O Lord, I will honor and praise your name, for you are my God. You do such wonderful things! You planned them long ago, and now you have accomplished them. (Isaiah 25:1 NLT) Do you celebrate God in your life? Do you celebrate his goodness as well as his correction? It is an easy thing to celebrate him when he does something spectacular in your life, blessings abounding in every way. It is another thing to celebrate him when he identifies something within you that needs to change, bringing both the conviction and the grace to accomplish that change, isn't it? We might look toward heaven when all is going well, but do we tend to look inward at our failures when things didn't go so well? The more God corrects both the big and little things in our lives, the more we can be assured we are moving in the right direction with him. We should not fear his correction because it is essentially another 'blessing' from his throne! Salvation was a 'one-time' deal. Sanctificat...
And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7 NLT) Is there ever a time or place when God's Word isn't right there? If we commit even a small portion of it to our memory, we carry it with us at all times. I know that I haven't memorized scripture like so many others have, some even doing a verse a week. Yet it is there when I need it - maybe not word for word, but God's Spirit brings it to memory within me. Commit yourself to the study of his Word and you will be amazed how it comes to light exactly when and where you need it most! It is more than the 'study' of his Word that transpires, though. In that commitment to study it, we find our framework for living actually changes. We begin to prioritize things a little differently and o...