In God’s Time

Exodus 7:6
Moses and Aaron did just as the LORD commanded them. 7 Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three when they spoke to Pharaoh.

In God’s Time

The calling of God can come at any time upon our lives. Some think they are too young and some, like Moses and Aaron may be in their eighties before they received their call. The important thing is not our age, but our readiness and willingness of heart. Moses actually provoked the Lord to anger, because he didn’t want to answer the call. He wasn’t eloquent enough in his speech to talk to Pharaoh he felt. God reminded him that all that he had was from Him, but nevertheless gave him Aaron to be his spokesman.
God knows your time and season. He has prepared you for it and He will enable you to perform what He has called you to do, regardless of the age when you are called. When we are called we always want to see ourselves after the flesh with all of our inadequacies and faults, but God has seen our heart and He wants us now to trust Him to perform His will and good pleasure. This is where our willingness and submission come in. We can all make excuses as to why we can’t do something, but with God’s enablement there is really nothing that we can’t do.
Listen to the Lord. Wait upon Him. Allow Him to direct your path, but be faithful and obedient to walk in the way that He shows you. Remember things are not always as they seem outwardly, so don’t judge all things after the natural understanding, but seek the mind of Christ. Wait upon Him; don’t run impulsively ahead of Him. He will work things out in His time and way.
Allow His peace to fill your heart. ‘Be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and supplication make your request known before the Lord.’ When you listen to the Lord it is important that you get your heart still, so that there are no other voices distracting and confusing you. Listen and know His voice. Follow the Shepherd wherever He leads you to go and do whatever He gives you to do. This is His will concerning you.
When He gives you good success and you accomplish those things that you may have never once thought possible, don’t be deceived. This is one of our great pitfalls when we enjoy success and prosperity. We begin to take the glory unto ourselves. We plagiarize on what God has done and deem it as the work and accomplishments of our abilities and strengths. God warns his people of this very thing in Deuteronomy 8:10-20, “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. 11 Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 15 He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 16 He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you. 17 You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.
19 If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. 20 Like the nations the LORD destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the LORD your God.” It is a strong and solemn warning for all of us as His people to never forget where our blessings and our help come from. Let us never forget to acknowledge and praise Him for the work He has wrought in us and through, along with the blessings that He has bestowed upon us. God does not share His glory with another. To Him alone belongs all of the praise, dominion, power and glory forever and ever! Amen.

Blessings,
#kent

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Pride and Humility

Pride and Humility

Zephaniah 3:11-13
In that day shalt thou not be ashamed for all thy doings, wherein thou hast transgressed against me: for then I will take away out of the midst of thee them that rejoice in thy pride, and thou shalt no more be haughty because of my holy mountain. I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the LORD. The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies; neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth: for they shall feed and lie down, and none shall make [them] afraid.

Pride is the arrogance of man usurping the place of God. Psalms 10:4 says, “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek [after God]: God [is] not in all his thoughts.” What is the place of God in our lives? Isn’t it to be in every pattern of thinking, demonstrated in our motives and revealed in our actions? Every place in our lives that we rob and exclude from God becomes a place of pride. Pride is our self -exaltation over the will and mind of God. Sometimes we have taken pride to the other extreme of being self-abasing. Declaring how worthless and evil we are and how we don’t deserve God for He could never love someone like me. We have declared God a liar because we have taken upon ourselves such condemnation that we refuse the goodness, forgiveness and reconciliation through Christ.
Humility and meekness, the counter parts of pride, simply places our heavenly Father in the place of Lordship in all areas of our lives. If we are gifted or blessed above others in areas it is a place where God is to be exalted, not us. I think of Jesus and the potential power He had resident within Him. How destructive He could have been if He had ever let pride have place in His life. In His meekness, He was strength under control and in submission to His Father. He never had to exalt Himself for the Father affirmed and exalted Him. In His greatness He became lowly and showed himself to be the servant of men. He was not lofty and condescending even to sinners, but gently got underneath them and lifted them up in His love and truth.
The “afflicted and poor people” referred to in this scripture from Zephaniah carries the connotation that these were people who constantly saw their need and weakness outside of the Lord. They were people not so much outwardly poor and afflicted, but it spoke more of the condition of their hearts, much like Jesus addressed in the beatitudes of Matthew 5. It is an attitude that the Lord you are everything: every provision, every strength, every direction and purpose, every ability I have or can have is found in You. Without you Lord I am poor and afflicted in my own state of being.
Pride will always turn away the face of God, but humility and meekness are an open invitation to His presence. It is the condition of our heart that allows Him to be God in us and to be all that we need to be in Him. It allows Him to have His expression of love and grace through us, because we are not in the way to mire it up. This is the state of the God’s true flock and the sheep of His pasture. They know the Shepherd and are totally reliant upon Him. Thus He cares for them and makes them to lie down in His green pastures of rest. Their confidence is in their God and in Him alone.

Blessings,
#kent

The Nails and Fasteners of the Lord

The Nails and Fasteners of the Lord

Ecclesiates 12:110-11
The preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and [that which was] written [was] upright, [even] words of truth. The words of the wise [are] as goads, and as nails fastened [by] the masters of assemblies, [which] are given from one shepherd.

As God builds His spiritual house, which we are, as the body of Christ, what holds it all together? What are the fasteners and the nails that assemble and hold fast this structure of God’s Spirit and doing? The “words of the wise,” as Solomon refers to here in Ecclesiates are the words of truth. Truth, hammered in by the carpenters and builders in God’s house, is what holds all that we stand upon together, truth given by the one Shepherd and guardian of our souls, Christ Jesus. If God wasn’t True then all that we base our faith and hope in would be a lie and would mean nothing. It is because we believe God’s Word when it says in Hebrews 6:17-18, “Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability (fixed, unalterable) of his counsel, confirmed [it] by an oath: That by two immutable things, in which [it was] impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:” It is because of this unalterable Truth that our faith and confidence remains in tact as we walk the walk of faith. We know that our Lord is a sure foundation that cannot be moved as it says in Isaiah 28:16, “Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner [stone], a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.”
Our God uses the same nails and fasteners to hold together His temple, which we are, as He did to assemble all of creation. In John 1:1-4 it declares, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” Christ is that eternal Word of Truth through whom are all things is made and who holds together all things by His Truth. The Word establishes that it is Christ, who is the “way, the truth and the life,” that establishes and upholds all things together by the power of His Word. Hebrews 1:3-4 says, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by [his] Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of [his] glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
When Christ Jesus, who establishes and upholds all truth, was nailed on that cross at Calvary it was as if God was placing the final nail that would seal salvation and the Truth that would complete His eternal plan for all of creation. It is our faith in Christ and the Truth of all that He is and all that He has accomplished on our behalf that fastens us permanently to Him, to His promised inheritance and to His very heart. We must truly reverence the truth and the promises which our God has so graciously given us, for it is declared in Romans 1:18, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;”
If we truly believe the Truth of God’s Word, not just parts of it, but all of it, then let us fear the Lord and walk in the righteousness of it. It is eternal life to us. It is what forever fastens and nails us to the heart and life of God.

Blessings,
kent