Jeremiah 15:19.

"Therefore thus saith the LORD, If thou return, then will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before Me: and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as My mouth"   (Jeremiah 15:19).

Faith: everything hinging on belief.

"...faith means that we give up control, we let go and we allow His Holy Spirit to lead us. Everything from that point on becomes about our belief in Him, not about our works for Him."

Faith make rightful hope and love, and without faith, there are only shadows of either hope or love.

verse of the day, Wednesday May 17, 2023

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!  -Romans 11

The vine and the branches.

He is the vine; we are the branches.

When one vine is unproductive, the good husbandman lifts it up and makes sure its getting water and sunlight.

Let them know the body of believers by the fruits of peace, love and justice.  Let patience have its perfect work; let hope continue.

I was reading in Timothy about gain not necessarily being Godly, how so many see earthly increase as blessings, but it isn't so, per se.  One never knows, and this is the world of man, and there is the prince of the power of the air to contend with.  All we are to do is trust God's providence.

 

spurgeon on the need for prayer.

Do not despair, dear heart, but come to the LORD with all thy jagged wounds, black bruises, and running sores. He alone can heal, and He delights to do it. It is our LORD's office to bind up the brokenhearted, and He is gloriously at home at it. Let us not linger but at once return unto the LORD from whom we have gone astray. Let us show Him our gaping wounds and beseech him to know His own work and complete it. Will a surgeon make an incision and then leave his patient to bleed to death? Will the LORD pull down our old house and then refuse to build us a better one? Dost Thou ever wantonly increase the misery of poor anxious souls? That be far from Thee, O LORD.

-Charles Spurgeon 

verse of the day, Sunday May 14, 2023

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalm 139:13-14

The wonder of creation, and even the wonder of self: it even perplexes the sciences.  How much of a wonder we are, however much, we are only a shading of our magnificent God.

"all flesh is as grass".

"All flesh is grass and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:

 
the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. 

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of the Lord shall stand forever."

-the prophet Isaiah.

Cutting grass, mowing, is just like a kind of maintenance, necessary maintenance, like vigilance in the natural against the devouring beast.  We have to keep one open sometimes because "the days are evil"; we are submerged into a world of contrasting wants, desires and needs, and not all of them need to be necessarily evil that does us harm, but things that would be necessary and providential to others, might sometimes cause us harm--such is life, with all the contrasting, wants, desires and needs.

Just like we might mow often, we keep an eye out for the devil, and when the plant goes astray, we cut 1/3 from the plant, just like the grass, we should so too treat the planting of the soul, keeping vigilance, doing maintenance, being mindful of evils that might creep-up into our perview from time to time.  Just as the husbandman works the field, so to do we tend to our own garden, that internal bit of old Eden in the soul.