Many of us feel hopeless, or fearful, or anxious when we look at all that is happening in the world around us.  It’s easy for our minds to go to those places when we watch all the horrible natural disasters happening all around us in recent times.  It can feel really scary.

But a few days ago I read Psalm 29 (NIV), and it gave me a new perspective on what’s happening.  A perspective of faith.  It starts out with praising God for His strength, and glory, and splendor of holiness.

1 Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings,

    ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;

    worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.

But why all this praise when everything seems to be going wrong.  Let me show you what I saw in these verses.

3 The voice of the Lord is over the waters;

    the God of glory thunders,

    the Lord thunders over the mighty waters.

 I read these words and thought of the terrible floods and hurricanes, but the Lord is over it.  It’s His voice that thunders over the waters.

4 The voice of the Lord is powerful;

    the voice of the Lord is majestic.

5 The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;

    the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.

This made me think of the devastating tornadoes we’ve had that bring down mighty trees and twist other to pieces.  But over all of that is the powerful  majestic voice of the Lord.  God is in the storm.

6 He makes Lebanon leap like a calf,

    Sirion like a young wild ox.

8 The voice of the Lord shakes the desert;

    the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh.

 Here I saw earthquakes, and we have had some devastating ones around the world.  But it’s the Lord that makes the ground leap and shake.  God is in it.

7 The voice of the Lord strikes

    with flashes of lightning.

I pictured the terrible thunderstorms that have hit some areas with such destructive force.  But it’s the Lord that flashes with lightning.

9 The voice of the Lord twists the oaks

    and strips the forests bare.

This reminded me of the horrific ice storm that we had in Oregon some time back.  Our property and our neighborhood have many evergreen trees.  Freezing rain fell throughout the night, building up on every branch.  Suddenly there was a loud crack like a gun firing, then swish, swish, swish, thud as the limb fell thru the branches of our other fir trees and hit the ground.  This awful sound continued thru the night – sometimes close, and sometimes in the distance.  I dreaded what we would see. By morning, we had lost many branches from our trees, as had most of the neighbors.  Huge trees had come down on houses, and cars, and across streets.  Other less brittle trees were bent clear to the ground.

By morning the rain stopped, and we went out for a walk to look at the damage.  Our neighborhood looked like a war zone.  The voice of the Lord had “stripped the forest bare”.  And at the same time, it looked like a crystal wonderland.

 

What a contrast of emotions.

9b And in his temple all cry, “Glory!”

Why is all of heaven crying “Glory!”  when there is such devastation?  I believe it is because God is always in charge.  He is bringing about the things that will bring about “His Kingdom come, His will be done” in the earth.  Sometimes it takes terrible things to bring people to their knees to acknowledge that they need God.  His heart is always longing for us.  And He is in charge of and “over” everything that is happening in our world.  Be encouraged!  If we let our faith see Him in His Glory, we can rest at peace whatever comes.  His grace will be sufficient for us.

10 The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;

    the Lord is enthroned as King forever.

11 The Lord gives strength to his people;

    the Lord blesses his people with peace.

Next time you see the news of a disaster, say to yourself, “the Lord is over it!  The Lord is enthroned as King forever!”  Amen

Blessings, Linnea

Last time I talked about roots of sin that grow deep and can be hard to get rid of.  This week I will reflect on good roots, roots of righteousness.  So how do we grow good deep roots.  Good roots only grow in good soil.  If you really want good roots and good fruit in your life, you must plant your roots in Christ Jesus.  He said in John 15:5  “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

And in Colossians 2:6-8 it says,  “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him,  rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”

 So practically speaking, how do we grow our roots deep into Jesus so we can bear much fruit?  Let me offer some suggestions.

• You have to draw life and strength from His life. This starts with knowing who He really is, not just some socially distorted version of the real Jesus that you picked up here and there.
• To know Him, you have to read the word of God, and not just the New Testament. Jesus is God, and to know who God is – as much as we humanly can – we need to see the whole story of who He is from “In the beginning” in Genesis 1 to the end of the story in Revelation.  What has He done?  How does He treat His people?  What emotions does He have?  How does He feel about rebellion?  What are all the wonders and miracles He has done to show His might and power?  What prophecies has He spoken through the prophets and then later fulfilled?  (Did you know that by some counts there are 1817 prophecies in scripture?)  What kind of plans does He have for the future?  To really know Him, is to form a deep connection with who He is so we have roots that grow into His nature – from which we can draw strength.
• Another way we form a deep connection with Jesus is to talk to Him – not just spouting out our pray requests, but having a conversation – telling Him how we feel about things, what we are concerned about, what we are afraid of, what we have questions about, etc. He wants very much to have an intimate relationship with us.  This deepens our roots into Him.
• The next thing mentioned in Colossians is “strengthened in the faith as you were taught.” Our faith is strengthened when we are in fellowship with other believers and we are being taught from God’s Word.
• And when we pour out our hearts in thanksgiving to Him, our gratitude roots grow and our sense of appreciation grows, which affects everyone in our lives. So find some things to give thanks for today.

And may your life overflow with fruitfulness.

Blessings,

Linnea

We recently redid the landscaping along our front walkway.  Before we could make it beautiful, we had to remove two, large, old overgrown shrubs.  They partially blocked the front of our entryway.  We have been trying to simplify some of our landscaping so we don’t have so much trimming to do, so these shrub needed to go.

We asked three of our grandkids to come over and help us remove the shrubs.  They are very hard workers.  It was a lot of work cutting back all of the old large branches – filling the back of our pickup to overflowing.  But gradually we got down to stumps.  We discovered that the “one” rhododendron was actually three separate stumps.

The roots of the rhodies, as we call them in Oregon, we’re a mesh of thousands of tiny roots going everywhere close to the surface, with only 2-3 bigger roots.  The feather leaf was another story!  It had a massive root system like a trunk going down into the ground about a foot and large roots coming off in every direction.  Every time we thought we had the last root, we found one more.  And it seemed it would never end. But finally the last one was gone, and we were able to proceed with our new landscape plan seen here.

Sin can be like those two root systems.  We may have a lot of little things that need to be confessed and taken to the Lord for cleansing.  Or we may have let certain sins take such a hold In our lives that those roots of sin have grown very strong a deep and are extremely hard to get rid of – but it can be done.  With consistent hard work and perseverance, Satan and our sins habits can be defeated.  Never give up!!  The results will be beautiful.

Blessings,

Linnea

Do you ever feel like life is just “too hard”? Well, I have. Some times are like that. I have recently been thru a stretch like that. It wears you down to the point that you lose your energy, and your strength, and your enthusiasm to do anything, and probably you lose your joy.

Those times are indeed difficult! I was complaining to the Lord one time about all of the things that were going on in my life right then, and I told Him, “This is just way too much. This is too hard!” And He corrected me, “It’s hard, but it is not too hard.” And the verse scrolled thru my head, “My grace is sufficient…”

So when I told God it was “too hard”, I was basically telling Almighty Sovereign God that He didn’t know what He was doing allowing me to go thru such hard trials. When we face what He allows in our lives, He uses it to teach us and to make our faith grow, faith in his faithfulness. He never wastes the hard places when we yield them up to Him. He always uses them to transform us. Like gold in the assayer’s fire, he is refining us.

So the next time you are thinking “this is too hard,” change it to “this is hard, but I will draw on Your strength to see me thru. Use this for my good and for your glory.” Like this little flower growing and blooming right out of the concrete, our spirits can find God’s grace to bloom in the hard places.

The Holidays are filled with the sparkle of lights, the fun of decorating the tree, the memories of different favorite ornaments, the excitement on little faces, and the delight when the tree is all decorated and the lights are turned on.

Then there are the wonderful smells coming from the kitchen, decorating Christmas cookies with the kids, and tasting that first Christmas cookie.  And let’s not forget the scrumptious smells of Christmas dinner cooking and then the family all gathered around the table talking and laughing and telling stories.

And the music!  Oh the joyous sound of Christmas music ringing out through the air everywhere you go, starting right after Thanksgiving.  Songs of joy and fun like Sleighride, and songs of worship that remind us of what Christmas is all about – the Word made flesh came to dwell among us, experiencing our pain and temptations so He could fully understand our struggles, and then dying on the cross for our sins, so we could have the promise of eternal life.

At our church, at the end of the service when the candles have been lit and Silent Night has been sweetly sung, everyone who would like is invited up to the stage to sing the Hallelujah Chorus.  What a glorious and uplifting sound it is!  So beautiful!  All of those voices magnifying God.  Wow!

And the presents.  What fun to watch the delight on little faces as they open their long-awaited gifts – love being passed out in brightly colored paper.  Joy fills the room in those special moments.

But now it’s January!  The village has grown dark and will be packed away in the boxes until next December.  The tree comes down along with all of the decorations with their sparkle and glow that lit up the room.  The boxes are packed away in the attic. The merry music is gone and we are left with the quite gray of January and the post-holiday slump.

 

Now I realize that some of you are just glad to get back to “normal”.  But if you get in a slump like I do, here is my remedy.  “The joy of the Lord is my strength” Neh. 8:10.  What I have discovered is that when  I don’t have any joy, I can borrow some from God.  His is unlimited and He loves to share it.  Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you with His joy.  Notice this verse in Luke 10:21 “At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit…”  Where did Jesus get his joy?  Through the Holy Spirt, and we can too.  Just ask and receive.  Every time you feel down, just ask for more of God’s joy to fill you.

My prayer for you this new season is, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.  Rom. 15:13

Have a joyful New Year.

Blessings,

Linnea