The Three of Us

The three of us have been friends for awhile now and we've walked along with the Lord. He's shown us that He's faithful, that He's all that we need, especially when the world comes crashing down around us. We've held each other in contention and we've loved on each other, we've been angry and frustrated and we've had patience as we confront each other in love and He's been with us through our refining friendship. I'm so thankful that my friends are real with me and that they're serving Him and desiring to love Him and know Him more.

He's aloud Jessica to go through the School of Evangelism at Horizon, providing for her along the way and He's aloud Smaranda to join our worship team, become our worship leader and minister to the women at Home Fellowship. He's aloud me to find healing in becoming a Preschool teacher loving on the children. He's reigniting some old desires that He's put on my heart and helping me see that they might not be that impossible with faith.

Smaranda's reading, "Man of Faith," and reminding me that we can have dreams and desires, we can have love for one another, we can have all the good intentions in the world, but we'll always have a choice and without choosing action, without choosing to move forward with the Lord, it's as if those intentions weren't even there at all. His word shows us that without faith it is impossible to please Him and He calls us to be in the business of pleasing Him, to find out what pleases Him, what honors Him and what encourages Him to keep working in our lives. We're reminded that our faith without work is dead, just as work without faith is dead and that there's nothing worse than love that's kept secret...who after all hides his light. Oh NO! We must let our light shine before all men that they would see the good work and PRAISE our father in Heaven.

I love you Jesus!

Deceitful hearts

Jer 17:9  The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

How many times do we think if I just had this job or this relationship or this much support from my friends and family that everything would feel much better? We are to feel much better just knowing that God is the one that is in control, not man, not society, and for sure not the economy. Matthew Henry writes in his commentary regarding this scripture that we should not place our trust in man. That means not putting your trust in a job, a position in the church, friends or even family. Our trust is to be in God and God alone. Though even when we try to do this he states that, "We think that we trust in God when really we do not, as appears by this [entitled blessings], that our hopes and fears rise or fall according as second causes smile or frown.” We must keep our focus on Jesus lest we grow weary in doing good.

We also error when we think we can know others hearts or even our own for, “The heart, the conscience of man, in his corrupt and fallen state, is deceitful above all things……. it is deadly, it is desperate.” Mr. Henry comments that we cannot know what we will do during an hour of temptation, nor can we understand our own errors, “Much less can we know the hearts of others, or have any dependence upon them.” He comforts us that God is the one that has all this knowledge that surpasses all of our “artfully disguised” ways of concealing our heart.  “Therefore God is Judge himself, and he alone, because he, and none besides, knows the hearts of the children of men.”

1Cr 15:58  Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

1Sa 2:3  “Do not keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance, for the Lord is a God who knows, and by him deeds are weighed.