We have moved! Resubscribe at the website…

Dearest Blog-Followers,

The blog has officially moved for the last time!  (And a celebratory roar fills the crowd!)  I so appreciate your faithfulness in following me around the internet as I find new resources to use.  Now that the blog is integrated into my main website, I will do not anticipate needing to move it again.  Yay!  Unfortunately, this means, for the very last time, if you want to receive post updates in your email inbox, you will need to subscribe at the website– http://www.groundswellministries.org/blog/

The blog portion is up and running already, and I will continue to build the rest of the site.

Mark your calendars for May 1, 2012!  In addition to the normal blog posts several times a week, you can participate in daily devotions on a different part of the website.  Ecclesiastes is the book for May.  Join along as we ready through the entire book (12 chapters) in 31 days–I will post my own reflections on the day’s passage, and I hope you will include yours in the comments section.

Have an amazing day!
–Jennifer

Under construction…

Say a prayer, bless the technology, and wish me many cups of amazing coffee–I am moving the blog this weekend!

After some time of prayer, reflection, and, well, annoyance that my website was in one place and my blog in another, I have found a wonderful webhost that can accommodate my bloggy, webby desires.  I have been working behind the scenes, but if all goes as I hope, this weekend all the content from this blog will be moved over to the new website: www.groundswellministries.org

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Photo by Ambrozjo

Beyond what we can know…

 

Prayer baffles me.  It works, it draws me closer to the Father, and it brings me more aligned with HIs will.  But I still don’t get it.  Exodus 30, when describing the altar, explains the incense in an interesting way.

“When Aaron trims the lamps at twilight, he shall burn incense, there shall be perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations.” –Exodus 30:8, NKJV

There shall be incense burning. There shall be. Not maybe, not could be, there shall be. There shall be incense burning. Before the Lord. Throughout my generations.

“When the Lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. Another angel came and stood at the altar, holding a golden censer; and much incense was given to Him, as that He might add it to the prayers of the saints on the golden altar which was before the throne of God. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with the fire of the altar, and threw it to the earth; and there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightening and an earthquake. And the seven angels who had the severn trumpets prepared themselves to sound them.” –Revelation 8:1-6, NKJV

Our prayers are mixed with incense before the Throne of God. The incense is added by another entity. We simply must pray.

It works out nicely, don’t you think? If I am to be in the will of God, I must be asking Him about it, engaging with Him, letting go of my thoughts and engaging only with His. Prayer becomes essential in my life. And those prayers are mixed with incense before the throne of God.

When I am in His will, the incense will come, regardless of my attempts. If I eat a ton of garlic on a regular basis, soon, everyone will know without ever being told, for the aroma will literally seep out of my pores.

And those prayers, that incense, all intermingle with the actions from the Throne. One may not spur another, or it might; those are God’s dealings. What I do know is that my prayers intermingle with sweet incense before the Throne of God as God throws down the gauntlet on the world. His will is carried out, His actions are taken, and the angels prepare for battle while incense and prayers raise up before the Throne.

We cannot know the order of action, but we can know the Throne room is active, and we can be part of that.

God’s people pray, the incense is there, His actions are taken. We have no responsibility to do anything but pray. The rest will come.

The same is true for the Word of God, the will of God, the heart of God.

“For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Do not let your prophets who are in your midst and your diviners deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams which they dream. For they prophesy falsely to you in My name; I have not sent them,’ declares the Lord.” –Jeremiah 29:8, NKJV

Be careful what fuels you, what speaks to you, and what you base your life upon.

For a life based on anything but the express Word of God runs the risk of being led astray, even by one proclaiming to be speaking by the authority of God.

God can speak for Himself. Seek Him. He longs to be heard by you individually. Others have wisdom, and there is wisdom in the counsel of others. But if others’ wisdom goes against the wisdom of God, then they have no wisdom at all. You would be best alone on an island with the Word of God than to be led by such as those.

 

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Photo by Brett Nutter

If my left foot could speak…

If my left foot could speak, it would say, “Sometimes you never know there is a hole in your shoe until you walk in the rain.  Now get me some dry socks.”

I despise wet socks.  Gooshy, icky, wet socks.  And one day, walking to work, I learned the hard way my shoe had a hole in the sole.  It apparently was not big enough to discover any other way except with the teeny-tiny molecules of water eeking their way between the crevices, leaving me with one wet sock.

You know what is worse than wet socks?  Only one wet sock.  Unbalanced, only half-gooshy, I went through the morning internally bemoaning my left foot, waiting until lunchtime when I could go home and change both socks and shoes.

Sometimes you never know there is a hole in your sole until you walk in the rain.

Sometimes, we never know there is a hole in our character until we go through a trial or are faced with a temptation.  The thing that never occurred to you to be a problem suddenly leaves you off-balanced, like walking around with one wet foot.

And though the lesson was one of my least favorites, learning of the hole in my shoe allowed me to get different shoes–to seal up the crack in the fortress and keep my feet healthy.

Such is the case with our spiritual soul as well.  Though the rains of daily life may be less than ideal, leaving us feeling uncomfortably squishy, it gives opportunity to buttress the fortress, seal the crack, and protect our very hearts.  Left unattended, the hole becomes bigger.  But if we heed the warning shot of the spiritual soggy foot, we will find that the squishiness is temporary, for we will have done the work needed to plug the hole, fill the gap, and keep moving forward.

Whatever the hole that has left your soul soggy, rather than curse the rain, seal the gap.

 

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Photo by Shannon Pifko

The Glow of the Altar…

In Exodus 30, God lays the framework for the altar. As we are His altar, His temple, He has a specific framework for us. He longs to see us set apart, burnished, shining, cleansed, that we might be prepared to do His will. He loves us. He wouldn’t be so exact if He didn’t have a plan.

In verses 7-8 of that same chapter, God specifies exactly the role that Aaron was to play in the burning of incense.

God has a role for me too. He has a plan, and a purpose, and a calling. For me to seek that out, for anything less makes my life less, and His glory clinks off me rather than glowing brightly as He designed.

When I am safe in the calling of His will, I will not need to worry about His glory, His shine, or whether others can see Him in me. Just like the pregnant woman glows without doing anything of her own accord, we glow when we allow this thing growing inside us, this amazing thing called the Holy Spirit to do what He does, and stop fighting it, the glow will come.

Even in heartache the glow will come. Even in tiredness, the glow will come.

 

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Dishwasher…

God’s approach to dishwashing is high-powered, high-heat, grit-busting soap.

My meager attempt to clean up my life is like trying to wash every hole in a colander with nothing but a giant bath towel and a drop of rain.

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Photo by Tony Jacobson