In The Middle Of Eternity - Thoughful Tuesdays

It is the Thoughtful Tuesday today.

There are many people who have been close to God and have given us good thoughts to meditate on.

God's Word gives us many verses we need to pray about.

Today is dedicated to those thoughts, ideas, verses and words that make us think and make us want to be closer to God.

Here are today's thoughts!

Here I sit in the middle of eternity.  This wheelchair has helped me sit still.  I’ve observed with curiosity the way we Christians grasp for the future, as if the present didn’t quite satisfy.  How we, in spiritual fits and starts, scrape and scratch our way along, often missing the best of life while looking the other way, preoccupied with shaping our future.  In my least consistent moments I too try to wrest the future out of his hands.  Or worse, I sink back into the past and rest on long-ago laurels  But God is most concerned with the choices I make now.  God, standing silently and invisibly and presently with us in the middle of eternity, is interested in a certain kind of change.  He brings us choices through which we never-endingly change, fresh and new into his likeness.

Joni Eareckson Tada

For all the gods of the people are idols: but the LORD made the heavens.

1 Chronicles 16:26
The King James Version

This post is part of the Thoughtful Tuesdays series.

His Word Is Like Fire - Prayer Monday

The Scripture makes us think when we pray.

“To use God’s Word in prayer is to employ divine power in breaking strongholds and demolishing arguments of the enemy.”

Joni Eareckson Tada

Using the Scripture in our prayer shows God the importance we are attaching to our requests.

It also demonstrates the high regard and appreciation we attach to His Word.

“’Is not my word like fire,’ declares the Lord, ‘and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces’” Jer. 23:29

When we cannot find our own words.

We can lend God’s Words for our prayer.

There is always something in Bible, that talks to our hearts and the worry, pain or sorrow that we carry.

And even when we find those words, our prayer is even stronger to change us.

If we build it on the foundations of His Word.

“Dear God, help me to find the right words to tell You how I feel. To tell You what is bothering me. And also to understand what is it inside me that is not according to your plan. Help me to build my life and my prayer in Your Word and Your will. Let Your Word be the fire that cleanses me and the hammer that breaks the walls of my stubbornness. Help me to always trust that it is the best for me! Amen!”

This message is part of the Prayer Monday series.

Speaking God's Language - Joni Eareckson Tada - Prayer Monday

"The large window in the airport framed a gray afternoon. Our flight was late and my friends Judy and Bunny stood beside me to pray - something we often do before and after flights. I was feeling discouraged by the news that we lacked the funds to launch an outreach to help disabled children in several Eastern Europe orphanages.

Bunny reached for our hands, we closed our eyes, and she prayed, “Lord, send forth the corn and the wine and the oil. Send forth the early rains… the late rains… and produce a wonderful crop of blessings…” I recognized the words from Joel 2:19 in her prayer: “The Lord will reply to them: ‘I am sending you grain, new wine and oil, enough to satisfy you fully…’” I wondered if Bunny was thinking about the needed ministry funds.

Just then, I felt someone edge between us. The mystery person must have been a believer; he kept punctuating Bunny’s prayer with “Amens”. When we finished, he picked up his bag to run and catch his flight. Before he left, he folded a $100 bill to Bunny’s hand. As he hurried away, Bunny waved the bill in the air like a flag of victory and said, “Yea, even while I was speaking in prayer, the angel came with the answer!”

She was right. When Bunny prays, things happen. “Joni,” she instructed as she tucked the bill in my coat pocket, “This is the first fruits of what God will supply!” And it was. A foundation eventually caught our vision and helped fund the outreach to the orphanages. I’ve learned, through the years of interceding with her, that Bunny’s prayers not only seem to, but do, have power with God. It’s because she has learned to pray in the language of the Father. Even her response was from Daniel 9:21, “Yea, even while I was speaking in prayer.””

Speaking God’s Language: Joni Eareckson Tada

This message is part of the Prayer Monday series.

Your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses

You know those people? 

The ones who love their neighbor but not in their neighborhood.

Of course I love the less fortunate but not in my neighborhood.

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

Psalm 139:23-24

The English Standard Version

Of course we must feed the hungry and clothe the naked but not in my neighborhood.

The ones who offer their sacrifices and tithe at church with great delight.

And tell everyone about how church must help people in far a way countries, where they don't even know Christ yet.

Always, love is a choice. You come up against scores of opportunities every day to love or not to love. You encounter hundreds of small chances to please your friends, delight your Lord, and encourage your family. That's why love and obedience are intimately linked- you can't have one without the other.

Joni Eareckson Tada

Do you know those other people?

The ones that talk about schmootzers.

The people who claim it's churches place to take care of the poor and needy.

But only of the poor haven't caused their situation.

Only if they're not lazy or criminal or abusing the system.

The ones that say that children would learn about going hungry or working for their food.

"...our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your sense."

C. S. Lewis ~ The Weight of Glory

Maybe you know the ones?

Who give from what they have too much.

Even doing so, they sigh, gripe and moan.

They are your neighbors.

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