A Melted Heart

I love King Josiah...in fact, it is the name of my boy, hoping that he lives out what King Josiah lived out years and years ago.  I read about King Josiah today in my Bible reading and this is what i came up with:

A melted heart (tender/humble) is a heart that not only reads the Word of the Lord, but does what it says!  I must confess, I used to be pretty good at reading the Bible almost every year.  But sadly, i wasn't doing it...i wasn't putting it into motion.  Thus, i wasn't moving and some say, if you are not moving forward, you are actually going backwards.  Lately, only because of the Spirit's work in me, I am reading and doing my very best to move forward with it.  What i can confess is that i believe my heart is being melted more than ever instead of being prideful and hard!  I still have my moments, but i love this picture that was brought to my mind this morning around God's Word.

God's Word is like a Flame!  The closer we bring our hearts to the Flame and do it, the more our hearts become melted.  The further we get from the Flame and of course, not do what He says, the more our hearts become harder.  So here is what we must choose, not just whenever, but everyday.

1.  Choose to take the time to allow yourself to get close to the Flame (Open up God's Word...find a reading plan but don't let the reading plan control you...let the Word of God control you.  For example, if you read 3 verses and you are moved by something that you read, highlight it, pray over it, and go do it...which means you can stop reading and get moving or come back to the rest of that chapter later.)  Just find a way to get to God's Word.  Tozer said in a writing of his, "you can be as full as you want to be" with the Lord.  And sadly, sometimes I get up from His table too soon because I am satisfied, but satisfaction is not what we are going after friends...we are going after Him and there is no limit to what He has to offer.

2.  Read and chew on His Word.  Don't just read it and move on.  James says that is like a person looking in the mirror at himself and then seconds later already forgetting what he looks like.  No, read and chew on it, even if it is just one verse.  Chew on it.  Just like eating a big fat juicy steak.  Chew...chew...chew.  Pray over it.  Break it apart.  When I was a boy, one of my favorite things to do was take matchbox cars out behind my house and build matchbox car cities in the dirt.  I am not kidding, listen to what amazing truth i realized at an early age...with my trusty scrapper.  Underneath the hard part of the earth's top layer, was the soft rich dirt of earth.  I could then pack it and shape it however i needed to for my cars :), isn't that cute.  But that has stuck with me from a very early age...there is so much more underneath the layer of just God's Word because underneath is the Holy Spirit who truly wants to open our eyes to His beauty...for us to know the heart and mind of Jesus (1 Cor. 2:6-16)

3.  Do it.  Just do it.  Don't be afraid because we again have the Spirit in us and it is not a Spirit of fear but of power.  We have the power within us...go do it.  Interestingly my mentor pointed out to me the other day what the last verse of John 14 says.  Before i tell you, let me give you a simple context: Jesus is about to die.  The disciples are confused.  The Cross is humiliation that Jesus is to embrace, but more than that, the actual separation from God that Jesus is about to deal with is TOO MUCH.  Death!  Listen, it is easy to stay put...i get that.  It would have been easy for Jesus and the disciples not to move, but to stay in fellowship, eating, and reclining together.  But Jesus finally says, "come now; let us leave."  In essence, Jesus is saying, I must go do what I was sent to do.  You guys need to get moving and although things won't make sense for a bit, they eventually will and I need you to do it.  No plan b.  Well, the same is true for us...we must get up with the Word in us and do it.

So let's keep our hearts melted by choosing to be in God's Word...reading it and praying it...and living it out.  Not for our sake but for His Name's Sake.  We get to choose, but to stay away from the Flame means we are leaving ourselves open to a hard heart!  Let's choose to have a melted heart.

A classic example is Rahab in Joshua 2.  Go check it out.

The Joy Before Him

This week has been very interesting to me for many reasons, but I won't get into any of that at this moment.  What I want to simply say though is that the passage of Scripture that has changed my life and impacted me greatly is Hebrews 12:2-3:

1.  Fix your eyes on Jesus...why?

2.  Because He endured the Cross and scorned the shame and is seated at the right hand of God...that's why!  And He did it with JOY?  Joy?  Joy?  Is that right...joy?  The joy set before Him!  What?

3.  Because He knew enduring the Cross and scorning its shame would do two things:
A.  He would get to go Home (John 17:5; John 13:3; John 16:28)
B.  Make a way for the Father to be reunited with His lost children

4.  Seated at the right hand of God waiting to come dwell us forever, but in the meantime He has given us His Spirit so that we...

5.  Will not grow weary and lose heart

Isn't that good?  He did that for us.  So as we wait for His coming, let us just simply fix our eyes on Him and remember that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who are cheering us on!  I love Hebrews 12.

The Lord Rested

So give me a lot of grace here as I type this thought out.  It came to me while listening to a song.  The Lord created in 6 days and on the 7th day He rested.  I am assuming He kept this pattern because He taught us to do so.  Moses commanded it.  Then Jesus comes on the scene and talks about it.  God's set pattern is labor for 6 days and rest on the 7th.  Chick-fil-a does it...does Hobby Lobby still do it?  I love the old time farmers who do it.  And God does.  So fast-forward with me to the Passion Week or the week leading up to Jesus' death.  From Sunday to Friday He labored until Friday at 3pm and then He breathed His last breath and said, "IT IS FINISHED."  He dies.  Job accomplished!  He is quickly taken from the Cross and sort of thrown into the tomb, because Sabbath was quickly approaching and you don't work on the Sabbath.  So once Sabbath is over with, then they will go back to the tomb at the first sight of daylight and give Jesus a proper burial.  Tracking with me so far?  Haha. 

So Jesus is taken off the Cross and placed in the tomb before 5:15pm.  Sabbath starts!  Let's reflect on some people shall we?  The religious leaders are joyful and thankful to be done with this Rabbi who claimed to be God.  Pilate was very confused and tried to wash his hands from this weird situation.  Peter and the rest of the disciples are crushed!  Mary (mother of Jesus...and probably Mary Magdelene) didn't sleep at all that night.  And Satan, Satan had the biggest victory party ever on the face of the earth...he thinks he has won.  But what about God?  What was God doing?  Well, believe it or not, God was resting.  I even chuckled thinking as Creation was at its worse moment ever and the enemy was rejoicing, God rested!  What?  Why?  Please please please drink these two thoughts in:

1.  He is never rattled by anything!  He is not shaken!
2.  He is still In Control.  He knows how the Story Ends!

Wait, but...nope!  In Control.  Yay but...nope!  In Control.  Death?  In Control  Cancer?  In Control  Abuse?  In Control

And not only In Control, but satisfied.  Satisfied?  Really?  Yep, the Son of God allowed the Father to be reunited with His children.  Pleased!  Jesus is dead...but not done!  Wait till tomorrow morning.  Sunday morning, first shine of light and they go back to tomb and Jesus is already back at work.  God is already back at work.  The Sabbath - day of rest is over, it's time to be poured out again and that's exactly what Jesus is doing...what are you going through right now?  Is it bigger than you are?  Well, i've got great news for you, God is bigger than whatever it is that you are facing and when it seems like everything is crashing down, God is In Control and He is not rattled...He knows how it ends.

On the worst day of all creation - God rested!  Now are we going to rest in Him?   Are we going to trust Him?

Humble Surrender

Two words that are stirring in my head these last couple of days...humble surrender!

It is from this place that we are able to receive what God has for us next.  When God's people cried out for food, God said, you need to leave your tent to receive your manna.  That is humble surrender.  You don't have to leave the tent, but the manna isn't going to be tossed in your tent for you, because you have a part to play to receive God's blessings...humble surrender. 

Elisha told the widow, go to the neighbors and asked them for empty jars.  If the widow wants help with her situation, then she needs to respond with humble surrender.  She doesn't have to leave the house and asked for help, but the neighbors are not bringing empty jars over to her.  So she leaves the house and knocks on the doors and gathers up empty jars...and every empty jar she received was full of oil that she was able to sell.  God wanted to bless her, but she had a part to play...humble surrender.

One more example, i think you get the picture.  Naaman had leprosy and was only able to get help because of a young girl who was kidnapped and made a slave...talk about humble surrender.  This young little girl has been removed from her home and her first thought is that she doesn't like her master (the thief) to be sick...ummm, wow.  So Naaman finds out that he is suppose to go to the dirty, filthy Jordan River and dip in it 7x.  Naaman has the opposite of humble surrender and instead has prideful stubbornness, thus missing out on God's blessing.  Finally, Naaman's servant lays it out for him and Naaman finally turns from prideful stubbornness to humble surrender and when he came out of the river on the 7th dip, his skin was like that of a baby.  God wants to bless us, but we have a part to play...HUMBLE SURRENDER!

In the Name of Jesus.

A Big God!

How big is our God?  It is a very critical question.  I have loved hanging out with Daniel in my Bible Reading lately because his view of God was huge.  It seems that there was nothing in this world that would take anything away from how he worshiped God.  Even if his life was threaten, Daniel stayed focused on God.  Because God was big to Daniel.  When Nebuchadnezzar was going to take everyone's life for not being able to interpret his dream, Daniel stepped up to give the king the words of the dream, but not before Daniel worshiped God and gave God credit for the interpretation.  It is utterly amazing.  Then when the new king is tricked into creating a law that anyone who bows down to anything other than him would be thrown into the lion's den, Daniel saw God bigger than this threat.  Thus, the king, who like Daniel, had to stay true to his law he created and through Daniel in the lion's den...but Daniel was ok, why?  His God was bigger than the lions and even if the lions would have torn Daniel apart, nothing was going to take him away from worshiping his BIG GOD.  We should spend some quality time with Daniel asking his Spirit, which happens to be ours as well, how to live this way.  I want God to be so big in my life that nothing...i mean nothing would distract me from honoring and worshiping Him.