TerryLema

I love to crochet and I’m good at it. I even have Best in Show awards for thread and yarn crocheted items at the State fair. I have been crocheting since my mid-20’s, which along with keyboarding since high school has left my thumb joints disfigured with arthritis.

Still, it gives me great joy to crochet, and I still love to do it. However, now when I crochet, I must make a choice. Do I crochet and then have my hands hurt all night, or do I just stop. Is the joy worth the pain?

Life is full of choices. Some are lightweight, like my choice to crochet or not. Other choices have dire consequences. Joshus put forth such a weighty choice in Joshua 24:15 when he confronted the Israelites after settling in the Promised Land. “Choose today whom you will serve…. As for me and my family, we will serve the LORD.” [NLT]

That choice has eternal consequences. Those of us who have made that choice must understand that it doesn’t stop there. There are everyday choices that will also affect our eternity. I was reminded of one in a daily verse recently.

“I have chosen to be faithful; I have determined to live by your regulations.” [Psalm 119:30 NLT]

Every day we choose to be faithful. Every day we make the choice to live by God’s Holy Standards. It doesn’t stop with salvation; we must also choose sanctification—simply stated that means to be conformed to the image of our LORD Christ Jesus. Amen&Amen [Romans 8:29]

I woke up the other morning with questions swirling in my mind. Those thoughts centered around our Holy, Untamable, All-Powerful Majestic God. I could hear the Holy Spirit asking …

When was the last time you faced the God of Moses and came away from that experience with your face reflecting His Glory?

When was the last time you met the God of Elijah who first brought an earthquake, fire and wind to command your attention for His still small voice?

When was the last time you entered the presence of the God of Isaiah and found such holiness that you were unraveled in your humanity?

When was the last time you fell as dead before the God of Daniel and had to be revived before you could hear God’s answer to prayer?

Now lest you are thinking that’s the Old Testament God and we now serve the New Testament gentle Christ Jesus who allowed children to climb on His lap, then let me remind you that this gentle Christ Jesus calmed the raging storm and sea with a word and left His disciples more “terrified” of Him than of the storm. [Mark 4:35-41]

And remember John the Beloved, the one who reclined beside Jesus during the Last Supper? Remember his response when He saw the glorified Jesus holding the keys of death and Hades in Revelation 1, “I fell at his feet as though dead.” 

We serve a holy, untamable, unexplainable, mighty LORD. He is majestic, powerful, dangerous. We should be breathless in His Presence, awestruck by His Majesty, undone when faced with His Holiness.

What does that say of us if we are not?

A one-frame cartoon on Facebook has stayed with me for years. It showed Charlie Brown and Snoopy sitting on the ground facing a sunset in the background. Charlie Brown says to Snoopy, “We are all going to die one day, Snoopy.”  It’s Snoopy’s response that has stayed with me, “Yes, but every other day we are going to live.”

We worry so much about dying that we forget that is only one day, while we have years of days to live. Some may have more than others, but I don’t think God is concerned with quantity of days as much as quality of days. After all, He is already aware of the number of days we have. “…all my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began.”  [Psalm 139:16b HCSB]

What are we doing with our days? Are we living them in abundance of God’s grace and mercy? Are we bringing the light of Christ into the darkness of others’ lives? Are we seeking our daily bread from the source? Are we drinking of the Living Water? Are we growing in Christ Jesus … loving each other the way He loved us? Are we caring for the poor of this world, the blind, the naked, the imprisoned as He commanded?

Are we living every day we have or merely going through the motions? Every day presents opportunities to grow in our relationship with God and our relationship with people.

Let’s live with an “every other day we are going to live” attitude and let God handle that one day we are going to meet Him. Amen&Amen

I want to go back to Revelation Chapter 5, where we were in yesterday’s devotion. I want to go back to look once more at a group of people described simply as the “24-elders.” Many scholars believe these 24 represent the 12 tribes of Israel (the OT saints of God) and the 12 Apostles of Christ (the NT saints of God.) If that is true, then that is us!

If that is us then we are doing three things!.

We are all there together. All the people of God from all the ages, all the nations, Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free. We are together with Him before the throne.

We are rejoicing, singing of His glory. I think there might even be some dancing going on. I can picture David whirling and twirling in his praise with a bus driver from Queens. There’s Paul singing loudly arm and arm with a martyr from Nigeria. Billy Graham and Martin Luther are side-by-side and Mother Teresa is hugging a Chinese believer. Maybe Peter and the Centurion are back together. And in the middle of them there’s you and me.

Then all of us are overcome with the desire to fall together and worship the Great I Am and the Lamb. Suddenly we sing, “Blessing and honor and glory and power belong to the one sitting on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever.” [verse 13]

We are together. We sing His praises. We bow before Him in worship. We probably should start practicing that now. Amen&Amen

It is hard not to think about the End Times with all that is going on in the world. Today I headed to Revelation Chapter 5. It’s only 14 verses and takes about two minutes to read. It is full of music and worship. First the 4 creatures and 24 elders play their harps and sing. Then the thousands upon thousands and ten thousand upon ten thousand join in. Finally, the “Cosmos Choir” made up of every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth and in the sea begin to sing.

While I can only imagine what that will be like, there is a verse in that wonderful chapter that reaches deeper in me than I can even express. The NKJV renders the wording beginning verse 6, “And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain ….”

But it is the way the NLT renders it that grabs my soul, “Then I saw a Lamb ….”

I saw a Lamb … I saw THE Lamb. As John stood before the Throne in the heavenlies, John saw the Lamb, the One slain from the foundation of the world. He saw the one upon whom he had rested his head at the Last Supper. He saw the One who loved him so. He saw the One who died for him, stripped naked upon a Roman cross. He saw the One placed in the tomb and he saw the One risen from the grave. He saw the One who ascended before his very eyes into the clouds. He saw the One who took away his sin and his guilt. He saw the One who alone now has the authority to open the scroll that signals the beginning of the New Heaven and New Earth.

I want to see what John saw! I want to see THE Lamb. I want to hear the heavenly choir. I want to stand shoulder to shoulder with the saints of all the ages and worship the One who sits on the throne and the Lamb forever and ever. I want to see what John saw! Amen&Amen

We serve a GREAT God! The Scriptures are filled with descriptions of His Greatness.

Psalm 145:3: “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.”   

Jeremiah 32:17: “Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.” 

Isaiah 40:28: “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.” 

Psalm 147:5: “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.”

So, since God is so GREAT (and He is, there is no argument about that), why are my prayers so wimpy? Since I serve a GREAT God, should I not be asking great things from Him.

Too often my prayers are about me. I need to make them about the things that break the heart of my beloved Savior who on His way to the cross wept about the destruction that was soon to come to Jerusalem.

“As He came closer to Jerusalem…He began to weep…. Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side. They will crush you into the ground and your children with you.”  [Luke 19:41-44]

Oh LORD, let my prayers be great as you are great. Break my heart with what breaks yours. Amen&Amen

I have lived in 28 different homes (if you don’t count stays of six months or less). Twenty-two of those homes were after Bob and I got married. We have been at our current location since 2007. This 19-year stretch is the longest we have had. I love it here.

But I also know that as we age (Bob is 86 and I’m soon to be 80), staying here might not always be possible. One or both of us will probably have to move before too long. I anticipate that when that happens, it will be difficult. This is our abode.

I looked up that word abode in Merriam-Webster and abode simply means the place we call home. There is another place, however, where we are to have our abode. Jesus said in John 15:9, “Abide in my love.” 

The word abide used there is Menó. It is a primary verb and means to stay in a given place, to abide, continue, dwell, remain. In other words, we are to make our home in the love of Christ.

Home is where we return when we’ve been away. When the difficulties of life pull our hearts away, we must return “home,” home to the love of Christ Jesus. His love is our home—the place where we remain, continue, dwell, abide—the place we can truly call home.

“Home is where the heart is.” Amen&Amen

“Be holy for I am holy.”  God commands us to “be holy” in both the Old and New Testament, which raises questions. If we are to be holy, what exactly is holiness? Is our holiness and God’s holiness the same? How exactly do we achieve this holiness?

When we speak of God as holy (“… for I am holy”). we are saying he is “wholly other” or “wholly above.” God is absolute perfection. There is not even a microscopic trace of anything other than perfection in Him. He is high above all others; no one compares to Him. Every other attribute is governed by His Holiness, holy mercy, holy grace, holy love, holy wrath. We can’t even grasp that kind of holiness, let alone achieve it.

So, what kind of holiness is God indicating for us when he says, “Be holy ….”  For us, holiness may be defined as “wholly apart (not “wholly above” or “wholly other”).

When God called Israel out of Egypt, he set them apart from other nations and gave them specific instructions to govern their lives so that the world would know that they belonged to Him. When Peter repeated the command regarding holiness in the New Testament (1Peter 1:16), he talked specifically to believers and indicated that we needed to be set apart from the world. We are to be governed by God’s standards not the world’s or our own. Holiness calls us to be distinct, “wholly apart,” not perfect.

That leaves the last question. How do we achieve this holiness to which we are called? That can only come from a right relationship with God through the work of Christ Jesus our Savior. We cannot achieve holiness through our own efforts. To try to be holy without first being born-again in Christ Jesus is to descend into legalism, not the freedom found in Him.

Remember what Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:6? “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” Seated with Christ Jesus in the heavenly realm is truly “wholly apart” from the world. As we learn to live in that, we can truly “be holy for I am holy.” Amen&Amen

It’s that time of year when teachers are beginning to prepare their classrooms. I love teachers. I know three things about teachers. First, teachers have the second most important and difficult job in society. (The first? Parenting).

Second, teachers don’t get paid what they are worth. Many begin teaching in debt with student loans from the years of college required and their beginning salary is a mere pittance. They usually must set up their classrooms out of their own pockets and often supply what students need from their own resources.

The third thing I know about teachers is that they love to teach. They must, otherwise they’d take their education and find much better paying jobs. Yes, I love teachers. I think they should get THE BIG bucks.

Jesus was a great teacher. He, the Son of God, came for a specific purpose, to bridge the gap caused when mankind sinned and rebelled against its Creator. He died and rose to save us. But Jesus also loved to teach. How often the Gospels recount, “And seeing the multitudes …. He opened His mouth and taught them.” [Matt 5:1-2]

Not only did Jesus teach, but He also passed the job of teaching on to His disciples, to us. “Jesus came and told his disciples, ‘I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’” [Matthew 28:18-20 NLT]

Father, give us the heart of a teacher so that we might teach others of the love You have for us, the salvation that is available, and the duty of a grateful heart. Amen&Amen

Nothing I hate worse than a run of 100 degree days. I get grumpy! To beat the heat in a house with an aging air conditioner, I leave the blackout curtains closed to reduce the sun exposure. I love light so that adds to my grumpiness. It seems like the heat saps the joy out of my soul. I can hardly wait for the dogdays of summer to expire!

So, of course, where did I end up today? In Psalm 19, one of my favorite psalms. David takes us to creation and shows how God speaks to everyone every day across this world. Then David turns his attention to the way God speaks to us in Scripture. Finally, he turns his attention to our hearts and applies the revelation of God to them. It is the final verse of this song that made me think about my lack of joy.

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” [Psalm 19:14 NLT]

If there is a prayer that should be on my lips each day, it is this one. It reminds me that it is the meditation I allow in my heart that will affect all the words that flow from my mouth (or my keyboard!) It urges me to affirm that those meditations are pleasing to my LORD, my Rock/Strength, my Redeemer.

That word “meditate” carries the image of a musician plucking the strings of a harp. In other words, meditation is the music of the soul. 

My music has been a bit offkey in this weather and needs to change its tune! What song is your soul singing this morning?