Acts 26:14 … “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?  It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”

The word goads has always seemed a weird choice to describe resisting relationship with Jesus, but today something falls into place and I am beginning to think the word fits very nicely.  As I reflect on that ancient Jewish translation of the word righteous – which is right relationship, anyone who resists being in right relationship with Jesus is actually resisting what was meant to be from the time of Creation.  How could God who IS love, create man then take off to let them hang out on earth without being in relationship with Him?  How can His love happen outside of relationship with Him?  The best analogy I can think of is trying to run from the force of gravity.  It would be futile to do that as we understand the merits of it and the power it holds.  Spending our energies resisting the love of God through personal relationship with Him, is to deny the very reason we were created – to have communion with God.  This is how we kick against the goads.

It seems that many view having relationship with Jesus kicks against the goads of society, not realizing the goads set in place from Creation are far stronger.  We were created to be in right relationship with God and one another.  That is how it is, just like gravity is how it is.  Why would we spend our energies resisting?  Did Paul not find a lasting, loving, enriching and empowering relationship with Jesus once he stopped resisting?  This is no different from what God has in mind for you and I.

Love, grace and peace,

Merelyn.

Matt. 26:41 … “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation.  The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Matt. 27:28-30 … “And they stripped Him … “put a crown of thorns on His head” … mocked him … spat on Him … lead Him away to be crucified.”

Jesus was doing more than giving a momentary instruction to His disciples.  He was not saying, pass the gravy, when He instructed them to watch and pray.  He was reinforcing what He had told them earlier – that all of them would betray Him.  He was letting them know they all needed to be aware that their flesh was weak and in need of sovereign intervention, lest they fall into temptation.  What I hear is that our flesh is weak, even if we have been made aware and in our best effort, attempted to strengthen it.   He did not say, “For now, until your flesh has been strengthened by you (though we should work in this direction), pray for  God’s intervention on your behalf”.  He is making a blanket statement, your flesh is weak and in need of heavenly intervention, so you don’t succumb to temptation.  This principle applies today.  For those of us who want to serve the Lord, who are we to think that we can offer up a quick prayer from time to time and live a Godly life?  We need an ongoing awareness of where our weaknesses lie and applied prayer!  What occurs to me here is how much junk has occurred in my life that could have been dealt with if I had made a conscious effort to meet the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane regularly to ask for His strength to invade my weaknesses?  How many people would be spared hurt from me if I had done that?  Equally important is to ask myself how many times have I grieved Holy Spirit by acting out of my weaknesses?  LORD, strengthen me and be strong in me in my areas of weakness I pray.  Let me not grieve You by my sin or by how I treat others.

I see a long list of things done by man that deeply wounded Jesus.  Let us not wag our heads at their treatment of Him as if we are not fully capable of inflicting those hurts on others.

1. The stripped Him – exposed His nakedness.  In other words, they rendered Him vulnerable to the world.
2. They mocked Him – saw Him as a object for their scorn and a place for them to make jest of what they perceived as His differences from themselves.
3. They spat on Him – saw that He was degraded by their gestures in order to bolster themselves.
4. They lead Him away to be crucified – they cast their vote that His life was of no value.

In order for us to love God and have our actions follow the convictions of our hearts, we must love others.  We have a glimpse of the capacity of our own hearts as we examine what was done to Jesus.  This affects our relationship with the Lord.

Father, forgive us.  Draw us into right relationship with You, which is also right relationship with others.  Help us not turn a blind eye to seeing our capacity for wickedness against one another, but recognize our capacity as You revealed in Your words in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Help us to become diligent at prayer in seeking Your strength for our weaknesses.

Love, grace and peace,

Merelyn.

Mark 7:5, 7, 9 …”Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?” … “And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” … “All too well you reject the commandments of God, that you may keep your tradition.”

Katharine Bushnell in her volume “God’s Word to Women”, tells of her findings that sages and priests of the Jewish faith of old would interpret God’s word and layout out all they perceived that God meant by what He said.  These interpretations were all passed through their own filters and as a result, came out skewed from God’s original intent.  The trouble was, that these interpretations now came to take the place of God’s own word, hence people put their trust in man’s interpretation over and above the pure and true word of God.  Hundreds of new laws were created at that time, burdening the people and requiring much more than God intended in the way of rituals, but much less in the way of caring and loving as God intended.  Man then stood themselves in the gap between God’s intent and man’s understanding rather than inviting or allowing God Himself to be in relationship with them, rightly revealing His intent to them.  If they did this, God’s word would and could remain relevant throughout the course of time.

Katharine Bushnell’s suspicions were spot on as I read Jesus’ words to the disciples.  In verse 5 the Pharisees ask Jesus why He chooses to ignore the traditions of the elders – in other words all the interpretations of scripture and subsequent laws.  Jesus responded by saying they worship Him in vain when their attentions turn to the interpreters and their interpretations over and above God Himself and what He might say to them.  We are to seek HIM and HIS righteousness, not our own and the righteousness we might gain from that.  We pass by right relationship with God in favor of right relationship with man.  This amounts to idolatry.

It was fascinating to learn in a recent course online that the ancient Jewish interpretation of the word righteous is actually right relationship.  This is a right on interpretation and in keeping with Jesus’ complaint against the Pharisees.  Right relationship though, must first be with God and not the elders.  He alone is righteous and will cause us to walk in right relationship when we choose His interpretation of His word in our lives.

The lives of millions of women have been severely hampered over the centuries by zealous men who negatively interpreted God’s word toward them.  Jesus had a lot of work to do to unwind the grip of these interpretations and set up intimate connection between God and man again.  He is to be our guide, counselor and the revealer of His own word.  Ours is to distrust our own interpretation and trust in His.  Ours is to learn to hear His voice and walk accordingly.  Proverbs 3:5 tells us to “Trust in the LORD with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding.  In all our ways acknowledge HIM and HE will direct our paths.”

Love, grace and peace,

Merelyn.

Psalm 108:4 …”For Your mercy is great above the heavens and Your glory above all the earth.”

Acts 10:35 … “But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him.”

Acts 10:38 … “… how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.”

Acts 11:17 … “Who was I to withstand God?”

Acts 11:18 … “Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.”

Here is a great saying, taken from my commentary, “Satan’s ploy is to get us to doubt God’s good will to us.”  I have seen this in the world when it comes to how some women view themselves.  Somehow they have bought the lie that God wants men to freely receive His good will, grace and mercy, but strangely doubt the extent of it when it comes to themselves.  Will God be granted the full glory He is due on earth when women limit themselves in how and when they function in the gifts He has given them? Will God not receive much glory when women are fully released to pursue the expression of His gifts in and through them whatever they may be, whether to serve as pastors, teachers, evangelists, apostles or leaders?

Right from the Garden of  Eden, we can see the truth of how Satan was attempting to cause us to doubt God’s good will.  In Gen. 3:4, he said to Eve, “You will not surely die.  For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  Satan was suggesting that God was wanting to restrict Adam and Eve from all that was available to them.  Do we as women still feel the effects of this lie today?  Do we still want to doubt God’s good intentions because we are women?  If as we read in Acts 11:18, that all Gentiles were now free to receive God’s goodness to them through repentance to life, why would we women preserve the notion we are yet bound in some way?  Women, we need to repent of believing the lies of the enemy and get on with operating in the fullness of the life, grace, mercy and gifts God has sovereignly granted us – that He might receive the glory He is due.  Who are we to withstand God?

God anointed Jesus with Holy Spirit and power to do good and to heal all who were oppressed by the devil.  We are all operating as the oppressed if we choose to believe and act according to the lies and limitations of Satan.  Scripture tells us that we are released by Jesus to act according to the life and liberty He has granted through His life and death.  Let’s move forward, honoring the fullness of His good will in our lives and His power over all the works of Satan, through the power of Holy Spirit in us.

Love, grace and peace,

Merelyn.

2 Sam. 11:27 …”But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord”; Psalm 51:6 … “Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.”

Having seen David’s integrity through all the previous accounts of his life and actions, reveals his great capacity to know God and walk obediently and courageously in His will.  David has not been called a man after God’s own heart for no reason.  He was a man of character.

David also had much to be grateful for.  By this time he had amassed much wealth and a reputation that anyone would admire.  One would think he would have been content with his lot, but such was not the case.  One fateful evening, David spotted a woman of great beauty – a woman that was not intended for himself.  Perhaps he thought that because of his royalty he was entitled to take whomever caught his royal eye for a wife.  Whatever his reason, David’s desire was great enough to go to any lengths, even to causing an innocent man to die in order to satisfy it.  This choice was completely incongruent with what we have come to know about him thus far.  How could one with his integrity justify such actions?  David’s solution was simple.  He would compartmentalize his actions, separating them out from what he knew to be God’s will.

Tragically, the consequences of David’s actions caused the death of his newborn child and as well brought a curse to his family which ultimately affected his entire kingdom.  In Psalm 51 we hear David crying out to the Lord in grief for his actions and asking for forgiveness.  In response we hear the truth that God wanted David  to know …  “You desire truth in the most inward parts …”  Those compartments that may seem to us to be sealed off from the world – those are the places in which God desires truth to penetrate and when we do, His wisdom will avail itself to us and we will prevail, protecting us, our family and our kingdom from the consequences of sin we might otherwise subject them to.

I thank you Lord that we can come to Your word and learn from those who have learned lessons the hard way.  I pray Lord, that You will reveal to me any parts in my heart that are not inviting Your truth and that You would allow Your truth and wisdom to reign in my heart that I might not bring hurt on any person.

Love, grace and peace.

(Journal entry from May 6, 2010.)

Psalm 119 … “Your word I have hidden in my heart” (vs. 11) … “Your testimonies also are my delight and my counselors” (vs. 24) … “Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage” (vs. 54)  … “Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, for I delight in it” (vs. 35).

My dear mother passed away on November 27, 2010 and if I could put in a nutshell the credo she lived by, I would choose these passages from Psalm 119.  When I was young, the things she would put her hand to, her personality and her choices over the years, all seemed to have been rather random and at times, and did not always add up.  At times her ways were even unpleasant to me, particularly in my teen years.  As I grew into adulthood, my appreciation for her grew immeasurably, but now that she is gone, I have the advantage of taking her whole life into review and seeing that she was indeed a remarkable woman.  My mom was a woman who stood strong in her faith in all the massive challenges she faced and in that, her life became a canvas on which the hand of God painted His own portrait of His great love and faithfulness.  God’s amazing strength in her, His faithfulness and virtues are portrayed as clear as a bell on that canvas.  No one would wish for her life and what she had to face, but all can admire the strength of her faith and the strength of the faithfulness the Lord portrayed through her life.  This is the legacy she left.

Now I desire not the difficulty, but at the end of my day and even now, that God would be highlighted and His gallery of virtues be evident in my life as well.  I desire that same legacy to continue through to our sons and their families.  This is the Christian way.  It is my desire therefore, to redouble my efforts and resolve to know Him, appropriate Him and reveal Him in all my life!

Love, grace and peace.

(Journal entry of December 5, 2009.)

Job 42:15 … “In all the land there were found no women so beautiful as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers.”

If you had it to do all over again, what would you do differently?  What do you know now that might have saved you a lot of grief in the past?  While no one would ask for the tragedy that Job encountered in his life, it is clear from scripture that he got a second chance to handle his affairs differently.  Job had to start from scratch rebuilding his home, his family, his business and his estate, but this time was able to build with the benefit of the wisdom he had gained over time.  Job’s fresh start was blessed of the Lord because of his great faith, as we can see by the descriptions of his wealth in verse 12.  Not the least of this wealth is the account of Job’s daughters in verse 15.

This verse is rather unusual.  Women in those days were considered as part of their father’s or husband’s wealth, and rarely received an inheritance of their own.  It was common practice to give only sons an inheritance, but not daughters.  Job had been given time to review how he had done things in the past through the devastation he experienced and the period of grieving he went through.   This time around, Job saw the incredible value of his daughters.  He got it!  How exactly that had come about who knows, but it was there just the same.  I would have loved to have walked and talked with Job at that time.  It would have been so interesting to hear him expand on this small verse.   Job had had eye surgery while he was in his devastation.  He now saw his kids – male and female as a gift from God and he chose to invest his best into both.  Job’s daughters received a rich monetary inheritance.

To my way of thinking, Job left his daughters with more than a monetary inheritance.  Verse 15 declares his daughters to be the most beautiful in all the land.  Material wealth does not engender radiant beauty in us.  Our most radiant beauty comes when the Lord is sown into our lives.  Job not only poured his most valuable earthly possessions into his daughters, he poured a rich spiritual inheritance – his faith, rendering to them rare and unusual beauty.  God was being revealed in them.

In his day, people’s view toward women had been skewed and Job had bought in.  But Job would now treat his daughters differently after his devastation and the Lord had healed his eyesight.  Who is it today that we need to view differently?  We have the opportunity to learn from Job’s second chance insight and see the incredible value in others, regardless of their gender, race, age or socio-economic status and treat them according to their high value.  We can sow a rich spiritual inheritance in them as well when we sow seeds of faith and God begins to be revealed in them.

Job is not a story of devastation, but a beautiful story of restoration.  God restored his eyesight and when He did, Job responded and in the end received twice the original material blessings God had given him.  Beautiful!

Love, grace and peace.