It's His grief

"...but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings... If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you." -1 Peter 3:13,14

Crying out tonight wanting to be genuine in my faith and praying that my sons will be too. Praying for their deliverance. Praying for one I'm hurt very much by. Crying more. Longing. Grieving.


I open up to Isaiah 53:

Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the labor of His soul and be satisfied... (Isaiah 53:10-11a)

This is HIS grief I am getting to partake of to a certain extent. This isn't mine. He is not distant and uncaring, leaving me to wait this grief out. This isn't my grief, this is HIS! He already bore it to the full! I am only partaking of it to a very small extent. And my hope is great because this is HIS grief. His grief passed and He saw (sees) the labor of His soul satisfied! I too will see the labor of HIS soul and be satisfied! Because this is HIS, not mine. Oh Jesus, thank YOU!

If you're grieving tonight because someone looks down on you for your adoration of Jesus, someone you love, someone you don't want to loose... your grief is not your own. It's Jesus' grief. He bore it all and He sees the result of that pain and is satisfied. Some soul is won. Your heart is more bound to His. Pleasures that prosper in the nail-torn hands of Christ are the result of the grief He bore. The grief you and I get to partake of to a certain extent.

But even if you grieve tonight for some other reason. Maybe it's not because someone you love rejects you because of Christ. Maybe you grieve because you're tired, and the day to day, wear and tear of life has you weeping. Maybe you grieve because your child is choosing a way that is destructive. Maybe you grieve because your parent has never been there for you. Or because your spouse walked out on you. Sin destroys and leaves us all grieving. But let us remember that Jesus bore the grief we bear!

"Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows..." -Isaiah 53:4

Don't believe the LIE that God is distantly looking upon you, not knowing how you feel. HE KNOWS!!! In fact He bore the very grief that crushes you now! He is not just an all knowing God who understands how you feel. What grieves you He bore! Even the very sinful choices we've made which have affected our lives in such a way as to leave us grieving, HE bore!

A mist of His tears rolls down your cheek. The entirety of your tears rolled down His. A hint of His pain grips your heart. The full crushing weight of your pain exploded HIS! If you grieve tonight you grieve a dot of what He bore, because He bore ALL of humanities grief and sorrow while we, "...we hid, as it were, our faces from Him..."

I've turned my back on the enormity of His grief and pain, but He has not turned away from me!
I am the one who doesn't understand. He understands. He knows. And when I grieve let it drive me to looking and not hiding my face from Him.

Isaiah 51:3

Giving thanks brainstorm

Thank YOU Jesus...

You are God. The One who knows what it feels like to be in a fallen place, in a fallen body. Who knows sorrow, rejection, grief and pain. Who suffered for all my mistakes, sin and crooked nature just so I could know God and be made right, the way You created me to be. Thank YOU because YOU are God!

Thank YOU Jesus...
For receiving what I offer You. For the promise that You will never leave me or forsake me. For being so patient with me! For promising to be my children's teacher and peace. For a computer. For an oven and a kitchen and a couch. For mountains to climb. For moments of refreshment. For beautiful sunsets. For chocolate. For songs that speak my heart. For not giving up on me. For the blessing of being a mom! For letting me hear Your voice. For hope. For the Church. For Your Word preserved! For the ability to hear. For Kris and Darren. For the ability to see. For Austin, Ashley, Robert and Makayla. For perfume. For the promise that You are greater than he who is in the world. For the promise that You have overcome the world. For clean water! For Ethan, Nolan, Avery, Liam. For Searchlight. For the ability to smell. For letters, emails and phone calls from friends. For the country I live in. For orchids. For Samuel's mom! For listening to me and answering my prayers! For sleep! For perfume! For Moses' mom! For my trip to San Diego with the boys!! For being with me when I'm alone. For the ability to see. For free access to Your word. For being with me when I'm sick. For turning what is meant for evil into something good!!! For being with me all these years. For Kandace and Wally and John and Will. For going to the cross for me. For laughter! For pain that you promise is not in vain. For satisfying my thirst. For providing my needs and pampering me with pleasures. For hugs! For a healthy body. For cold water! For medicine. For a phone. For the sure confidence of resurrection life!!! For parents who told me about You! For the 31 Days of Praise book. For coffee! For a rescue! For being good!! For Jenene and Ken. For the promise of completing the work You started in me. For being with me when I'm with others. For deodorant. For the woman you gave me as a mom, Verna, Mom. For understanding landlords and maintenance people. For sadness that drives me to YOU! For a cell phone. For letting me pour out my complaints to You. For Arizona sunsets. For a job that allows me to be home with my boys when their home. For Connor and Ryland!!! For giving me Your Spirit! For the man you gave me as a dad, Bob, Dad. For the opportunity to help someone else. For the color blue. For James. For candles. For a hiding place. For letting me taste of the joy of being a wife with Your heart. For a warm home. For understanding me. For shoes that fit. For B.J. For being gentle. For April. For Eileen. For Frank. For a kind boss and co-workers. For that day on the floor in the kitchen. For a car that works. For helping me out of pits!!! For air conditioning. For a hot shower. For John and Lorna. For Internet access. For putting LOVE in my heart. For a pencil and paper. For a washer and dryer that work. For hands. For the promise to conform me to the image of Your Son. For the Streams in the Desert book. For watermelon. For dentists. For health insurance. For lights and a dishwasher. For quiet moments. For feet. For getting to tell someone else about Jesus! For airfreshner. For Bailey. For Jackson. For scorpions. For candles. For peace in the midst of pain....

I could go on and on Lord. It is good to give you thanks!

So glad He found me ,

Isaiah 51:3

Not left to survive alone

I'm in an intense time of testing right now. And the struggle to survive this test is really a struggle to continue believing God, trusting and worshipping my Savior... knowing I'm not alone.

I was reading through Genesis 16-17, concerning God's promise to Abraham and Sarah and their attempt to make His promise come true in a way they could understand (giving Hagar to Abraham to produce Ishmael). I asked the Lord, "What do you want me to do after reading this?" No flashes of lighting, no tangible thing to do, just, "Be patient. Believe my promises will come to pass even if you don't see it."

"Okay. But what is your promise to me Lord?" I questioned.

Then a couple hours later I opened up Amy Carmichael's "Edges of His Ways" and read today's note. Here's an excerpt:

Hebrews 13:5: I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

Many years ago someone told me that "forsake" is a compound of three words in the Greek, "leave behind in." It conveys the thought of leaving comrades exposed to peril in the conflict, or forsaking them in some crisis of danger. Westcott interprets this verse, "I will in no wise desert you or leave you alone in the field of contest, or in a position of suffering; I will in no wise let go- loose hold- My sustaining grasp."

This promise cannot fail. Let us stand upon it, and rejoice in it...

So there's my promise: Jesus will never leave me behind in this time of testing!

I was so excited to receive this for sure answer to my question that I went and looked up Hebrews 13:5 in the Strong's at Blue Letter Bible and found it really is true. Forsake means:

abandon, desert

a) leave in straits, leave helpless

b) totally abandoned, utterly forsaken

2) to leave behind among, to leave surviving

Jesus will not leave us who have put our trust in Him. He won't abandon or desert us. He won't leave us in the straits we got ourselves in, or find ourselves in. He won't leave us helpless. He won't leave us behind among the cares, fears, accusations, and depravity of this world. He doesn't say He'll take us out of them, but He won't leave us to survive it alone! Oh HOPE! Fresh air! Light! Thank You Jesus!

And not only that but the word leave in that verse holds to me an even more dear meaning:

1) to send back, relax, loosen

2) to give up, omit, calm

3) to leave, not to uphold, to let sink

Our Living Lord (though unseen by us- yet aren't we blessed that we hold on believing having never seen) will not only not leave us in the trials of life to survive, He also won't send us back or give up on us when we fail. Like Peter, He won't let us sink when we take our eyes off of Him and find ourselves sinking in the sea of the difficulty. We may begin to sink, but he will not let us sink. All we must do is cry out, "Save me Lord!"

Oh this is a promise we can all stand on! It is my promise! Though like Abraham I may find myself waiting to see it come to pass. It will! He has promised, so whether I see or not, I can say, "The Lord is not going to send me back though I've failed. He is not going to let me sink, though I feel like I'm going to drown. He is with me though I don't see Him. He hasn't left me to endure this trial alone, to survive the best I can. He walks with me through this dark valley. I will believe though I do not see!"

Thank you sweet Savior!

So glad He found me ,

Isaiah 51:3

I'm writing this down so I don't forget it!

From a teaching my friend gave me on CD from her pastor:

Jesus' life was tough, by any measure. When He was born, His own king wanted to kill Him. When He began His ministry, His family called Him a nut case. His countrymen scoffed at Him. His closest friends ended up denying they even knew Him. He was God in the flesh and yet people called Him a blasphemer. He came to heal the hurting, but was despised by the very people He had helped.

He came to save men from death, but was put to death by the very men He came to save. I mean, when you consider whatever hurts you've gone through in your life; when you struggle with the injustice of having loved well, and yet having received in return being taken advantage of, ridiculed, scoffed, hurt, maybe even down right abused, before you panic, before you run, before you strike out in anger, or recoil in fear, fix your eyes on Jesus...

How do you learn to love like Jesus loved? How do you keep from loosing heart and growing weary in the face of your opposition? Whatever cross you've had to endure. You fix your eyes on Him and not on your hurt.

What will you see when you do that? Well you will see that Jesus, God's only Son, out of obedience to the Father and love for you and me, emptied Himself. He willingly did it. And He became a man in order to save man. But even that gracious act of selflessness, seemed to have gone unrewarded. Cause He was laughed at. Mocked. Ridiculed. Misunderstood. Painfully scorned. And even in those final hours when God the Father could have done something, He didn't... help His Son. Just think of Jesus in the garden praying. A disciple fell asleep. Another became a traitor. A huge mob appears out of nowhere, dragging Him off to Pilate's courtroom... He stood before them naked, His blood mixed with their spit, streaming down His face. And then came Calvary...

You see Him there? Hebrews 12 said, "Picture Him there..." so, so do you see Him there? Hanging from that tree? And here's my point: As you watch Him there, you need to call to mind the deepest disappointment of your life. The greatest hurt that has been perpetrated against you. Whatever the deepest loss you've ever had. Call it to mind. Maybe you staked everything on what you thought was the right thing... the recovery from cancer, the birth of a healthy baby, the renewal of your marriage... But it seems as though everything has turned out wrong. The cancer killed in spite of your prayers. The baby was born with a complication. You got served divorce papers. He went out on you... I'm just sayin' think of Calvary in those terms...

See everybody surrounding the cross that day they wanted a miracle too. Including the women who followed Jesus all the way to the cross. The disciples who huddled in the shadows. Even one of the thieves wanted a miracle. The spectators in the crowd that day shouted, "Come down from cross... and, and, we'll believe you then!" But there was no rescue, there was no miracle. Only a shout of agony that rumbled across the heavens... as Jesus, His body wracked with pain said, "Why have you forsaken Me?!" It seemed in the moment that the Father had turned His back, and that the crowds got their wish. That the religious leaders won the day. And the gravest injustice ever perpetrated in our world, was perpetrated. Cause in that moment everything that was wrong about our world seemed to triumph over the ONLY thing about our world that was good. It seemed such a tragedy in fact, that the Bible says, nature itself convulsed... remember the ground shook like and earthquake. Tombs cracked open. The solar system shuddered. The sun hid. The sky went black in mid day, and yet, please listen to Jesus' response to all that mess, "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they are doing." We're talking more than a slap in the face. More than a stolen t-shirt. Jesus was nailed to a cross, and yet even then His love shone through.

And remember the charges brought against Jesus, unlike the charges brought against you and I, were false....

So show Him your wound. Just make sure you notice His.

Betsy Tenboom was right, "If you want to love like Jesus loved, don't look at your own wounds only, you look to Jesus."

"For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps..." 1 Peter 2:21

Isaiah 51:3