Dhere It Is

The other night my family and I were returning home from running errands and all climbing out of the truck. My two oldest kids bolted from the truck and towards the house, as is their custom to do, while the wife and I lingered to wait for our youngest daughter. She is just a little past two and almost always insists on doing it herself. You know what I mean, right? "No. I do it!" and "No. Walk. I walk." And if we are not in a hurry we are inclined to let her do just that.

That night, for whatever reason, she headed up the lawn to the left of the path towards our row of blue spruce trees and out around a pile of rocks at the base of the walk. We told her, "This way." She ignored us. We questioned, "Where are you going?" And she ignored us still. We waited and watched to see what she would do when she blurted out, "Dhere it is!"... She apparently was looking for the path in the dark and nothing looked familiar to her from her perspective.

This got me thinking that... Isn't that just the way it is with us in our Christian walks? We set off on our own, determined to do it ourselves, stumble in the darkness a bit knowing nothing remotely is familiar to us from our limited perspective. But somehow by faith we know our Father has placed a path there for us. And we trust by faith that even though we can't see it we soon will find our way.


Now we were never very far from our baby and would have helped her if she wandered too far out of the way and so it is with our heavenly Father. He is never far away, but in order for us to grow and learn, He sometimes allows us to set off, as it would seem, on our own. (Even traveling on our own steam for a bit without His wind in our sails.) But with us it is impossible to find the path without His intervening. After we wrestle, and struggle, and fight, and wrestle our Father will step in and show us the path. He will hold our hands and help us to walk up the slope along the way.


I am so thankful that our times of struggle are not wasted with Him. He redeems our everything for His purposes. He will be magnified in our lives as we realize how incapable we are of continuing on without Him. He will increase in our lives, He who has begun a good work in us will complete it, and we will decrease.

He MUST increase, and we must decrease! And rest assured, if you are His child, He will make it so.

How much better it is when we willingly yield to His leading,
and walk in the path laid before us in the light of His Word.

"He must increase, WE must decrease!"

Kept And Keeping

"'You' are kept by the power of God
through faith unto salvation ready to be
revealed in the last time." 1 Peter 1:5

And "WHO SHALL SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE of Christ?

shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors THROUGH HIM THAT LOVED US. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, 'NOTHING' SHALL BE ABLE TO SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
~ Romans 8:35-39

Now "Keep yourselves in the love of God,
looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ
unto eternal life." Jude 21

He Stooped Down

"And again he stooped down,
and wrote on the ground." John 8:8

He stooped down in creation
and breathed into their nostrils
the breath of life writing on the
ground a living panorama.

He stooped down and walked
with Red Earth in the garden
for a time before the fall.

He stooped down and spoke
with men intervening in the affairs
of men, guiding and directing
things according to His plan.

He stooped down when holy men
of God spoke as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost.

He stooped down and took on
the flesh of a man when the Word
became flesh to dwell among us. For
33 years Jesus, God the Son, became
not simply AS a man, but indeed became
a man, still fully God, but completely man,
and as man should be, completely submitted
to the Father, and completely dependent on the Spirit.

Then He stooped down here in what is described
in John 8. Stooping in a lesson to the Pharisees, and
to the Apostles, and stooping to the woman who
was taken in the very act of her sin. Stooping in
a way that none of them would ever ever forget. 

He stooped down at Calvary when He died for you
and for me. But He lifted Himself up also both in
dying and in His visible physical resurrection.

Again He stooped down when the men He
had chosen spoke as they were moved also,
like the prophets before them, by the Holy Ghost.
 
He stoops down every time the gospel is preached,
every time men realize that they are lost in sin without Him,
and every time someone new calls on His name for forgiveness.
 
Every time we hear His still small voice
He stoops down to write on our hearts,
we who are but vessels of earth.

And each and every time we meet to hear
the Word of God, God once again stoops down
to write on our hearts. Incredible!

"And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground."

In this way, given that we have this treasure of Him
in earthen vessels, He does increase being glorified
in us, and we decrease because it is clearly not of us.

He must increase, WE must decrease!