this scripture just made me say... wow... this morning...

romans 4: 16This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God's promise arrives as pure gift. That's the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that's reading the story backward. He is our faith father.

17-18We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, "I set you up as father of many peoples"? Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, "You're going to have a big family, Abraham!"

19-25Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, "It's hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child." Nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. He didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That's why it is said, "Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right." But it's not just Abraham; it's also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.

giving God my all...

you know... I give God my mind and my heart and my body... to do whatever He wants to do in my life... but a few days ago... He asks me for my stomach... now that seemed really strange to me...

the background to this is... God wants me to give up sugar and white flour... I have a long standing love affair with biscuits and cookies... so I have not been able to give God what He wants... and He reveals to me that I am trying to do this in my own power... and I think... well of course I am.. this is not something spiritual... this is just what I'm eating...

well amazingly to me... God seems to think that even what I eat is His... if we go deeper into it... I guess this is one more thing that we try to keep control of... trying to hold on to some semblance of power... I don't think it is so much about what I am eating... as it is about giving it to God...

it is hard to recognize that every part of us... every little thing is God's.. not our own... and it is to Him to have control of it... and we don't like to give Him control of anything much less of everything... so this morning... as I wake.. and I am praying.. and giving God my life.. my mind.. my heart.. my body.. I also give Him my stomach... and even though I really don't understand it... it is about surrender..

so Lord continue to lead me... teach me to give You every part of me that I knowingly and unknowingly withhold... I ask you to control my entire life... I submit completely to You.. in Jesus name.. amen.amen.amen.

shaken... but still standing...

there are alot of things I don't understand... I don't understand God much of the time.. but this is something new for me.. when I was worldly... I understood Him much better... God's process of making us into whatever He wants us to be is confusing... everything is backwards... you have to give to receive.. you have to sow to reap... you have to die to live... none of those things make sense...

so I'm here today to tell God that I don't really understand any of what He is thinking... I can see the end result.. but I can't imagine how the way things are going is supposed to get me there...

I am supposed to stand strong while I am attacked on every side.. and I do mean every side... the promise for the future that God gave me looks unobtainable.. yet I am to continue to show love... (what possible sense does that make?? really... walking away is the smarter move... I promise you that...) my son has lost all sense of reality... my daughter is working 2 jobs one during the day and one at night and we can't seem to get her car fixed... so we are running around back and forth.. relying on others for rides much of the time... (I could just quit everything and go home after I'm done at work for the day... that would be so much easier...)

I refuse to say 'what else could go wrong' because in the midst of the drama... we have our health... we have a home... we have food.. we have clothing.. we are able to pay our bills...

but as far as what possible good all this could bring? I have no clue... I don't understand anything at all...

no matter what I'm gonna love You... no matter what I'm gonna need You... no matter what I'm gonna trust you... I know that You have the power to keep me from all pain... but if you choose not to.. all I ask is that You come through it with me... in Jesus precious name I ask this... amen.amen.amen.

God is in control.. (?)

I wonder some days if I really believe that God is in control... I used to be sure of it.. and in most situations I still am pretty much giving full control to God... but there are a couple things that I struggle to keep my hands off of...

the bible tells us that everything and everyone are subject to the will of God... are you still a 'free will' believer? well... God hardened the heart of the Pharoah... he didn't have any free will... and... the bible says that it is God that controls the heart of a man... so if God controls it... how is that free will?

now do I think we are just some puppets on a string? not exactly... but I guess I believe God opens our hearts and our minds to His will... and then we choose it...

anyways... so if I really trust that God is in control... not people.. why do I get concerned? what do I have to be afraid of if God controls the heart of a man? what is there to fear?

like the scripture says... Father I believe.. help me with my unbelief... help me to just trust You and rest in You... in Jesus name I ask.. amen.amen.amen.