Sylvia – Page 48 – The Sylvr Pen

Posted on 2013-11-182013-11-18 by Sylvia

Love has Legs! Loving and Doing

He speaks the sermon’s topic and jolts me back to the blog theme I’ve let side-trails pull me away from, reminds me that LIVING (OUT) (HIS) LOVE (begun here, and continued here and here and here and here) still needs follow-through to its conclusion.

Recap of the blog series so far: 1 Corinthians 13 speaks of Love (the noun) as something we have—or don’t have. To have real love, we/I must have God, be connected to Him, because God is love, and the source of all love, and apart from Christ we can do nothing truly loving, any more than dry branches can produce grapes, disconnected from the vital vine.

BUT (as I hear in this sermon emphasizing the truth’s flip side)… Loving (the verb) is doing. Love without any outward response… well, just isn’t! You can’t have love without its producing the fruit of some kind of action, visible to others or hidden, but actual flesh-and-blood living out.

If the love is flowing, the soul will get going… And. do. something! loving! Even if the body lies injured or sick in bed, mind and spirit will pray love.

Past posts in this series emphasized that not all deeds that look loving really are. The sad truth is that we we can play-act love, put on a good “stage” performance for whatever self-focused reasons. What happens then is but a masquerade.

But love, real love… (in the sermon’s wise words):

has its source in God (1 John 4:7, 19)

manifests itself in authentic action (James 2:15-18; Lev 19:9-18; Deut 15:7-11)

is what God demonstrated for us in Christ… (Rom 5:8; John 3:16)

is the reasonable response to God’s love for us (1 John 4:10-11,17)

is more than mere talk or play act, but an actual act: so, says the apostle John, do it, show it, “in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18)

is something we walk in (2 John 1:6)

Yes, Love has legs—and arms and hands—and they move! But there’s more. Love…

moves both “vertically” (back toward God Who bestowed it on us), and “horizontally” (toward His special creation, the objects of His love that bear His image (1 John 4:17,21)

We can’t truthfully say we love God if we hate our brother or neighbor (“how [then] can the love of God be in” us?)

Which brings us back to our love deficit, in our Adamic nature, and our need for Him, and for a maintained connection to Him, to be able to love.

Prayer: O Lord God, Whose love surpasses our imagination, fill me with that love of Yours today and use me as its vehicle, its channel to others. Love through me, please, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

~~~

Linked to

Posted on 2013-11-16 by Sylvia

Peace Amid Hubbub

“Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.” John 14:27

Mid-November, and I am on the front porch. Bright sunlight, warm air. I sit in jeans and cotton mock neck, light shirt, and my old moth-holey “writerly” sweater. After last weeks frigid, snow-clad, even icy days, how delicious!

I sit, and with me sits the vase of still surviving mums that porch shelter and cold outer air must have worked together to preserve all week. Now and then a sparrow or a chickadee drops by, winter friends on nearby branches.

It’s getting late, and I have an errand to run, paint for the mudroom, but this is rare opportunity to grab, for a bit of outdoor sitting and semblance of stillness.

Semblance, because heavy machinery rumbles around me, both north and south on the road, and a chorus of yellow lights are flashing, and now a distant loudspeaker squawks, and male voices exchange blurry words. And here comes the traffic guy in helmet and bright-light chartreuse, strolling the edge of the blacktop, carrying his “stop” and “slow” sign, now stationing himself at the end of our driveway…

But only momentarily. Thankfully, he moves on.

Someone’s pounding or chopping across the way, and inside, dear husband’s running the shop vac, sweeping up plaster dust.

But it’s still still in the inward sense for me, as I savor another unexpected late-summer flashback.

It’s like a momentary peek from heaven beamed down through cloud cover like happens now and then on autumn Earth. And even when resounding “boom!” of gunshout startles and jerks my pen into a scribble on my page, I think of heaven’s peace, Christ’s peace, which the child of God can enjoy, even amid earthlife’s hubbub.

“Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.” John 14:27

~~~

Linked to

Posted on 2013-11-12 by Sylvia

A Few Reflections on More Delights

All those delights of which Proverbs spoke, those things which delight the LORD, nudged me to see what else the LORD delights in. In searching, I found more than that. I also found delights for myself, in Him.

First, more that delights Him:

He delights in the obedient heart of the smallest human, more than in the sacrifices even of kings (1Sa 15:22).

He delights in the way of those whose steps are ordered by Him more than in burnt offerings (Psa 37:23)

He delights in the contrite spirit of the repentant sinner far more than in burnt offering (Psa 51:16-17).

He is a God like none other, Who pardons iniquity, passing over the repented transgression and not retaining anger forever… because He delights in mercy (Mic 7:18).

But this goes two ways. For the person who loves Him and walks in His commandments and ways there is…

delight in the ways of the LORD (2 Ch 17:5-6).

delight in the law of the LORD (Psa 1:2).

delight in the specific commandments of the LORD—even in times of trouble and anguish (Psa 112:1; 119:143)

delight in the others on the earth who are sanctified to God (Psa 16:3).

delight in doing His will (Psa 40:8)

delight in the abundance of peace (Psa 37:11)

and delight in the LORD Himself! (Psa 37:4)

How all these delights, both His and mine, warm my heart!

How about you? Do you enjoy these delights?

Posted on 2013-11-062013-11-16 by Sylvia

From Darkness into (De)Light

(And More Proverbial Reasons to Praise His Name)

Sometimes, you can get lost in your own insignificance, can feel of no real use or value to God.

At least I can.

Great Creator of all this vastness, how could I mean anything of significance to You today? What could I do in this twenty-four that would count with You as any more than the flap of a butterfly’s wing?

I ask, and He shows me…

Picking up where I last broke off in my Proverbs search for scripture-based reasons to praise Him, in chapters 11 and 12 I come upon this astounding realization: I (personally) can… delight Him! Right now, today! And then in 15 and 16 I find more

Wonderful Reasons to Praise (and Delight in) Him…

(from Proverbs chapters 11 and 12)

because…

though dishonest scales are an abomination to Him,

He delights in just weights and honest scales

because…

though those with a perverse heart are also an abomination to Him,

He delights in those who walk in the ways that are blameless

because…

though lying lips are an abomination to Him,

He delights in those who deal truthfully

(from chapters 15 and 16)

because…

though the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to Him,

He delights in the prayer of the upright

because…

the way of the wicked is an abomination to Him,

but He loves the person who follows righteousness

because…

the very thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to Him,

but the words of the pure are pleasant (to Him)

When will I really, finally, get it through my head and heart, that it isn’t what we consider the big stuff that matters to God? It isn’t any teensy human’s supposed big stuff that gives His great Heart pleasure. It’s what we/I, in the headlong rush to flashy accomplishment, too often brush aside as insignificant.

Even the tiniest “nobody” can delight Him

simply by being honest and just

merely by choosing to follow blameless ways in the everyday

just by dealing truthfully with others,

purely by praying to Him in uprightness,

simply by following righteousness and

keeping those inner thoughts and intents pure, (by coming to Him regularly for their cleansing)

then, by simply conversing with Him, heart to heart, thought to thought

This is enormous! A little being like myself able to delight the Great Creator of the vast Universe! No big earth-shaking large-numbers needed. No highly padded platform required. Just these basic things, with a right heart, which He Himself will keep giving me, if I go to Him for it.

This puts all my senseless striving for big and noticeable where it belongs—in the trash bin—and immerses me in the simplicity that pleases Him and brings me peace, and delight.

His yoke is easy. His burden is light. He Himself is meek and lowly in heart. And in all that I find rest for my soul.

*****

Linked to

Posted on 2013-11-05 by Sylvia

What Oswald Chambers Said About this Darkness

[This post continues the last one, How Darkness Defines the Light—and What About When There is No Light?]

After that talk, later in the day, I’m searching for a book—unaware my search has a reason related to the message I’ve heard and the questions that still haunt me.

Only God knows that. I just think I want this particular book because I’ve read it quoted on other blogs lately, and think it would make good devotional fare.

But the book is hiding, as light often is, and it takes effort, time, and teamwork from Husband to ferret it out of the “wrong spot” on the shelf.

I decide to start in on it now, and turn to its devos for the start of November, hoping the whole rest of the book isn’t prereq for their reading. And there, what do I read as skim November’s first entries, but… “PARTAKERS OF HIS SUFFERINGS” (!) After this title lies the rest of the answer still evading me… And it’s glorious, filled with… holy light! So, I share here with you a slightly edited version:

“PARTAKERS OF HIS SUFFERINGS”

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest.

Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings. —1 Peter 4:13

If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a multitude of experiences that are not meant for you [meaning for your personal benefit] at all; they are meant to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what transpires in other souls so that you will never be surprised at what you come across.

Oh, I can’t deal with that person.

Why not? God gave you ample opportunity to soak before Him on that line, and you barged off because it seemed stupid to spend time in that way.

The sufferings of Christ are not those of ordinary men. He suffered “according to the will of God,” not from the point of view we suffer from as individuals. It is only when we are related to Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us. It is part of Christian culture to know what God’s aim is. In the history of the Christian Church the tendency has been to evade being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ; men have sought to procure the carrying out of God’s order by a short cut of their own. [But] God’s way is always the way of suffering, the way of the “long, long trail.”

Are we partakers of Christ’s sufferings? Are we prepared for God to stamp our personal ambitions right out? Are we prepared for God to destroy by transfiguration our individual determinations?

It will not mean that we know exactly why God is taking us that way. That would make us spiritual prigs. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through; we go through it more or less misunderstandingly; then we come to a luminous place, and say – ‘ ‘Why, God has girded me, though I did not know it!”