Redolent!
O Holy Spirit,
As the sun is full of light,
….the ocean full of water,
….Heaven full of glory,
……..so may my heart be full of thee.
– Spiritus Sanctus, from The Valley of Vision, p28
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I continue to enjoy my copy of The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions. The opening prayer is the opening lines of this particular prayer.
Actually, I’ve made a point of reading this prayer every morning for the last week. As I mentioned some days back, I felt the need to shore up my relationship with the Lord. First, I set my alarm 15 minutes earlier. For quite a while I got up at 4:00 AM but, at that time, I felt it would be better used trying to get a bit more sleep, so I set it for 4:15. But now I’ve made the deliberate decision to get up at 4:00 again. And I’ve exchanged some old unproductive habits, for new productive ones.
I read Our Daily Bread from their app, first thing. Then later, after a bite of breakfast, I’ve been reading this prayer from The Valley of Vision and another devotional entitled, The Way of Love: Re-Discovering the Only Path to Peace in this Life by Ted Dekker. (He is one of my favorite fictional writers, but I received this devotional as a gift and decided to start reading it.)
Focusing on the heavenly inspired has helped realign my heart and mind and I plan on keeping it up!
There’ve been a couple of things that have spoken to me from the Spiritus Sanctus prayer. One is after the author pleads for filling by the Holy Spirit, they write,
I bewail my coldness, poverty, emptiness,
………….imperfect vision, languid service,
…………prayerless prayers, praiseless praises.
There’s sure nothing wrong with being honest with ourselves! The phrases prayerless prayers and praiseless praises grabbed me each time I read them.
Another line that gave me pause was…
Come as joy,
….to dwell in me, move in me, animate me;
Picture that, being animated by joy! The world could sure use some of that…a lot of that!
Then …make me redolent of thy fragrance.
I wrote of the word redolent when I was first loaned this book back in August 2016
Its definition: strongly reminiscent or suggestive of (something). May I be redolent of the Holy Spirit’s fragrance for the rest of my life! For me to live for Him I must remain full of Him. I cannot fill myself with the things this world deems important. It’s like comparing a healthy meal to just consuming junk food. It may taste good in my mouth, but I won’t feel so good later and eventually, it will kill me. A steady diet of the world cannot satisfy – only He can do that.
And when we’re full of the Holy Spirit, we cannot help but cast off His aroma. May everything I say and do be redolent of Him! May the way I live draw others to Him.
When Karen puts a roast in the crockpot to cook for the day, by the time supper rolls around the whole house is permeated with the scent of that scrumptious meal! May I be so full of You, Holy Spirit that people have to get a taste!
Dec 21st, 2022, Wed, 8:37 pm
Parts Is Parts
Thank You, Father, for a great start to my morning. Some extra time set apart for me and You makes all the difference! May it become a habit.
Romans 6:12-14 (<<click here to read the passage)
This is going back a ways, but in the mid-80s, Wendy’s had an ad campaign for their chicken sandwiches in which the key phrase was “parts is parts”.
A gentleman at the counter of a hamburger joint saw another customer walk away with a sandwich and the dialogue went as follows:
Customer: “Excuse me but what was that in there?”
Employee: “It’s chicken!”
Customer: “Chicken?”
Another customer: “Processed chicken.”
Customer: “Processed?”
Employee: “That’s like when they take a lot of chickens and assemble their respective parts.”
Customer: “What parts?”
He asks someone else, and they say, “Different parts.”
Employee: “Parts is parts.”
Wendy’s sandwiches were (and still are) made of whole chicken breasts, not processed parts.
I do like their spicy chicken sandwiches, but this post isn’t a promo for them. My focus is on “parts”.
Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. v13a NLT
We have all kinds of parts that we can allow to become instruments of evil – our eyes can perceive things in twisted ways, our hands can perform wicked deeds, our feet can transport us to tempting destinations, our ears can listen to perverse and wicked verbiage, and our tongues can cut people far more damagingly than sticks and stones ever would.
Other parts can be in check, but if just one part becomes an instrument of evil the damage is done…parts is parts.
Instead, give yourselves completely [every single one of your parts] to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. v13b NLT (emphasis mine)
Honestly, it’s much easier said than done…right? But here’s the thing – and I’ve said it repeatedly – we cannot do this on our own. In order to succeed in this great endeavor, we must strive to work alongside Jesus!
He said in Matthew 11:29-30,
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me [following Me as My disciple], for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest (renewal, blessed quiet) for your souls. For My yoke is easy [to bear] and My burden is light.” AMP
Only in Him can we be victorious…and it doesn’t just happen. It takes a conscientious effort on our part. It takes discipline. It takes consistency. Every bit of that until it is embedded in our hearts and minds. And the best thing is we’ll never go it alone, for the Holy Spirit is with us all along the way! Lord Jesus, help us!
Dec 14th, 2022, Wed, 5:00 pm
Taken Aback
It is evening as I am sitting down, but You’ve been with me throughout this day, Father. The tuning is coming along. All praise to You!
Romans 6:5-11 (<<click here to read the passage)
I have to admit, as I read through this passage I was taken aback. Just as a statement of fact, I don’t even remember exactly when I accepted Christ (I just know I was very young), I’ve served in some capacity of church ministry at least since high school, I’ve served on church staff as a minister of music, youth, and children, and most recently as the pastor of two churches – one for 20 years. I’m not being boastful, but reading these verses gave me reason to pause.
I lay claim to those things, but I am far from perfect. Anyone who has read my blog with any regularity knows that I’ve said that on numerous occasions. I’ve stumbled more times than I can begin to count. I’ve fallen flat on my face frequently. I’ve totally crashed and burned more times than I’d care to admit.
That being said, what in heaven’s name do I do with verses like these?
We know that our old self [our human nature without the Holy Spirit] was nailed to the cross with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. For the person who has died [with Christ] has been freed from [the power of] sin.
…consider yourselves to be dead to sin [and your relationship to it broken], but alive to God [in unbroken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus. vs6-7, 11 AMP
The power of sin over us died with Christ on the cross. Our old self [our human nature without the Holy Spirit], died once and for all, so we are freed from its power.
The first part of verse 10 reads,
For the death that He died, He died to sin [ending its power and paying the sinner’s debt] once and for all
That “power” refers to our rebellious sin-loving nature inherited from Adam. Though we often willingly cooperate with our sinful nature, it is not us but the sin in us that is evil. And it is this power of sin at work in our life that is defeated! Paul has already stated that through faith in Christ we stand righteous before God. Here Paul emphasizes that we need no longer live under sin’s power. God does not take us out of the world or make us robots – we will still feel like sinning, and sometimes we will sin. The difference is that before we were saved we were slaves to our sinful nature, but now we can choose to live for Christ. (emphasis mine)
My Life Application Study Bible sure helped bring clarity!
And a couple more passages to drive it home!
I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. Galatians 2:20 AMP
Thank God for this gift too wonderful for words! 2 Corinthians 9:15 NLT
Dec 13th, 2022, Tues, 6:03 pm
Surrender
May we heed Your word, today, Father. It was straight and true…may we not let it slip through our minds and hearts like sand through our hands. Amen.
Romans 6:1-4 (<<click here to read the passage)
This is one of those days when part of today’s sermon connected with today’s blog. Romans 6 wasn’t even part of the sermon, though it could have been.
Should we continue in sin and practice sin as a habit so that [God’s gift of] grace may increase and overflow? Certainly not! How can we, the very ones who died to sin, continue to live in it any longer? Or are you ignorant of the fact that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We have therefore been buried with Him through baptism into death so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory and power of the Father, we too might walk habitually in newness of life [abandoning our old ways]. AMP
Many know that I grew up in the church. I could not begin to count the number of men and women who came to accept Christ as their Savior during those years of my dad’s ministry. I witnessed time and time again a major life change in them. Their old lives of sin were abandoned, and new lives of righteousness, holiness, and pleasing God were adopted. They lived out the expectation that you quit the sin business when you accepted Christ. Now I would imagine that that was not the case in every circumstance, but all in all, it was.
It seems to have become a more prominent mindset today, that those who lay claim to salvation in Christ, continue to hang onto sin even after making a profession of faith. Is it ignorance? …stubbornness? Or have we bought into the notion that we’re just poor miserable sinners and have no hope of overcoming the addiction to sin in our lives?
If Jesus is going to forgive us no matter what we do, what’s the point? Wouldn’t it just be easier to continue in sin and practice sin as a habit so that [God’s gift of] grace may increase and overflow? v1 Should we just learn to live with sin, mastering sin management? And I reiterate Paul’s exclamation, “Certainly not!”
How tragic it would be if God only came to save us but not fix us…to give us tickets to heaven but leave us to wallow in our sinfulness and addictions?
Jesus enables us to overcome our bondage to sin. If we want to be set free, we can be. Our lifestyles and life choices matter to God and His standard has always been, and always will be, holiness.
Paul points out that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death. v3
There’s an interesting note in the Amplified Bible.
“Baptize” [here] means to submerge an object into liquid. In this passage, Christ becomes the liquid, metaphorically, and those who are baptized into Him remain in Him forever and benefit from His experiences, including His death. The best news is that Jesus was resurrected, so believers will also experience resurrection… But even now believers experience a kind of resurrection in that they live new lives (as Paul says, “walk in newness of life”) in a wonderful new relationship with God and their fellow believers.
God has miraculously transformed us. Our responsibility is to obey, and obedience means to surrender. The wonderful thing about that surrender is we lose only what is destroying us and we gain that which will bring us to heights and wonder of which we have never dreamed! Surrender allows us to become the person that God intended for us to be! Amen!
Dec 11th, 2022, Sun, 7:14 pm
The Man on the Middle Cross
(Biblical vector illustration series. Way of the Cross or Stations of the Cross, twelfth station.)
It was a whirlwind kind of day and though we were spread apart in our different areas, we all came back together with an enjoyable supper and now wrapping things up. May I hear You and put forth what You desire. Amen.
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When I traveled back and forth to Kohl’s all those years, I had a fair amount of time on my hands – it was about a 40-minute trip one way barring any traffic issues along the way. One thing I enjoyed doing was listening to Christian radio and at the time there was a station that aired a combo of music and speakers. One I enjoyed was Pastor Alistair Begg. He is a Scotsman by birth but has been the pastor of Cleveland’s Parkside Church here in Ohio since 1983. Based on what I heard, I always found him to be very solid doctrinally.
Anyway, the other day while on TikTok, I came across a portion of a sermon he delivered back in November 2019, entitled “The Power and Message of the Cross”. Here is the text of that segment.
If you were to die tonight and you were getting entry into heaven, what would you say? If [we] answered that in the first person we’ve immediately gone wrong.
Because I…because I believed…because I have faith…because I am continuing…
Loved ones, the only proper answer is in the third person, because He…because He…
Think about the thief on the cross…I can’t wait to find that fellow one day to ask him, “How did that shake out for you? Because you were cussing the guy out with your friend. You’ve never been in a Bible study, you never got baptized, you didn’t know a thing about church membership and yet you made it! How did you make it?”
That’s what the angel must have said… “What are you doing here?”
“Well, I don’t know…”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Well like because I don’t know!”
[The angel was at a total loss for words and stuttered around for a bit then said,] “Excuse me, let me get my supervisor.”
[The angelic supervisor said,] “So we have just a few questions for you. First of all, are you clear on the doctrine of justification by faith?”
He said, “I’ve never heard of it…”
“Let’s just go to the doctrine of Scripture immediately…” And the guy’s just staring… and eventually, [the supervisor] says, “On what basis are you here?”
And he said, “The Man on the middle cross said I can come.”
And that is the only answer!
Much too often, we as established believers make things too complicated! And we feel that we have to find into answer when Jesus is the only answer! We don’t fit into the answer part whatsoever. We didn’t provide that answer. We didn’t even think up the answer. We are only recipients of the Answer, and all we can say is thank You, Lord God Almighty! Where would we be without You?!
Nov 30th, 2022, Wed, 7:12 pm