Abundantly Pardoned

^{La 5:12 Princes have been hung up by their hands; elders are shown no respect.}

^{1 Ti 5:1 Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men i as brothers, 1Ti 5:2 older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.}

^{I hate to see the elderly mistreated or shown disrespect, and there is so much of that in our world. We should look up to them. They are wise. They have lived through many things, much more than have we. When we are born we go from baby to child to teenager to adult and back all the way to baby again. Many elderly people are helpless, and they need us just as the wee babies do. God loves the elderly and so should we.}

"Come Home"

Why do you sigh for that

Which you do not know?

Why do you long for that

Which you cannot find?

You search and search

On a trail of eternal longing,

Straying onto paths that lead

Nowhere.

Your way is marred by

Felled trees and forking streams

In your path,

And still your eyes stay down

As you trudge and climb and

Hack your way to something

That haunts your heart.

Child, don't you know?

Child, can't you see?

You fight against the

Greatest Love.

Come home.

Come home.

"What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish...." (Philippians 3:8)

Why do we fret over so many things, complain over so many things, worry over so many things, think upon so many things, spend time on doing various things (that are really a waste of time, when you think about it), when they all don't mean a thing? Only Jesus matters---loving Him, receiving His love and getting to know Him. Everything else is rubbish that we need to cast aside. Like the hymn says, "Turn your eyes upon Jesus."

"Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:1-2 NIV)

"Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth." (Colossians 3:2 NKJV)

What transforms us? What changes us? What causes us to morph into a different, better person? Keeping our mind on the things of heaven. Keeping our minds on Jesus Christ. If we keep thinking of earthly things, we'll remain of this world. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be of this world. I want to be completely transformed.

Amy Carmichael in one of her "Scraps" family newsletters: "I think I won't name his faults, for since beginning to write, I have become conscious that my own are so numerous and so far outweigh other people's, that the less I say about them the better." Oh, so true, so true! Everytime we start to fuss about someone else, we need to stop and take a good look at ourselves. Which person has more faults? I don't know about you, but I'm almost afraid to look! Clean me up, dear Jesus! Clean me up!

The cost of gasoline keeps getting higher and higher; the cost of groceries keep rising, and we find that sometimes the groceries make people sick or kill them; cancer is running rampant in all kinds of people we know, and the wars keep getting worse. James 1:17, 1 Samuel 15:29 and Malachi 3:6 tell us that our Lord God Almighty does not change. Hallelujah! Hang on to the Lord!

I'm now reading a book that I'm using for Bible study at the Assisted Living facility: "A Long Obedience In the Same Direction" by Eugene H. Peterson which is about the Psalms of Ascents (Psalms 120-134). We are pilgrims on a journey in this world. We're in this world, but not of this world. Like the Hebrew pilgrims who sang these Psalms on their way up to Jerusalem for the festivals, we, too, should be singing these Psalms as we traverse up, up, up until we reach our goal: Jesus. As we make the ascents, we go into different levels of our Christian maturity. "Come, let's climb God's mountain, go to the House of the God of Jacob. He'll show us the way He works so we can live the way we're made." (Isaiah 2:3)

I had the privilege of working with a very sweet lady who is now in a powerful battle. She emailed me her journal that she's been writing since April 28th, and I couldn't put it down. I blinked away tears as I read all that she's going through because of women's great physical enemy: breast cancer. Those are two words that pour terror into a woman's heart and mind, and what a woman has to physically, mentally and emotionally go through in order to defeat the enemy is a battle that can make you or break you. As I read her journal, I could see Satan at work as he has tried to push her into giving into her fear and the physical pain, and I'm sure as she goes through her treatments, he'll be prowling around like a roaring lion looking to devour her (1 Peter 5:6). Tracy knows exactly what she's facing. She knows what breast cancer is all about, because she's a nurse. When I was 15-years-old and going through painful procedures and paralysis on one side of my body and major surgery to remove a malignant brain tumor followed by learning to walk and see only one of everything again, I was lucky in that I didn't know or understand all that I was going through. My parents chose to hide the truth from me, and being the trusting child that I was, I believed that it was something simple. When we're not children anymore, we have to stand and face the calamities of life, knowing that the outcome could possibly be devastating, but we need to remember that our Lord God Almighty is a God of miracles. He who has worked big miracles and little miracles in my life will also work miracles in the lives of others. "For with God nothing shall be impossible." (Luke 1:37). "Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You." (Jeremiah 32:17) The battles are long and hard, and we can allow Satan to use them to break us, or we can allow God to use them to make us. My long battle made me into the person that I am today. I know Tracy, and I know that her battle with breast cancer is going to make her into a better, stronger person and a better, even more compassionate nurse. In 2 Corinthians 12, we read of Paul's thorn in the flesh. He begged 3 times for the Lord to take it away, and the Lord told him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness." Did Paul throw a hissy fit? Did Paul allow Satan to use his thorn to break him? No, Paul said, " Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me" and "For when I am weak, then I am strong." We have the strength of our Lord to see us through our battles.