Bragging on God

Our oldest son is graduating this weekend.  I've drug out the papers and art projects that were squirreled away in the basement, scanned pre-digital photos and put them together for a slide show.  And it's time.  Time to brag on God.

With graduation looming, floods of answered prayer come to mind. A friend and I meet weekly to pray for our children and schools and this is how we've seen God work:
- We prayed that God would expose dangerous substances in our community and that very night police arrested members of a drug ring from Chicago at the local grocery store.  Shots were fired.  No one was hurt.
- We continue to pray for the safety of our high school and middle school students.  For the last three years, there have been no end-of-the-year or alcohol-related accidents.  We have specifically asked God to intervene in cases of attempted suicide, and have seen His hand in that as well.
-  We have prayed for those who guide and guard our schools:  the administrators, school board, and counselors.  God has continued to prompt them to lead with righteousness and justice.
- We have asked God to make Himself known through excellence in our education system, and this is the result: http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/West-Liberty-Cracks-Iowa-Top-Ten-in-Best-High-Schools-Rankings-151057875.html
- We pray for strength and perseverance for our teachers, for unmet and hidden needs of students, for attentiveness and diligence.  God provides.
- We have prayed about weather for both school- and construction-related events and praised God as He worked all things for His glory.

Personally, I am praising, blessing, and thanking God for the years we've enjoyed with our son.  We are extremely blessed and proud of him, of who he is, of who he will become.  He will be missed at our house and enjoyed elsewhere.

In wrapping up the school year, I ran across this verse: Thus says the Lord, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:23-24).

This is my God--a God of kindness,  justice and righteousness who is actively at work. Have you seen Him lately?  It's your turn to brag!

 

The Death of Life

The women sat around the table, grappling with the  impossible, the inconceivable, the unimaginable and their hearts twisted, their stomachs clenched, their minds spun.  Okay, maybe the other women didn't feel that way, but I did.  It was lesson seventeen of eighteen on the book of Mark and, once again, I marveled at Jesus' journey to and through the cross.

We discussed the courage of Peter and John in the courtyard, the physical abuse and the betrayal Jesus endured, but could not get past the fact that God Himself bore our sin, that the Godhead was rent.  How could the one who said, "I am the resurrection and the life," become unrighteousness and death?  

And I realized that we, the created beings, live in a state of death.  Until God draws us and quickens us, there is no spiritual life (Ephesians 2:1).  We begin as small babes with little awareness of the world around us and grow, day by day, as we are fed and nurtured into fullness of life (John 10:10).  Jesus was life.  The Author of life. The Giver of life.  The Fullness of life.  And He, bearing my sin, gave up that spiritual life, what He was, what He had always been.  There is no level of human comprehension to span that distance.

Then we, dead, naked corpses that we are, claim that God died for all, that we will all join Him in paradise, that we can live as we choose and take the rot to heaven where God will miraculously transform unrepentant hearts into joyous rapturous ones that continue to seek their own pleasure.  Not so.  We must come.  We must fall on our faces, acknowledging our sin and fallenness and asking for His mercy and forgiveness.  We choose to take the life He gives and live daily in the dual body of death vs. life until this body is left behind and we, too, experience His presence in its fullness.  We would still be dead.  We deserve nothing more....

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,  even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),  and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,  that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.  For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,  not of works, lest anyone should boast.  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:4-10).

Come and See!

Our ladies Bible study group has been working its way through the book of Mark, and this Easter morning, I am thinking about faith.  Faith is the act of going to God with expectation.  The four friends took their lame companion to Jesus and lowered him through the roof because they expected Jesus to heal him.  Jairus went knowing Jesus could heal his daughter.  The hemorrhaging woman reached out and touched, believing He would make her well.  Then Jesus went to Nazareth and taught in the synagogue.  There was amazement, but without crowds, clambering people, mobs of distraction.  "And He could do no miracles there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.  And He wondered at their unbelief"  (Mark 6:5-6).

On Easter morning, I often think of Mary.  "Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb.... But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping; and so, as she wept, she stopped and looked into the tomb..." (John 20:1,11).  Mary went to Jesus with every expectation of finding Him.

This morning, as I consider struggles and disappointment and my need, am I willing to go to Jesus?  To leave behind excuses and justifications and simply go?  Do I believe, truly believe, that He is who He says He is?

"And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him" (Hebrews 11:6).