75 w/God
I want to give my life to something that will last - eternally = people.
75 thought
I have no peace about working at home or going into farming. I feel God has something different planned for me. Therefore I should not covet anything Wayne gets cause it was meant for Wayne and not me. It would not be God’s best for me to farm.
75 thought
Goal - Winter 2000 - 25 years from now (Dad’s age)
I want to be giving my life to God, seeing spiritual children, many generations. To be known for following Christ, not job. To be used by God in art world.
98 mo w/God
Dt 15 v7-11
‘“If there is a poor man with you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns in your land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.
Beware, that there is no base thought in your heart, saying, ‘The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,’ and your eye is hostile toward your poor brother, and you give him nothing; then he may cry to the LORD against you, and it will be a sin in you. You shall generously give to him, and your heart shall not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all your undertakings.
For the poor will never cease to be in the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land.’’’
Work.
Giving.
Giving to the poor amongst one. Giving through an unhardened heart. Giving with a free and open hand. Giving generously. Giving sufficiently. Giving from the heart. And the Lord God’s blessings in all one’s work and in all one’s undertakings.
One of the mysteries, one of the ways God turns the world’s ways upside down. To receive by giving. To have one’s work blessed of God for giving from that work to those without. A beautiful thing. So wondrous it can only be of God.
What I have, the land I live in, the cities, the home(s), the work, the finances, are all from God. To give is simply to give of God’s.
The heart. God is saying, asking, for one to watch one’s heart. It can kill Godly giving.
Stuff. People before and above stuff.
Time. It too can be given. Life. A life.
To be of God. To be blessed of God.
1 March
“‘Lord, make me to know my end,
And what is the extent of my days,
Let me know how transient I am.
Behold, Thou hast made my days as handbreadths,
And my lifetime as nothing in Thy sight,
Surely every man at his best is a mere breath.’ (Selah).”
Yesterday I spent time sorting through old files/papers. There were many things that went back as far as my days at the U of M, over 20 years. Some things seem as just yesterday.
There will come a time when I will either be confined to a rest home and/or will die. My files and papers, the records of a life, will be thrown out. A life as a breath.
To live this breath of time to the glory of God.
At BC, John shared a great truth: God is just in His justifying us in Christ.
We want God’s mercy and grace, but we don’t often want His justice. It is for fear of what it will bring us.
God can and does deal with us justly, in all His holy justness, and we are not utterly destroyed, because of the justness of Christ’s work. It is an awesomely big thing that Christ did, and the depth of it is beyond understanding. Only Christ, the Son of God, God Himself, could justify all the sins of all of humanity for all of time.
Rm 8 v30
“…and whom He called, these He also justified…”
1Cr 6 v11
“…but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but your were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.”
Rm 8 v33,34
“Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.”
An awesome, ununderstandable, glorious, freeing, wondrous, beautiful thing. My God.
When Christ was crucified, His hands were open.
The nails of the cross were driven through open hands. There was nothing Christ was clinging to. Hands with nails cannot cling, cannot clinch, cannot hang on.
He gave it all up, all that He was in God, for sinful and sin-filled man.
Who am I to cling when He did not?
