IS HIS NAME....

I know the last couple of posts have been challenging.

Could even be down right depressing and discouraging.

So I wanted to encourage you today

with the same verse I have been encouraging myself.

Their Redeemer is strong;

The Lord of hosts is His name.

Isaiah 50:34(a) NJKV

We are not in this alone.

We are not depending on our own strength.

Whatever you are going through,

get this good news in your head.

Our Redeemer is strong!

The Lord of hosts is His name!

Glory!

CRUSHED

...because I was crushed by their adulterous heart

which departed from Me,

and by their eyes

which play the harlot after their idols;...

Ezekiel 6:9 (NKJV)

I had to go back and re-read this verse a second time. The word that jumped out at me....crushed. God is talking to Ezekiel about the children of Israel. They have not had loyal hearts. I knew He was upset with them. I knew He was angry. Crushed though? I never think of God as being crushed. I have been crushed. It is a word I can relate to quickly. Heart-break in my youth, betrayal anytime. Crushed is a word many of us can relate to. Kinda feels like being kicked in the stomach. It is different than anger. More than being upset. It is deeper. To your very being.

I'll be honest, it is really hard for me to picture God crushed by anything. To picture my God broken. However, He clearly says in His word that He was (and is). The KJV (for my mama) says He was "broken with their whorish heart".

I always knew my sin disappointed God, but I think I pictured Him feeling similar to what I feel when the MC's disappoint me. I am upset, but not cut down deep. The idea that my "whorish heart" crushes Him, that puts a whole new weight on things. A mental and emotional image I can't seem to shake. I have seen parents who were crushed by the actions of their kids. I have seen spouses crushed by the infidelities of their significant others. I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like to an extent.

All this to say I now have a stronger desire to have a loyal heart. I want to be so very watchful for idols in my life, as small or large as they may be. I want to be sure I am loyal to Christ's calling above all else. If it means swallowing some pride, forgiving deep wounds, confessing secret sins, then fine. If it means stepping out of the comfort zone or speaking boldly into a relationship, fine.Whatever He calls me to, I desire even more for my heart to be loyal to Him alone.

Won't be easy.

Won't come naturally.

Won't feel good all the time.

But it will feel better than

the thought of causing God

to be crushed by my heart.

Deliberately Delivered.

My heart,

to God.

Loyal.

Faithful.

True.

Because

He was

deliberately

delivered

unto me

and to

you.

A LOYAL HEART

I just could not get it.

What was the difference between David, who messed up in a big way multiple times, and the other good kings, who were obliterated for doing one thing wrong?

What made David different?

Then I found my answer in 2 Chronicles 25:2,

And he did was right in the sight of the Lord, but not with a loyal heart. (NKJV)

This passage is speaking about Amaziah and his reign in Judah, but it spoke so loudly to me in response to my question.

When many of the good kings messed up, even if only once, they rejected the correction of the Lord.

They got angry and responded in rebellion.

When David was corrected, he humbled himself before the Lord.

He had a loyal heart.

We can do all the right things for all the wrong reasons.

To What is our heart loyal?

Looking good in front of others?

Convincing everyone, perhaps even ourselves, that we have it all together?

We can do them all for the right reasons.

Trying to please and honor the Lord.

It is easy to do right when it carries little consequences or inconvenience.

What about when we need to do right after we have done wrong?

When the Lord chastens us,

which we pray He does as it is a sign of His love for us,

how do we respond?

To What or Whom do we find our hearts loyal?

Our flesh or our God?

Like David, we are going to blow it.

We are going to mess it up at some point in time.

The test of our heart can come when we are corrected by the Lord.

Are we loyal to our flesh and demand we have done nothing wrong?

Are we loyal to Christ Jesus and repent then and there?

A work in progress, yes we are.

In that progress, let us (and believe me I mean ME in a big way) be deliberate in turning our hearts toward the Lord.

Let us deliberately raise up within ourselves loyal hearts to Christ Jesus.

He is deliberately loyal to us.

HOGWASH...

is what it is. Before I ever start, let me warn you now I have a burr under my saddle. A big one. It has hit a nerve and I am fired up. That was your disclaimer.

Complete and utter hogwash. There is a trend moving within the church body (at least in this nation) that ticks me off like nobody's business on one hand and scares the fire out of me on the other. The belief that the Bible is not the complete Word of God. The argument that the Old Testament stories are just that...stories. Used by writers to invoke emotion about a deity, but with no real validity.
Adam and Eve just a parable.
Jonah impossible.
Jericho - no way.
It is a movement that has crossed into main stream denominational churches and seminaries alike, and it is wrong. Someone help us when we have pastors with their very fancy doctorates and seminary papers telling us from the pulpit that they do not believe that Bible is the absolute Word of God.
Excuse me?
When we have megachurches and minichurches alike full of people listening to men and women who argue the Old Testament is figurative more then literal.
Are you kidding me?

Let me tell you something right now, if you can't believe the "in the beginning" then you have nothing to cling to in the end.

I can not even wrap my head around how someone could believe in God raising Christ Jesus from the dead (which is a, if not the, chief tenant of Christianity) and yet finds it impossible for the very same God to put a man inside a whale. Or knock down a wall. Or make a aged woman have a baby.
Which is harder?

What is even worse is we are buying it. Hook. Line. Sinker.
Which is exactly what we are doing.
Sinking.
Into our collective pews. We open our mouths and we believe everything that man or woman behind the pulpit says. We read our scriptures from the screen. We listen without ever checking the scriptures out for ourselves. We take no notes. We ask no questions. We give away ownership of our faith piece by piece, little by little. Don't get me wrong. I don't believe for one second that we are to sit in our pews and challenge every word our pastors or bible teachers say. There will be issues that we do disagree with them on. Do they all merit beating down his or her door Monday morning? Most likely not. However, there are some that should be deal breakers for us. The validity of the Bible better be the first.

Here is the deal. God is either a liar or He is not. (He is not, Titus 1:2; Num. 23:19).

He can not lie in the Old Testament and then be truthful in the New. It is either all true, or it is all a lie. No in-between. You can not pick and choose the parts you want to believe in. It either happened as God said it did, or it didn't. Now I know the arguments. Well, the bible was written by man....there are so many different translations....we did not really know what all the words really meant. There is legalism out there that says I must keep the Jewish laws of the Old Testament. There are those who will say I am in the wrong writing this because I have usurped my role within the body and spoken out of turn according to the New Testament. Most likely the word hypocrite will come to mind, if not to the comments. Which is fine. Absolutely fine. Why? Because my faith does not depend on what the comments section says.

Here is what I know. Here is what I have lived. When it comes down to it. When the rubber meets the road. When I am in my darkest of darks, the Word of God is the ONLY light that can defeat it. It comes down to me and that Bible. It is those words that are my sword. It is those words that speak to my soul and encourage me. Those writings that have even allowed me to know how to be saved, actual salvation, and to share that with others, and if I don't have confidence in it, all of it, I am done for. Finished. My pastor can not help and my favorite bible teacher is useless in those times. No feel good message is going to cut it. I need to know the word, believe the word, and act upon the word.

I beseech you brothers and sisters in Christ, please, please, do not think for one second that the Bible is just a story book. Please do not diminish the sacrifice that Jesus made for us (whether you accept it or not) by saying it is only to invoke emotion. Use discernment. Study. Research. Learn.
Above all BELIEVE. Have faith in the God who wrote it. Exercise faith in the Christ who died for it. Stand up and stop sinking.

O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge- by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith. Grace be with you. Amen.
1 Timothy 6:20-21 (NKJV)

MERE WORDS OR MORE....

The devil is a trash talker.
In case you had not gotten that one yet.
Especially when we are already afraid or anxious.
Oh - he is a fine master of words.
He knows how to play with the truth just enough to make us believe his lies.
He loves to make us doubt.
How he loves that!
Because doubt breeds fear, which will snuff out faith if we let it.
While reading about Sennacherib this morning, I could not help but think how his words could have come from the inner chamber of the enemy's strategy meetings.

..."Thus says the great king of Assyria: "What confidence is this in which you trust? You speak of having plans and power for war; but they are mere words. And in whom do you trust, that you rebel against me?"
2 Kings 18:19-20 (NKJV)

The devil probably could not have said it better himself.
We speak of the weapons of our warfare.
We make plans for battle, but sometimes lack in the follow through.
We know we have the power of the Holy Spirit with us, yet we don't call upon it.
We think we can do this alone.
We trust in our own strength.
We boast in our own confidence.
In doing so, we fail.
When we speak out of our own strength they are but mere words.
He is right- how can we rebel against him alone?
We can't.
The good news is we don't have to.
We were never expected to.

"By awesome deeds in righteousness You will answer us, O God of our salvation, You who are the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of the far-off seas; who established the mountains by His strength, being clothed with power; You who still the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the peoples."
Psalm 65:5-7 (NKJV)

The enemy is going to try to beat you and I up with his words. He will remind us of times we have failed. He will remind us of times we thought God failed. Times when things did not turn out like we had hoped or prayed.
When those whispers start to tickle you ears, silence them with truth. Not with mere words, but the Word of the God Almighty. The Word of Christ Jesus. He is your confidence. He is your strength. He is your power.
May we not only be diligent in planning for battle,
may we be deliberate in the follow through.
May we purposefully and intentionally submit ourselves to the Lord God in all our battles.
May we walk confidently in the armour of God, not because of us, but because of Him.
May we silence the lies of the enemy when he asks,
"And in whom do you trust, that you rebel against me?",
by responding with two words,
Jesus Christ.
Our deliberate deliverer.

HAND-CRAFTED SIN

So these nations feared the Lord,

yet served their carved images;

also their children and their children's children

have continued doing as their fathers did,

even to this day.

2 Kings 18:41 (NKJV)

You can fear the Lord and still serve your own gods.

That is my handwritten side note beside verse 33 of the same chapter, which states the same thing.

I, Rhonda, can fear the Lord, and still, mistakenly, serve my own gods.

Maybe not little statues, but little issues, you bet.

Money.

Accolades.

Security.

Love.

Anything that I try to put above the Lord God and Jesus Christ will become a god to me.

A god that I myself have created. It tells us the people were serving "their carved images". Someone had to carve them. Isaiah says something very similar.

For in that day every man should throw away his idols of silver and his idols of gold - sin, which your own hands have made for yourselves.

Isaiah 31:7 (NKJV)

Sin that I have made for myself. It might have started out innocently enough.

A man wanting to provide for his family.

A mom wanting her kids to be well behaved.

Just wanting to shed those few pounds.

Writing something and wanting people to think it was good. Insightful.

An employee wanting to make his or her boss proud.

All good things, but the moment they move up the ladder to the top and surpass my relationship with Jesus Christ, they have become gods.

Am I sacrificing my family to make money?

Am I enabling my kids instead of training them up?

Am I obsessed about my weight? Letting it define me instead of resting in who I am in Christ Jesus?

Do I seek the approval of man above the approval of God?

All easy traps to fall into. For me it is usually a slow fall.

Gradual.

A little compromise here, a little give there.

A second look in the mirror followed by a run down of all the things I don't like.

Bribing my kids to behave in front of company, all the time.

Checking my profile status to see how many people have visited.

Sin that I myself have crafted.

If that was not bad enough, sin that can be passed down for generations (note the plural).

If I am obsessed with my body, don't you think for a second my men children won't be with theirs.

If my husband works at the expense of these boys, he is marking the path they will be likely to follow, and pay dearly for.

Diligence is what is required of me.

Listening for the Voice that says this the way to walk.

Heeding the Holy Spirit's nudges.

Keeping my heart and mind grounded in the word of God.

Because I, and you, have been delivered from all of that.

Deliberately.

"NO" MEN

We all have a desire to surround ourselves with people who encourage us, and rightly so. We need people who will lift us up. However, we must be aware of the pit of excess. We see it all the time. People become famous and are surrounded by an entourage of "yes" men. People come into places of leadership, and the "yes" men abound. Doesn't just happen in Hollywood. Happens right here in our own backyards. Successful coaches hung the moon, charismatic preachers can do no wrong, politically prominent men and women wield power unfathomable.

It can happen to any of us. Should we find ourselves in that situation we would be wise to make sure we get a healthy dose of "no" men as well. We need only to look at the story of Ahab, king of Israel, to see how deep the pit can be.

And Jehoshaphat said,

"Is there not still a prophet of the Lord here, that we may inquire of Him?"

So the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat,

"There is still one man, Micaiah, the son of Imlah, by whom we may inquire of the Lord;

but I hate him, because he does not prophesy good concerning me, but evil."

And Jehoshaphat said,"Let the king not say such things!"

1 Kings 18:7-8

(NKJV)

The two kings were considering going to war together. Now keep in mind Ahab was an evil king who had turned from the ways of the Lord. His desire to go to war was motivated by pride and gain alone. Jehoshaphat had requested that they inquire of the Lord, so Ahab called together hundreds of prophets (his personal "yes" men). They all agreed....go to war... the victory is yours... you are the best... you can do anything... the world is your oyster... so on and so on. Yet even in hearing this, Jehoshaphat knew something wasn't quite right. Then there was that one guy...

Our "yes" men need to balanced with the truth of God's word. Which means, at times, they need to be "no" men. Any one of us, left to our own devices, and given a bit of fame, fortune or power, can find ourselves heading head first into a deep pit of pride and self-absorption. Doing what we want, when we want, how we want, regardless of what God wants. Truth be told, I can find myself doing that now (without the fame, fortune or power).

We need to be watchful that we, ourselves, don't become another person's "yes" man. "No" men won't always be popular. We won't always like them,or be liked if we are one, but if they are acting in the love of Christ when they say no, we will treasure them.

Take a look around your circle of friends today. Are you surrounded by "yes" men? Have you gone the other, just as damaging direction, and surrounded yourself with "no" men? Do you have a balance of the two?

Godly correction and discipline will be just as profitable as godly encouragement if we let it. Let us be deliberate in surrounding ourselves with both.