Emergency Responders

"The rain came down, , the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house........"

As we have been processing the thoughts of our realities verses God's reality and all man being subjected to futility, we have all been bombarded with hazardous weather conditions. This reminded many people of the absurdity of self protection and how dependent we truly are upon His supernatural intercession during times of helplessness.

Of course, when things happen God's words flood in to my memory and verses begin to align with conditions in our midst.  When the verses from Matthew chapter 7 came to mind, I had to pick up my bible and jump into it:

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.  But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash." (24-27)

Much of the time, when reading the verses in the past, my focus was drawn to wisely building a house on a good foundation.  Maybe it was due to the weather conditions, but the big opening scene, I saw this time from God's word, was the storm rolling in.  And as the local fire station alarms went off again I got it: This life is all about our responses to the things which come toward us!

• How will we respond to what rains down on us?
• How will we respond to what rises up around us?
• How will we respond to the forces that blow against us?

This life beats against us, that is the truth. Do we have the wisdom to know when to move, where to enter and the strength to stand till the winds are gone?  Fear of the unknown is always there; what are we up against? Which unknown will we lay down to? We know we cannot stand forever and we will be overtaken by an unknown from time to time.  No one is invincible; if by nothing else there will be death for us all.

If the gateway to the unknown we enter is a mystery of God, we may trust that He is for us and willing to uphold us through all things.  The Lord desires to share His victories with those relying on His undying love; that does not mean we will never be afraid when entering the unfamiliar or out of our control.  Fear however is an unmerciful lord, desiring to grieve us and steal anything which resembles a hope of a future; yet many will muster up all the strength they can to pass through this wide open space. 

When the storm clouds roll in....who is your Lord? When the rivers of life begin to rise up.....what traits will you employ? When the winds swirl in chaotic formations....who is the Master of your thoughts?  While there is no storm on our horizon here this day, maybe we should pause and think about these things.  

As the storm was rolling out this past week, the ice and snow were melting and the winds were whipping the moisture back home, my family and I had a conversation about how we all respond to natural catastrophes. We felt that this brings out virtues of Godliness toward others which should bring a bit of shame and humility to our "Christmas" attitudes. 

As the children of God and followers of our Lord, we should be standing at every street corner sprinkling salt (and this time it could be literally along with some sand or cat litter!) and showing others a guiding light.  If we are His body, and we are to be out in the world why do we keep all our salt in the church? Doesn't that make us more like one of those salt licks that my grandpa used to have in his field? Shouldn't we be out responding instead of expecting all the urgencies to come running to us?  And what about our lights? Aren't we rather hiding it at times under the bushel of the church roof?  

Just things I think about often.....and thought I would extend the invitation to have your thoughts merge ;)

Kisses,

C

Copyrights Reserved ©Candace Huffmaster 2014

Kaleidoscope Butterfly, Inc.®

Am I Standing in the Right Place???

Found it Guys!  It was not in the archives, however there is another post from Friday August 20th 2010 where I suggested you refer to this.  Since it was not in the archives, you might want to go back and pull that one up as well to look over tomorrow.  
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All week long we have been going back to basics which has made me reflect as well.  These are things I am pondering and somewhat have experiential knowledge of  through taking action on the knowledge He has made available to us.

God has made it clear to us that we are to stand in the gap:  to show His love -which covers a multitude of sins, to lead and teach Gods word to lost and or struggling people. Essentially, to be a vessel for Him so that His body is in their midst doing whatever He needs to do to rescue and deliver His children.

Today I was listening to Bryan Houston and his sermon was on being fearfully and wonderfully made. I know I am, I believe I am - just as I know and believe this about all of us. This lead me to think about the spirit of Jezebel and how we all think that we know best, how we should look, vocation or whatever else. We basically say to God, "who needs you and by the way what you did was not so hot!" "I want to look like this", "I want to do this... and I can…so that is what I am going to do!"

This lead me into thinking about marriage and how God created us to be a man’s helper. We all want to marry someone that we are the mirror image of in likes dislikes etc. Yet we want the other person to do what we do not want to do (such as laundry, pay the bills, watch the children so we can have more personal time - just sayin' if they are just like us they will not want to do it either!) We want to be attracted to the person physically and we want them to always take care of us in all ways.

If all this happened, we would not have to learn and grow. We would get no ideas about how God functions or what He desires. Why can we not stop thinking about ourselves for more than mere minutes at a time????? Our needs are met; we have a creator that promised that. What He needs is a body to do His will.

Will we keep neglecting God’s instructions? Will we keep telling Him no and our selves Yes?

God tells us that when we have done all to stand, to stand. But what if we are standing in the wrong place and He is simply trying to push us toward another place? If we do not know His will, or why he made us we might believe it is “the enemy” we will fight Him even harder!

So where have we moved beyond fighting the good fight and passed into fighting Him to stay in the wrong place?

There is so much for us to learn, so many areas for Him to speak to us as individuals. He is so interesting to listen to; His ways are higher than our ways. He has the correct answer for all our questions. We simply want his answers to always fit what we want to do – so we go in circles trying to find somewhere to access the agreement with our own understanding. True research looks for “all wise resources” the agreement and the dispute. There is balance for discernment, not weights – which God warns against. He tells us to beware of the false teachers who tickle our ears, the ones that scream peace, peace when there is no peace. We must look for people who are standing in the right place, telling us the righteous things. They may miss it at times or we may misunderstand but at least we will be standing in the right place covered in the love that covers a multitude of sins.

In your journals or on your canvas' write about this as you ponder the questions below: remembering our foundation is God's word.

• What was the first and last thing we knew we had to do based on God's word?
• Did you stand till it was complete?
• Do you listen more to fear and fall - or faith and finish?
• Do you believe God is sovereign?
• Today we are adding to this list based on the above questions: Do you believe that you are fearfully and wonderfully made, for God's purposes?

I love you Lord – my prayer is for our spirits to prosper even as our souls do and for your church to be united and all people to be one, as you and the father are one. We are your people and we are one with you, I pray come Lord Jesus, come…..and the church said "Come".

With the love of our Christ
Kisses,
C