to the risen Lord is a consolation of the most abiding order; it is, in fact, everlasting. Let sickness prostrate us, have we not seen hundreds of believers as happy in the weakness of disease as they would have been in the strength of hale and blooming health? Let death's arrows pierce us to the heart, our comfort dies not, for have not our ears full often heard the songs of saints as they have rejoiced because the living love of God was shed abroad in their hearts in dying moments? Yes, a sense of acceptance in the Beloved is an everlasting consolation.

-Charles Spurgeon

From the void primeval, and then becoming the era of God's love.

"before the sun is just a bright spot in the night time..."

Light, hermanos, is the creation of God.

"Light, be" says our wondrous Creator.

Naturally, such as in the void of space, the light is not diffuse, and there is no bright sky such as we know it.  The sun is just like a really blight light bulb, whereas here on the surface of the Earth, the entire sky has brightness when the sun is shining.

Think of it such that one cloud passes before the sun mid-day.  The sky doesn't go completely dark, you see, because there is luminance, or a measurable brightness about it. 

But in the dead of night, the world is more like the days of old, save for the stars shining, the days of creation, before there was light.  In those days, the apostle John cryptically states, "the Word was with God".

The uncreated universe, the void primeval, and God thought to fill that with something, and such the manifesting of love began, and then after, a fellowship in His Word.

I say all this lest we forget what it was, and what it yet could be, as God's miracles unfold and unfurl here in our world.

Cowman on the Dark Night of the Soul.

Comfort does not come to the light-hearted and merry. We must go down into "depths" if we would experience this most precious of God's gifts--comfort, and thus be prepared to be co-workers together with Him.

When night--needful night--gathers over the garden of our souls, when the leaves close up, and the flowers no longer hold any sunlight within their folded petals, there shall never be wanting, even in the thickest darkness, drops of heavenly dew--dew which falls only when the sun has gone.

-LB Cowman

 

Can you praise even in bad times?

Spurgeon speaks of some Christian who fall into a depressed silence.  They may say that they remember prior happiness, the love of God, and how much better the air tasted, how much better the sun shined, but no more.

Numbers of Christians can view the past with pleasure, but regard the present with dissatisfaction; they look back upon the days which they have passed in communing with the Lord as being the sweetest and the best they have ever known, but as to the present, it is clad in a sable garb of gloom and dreariness. Once they lived near to Jesus, but now they feel that they have wandered from him, and they say, "O that I were as in months past!" They complain that they have lost their evidences, or that they have not present peace of mind, or that they have no enjoyment in the means of grace, or that conscience is not so tender, or that they have not so much zeal for God's glory. 

What changed?

Something had gotten between him and God, and that robbed his joy.

In the midst of sickness earlier in the week, I stopped and began to praise God, in the worst of the pain, and I was remembering how grateful I was to my Lord and Maker.

And that was the turning point in my sickness.  The Lord delivered me from ills from that moment on, and a smile soon returned to my face.

Only through Him; only with God.

Verse of the day, August 09, 2023, and Spurgeon on praising God.

 

In line for love hope and mercy, not the man-made things.

Men in the day of Christ were somewhat enamored with Simon Magus, or "Simon the Sorcerer" who borrowed his "magic tricks" from all sources, and even contacted the disciples about learning their healing trade.  His overture was rejected of course.

In more modern times, Jim Jones and his followers destroyed themselves for his ideas; bound to a man, and not God, not Christ, not the Holy Spirit-the Parakleton.  

It is amazing, even at the cost of life and limb, men can take up some ideas, however, I remark that sure there are ideas worth contesting for.

I was reading today about the assurance of faith in God, that taken up in steps and stages, points made and rejoined, faith being that super force that saves us.

Think too, sometimes where we put our hopes.  Odds one in three hundred million, and two dollars per lottery ticket, the people line up and hand over their moneys in hope of instant lifestyle makeover by worldly means.

Bind ourselves instead to love hope and faith, and not the magic money of some predatory monetary system.  Line ourselves up, not for the latest and greatest of man, but for hope and mercy, all granted from above.

the peak experience of faith.

What is we goin do?

God in the flesh, said "Oh you of little faith.  Do you not remember the loaves and fishes?"

"Why do I have to keep reminding you?"

"Why the heck does he keep reminding us?"

No miracle is too very far from our fingertips, even this, the princes of the power of the air, twenty pounds of fish and bread, and I mean, twenty pounds of foccacia is nothing to sneeze at, and the fish, he just "break the bread".

He has to keep reminding us, perhaps, to sustain the miraculous sense of wonder, the peak experience of faith, mayhap.  In that, we are truly "more than conquerors", and as is said, "nothing is close away from them".

And then she was constipated, and after what Juan Vivo did to her, set it to the sticking place, and all she had to do was drop a deuce to be happy again, to be "Shalom", "whole", drop a deuce.

All she needed was faith.

But not just any faith, but a peak experience of faith, such as near the end of a good sermon, when the feeling has built, when the faith is most prodigious, where she can let go and aim it at the drain, and just kind of Eminem that sin debt away.

"Lord take this burden away from me."

There was only one set of footprints after all, and he was there all along, if you only acknowledged Him.

 

Verse of the day, August 7, 2023, on Education, and Tozer on evangelism.

 

Consider it: in the original language Psalm 119, each stanza beginning in sequence, with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  It was often used by Hebrew children to learn their letters.

Today we find a daunting gulf between religion and education, but there are some who hold the line and still develop theology ideas, the science relating to God.  As we live, we continue and our relationship with our God develops.

"leave the world better than you found it."

We learn to get in there, as per Tozer's statement about idle Christians, indeed, we are to push to spread the faith, mostly, to keep pushing, but from the First World to the Third World, there seems to be only survival, and whatever the next thing happens to be.....

(Also, for a while I will try making the verse memes of the verse of the day myself, the admin.)

Futhering the Gospel of hope, faith and love.

"Be ye circumspect, for the days are filled with evil."  

Are we not compassed on all sides, hermanos, and that makes the common faith we share all the better, the love of God, all the sweeter.

And conspicuously, actually thinking of monetizing somehow, but that doesn't ring true; it must be some kind of heresy.  I tend to mistrust monetary transactions, the passing of money, and that mistrust carries over even into ministry.

As Christ said in paraphrase, only the shirt on your back, and the shoes on your feet, do we go into the world for the faith.  It's a romantic notion later carried to the extremes by the desert fathers, the ascetics that hid from the world, but we my brothers and sisters, are called to another way, for the furtherance of the Gospel.

That we love our friends and neighbors so much that we want to share this wonderful Gospel with them, the life-improving message of faith, love and hope.

And now, my head on straight, I cringe when I think of prior thoughts of money.

From Acts 17 or so, "these are the men who have shook the world, and now they have come here!"  Paul and Silas, trying to give hope to the hopeless and bring the message of faith in Jesus Christ.

 

Verse of the Day, August 6, 2023

 

Verse fo the Day, August 4, 2023

 

Spurgeon on the Blessing.

What a joy to abide under the divine blessing! This puts a gracious flavor into all things. If we are blessed, then all our possessions and enjoyments are blessed; yea, our losses and crosses and even our disappointments are blessed. God's blessing is deep, emphatic, effectual. A man's blessing may begin and end in words, but the blessing of the LORD makes rich and sanctifies. The best wish we can have for our dearest friend is not "may prosperity attend thee," but "the LORD bless thee."

-Charles Spurgeon

The message and being thankful to God for His love.

...our rejoicing is the testimony of your conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly towards you....

-2 Corinthians 1:12

I thank God not only for the gift of the Gospel, the gift of unearned righteousness and the abundance of his Grace, but the mind and heart and means to spread the message, to believe on Christ, that he died and came back three days later.  

Further, the message of God's love, and the imputing that we should love God first.

Verse of the Day, August 3, 2023

 

"To the Children of God in Dispersion..."

Be ye does of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves....

Just as the Athenians loved the learning of new things, how much of it did they take up?  Paul notes many were interested to hear the Gospel, to at least learn the story, but some of these began to believe!

The verse comes from James 1, addressed to the "Jews in dispersion" or the "Jews in the diaspora", the far-flung having fled or migrated to other lands.  This was just as Abraham moved to the Holy Land originally, but here for different reasons did the Children of God leave the Holy Land, later.

We are all, in many ways, these Children of God in modernity, far-flung about the earth.

Verse of the Day August 2, 2023

 

Spurgeon on the Love of God.

All the year round, every hour of every day, God is richly blessing us; both when we sleep and when we wake his mercy waits upon us. The sun may leave us a legacy of darkness, but our God never ceases to shine upon his children with beams of love. Like a river, his lovingkindness is always flowing, with a fulness inexhaustible as his own nature. Like the atmosphere which constantly surrounds the earth, and is always ready to support the life of man, the benevolence of God surrounds all his creatures; in it, as in their element, they live, and move, and have their being. Yet as the sun on summer days gladdens us with beams more warm and bright than at other times, and as rivers are at certain seasons swollen by the rain, and as the atmosphere itself is sometimes fraught with more fresh, more bracing, or more balmy influences than heretofore, so is it with the mercy of God; it hath its golden hours; its days of overflow, when the Lord magnifieth his grace before the sons of men.

-Charles Spurgeon

Verse of the Day, Aug 1, 2023