Counting my BLESSINGS

My friend, Roxie, asked me several weeks ago to join her in a using a devotional book. She asked me to be her accountability partner. I accidentally picked up the wrong book. She is using Becoming the Woman God Wants Me to Be and I am using Becoming the Woman I Want To Be. They are both by author Donna Partow. Today in the section "Action to take" I read, "Count your blessings. List five things you can be grateful for and choose to focus on them today. Then go a step further and remind your family and friends how blessed they are too". My list: 1. HOT shower - It was my very first OUT LOUD thank you to God this morning. I had not read my devotion yet. It just happened to be my first OUT LOUD thank you to God. A local church group has adopted a battalion in Afghanistan. The men and women only shower once a month. Makes me cry. Makes me thankful. 2. Friends 3. Love of my husband 4. Choose what I eat 5. Laughter That's my list, what's yours? And how do you begin a new paragraph? Can you tell I don't blog very often. I want paragraphs!!

Be Restless, Wiggly, Jumpy

My quiet time is different every morning. It usually starts the same way and sometimes I study the same topic/word/etc for quite awhile. BUT. . . I do really try to allow the Holy Spirit to direct me. If I feel the urge to pray, I will stop what I am doing and go to the spot where I really pray. If I feel led to leave a study and just read a certain passage and meditate on it, I do that.

Today has been different. I have been meditating on some things said at my Bible study last night. The main focus is how we change the meanings of words. I pulled out my copy of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity last night with the goal of actually reading the whole book this time. He talks about how the definition of the word "gentleman" changed. (Read the intro if you want specifics).

Made me ponder how we update the Word of God. Now before I hear anything from someone about how great this or that translation is - actually I'm not hearing from anyone so before I start telling myself which translation I just love - I know the people who have given us different versions supposedly really searched for the correct words to use in translation. But if I just always take someone else's word without searching out meaning for myself, aren't I just selling God short? (Ramble, ramble)

Back to Restless, Wiggly, Jumpy!!

In Psalm 83:1 the psalmist uses the word NOT three times. "Do not" implies "DO". So I started looking up the opposite of the words I found in my concordance. I looked up a whole bunch of words.

The word I am studying right now is: STILL.

The opposite of STILL is: RESTLESS, WIGGLY, JUMPY

I loved that. Instead of saying to my God "O God, be not still." I can say,

"O God, be RESTLESS!"

"O God, be WIGGLY!"

"O God, be JUMPY!"

I like thinking that my God will be RESTLESS, WIGGLY, AND JUMPY on my behalf.

Pierced Ears

Friday morning I was reading and praying Psalm 40. If you have never prayed through the Psalms, please do it. You will end up learning so much and just falling in love with our God all over again.

Anyway, I am having this wonderful time with God, praying His word for myself, my family, my friends, and just for people everywhere. I arrived at
verse 6.

"Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have pierced;"

What does any girly girl do when she reads "but my ears you have pierced" when she is taking everything literally?

You guessed it!! I touched my pierced ears! When I realized what I had done I started laughing and then couldn't stop laughing.

Ok, I know God didn't pierce my ears. I got my ears pierced when I was 19 in a jewelry store in Darlington, SC. My dear husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, gave me a present one day. The money to have my ears pierced.

Anyway, when I settled down I thought, I just called myself a "girly girl". Such a change from my younger days.

I had laughed about touching my pierced ears. I had called myself a girly girl.
Then I just sat and thought about how God has changed my life. And I began thanking God for all He has done for me.

When God pierced my ears - opened my ears- to His call, He changed me.
From darkness to light,
from death to life,
from sadness to joy
from chaos to peace
from ok to great
from oppressed to free
from hungry to filled
from . . . . . . .

I am sure there are a gazillion ways he has changed us all. My list is not poetic and probably there is a list similar to this in a book or on the internet that would move a million hearts. This is my list for right this minute, ten minutes from now it might be different depending on where He leads me.

Just made me wonder how did God change you when He pierced your ears?

Psalm 83:1
O God, do not keep silent; be not quiet, O God, be not still,

Learning to be at rest is not easy. To quote a popular saying, "It is a process."

I don't really like to hear things like, "It is a process", "Think outside the box", "We need a paradigm shift", "It will just take time".

I think I will have to "stay put" on the verse for awhile. Does that ever happen to you? You read a short verse of scripture and you just know that this verse is short in words but not short in message.

I've started digging on this one just today. Three words are calling out to me.

1. Silent
2. Quiet
3. Still

SILENT - Hebrew word (d-m-m II) maybe derived from (d-m-m I) (1954)
silence, rest:-rest, silent

QUIET - Hebrew word (hares) (3087)
to be silent, be quiet; to become deaf; to be quiet, say nothing, be silent; to make no moves, keep silent:- silent, quiet, says nothing, deaf, altogether silent, fail to speak, holds tongue, keeps silent, kept quiet, made no move, reduce to silence, remain silent, said no more, say nothing, saying nothing, says nothing, still, stop, turn a deaf ear, without saying a word.

STILL- Hebrew word (saqaf) (9200)
to be at rest, be at peace, remain calm, quietness, unconcerned

My first research into Psalm 83 has been reading the commentary in my study Bible and at this website - http://www.easyenglish.info/psalms/psalm083-taw.htm.

First impression:
Think I have a long way to go on this one. The meanings that have struck a cord with me are in bold above.

I am still focusing on "being still" but I need to understand the three words: silent, quiet, and still in the context of Psalm 83.

Right back to CAUSE AND EFFECT

Psalm 89:9
You rule over the surging sea; when its waves mount up, you still them.

Hebrew word in this passage - sabah (8656)
to keep still, to cause stillness, keeps, still, stilled

My note from several weeks ago in my quiet time notebook:
"This is showing me again, to be still is active. It is the cause sometimes and it is the effect sometimes."

Today is Memorial Day. I do not have to work on this Monday. How wonderful for me, right? I woke this morning to the sound of my husband working in the yard. I do enjoy yardwork sometimes. What I enjoy is chopping stuff down. I like the cleaning out of the bamboo in the backyard, I like pruning the azaleas in the front yard. Stuff like that. I like it once a blue moon.

Sitting down to begin my quiet time was a definite choice because I really wanted to just put on some shorts and go outside. But if I had done that I would have not had my quiet time this morning.

I have made the choice to never read just one verse during my study. I read the ones before and after the verse I have been led to study. If you haven't read Psalm 89 in a long time, it's a long one. 52 verses long. I decided I would read just the part of Psalm 89 that contained verse 9. All that did was get me curious. So I read the entire Psalm not once but twice.

Made me wonder who had written this and why. So I Googled "Ethan the Ezrahite" and I found a sermon. I didn't look to see who had written the sermon, I just started reading it. You can find the sermon at the web address:
http://www.mppres.org/sermons/1999/121999.htm

Right in the middle of finding out about Ethan's circumstances I find this paragraph:

"Cause and effect. In other words, the Bible makes it clear that nothing has happened to Rehoboam that is outside of God's promise to David. Pharaoh Shishak was God's rod of discipline for Rehoboam."


There is much to learn from the sermon, "Ethan the Ezrahite Takes on God" by Dave Wilkinson. I have made that particular sermon one of my bookmarks for right now so I can go back to it.

Anyway, I am right back to learning CAUSE AND EFFECT in being still.

So glad I chose to meet my God, whom I can call Father (read the sermon and that will mean more to you) this morning first instead of going outside to chop stuff in my yard.

My prayer is to be even more aware of when I need "to cause stillness" in my life.

Finding REST

Today I don't have much time to actually type out the scripture for my next Hebrew word so if someone is reading this you will have to look up and read for yourself the following:

Jeremiah 47:6
Psalm 37:7
Joshua 10:13
Joshua 10:12
Exodus 15:16

Actually I will come back later and type it all out because I want it here for me, too.

The Hebrew word in these verses - damam (1957)

to be still, be silent, be quiet, rest, find rest, keeps quiet, rest, silence, stand still, stops, wait, waiting in silence

I have a very dear friend, Carrie. She is in the last stage of a lung disease. BUT she is not in the last stage of life.

She went to a doctor's appointment this past week. One of our friends went with her to support her and to hear what the doctor would say. The friend said after much paper shuffling by the doctor, when he could not really find the words to say, beautiful sweet Carrie leaned forward and said to the doctor, "You need to know that I am not afraid. It is going to be alright."

What a wonderful witness she is to her friends and to her doctor. She is finding rest in her LORD.

She is one of the examples in my life of BEING STILL in the LORD!

A CONTINUING

Daniel 9:21 - NIV
While I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice.

Daniel 9:20-21 - The Message

"While I was pouring out my heart, baring my sins and the sins of my people Israel, praying my life out before my God, interceding for the holy mountain of my God — while I was absorbed in this praying, the humanlike Gabriel, the one I had seen in an earlier vision, approached me, flying in like a bird about the time of evening worship.


I feel the need to go back to school and take a course in Hebrew. Maybe many courses in Hebrew. I have been doing some research online for this next Hebrew word for still. I don't know how to type the symbols/accents for the Hebrew words I am finding, so they really don't look like they are suppose to look. So excuse that error on this blog.

Anyway,from my Strongs I found "still in prayer" or "Absorbed in this praying" is from the Hebrew word "od" (6388)meaning:
this is not an absence of moving - this is continuing; stopped, remain, how long,
kept on, stands

In Aramaeic (10531) "od" meaning: yet still

BUT online in a Hebrew dictionary the word "od" had only one definition: MORE.

This word MORE hit me because I have been hearing the same words over and over this past month. I feel like He has had to say "I am going to tell you this one MORE time. The words, do what I told you".

On May 4th I heard not an audible voice but a "still" small voice during my morning prayer say, "Ok, that's enough asking about that. Start thanking me!" It makes me smile to remember that event. I wish I had a picture of the look on my face. I literally remember opening my eyes and saying out loud, "WOW!

On May 7th I read, "How long shall we pray? De we not come to a place where we may cease from our petitions and rest the matter in God's hands? There is but one answer. Pray until the thing you pray for has actually been granted, or until you have the assurance in your heart that it will be."

On May 14th I read, "Instant obedience is the only kind of obedience there is; delayed obedience is disobedience. Every time God calls us to any duty, He is offering to make a covenant with us; doing the duty is our part, and He will do His part in special blessing." and "Luther says that a 'true believer will crucify the question, 'Why?' He will obey without questioning.' I will not be one of those who, except they see signs and wonders, will in no wise believe. I will obey without questioning."

On May 19th I read, "Every right prayer is answered before the prayer itself is finished - before we have 'done speaking'." and "When we believe for a blessing, we must take the attitude of faith; and begin to act and pray as if we had the blessing."

On May 26th I read, "Our praise will still open fountains in the desert, when murmuring will only bring us judgment, and even prayer may fail to reach the fountains of blessing."

Since that morning of May 4th I have been doing a whole lot of "do what I told you". A whole lot of "thanking". In a way, it has changed my prayer life. For over 20 years I have been praying several very specific prayers. For over 15 years I have been praying for my future daughters-in-law, whoever they may be. For about 2 years I have been praying for guidance in knowing for certain where my husband and I should worship on Sunday mornings. There are other things, too. Anyway, my prayers for the things I have mentioned have turned to thanksgiving. There are now other burdens I pray for when led by the Holy Spirit. I have begun asking my God, "what are the burdens on Your heart for this day."

My BEING STILL in this lesson for me is: (1) Thank God for what He has already done that I just may not be aware of and (2) allow the Holy Spirit to guide me into some MORE new things to lift up in prayer.

I think I really like the Hebrew word "od".

(All quotes are from "Streams In The Desert".