To Bring Him Joy

I was invited to a baby shower not too long ago in which all the attendees were assigned a letter to bring along with a usual shower gift. Evidently it is a new thing to have the alphabet on your baby's wall in all different styles, colors and fonts. So this was the idea. If you know me very well, you know that my creations very often have a deeper meaning than what you just see on the surface. So when I was assigned the letter "M", I thought; "Messiah - I could print out all the verses in the Bible that contain Messiah, over and over until I've covered the letter."  Well, when I went to research those verses, in the version that I use and that my friend uses there were only two verses!! So I then wondered if there were any names of God in the Old Testament (you know the Jehovah something names like Jireh and Rapha) that started with an M. So I searched and there is - Jehovah Mekoddishkem or the variant spelling that I went with Jehovah M'kaddesh which ...

  “ After all that has happened to us because of our evil deeds and terrible guilt—though You, our God, have punished us less than our sins deserve and have allowed us to survive...” Ezra 9:13 HCSB As part of my reading, in what I write down on my “to do” list as “twiG” (time with God-twiG to remind me that I AM is the vine and little I is just a branch. I've got to be attached to Him to survive.) I read Ezra 9 and verse 13 stuck out. I was amazed and convicted. Amazed that someone had this attitude and convicted that I rarely do. We had community group last night and were discussing how we struggle with believing that God loves us and I realized in thinking of this verse that true to myself I go from one extreme to the other so many times. Either I struggle with truly believing that God loves me. O, I know it in my head but how different my life would be if I really grasped how great His love is for me and for others-to see people as someone Christ gave His life to ...