Why should I praise Him? Let me count the (Biblical, God-focused) reasons…

(Catching up. Counting toward 10,000. Do you think I can find that many?)

REASONS TO PRAISE GOD (COUNTING TOWARD 10,000)

THESE, TODAY, FROM PHILIPPIANS 1…

• 377 – Because He begins the good work of resurrected life in believers
• 378 – Because He is the one who completes it
• 379 – Because Jesus Christ’s affection produces godly longing in believers toward one another
• 380 – Because the first fruits of righteousness come by Him, by Jesus Christ
• 381 – Because those first fruits are for the glory and praise of God
• 382 – Because He gives little humans the supply of His Holy Spirit
• 383 – Because if we know Him as Paul did we will feel that “to live is Christ,”
• 384 – Because if we know Him as Paul did we will feel that “to die is gain” because we will be with Him.

FROM PHILIPPIANS 2…

• 385 – Because consolation is found in Christ.
• 386 – Because He made Himself nothing for little man!
• 387 – Because He took on the form of a bond slave for humanity!
• 388 – Because He lowered Himself to come in the likeness of mortal man
• 389 – Because He humbled Himself even to the point of death on a cross for humanity
• 390 – Because at the name of Jesus every knee in heaven will bow
• 391 – Because at the name of Jesus every knee on earth will bow
• 392 – Because His name is exalted above every name.
• 393 – Because every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
• 394 – Because it’s God Who works in us (believers) both to will and to do according to His good pleasure.

(I had to back up in my numbers, because I discovered I duplicated a lot of reasons from Isaiah 61, back there somewhere.)

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Linked to…

[Here it is: the continuation of the last post, “Still Here” (which you might want to read before this post). And right straight out of my private journal, unadulterated (except where you see a [] bracket or …) — because Dawn at Beneath the Surface invited me to link up for Random Journal Day. So this is no world class literature, but it surely is about a Beyond-the-Universe class God! True account. Truly true…]

When the mailman turned in the drive, I got all excited. Finally my package, order for clothes, a couple items, but mainly shoes!

I have been needing new shoes so badly, especially certain kinds—casual but wearable with dresses, open for summer, but closed-toed for winter. And with my feet so hard to fit well enough that I can walk in said shoes more than ten minutes without pain or resulting corns, cuts, or blisters…, my shoe shopping attempts [even] when I could still see well enough to drive around, searching everywhere, so often resulted in nothing but frustration…

So [this month] I [finally] reverted to [catalog] ordering four different styles of shoes,… hoping one would fit. Then I could just return the ones that didn’t and order more of what did.

After the doorbell rang, I eagerly retrieved the box and paper mail from the back porch, waved to the postman, deposited the envelopes on the kitchen table, cut the box’s tape, and transported it, flaps flopping, upstairs, to try on the shoes.

One after another, I did.

The result to me was nothing short of amazing.

I have never in my life (that I can recall) found in one day, let alone in one solitary store, four different  styles of shoes, all of which fit — and on the first try-on. But these did!

Now this isn’t just about shoes. This is reassurance on varied levels. It’s God meeting me in my relatively housebound need, in which those frustrating expeditions to multiple shoe stores have become an unwieldy proposition (Poor husband! think of him hauling around this frustrated wife, in far from his usual shopping method!) Where it has become hard for me to go out for shoes, God has brought the shoes to me! And they were all my size and my fit. And they all look good. [And they were all on sale!] Astounding!

But this is reassurance of another kind, and answer to my question (silly question, now that I see it in His light): “Is there anything wrong with a woman just (basically) staying at home?”

Guess not!

(I also got… [some clothes]… but the big deal was the shoes. Really looking forward to when [husband] comes down from the hill, [so I could tell him])

Meanwhile, since I was upstairs, I sat down at my computer (in my new, super-fit, navy blue shoes) — and checked my email. Comment notification. Went to blog and read how someone else “got it,” because time after time God supplied right when she was at the total end of her resource, perfect timing.

Exciting! So I had to respond. Wrote my reply, then scrolled down to the ReCaptcha to see what words or numbers I’d have to struggle to read and copy into the box…

The first word this time was clear and crisp. No trouble reading it at all. It stood right out like a beacon.

And the word was

shoes.

My, what a God I serve! And this crumbles me: What a God serves tiny me!!! I am awestruck! (Again.) And so grateful.

…..

You might also like to read these two old posts, following a similar vein:

God’s Children’s Shoes I

God’s Children’s Shoes II

and these related recent posts:

Crazy Faith Day

Still Here

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The prompt is “Here” on Five Minute Friday.

And my cheat this week is to include stolen portions from my private journal — because one entry there repeats that word… a lot!

It’s 9:15 and I am still here.

Still. and. here.

“There” was calling me with sense of obligation. “There” and “there” and “there.”

I didn’t go.

I like it here. But nagging voices say, “You should be there. Or there. Or there.”

How odd, I think now, as I shuffle out the front door, onto the porch, with my bundle of Bible and journal, pen and red pencil, and coffee in mug that proclaims, “Rejoice in the Lord always!” —How odd that I should feel guilty! Guilty for taking a soft half hour extra to extend prayer time…

You should be…

You should be…

You should be…

The voice of the world lays on the guilt.

Be where? For what? Would my time be better spent?

God stills earth’s voices, and I want to still even my journal writing and just sit still, with Him….

Funny, the weeds in the front bed call me as I take to silence. In my pocket a pair of “rubber” gloves await. I pull them out, pull them on, carry my prayer attitude to a seat of grass to pull weeds and thoughts together.

… I’m not “there,” where the siren calls shouted out to come. I never said I would be—at any of those places I haven’t jumped and run to this week, to spend time and effort and money. For what?

I try not to think about their nagging, as I return to the porch, three neat piles of weeds behind me. For I love it here in this breeze-blown, bird-softsung  silence. The wind-turned page makes “loud” rattle, it’s so quiet now…

Thinning carrots later I think it again: enjoying, just enjoying so much being here, not gallivanting all over the country.

Swallowtail on Echinacea flowers, chirp of baby bird in apple tree, intermittent sound like fluttering wings, warm but not oppressive sun, sweet breeze, quiet patient outdoor work, in the dryness no flies or bugs…

A question writhes its way from my heart to my lips: “Lord,” I whine, “Is there anything wrong with a woman just staying home?”

Bang! Bible truth hits like a jolt.

Keeper. At home. You can’t keep a place if you aren’t there.

Or rather here. and now.

And. I. like it. here.

…

At just this point the mailman arrives, and instead of pulling up to the mailbox, he turns into the drive. That means there’s a package…

Next time: confirmation in a box.

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On Your Heart Tuesdays

He wears these weird looking Mickey-Mouse-ears, now he does. Now that the damage is done.

He let them beat his hearing near to death, those noises of man, those clamoring cacophonies of “git-er-done” human contrivance. And now he has to strain every nerve to hear true voices speaking to Him.

Competing noise can utterly defeat his effort.

He cannot hear a music-accompanied sermon, especially with drums and bass sounds. And higher pitches often escape him even with hearing aids. Sometimes he can’t even hear his wife proclaiming she loves him!

That’s what the world’s noise can do.

Me? I wear these “silly” things—now.

Even before the Fuchs’ dystrophy, which my mother with no malice aforethought passed on to my eyes, I learned early cataracts were dotting my vision. And now, damage done, the eyes supposedly going blind anyhow, I start wearing sunglasses?

Did I read years ago that harmful light could etch those dots on anyone’s eyes, but paid no attention?

I suppose so. So even without the dystrophy, I’d have their too-early clouding, ever worsening, making oncoming headlights and lamp gleam into hindrances with artificial halos, bleaching out what’s there.

I’m developing an unattractive Mr. Magoo squint to filter out the interference, to see. And if I don’t wear those shades, those harmful rays will keep making bad things worse…

This is what the world’s light can do.

World’s noise and world’s light. They make it hard to hear the heavenly, see the holy. We have to strain, to labor at it. We have to eliminate the interference the best we can. And lots of years of damage work against us, too.

Make no mistake: Brother Lawrence had some definite advantages over us in this.

I never considered—maybe didn’t know—back when I quickly gave up on being a Brother Lawrence: In that walled, sequestered world He entered in 1666, distractions were largely stilled. I don’t know what “rule of silence” his followed, but monasteries of the time had strict “hours of silence,” until at least 9 AM, starting fairly early in the evenings. No one spoke, let alone chattered, let alone chattered and clattered. The only voices allowed within the walls were those lifted in worship at Matins, Lauds, and Terce, in notes and words all pointing to God. And the noon meal was silent but for the reader of holy script or ancient Christian wisdom.

Wow! Can you imagine absolute silence from your children or work colleagues, no traffic sounds except in muffled distance, no roaring engines or bangings or clangings, until at least nine every morning? No TV or radio blaring at night? No video or vimeo flashing and crashing, clashing with the still small voice of God? Wow. Just wow. We really have a challenge in our day!

So “Looking and Listening” to God need all the help we can get them.

I’ve long been fighting this battle. I’m still battling on. Quiet hours are hard to come by around here (yes, in the quaint “quiet” country). But sometimes they prevail—if I don’t junk them up with my own noise, outer or inner. And there are ways to help still the interference, heal the spiritual ears and eyes, “hear” and “see” God even in our clamoring world.

Through August, I hope to explore these. For my own sake. For the sake of any reader who might venture here. And for the sake of His name! May He bless the effort!

 …..

Previous posts about this aim of drawing closer to the Lord

(in the order of their appearance):

“Closer”

What Brother Lawrence Said About Can’t

So “C” Stands For…?

Truly Closer

CLOSER Without the C is… ? (How Not to Lose Out)

How a Call to Him Becomes Conversation (Scene One)

Silent But Speaking

How a Call to Him Becomes Conversation (Scene Two)

Entertaining High Thoughts of God

Some Borrowed High Thoughts

Non-Conversations with God

New Month, New Start

Glory be to God, and thanks, for a new start with a new calendar month!

I got up sluggish and feeling empty because the world and my own faulty flesh had drawn me away from the depth of fellowship I’d been enjoying with my Savior.

So I cried to Him and called on Him and told Him quite frankly, “I miss You!”

And through His word, in psalms of praise…

through personal prayer that interspersed itself within their lines…

through reading 2 Corinthians 10-12, especially 2 Cor 10:3-4 and 2 Cor 12:6-10 …

and a bottom line in Laura Krokos’ blog post...

I re-entered the fullness of His presence, as far as it can happen in this mortal frame.

“Hearing,” Laura reminded me, is the means by which Faith comes. Not by my trying to work up more faith, or wishing and hoping for it. But by hearing.

And hearing comes from listening intently. And Listening is what L stands for in my acronym C-L-O-S-E-R. Listening to Him.

It occurs to me that five more months remain in this year for learning to follow my chosen year’s guide word, CLOSER, and my acronym has five more letters I haven’t pointed out specifically on this blog.

The point is… with equal numbers of months and letters left, I could focus on one letter each month till year’s end.

So, today being August first, I am setting my “New Month’s Resolution” as “Daily apply the C and the L of CLOSER, and write some posts about them, mostly about the L word Listen.”

First, today, let me recap the C, as I’ve applied it:

C, I decided, can stand for Call.

Call to Him (That I certainly did today!)

Call upon/on Him (an idiom for visiting someone, as “I called on my friend, with whom I needed to talk.” In this lies a sense of approach, from my end to the other person.

Cry to Him or cry out to Him, the need of my heart.

Confess I can’t accomplish my needed holiness or faith or wisdom or strength in my frail flesh, that I need Him to live and move and do in and through me, even this very day, what I cannot.

How appropriate these reasons to praise Him I found in Psalm 18! In the first group are names I can rightfully call Him, pictures of what He is to the believer. The last pair are reasons related to my calling out to Him…

COUNTING REASONS TO PRAISE HIM:

(From Psalm 18:1-6)

Because He is the One Whom I can call…

• 367 – “The LORD my Strength“
• 368 – “The LORD my Rock”
• 369 – “The LORD my Fortress”
• 370 – “… my Deliverer”
• 371 – “the One in Whom I can trust”
• 372 – “my Shield”
• 373 – “the Horn (representing strength) of my Salvation”
• 374 – “my Stronghold”

And here’s the thing related to my calling to Him:

• 375 – He hears from His holy temple when His own cry out to Him.
• 376 – The cry of His own comes before Him, even to His ears.

Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift of… Himself!

…..

Previous posts about this aim of drawing closer to the Lord

(in the order of their appearance):

“Closer”

What Brother Lawrence Said About Can’t

So “C” Stands For…?

Truly Closer

CLOSER Without the C is… ? (How Not to Lose Out)

How a Call to Him Becomes Conversation (Scene One)

Silent But Speaking

How a Call to Him Becomes Conversation (Scene Two)

Entertaining High Thoughts of God

Some Borrowed High Thoughts

Non-Conversations with God

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