IDOK DEVOTION FOR TUESDAY, MAY 25, 2010

Praise Reports, Prayer Requests and Updates:

Judy is still not doing well; our prayers continue to be needed.

This song is ministering to me today.  It’s sung by Amy Grant.  Better Than A Hallelujah.

And as it ministered I ministered in homekeeping and now as I sit to write it’s Tuesday already …. this has not happened in a while.

One verse. Proverbs 3:27 (King James Version) ²⁷Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.

Simply, let us do all the good we can today.  This Tuesday, May 25, 2010 when it is done will be done forever.  It will not come to us again. Let us do well by it and one another.

To review the list of names for prayer, please click here.

ABBA, You know the hour, You know where we all sit in this moment; You know when I get up and when I lie down.  Just as You recorded for us to read in Psalm 139:

¹O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
² You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar.
³ You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
⁴ Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, O LORD, You know it all.

My peace is in this that You know.  Thank You.  I pray we will all do well today, for ourselves and for others.  I ask You to keep our IDOK Troops safe and protected today.  I pray for the Peace of Israel.  I pray for the repentance of America.  I pray for our list, for each one.  Judy, You know the need there. Andrew, You know the need there too.  And we KNOW You will do good for us all.  Amen and amen in JESUS NAME.

IDOK DEVOTION FOR MONDAY, MAY 24, 2010

Praise Reports, Prayer Requests and Updates:

I am here way early to start writing for Monday, but what’s that old saying, ‘strike while the iron is hot’.   I have only read Scripture so far this morning as my bases to begin and that Scriptural address is Philippians 2:14 and 15.   I am warning you now it a firm word, unyielding to our flesh and I’d be surprised if we liked it — some of us might even search for an argument.  Here’s verse 14 first — Do all things without grumbling or disputing;

Firm, unyielding, leaving no room for buts.   Not some things but ALL things.  So I looked up the word ALL and sure enough it means  ALL –  leaving nothing out. Being or representing the entire or total number, amount, or quantity is how my on-line dictionary reads.  And the definition continues with this: Each; apiece. So we can look at the word ALL and view it as  all things we do collectively must be done without grumbling or disputing OR we can envision ourselves in each individual duty, act, activity we doing absent our grumbling or disputing.  OUCH! And DOUBLE OUCH!   With an order that big I’m thinking if I can’t do certain things without grumbling and disputing, perhaps I just should not do it at all! Wonder how inactive that would make me?  Hmmm.

Lets move on here and go back to verse 12.

¹²So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling;

Have you heard part of this verse interpreted that salvation is by works?  Don’t be deceived here.  Salvation comes ONLY by faith and faith alone in JESUS CHRIST.  The work comes in the walking out our salvation in the here and now.  JESUS did the work of saving us from the penalty of sin – that’s a done deal at our re-birth.  Presently we are in the process of being saved from the practice of sin — that’s where the WORK comes in and you know as well as I do — IT IS WORK!  I heard someone say once, don’t recall who, that ‘it took only a moment to get me out of hell but it ‘s taking a lifetime to get the hell out of me’.  And it is that getting the hell out of us that we best be cooperating with JESUS in doing with ‘fear and trembling’.  We ought to have so much reverential awe (fear) for Him that the thought of not doing what He asks would cause us to shake (tremble) in our sandals.  And I dare say if we had such reverential awe of Him we would not find verse 14 so much a hurtle.   Verse 13.

¹³for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

Look at that!  God in us!  Why is that so hard for us to get our minds and wills wrapped around?  Must be that hell in us that has to be worked out!  And He is here.  He is willing.  It is HIS good pleasure to be here within us to WORK in us.  Don’t you just want to worship Him right now, reading this verse?  Oh I wish I had words to describe this!  Oh how Awesome and Good You are LORD GOD and Father!  It is worship.  It is reverential awe and love — worship —  that will empower and enable us to embrace verse 14.

¹⁴Do all things without grumbling or disputing;

And secondary to worship,  verse 15 gives us added support to walk out, work out verse 14.

¹⁵so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world,

¹⁶holding fast the word of life, . . .

Think about it! What aids the crooked and perverse so mightily to remain in their crookedness and perverseness?  You got it! Our grumbling and disputing in the church and our individual lives.

Momma must have got this saying from DADDY: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at ALL.

To review the list of names for prayer, please click here.

DADDY, I love You.  I really, really do.  Thank You.  Thank You for teaching me that I really, really DO love You.  This message is stern, it’s hard but I am so grateful for it.  I feel so loved by You in it. Thank You.  LORD, thoughts and longings to see You, Face to face are becoming sweeter and sweeter to me.  Thank You. Thank You.  And because the calendar tells me I am much closer to that day than I used to be, in the time I have left I want to stop grumbling and disputing and I want to help others stop it too.  DADDY, forgive me and Holy Spirit, help me  — just slap me in the mouth PLEASE when I even start to form the complaints in my head so they won’t come out of my mouth.  I know it is possible.  You would not tell me I must if it were not possible to do, at least to get really good at practicing it here and now.  Holy Spirit, please make this message as sweet on the other side of the screen as it is on this side.

You know the names and faces and hearts of every soul on our list and I am bringing them to You right now.  I want them to love You with all their hearts.  I want them to KNOW You are trustworthy.  I want them to trust You to take care of them, to give them what they need.  I want them to rest in You and work in You in the capacity that You have called each of them in this day, in this very season of their journeys.   And I am asking you to again protect and keep safe our IDOK Troops.  I have not heard from LeGrand lately but he’s doing great, isn’t he?  Thank You, ABBA.   As I am about to put this away to be posted on Monday, the weekend has hardly even begun.  I pray for safety for our beloved IDOKs and Readers.  I pray You will speak to them even before this writing reaches their screens.  I pray they will gather in their respective places to corporately worship You on Sunday and I pray individually they will worship You in their homes and vehicles and wherever they go and do.  Thank You, DADDY, for this ministry; still don’t know why You let me do it but Thank You.  Thank You in JESUS mighty and holy blessed perfect name.  Amen and amen.

IDOK DEVOTION FOR FRIDAY, MAY 21, 2010

Praise Reports, Prayer Requests and Updates:

Have you noticed when you finally notice that your shoulders have swallowed up your neck that to relax them down so your neck and your head can come up out of that hole takes real effort to do what is suppose to be a relaxed position?   In fact it is so much effort that the relaxed position seems to become the tense position and the tense position the relaxed position?  Anybody know what I’m talking about?  In the natural and the spiritual realms?  Many of our Nation’s People have long been in this position of calling tense relaxed and relaxed tense  but that’s not my focus today–at least I don’t think it is. See Isaiah 5:20 for the subject Scripture Text.

So how do we adjust that tense position for the relaxed position?

Pick up my head and suck in my gut!

Which in the spirit equals wrong thoughts out – good thoughts in while saying NO to fleshly appetites.  Anybody getting this with me?  It works every time and it is instant! But it takes practice, practice, practice to maintain in both the body and the spirit.   Moreover in my case I often put off this adjustment until I need weight therapy–a dumbbell in each hand, held to shoulder position, stretching out those taut shoulder muscles, physically speaking, you understand?  Spiritually speaking — the Old Testament and the New Testament (this is where the analogy gets cloudy …  by NO  means would I be calling the Old Testament or the New Testament ‘dumbbells’  …. perhaps humans who don’t pick them up,  dummies… moving on —  The Old and New Testaments in balance )  held to heart level until my will surrenders to His Will.  Okay that’s stretching the analogy I know.  Yeah,  that’s the point.  Stretching and balancing our spirit toward God, relaxes that tensed up, stubborn, unyielding flesh of ours.  For some reason this reminds me of what JESUS says in Matthew 11:28-30.   Come to Me.  Take My Yoke for My Burden is light.  This life is not suppose to be so tense and so heavy that  throwing in the towel feels like a good idea — if that’s our position, we have picked up the wrong weights.  Now who’s the dumbbell when we sit around tensed up with our head down letting our ‘gut’ tell us what to do? Been there, done that and now in ‘training’ to maintain NOT doing it.  How about you?

1 Corinthians 9:27 (Holman Christian Standard Bible) ²⁷ Instead, I discipline my body and bring it under strict control, so that after preaching to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

That sums it up, wouldn’t you say?

To review the list of names for prayer, please click here.

ABBA, this is another good one, I think.  It speaks to me.  I pray I will not close my ears and stop hearing it by tomorrow or even late tonight.  I pray it will minister to our IDOKs and Readers too… if not what’s the point of it?   I pray Holy Spirit You will use it to encourage and lift up; give some humor and some training to each of us.   And I pray now for Marley, hoping that she is recovering nicely and her parents and grandparents are breathing easy by now.   Having read the names and pictured others before You, thank You for what You are doing on behalf of each one.  And EC comes to mind too.  LORD, we love that baby girl and we want her to heal quickly and to have no more pain than is absolutely necessary to protect her as she heals.   Oh my goodness Thank You, DADDY, that just dawned on me; You allow pain to protect us from greater harm.  You are so good to us.  Thank You, DADDY.  Thank You.

And our IDOK Troops, I am again asking You to protect them and keep them safe from bullets and every other harmful object or human and I know You are.  We are asking and You are hearing and answering.  Thank You.  Again, I say You are so good to us.  Thank You.  And as I rest this before posting I pray right now here in this time that our IDOKs and Readers that will be reading this later, even now that You minister to them, that You draw them to Yourself, speaking courage and strength and wisdom into them.  I pray we will do what Joyce has preached that we will do what is right even when doing it feels wrong.  Thank You for all those sisters and brothers who serve Your Word to us and bless us.  Thank You in JESUS name.  Amen and amen.

IDOK DEVOTION FOR THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010

Praise Reports, Prayer Requests and Updates:

I’m just gonna be straight up with you.  All my life for as much of it as I remember, I have wanted to be beautiful.  Now mind you some days I actually feel a tad cute but only ONCE have I felt really beautiful… but that’s another story and not for today.

And while my case (obsession) is perhaps extreme, I think to varying degrees all women want to be beautiful.   Why else would product peddlers be so successful?!  And it would do us well if we could get our minds around the fact that spiritual beauty far, far, far exceeds physical beauty and we who have some Christian seasoning on us say we believe that, but I’m not sure we really believe it.  I’m not fussing at us … heaven knows if I am I’d be preaching not to the choir but the ‘preacher’.  Hmmm.  Maybe I am ‘preaching to the preacher’.  Okay.  Focus here!

So.  Here’s the text that started this line of writing this morning.  Proverbs 4:9 “She will place on your head a garland of grace; She will present you with a crown of beauty.” The note I placed in the margin of my Bible was this: ‘A garland of grace on my head; what would that act out like, LORD?  It would be a thing of beauty.  What woman does not want to be beautiful?’  And as I type I am reminded this 4th Proverb begins ‘Hear, O sons,’ .  What son of the Most High does not want to be ‘beautiful’ in the eyes of Almighty God?  I can tell you for a fact my beloved is a man of men and he desires to be ‘beautiful’ to our ABBA.   So.  What I am saying is this message crosses gender lines.  (I hope all IDOK devotions do.)

The recipient of Proverbs 4 as it was penned by human hands moved by God’s Voice was to the penman’s son.  Listen to a portion of it as we read:

⁵ Acquire wisdom!  Acquire understanding!
Do not forget nor turn away from the words of my mouth.
⁶ “Do not forsake her, and she will guard you;
Love her, and she will watch over you.
⁷ “The beginning of wisdom is: Acquire wisdom;
And with all your acquiring, get understanding.
⁸ “Prize her, and she will exalt you;
She will honor you if you embrace her.
⁹ “She will place on your head a garland of grace;
She will present you with a crown of beauty.”

This is what I see.   God wants us to pursue Him, pursue His Word, His Wisdom, as a man pursues a woman he wants to win. What does a man do when he is courting a woman?  Even when he is occupied with what is on the ‘stage’ of his desk, she is right there head peaking out from the curtain and he is delighted!  When she emails him, he answers her right away.  When she calls, he takes that call even if he takes no other.   When he’s in pursuit of her,  surprising  her with a little gift for no special reason is normal for him.   See what I mean?  Translate that from the natural to the spiritual, and we get a glimpse of pursing God. And what does such a pursuit do for us?  Look at the woman being pursued (Mind you this only works if the woman being pursued wants to be pursued!) and what do you see?  You see beauty!  You see her extend grace  more easily than before.  You see her act in mercy.  You see light and delight in her countenance. And you see the same in him.  Translate that natural occurrence to the spiritual and what do you see?  A garland of grace and a crown of beauty on their heads — you see minds transformed by the Word of God moving hands, feet and faces to the glory of God the Father!  You see beautiful everyday living — gracing this world.  You see JESUS in us!

Now! to be a doer of this and not just a writer  (and reader) of it!

To review the list of names for prayer, please click here.

ABBA, I write this and I read it again and again and praise You for the privilege of writing it BUT that is not enough!  I am so prone to write it and read and then NOT do it, at least not consistently.   But we are gonna get there, aren’t we?  Thank You LORD.  Thank You.  There may be some IDOKs and Readers out there who feel the same, assure them You will get them there — we just got to keep on keeping on one right decision after another.   Amen and amen!  Make it so!

And as we have read the names and have remembered the request for which their names were given, You have heard and You are active in their lives and I am grateful.  Grateful to be a part of what You have done and will yet do for them.  Grateful that You have kept our IDOK Troops safe and asking You to keep on keeping on keeping them safe and whole in spirit, soul and body and to bring them home one by one safe and sound at the appointed time.  And as we put this in resting mode before posting I ask You to even in this moment tend us LORD; pursue us and birth in us a burning desire to pursue You in JESUS Name and for His sake.  Amen and amen.