The Plumbline

If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people’s sins, if you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight. I will always show you where to go. I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—firm muscles, strong bones. You’ll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again. (Isaiah 58:9-12) I live in the Arizona desert, so growing things here is a little more difficult than it might be in the lush greenbelts of our country. Xerarch is a term that indicates the ability to grow and even 'evolve' in dry places. Most of us face those "dry places" in l

The Lord is not slow about keeping His promise as some people think. He is waiting for you. The Lord does not want any person to be punished forever. He wants all people to be sorry for their sins and turn from them. (2 Peter 3:9) I would like us to stop for a moment this morning to think on these words - the Lord is not slow about keeping his promises as some people think. If you promise me something, I am looking out for the fulfillment of that promise. I am eager to see it come to pass - whether it is a promise that is for me, or one for somebody else I care deeply about. If we see a delay in the promise, we might just think God isn't going to bring it to pass, or that he has forgotten us, or even that we might not have heard God right when we stood upon that particular promise. We are like that because we expect the fulfillment to be one way, but God may be coming about it in a totally different way than we expected.  I think I shared this before, but it bears repeating. There

Have you seen the hope of a promise and what influence it has over a person? The "pulling" or "pushing" effect of the promise they hold onto is often the only thing keeping them going, isn't it? If you have ever really taken any kind of look into scriptures, you will see they are filled with promises. Some make immediate sense to us, causing us to just simply latch onto them quickly, while others take a little "getting used to" in order to have any real kind of impact on us. By definition a promise is something which gives hope - it is what we base our expectations on. If we have been given a promise - we hold out for the fulfillment, don't we? Now, in terms of God's promises, they actually serve to "pull us on" when we don't have the energy to make another move ourselves! With promises like this to pull us on, dear friends, let’s make a clean break with everything that defiles or distracts us, both within and without. Let’s

If you are anything like me, you sometimes forget that God never (and I mean never) goes back on his promises. Sometimes we get so caught up in the 'delay' between the promise and seeing it realized in our lives that we get a little wigged out with God because there is such a 'gap' between the beginning and the ending. The truth of the matter is that there is meaning in the delay - while we may not understand or fully appreciate it, God is at work. God isn't hindered in his ability to fulfill the promise - but we may be hindering him a little by our reluctance to trust! 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, just as you said! ( Isaiah 25:1 TLB ) The other day I saw a plane at what almost appeared to be a total 'stand-still' in the sky. While I know this is impossible, the movement was ever so slight. In researching why this 'appearanc

A promise - do we really understand the meaning of that word anymore today? It seems like words are spoken these days, with no real intention of keeping those "promises". Sometimes it is because they were made in the spur of the moment. At other times, it is because they were made at a moment when we were emotional vulnerable. In fact, many people who raise money for various projects count on us being too busy to really explore what we are giving the money toward, or that their marketing tactics will tug at our heart-strings enough to get us to give. A promise is an expression of assurance that we base our expectation on - not a stipulation, or an undertaking that might or might not work out. When God made a promise to his children, he made it with a commitment to fulfill every aspect of that promise, regardless of the cost. He didn't make those promises us to either at the spur of the moment, or because his emotional strings were pulled. They were made out of intense lov

Three important truths became apparent to me in listening to the Easter sermon this year.  I didn’t really expect to hear much of a different “story” of Easter, but I really “got” something different out of the story I did hear!  Isn’t that just like God?  He brings about something new even when we think there could not be anything new possible!  It had to do with promise, purpose, and initiative.  God’s promises overriding our “try harder” kind of mental belief we will be able to do enough to save ourselves from our own sin.  God’s purpose determining our course right into the very presence of God and into the waiting arms of his embrace.  Lastly, God’s initiative to make a way for each of us where absolutely no other way existed.  All be it we try to live right, we don’t really “do” the work of salvation – the basis of our salvation is all in the promise, purpose, and initiative of another – Christ Jesus himself.  Although this wasn’t the passage my pastor spoke from, it caught my e

Have you ever really considered the lessons you have learned because of the experience of another?  You know, the stuff you just never really explore because you see how the exploration of another left them kind of unfulfilled, reasonably sane, but just so not excited about their experience?  Well, I think this is all part of God's plan for us in life - to learn from the experiences of those who go before us.  The first astronaut into space paved the way for all the others who came behind.  The first one to fly above the earth had a whole lot of failures before there was truly lift-off.  The experiences of the first made an example of both what not to do and what to do in the midst of the experiences of the many who followed.  I think the same is true in our spiritual lives - we learn a great deal about what not to do and what really is the best path for us simply by looking at those who've gone before us. When  God , your God, ushers you into the land he promised through you