How to Deal

The Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.  Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.

Exodus 34:6

God=good and good=like God

Can good exist outside of God?

No, of course not.

If good exists outside of God, that would mean that God is not all good.  If God is not all good, then He must be partly bad.

Thus continues my drawn-out study of prayer.

Exodus 33:7  Moses took his tent and pitched it ourside the camp, far from the camp, and called it the tabernacle of meeting.  And it came to pass that everyone who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of meeting which was outside the camp.  So it was, whenever Moses went out to the tabernacle, that all the people rose, and each man stood at his tent door and watched Moses until he had gone into the tabernacle.  And it cam eto pass, when Moeses entered the tabernacle, that the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses.  All the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the tabernacle door, and all the people rose and worshipped, each man in his tent door.  So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.  And he would return to the camp, but his servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle.

“We face the same problem today, for the more secularized and post Christian our society becomes, the greater temptation there is to love only our fellow believers who are righting by our side in the “culture wars.” We retreat from the command to love all people aw we consider those outside the church as too wordly, as too dangerous to our spiritual well-being.  Rather then loving them, we feel constrained to keep ourselves separate from them, to strive for a purity of being uncontaminated by having no contact with the “sinners” out there.  But, as Schaeffer points out, this is not the kind of purity that God’s word has in mind for us.  The Lord calls us to love all people, including those who are enemies of the gospel and those who blaspheme.  This may not be comfortable, and it may not be easy, but his is the gospel of Christ, for He loved His enemies so much that He died to save us.

Love, Schaeffer says, cannot be a banner that we carry around, or a slogan that we repeat like a mantra.  Love must be evident in practice.  All truly great Christians, he writes, have gentleness and tenderness about them, a gentleness and tenderness that is manifest in the delight they take in spending time with little children and the energy they gladly expend on “little people.”  Such love demonstrates that a believer truly has met with the Lord.  For the Lord carries little children close to his heart.  The Lord does not break “the bruised reed” or quench “the smoldering wick.”  The Lord has time for every one of his people - not matter how insignificant they may seems to the Christian leader who has his own big agenda in mind.”

From True Spirituality, by Francis Schaeffer 

And this was only the introduction by Jerram Barrs.

Just imagine how good the rest of it is.

Thank God I saved my ethics notes.

So I think I’m a little bit tipsy.  I had a few drinks at work after I got off.  It’s martini monday, and martinis are four dollars.

I only meant to have two drinks, but a third one was somehow ordered, so I drank most of it anyway.  Yeah, so now at least I know what’s it like to be slightly impaired.  So apparently, 3 drinks on a mostly empty stomach is not so good.  I had Chick Fil A at like 5:30, then egg rolls with my martinis.  Yep, no more, she says.

The first week of summer school is over.  I missed my class today because I slept in late.  I woke up, snoozed my alarm, then woke up again at 8:20.  I went back and forth: go to class, don’t go to class, go to class, don’t go to class.  Then it was 8:49 and entirely too late to get started, take a shower, and head to my 8:30 class.

So I sent the professor an email, praying for grace.  I just want somebody to say that it okay that things are tough with now, and that they see greatness in me.  And he did.  He said I was bright and was always a joy to have in class.

So I will press on.

Because there is greatness there.

Someone believes in me.

Things to learn from the book of Psalms (from Prayer, by Yancey):

• Work out animosity toward enemies not by gossip or hostility, but by informing God of their injustice and asking God to set things right.
• It’s all right o express impatience to God, asking for a speeded-up answer to prayer - and even to spell out God’s own interests in achieving the desired results. 
• Prayer sometimes involves talking to yourself (”Do not fret . . . Trust in the Lord, be still.), saying aloud what you know to be healthy but have a hard time putting into practice.
• Focus not just on the unfairness and problems of life, but also on all that does not turn out well.  Review the good things of the past, and don’t forget in the darkness what you learned in the light.
• Project yourself into the future as a changed person.  Behavioral psychologist would call this the “act as if” principle.

Genesis 18:23

Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city?  Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it?  Far be it from you to do such a thing - to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.  Far be it from you!  Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?

The Lord said, ‘If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

The Abraham spoke up again, ‘ Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty?  Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?’

‘If I find forty-five there,’ he said, ‘I will not destroy it.’

Once again he spoke to him, ‘What if only forty are found there?’

He said, ‘For the sake of forty, I will not do it.’

Then he said, ‘May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?’

He answered, ‘I will not do it if I find thirty there.’

Abraham said, ‘ Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?’

He said, ‘ For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.’

Then he said, ‘May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more.  What if only ten can be found there?’

He answered, ‘For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.’

When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.

Should we continually ask and seek God about the same things, or is just once enough?

It’s not like God forgets what we asked for the first time.   But should we really be like the persistant widow in Luke who keeps pestering the judge? 

Are we pestering God by asking and seeking for answers that we’ve already approached Him with?

In Romans 1:9, Paul says he “constantly” remembers the believers in Rome in his prayers. 

I just want to point out verse 26 of the same chapter.  Who says homosexuality is not addressed in the bible:

“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.  Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.  Men committed shameful acts with other men, and recieved in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

I wonder if the “due penalty” refers to sexually transmitted diseases.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

Interesting to me is a footnote (TNIV Bible).  Apparently, the word “fool” in the Olrd Testament usually denotes a person who is morally deficient.  Did not know that . . .

The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide, by some guy with a Jewish name.

Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

The Power of Intention, by Dr. Wayne Dyer

Facing your Giants, by Max Lucado

Wild at Heart and Waking the Dead, by John Eldredge

Boundaries, by Henry Cloud and John Townsend

John Bevere books

A Closer Walk, Catherine Marshall

Velvet Elvis

to be continued . . .