To Bring Him Joy

“ O Lord God of hosts, who is mighty as You are, O Lord, with Your faithfulness all around You?” Psalm 89:8 ESV This is a rhetorical question, there is no one so mighty or faithful as Jehovah. He is not this omnipotent( all powerful) God who sits enthroned above the heavens not caring about the people and world He created. His steadfast love and faithfulness are a part of everything that He does or does not do. He always acts in love towards those whose hearts are toward Him. He never acts in an unrighteous manner. He is the most powerful of all beings and yet He acts in mercy towards us. He could so easily snuff us out and yet He is long suffering, forgiving sin and waiting for people to come to Him. I am not nearly so patient. I have often said that if I were God the world would have been gone a long time ago. I don't know how He stands to watch us every moment of every day, seeing us turn away from His offering of grace and fellowship day after day af

"So when they had come together, they asked Him, "Lord, at this time are You restoring the kingdom to Israel?" He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or periods that the Father has set by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Acts 1:6-8 ESV When I was reading this earlier this month one of my first reactions to this verse was to feel sorry for Jesus that after all He had been through and taught them, the disciples were still not getting it.  Then I thought, Jesus, why didn't You just tell them no? Why didn't He take the time to explain to them again that His was not an earthly kingdom? Not now? It was not the time for explaining, He ascended in a cloud immediately after this statement. He had already explained numerous times. In fact if you read the previous verses, Luke tells us that Jesus appe

My mother in law died the day before Easter. She literally fought to the death (not in a good way).  It was heart wrenching to watch and still  hurts to think about it but God taught me some really good things as we walked this path with her and her husband. The following is one of the lessons that I learned and wrote during some of the early stages of us really being involved in their care. I have been learning from the real life pictures that God is giving me in dealing with my mother-in-law and her husband. She has a metastatic malignant melanoma that is at least at a stage 3 of 4, it is an avocado sized lump under her left arm. She sometimes acts as if she doesn't even remember that it is there. We have all agreed that she could not handle any kind of treatment and we don't really know how long God will give her. She probably weighs under 100 by now but insists that she eats when she is hungry. She has Alzheimers at least stage 5 of 7 and she has high blood pressure an