TerryLema

I am still tired from my recent bout with an infection. I am still trying to build my strength back to where it was before I got sick. While sick, I did not eat the way I should eat because the antibiotic took away any appetite I might have had. I did not sleep well; I missed my morning devotion time because it was difficult to concentrate.

When the infection left, it took my strength and energy with it. It left weariness is its wake.

Weariness is a part of living in our fallen world. (I don’t think we will find even a trace of weariness in the next. I can only imagine that being in our glorified bodies in the presence of the Lord will be eternal energy and strength.)

When Jesus addressed the church at Ephesus in the Book of Revelation in the opening verses of chapter 2, initially He praised them … “You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary.” [Vs 3 NIV]

While He will go on to admonish them for a few things, including forgetting their first love, His praise comes first and centers on their hard work and their perseverance. They did not grow weary in doing good and their reward was to have praise from the King of Kings. [Gal 6:9]

I imagine their bodies grew weary, just as our bodies grow weary, but I don’t think it is weariness of body to which Jesus is referring.  It’s our attitudes – we need to make sure that our attitudes never weary of doing good. Then we, too, will have praise from our King.

Bob and I usually watch the news in the morning.  No matter which channel we have on, no matter if the network is predominantly conservative or liberal, it is not hard to notice a recurring theme. Anger.

Those interviewing and those being interviewed are angry. The videos being shown are of angry mobs, protestors, politicians, demonstrators, criminals, and crime victims, etc. It seems everyone is angry about something.

I think it interesting that anger is one of the first emotions to show up in the Bible.  First, of course, was the fear displayed by Adam and Eve when they sinned and hid from God.  But it isn’t very long before anger enters the heart of their firstborn, Cain.

Cain and his brother Abel bring their offerings to the Lord. God looks with favor on Abel’s but does not look with favor on Cain’s. Suddenly, Cain is angry.  When he displays his anger, God calls him on it and gives him a warning.

“Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you furious? And why do you look despondent? If you do what is right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.’” [Gen 4:6-7 HCSB]

Simply said, “No point in getting angry, just do what is right.”  Cain did not learn that lesson and ended up blaming his brother for his problems, then killing him.  I think humans have not learned a whole lot since then. We still get angry, and we still don’t always do what is right, and we are still pretty good at blaming others for our problems.

Oh Lord, help us to do what is right. Help us to master sin’s desires for us through the power and anointing of Your Holy Spirit. Amen

On March 30 I was taken off insulin. I no longer must take steroids, which raise blood glucose, so the doctor determined I could stop taking insulin. She gave me a couple months to try managing my diabetes with just diet and exercise. That means greatly limiting foods high in sugar or carbohydrates. (Some of my favorite foods fall into that category, like bread, cookies, donuts, cookies, potatoes, cookies, cereal. Oh, and did I mention cookies?)

My wonderful husband (who doesn’t know a carbohydrate from a carburetor) has come home recently with cookies, fudge from Cabela’s, sugared almonds from Scheels. And of course, there’s that maple donut he eats sitting next to me in church. I am bombarded with temptation!

While sugar and carbohydrates are temptations to my diet, there are far more dangerous temptations. Those are the temptations to my soul engineered by the source of all temptation, Satan, the enemy of our souls. It didn’t take long before his temptation appeared. Adam and Eve were confronted with temptation by Satan, who is described as the most cunning of all in Genesis 3:1.

Satan’s temptations are dangerous because they are clever. He seldom announces his presence or intent. He sneaks up, cloaks his temptations in half truths and slick words. It is not surprising so many of us fall to his wiles. But the LORD Jesus gave us the remedy for temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane when He told his followers, “Stay awake and pray, so that you won’t enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” [Matthew 26:41, Mark 14:38, Luke 22:40]

We must stay “awake” to the warnings given us by the indwelling Holy Spirit, and we must maintain our relationship with our Father God through prayer.

I love wind chimes. When we added a patio cover to our house years ago, Bob bought a wind chime to hang. A few years ago, the clapper fell off and the wind chime went silent without it.

This past Mother’s Day as he was heading out (I assumed to buy flowers), I was standing by the back door looking at the remnants of that old wind chime. I told him what I really wanted was a new wind chime. He came home with one, along with flowers for Mother’s Day.

He hung it up and because it was breezy that wind chime began to sing. What a joy! Every time the wind blows, I can hear the sweet notes coming from my patio.

While I cannot hear it with my natural ears, there are even sweeter notes going on around me.

“For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.” [Zephaniah 3:17 NLT]

Our God, our wonderful, glorious, mighty God and Savior is living among us. He is delighting in us with gladness. He is loving us, and that love is calming all our fears. He is rejoicing over us with joyful songs.

There is glorious singing in the heavenlies. We cannot hear it yet … but there is coming a day when we will be surrounded by the wonderful joyful songs our LORD is singing! Praise His Holy Name!

I cannot count the number of times when I was going through a difficulty someone quoted Romans 8:28 to me. “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose.” [HCSB]

I cannot count the number of times that God proved that Scripture true in my life.

But, as much as I love that scripture, it is the following two Scriptures that I love even more!  “For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined, He also called; and those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified.” [8:29-30 HCSB]

Two things about those two verses make my heart sing with joy and reassurance. First is that word “conformed.” According to Strongs, conformed (Gk: summorphos) means sharing the same inner essence-identity (form).

One day I am going to share the same inner essence-identity as Christ Jesus, God’s Only Son. This, however, is nothing I can do on my own. Every time I do try to do it on my own, I fail.

So, what is the second thing about those two verses that makes my heart sing with joy and reassurance? It is that God is the One Who promised that I would be conformed to the “image of His Son,” and not only conformed … but also called, justified, and glorified in Him.

That assurance is for all of us. When we are discouraged … when the enemy is telling us to give up because we will never measure up … when we feel weak or defeated … we have the joyful assurance that God will finish in us what He has started! Amen & Amen!

Lately, I have been spending so much time thinking about problems or difficulties. That is easy to do because difficulties and problems are often demanding and require immediate attention.

The problem with paying constant attention to those things is that it can become habit forming. We wake up thinking about them, deal with them all day, and then they are the last thing we think about before bed. Eventually that becomes our life.

As I thought about my attitude over the past few weeks, it became clear that something needed to change. And one of the best ways for me to generate that change is when I find my focus on the difficulty, I start to praise instead.

This morning I turned to Psalm 150. Thirteen times in six verses we are commanded to praise. The song begins simply, “Praise the LORD!”

Then it tells us to praise God in both His sanctuary and His mighty heaven. We are to praise him for His mighty works and His unequaled greatness.

Our praise is with a blast of the ram’s horn, or trumpet. It is with lyre, harp, tambourine, strings, flutes, and dancing. And if that isn’t enough, throw in a clash of cymbals along with the loud clanging cymbals. (That tells me God is not afraid of noise!)

Finally, the song clarifies who is to praise – “everything that breathes” is to “Praise the LORD!”

Well, if that doesn’t change my attitude, I am not sure what will! “Praise the LORD!”

My friend posted a meme on Facebook the other day that brought an uproarious laugh to my soul.  “If I woke up and nothing hurt, I would think I was dead.”

 A couple weeks ago I had a follow-up visit for a recent bout with infection. My doctor’s office called and requested I come in to make sure the infection was gone. They told me that my primary physician had hospital duty that week, but I could see someone else.

The “someone else” visit was “something else.” She reviewed my chart, asked some routine questions, and then asked a question for which I really had no answer. She wanted to know “when did the pain start?”

I could not tell her when that “particular” pain began. She looked at me strangely. Then tried to elicit an answer by re-phrasing the question. “How long have you had that pain?”

I tried to explain to her that when you wake up every day with pain, you hardly notice a “new one.” It just slides in with the old ones, and you go on with your day. We batted the “pain” question back and forth for a while until I gave up trying to explain and she finally gave up asking and told me if it came back to call them.

It took me days to get over feeling like an idiot until I realized that she had probably never experienced chronic pain and could not understand where I was coming from.

When I read my friend’s meme I did laugh, but then I thanked my LORD and Savior because one day that is going to be true … all pain (chronic, acute, emotional, mental, relational, and every other) will be “gone forever!” Amen & Amen

Revelations 21:4: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” {NLT]

How do we live victorious Christian lives.  Too many of us are defeated. Each day when we get up the enemy of our soul runs us aground, there is no soaring on wings of eagles for us. We barely make it out of bed before we are beset with discouragement, hopelessness, defeat.

The enemy drives our emotions, fuels our addictions, tempts us constantly with that “sin that does so easily beset.” His goal is to keep us from living our life in the power of Christ and claiming the authority that is ours under the blood of Christ Jesus. Instead of taking our rightful authority in Christ over the enemy of our soul; we are waiting for him to leave on his own so that we might be the kind of people we know God wants us to be. The enemy, however, won’t leave on his own.

We need to remember that Christ already has gained the victory over him. Satan, the devil, whatever you want to call him, is a defeated foe. He was defeated through the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. Christ Jesus now sits at the Right Hand of Power of the Father and He has all authority and power given to Him.  But the best part is that we also have that power and authority delegated to us.

“God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” [Eph 2:6-7]

We, mere mortals, are seated already in the heavenly realm in Christ Jesus. We can live victorious in Christ. It’s about time we rose up as believers to claim our authority and power and remind the devil he’s defeated and has no part of us.

We may be mere mortals, but we are also children of God, seated in Christ Jesus in this age and the one to come.

Standing up for Christ often makes us targets for those who wish all mention of God to be silenced. The enemy of our soul wants to instill fear. He wants us to believe that he has the power—when it is Christ Jesus who has both the power and authority over all of heaven and earth.  The enemy knows the time is short, he can hear that chain rattling in the hand of the angel that will one day bind him and cast him into the Abyss.

While we know that vindication and vengeance are in the Hands of God, how do we deal with the day-to-day assaults. For me, there is only one way – that is to praise and thank God Almighty. The writer of Hebrews tells us to “continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.” [Heb 13:15 NKJV]

It is NOT a sacrifice to praise God when everything is going well, and we are coasting through life.  It is easy to thank Him when blessing after blessing pours down upon us.

It IS a sacrifice to praise God amid the trouble.  When we least feel like praising God is when we need to praise Him the most. When there appears to be nothing going on for which to give thanks, that is when we must thank him continually.

To praise and thank when everything seems wrong, when we can’t discern God’s presence with us takes a sacrificial act. (Remember, a sacrifice in the Scriptures often required the death of something.)

When we offer a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving amid trouble, we are putting to death our own expectations, our own sufficiency, our own perception, and instead embracing God’s opportunities, His all sufficiency and His will.

No part of this is easy, but then things eternal seldom are.