IDOK DEVOTION FOR FRIDAY, MAY 14, 2010

Praise Reports, Prayer Requests and Updates:

Can you believe it?  It’s Friday again already — well, it will be when this is posted!

I read Proverbs 2 early this morning.  It’s a chapter informing us we are wise when we seek wisdom.  Verses 1 through 4 are IF verses  and verse 5 is a THEN verse.  If we do verses 1 through 4, then we will receive what ABBA promised.  The chapter is full of good stuff! Like these verses 11 Discretion will guard you, understanding will watch over you, 12 To deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things; Ain’t that the truth!  Exercising God-given discretion will keep us out of all kinds of trouble.

But the verse I want to settle on for this writing is verse 21 For the upright will live in the land and the blameless will remain in it;

This land of wisdom, discretion, understanding, protection and safety is the place to be, wouldn’t you say?  And verse 21 says the upright will come to live there, yet it is the blameless that remain there.   Why is that?  This is the picture that came to me as I pondered this verse:  A beautiful clearing.  The grass is green and lush, dotted with splendid multiple colors and pleasant blending fragrances,  bordered and punctuated with ancient oaks and willows, all cuddled by a gentle, soothing breeze; and a swing beckons me from the branch of a massive oak and a table invites me set beneath the boughs with fine lace and linen coverings heavy laden with crystal gold-rimmed goblets brimming with iced tea and fresh mint alongside silver serving trays loaded with cheeses, breads, fruits, candies,  pastries, every thing to appease and gratify every taste bud in my salivating mouth.  And if this  were not enough there on a nearby hill is a house, but not just any house; it’s my house! And the mortgage is fully paid and every detail of the house delights me — I wouldn’t change a thing!    Would I stay in such a place?  Heavens yes!!! Would the place remain beautiful and splendid?  Only if I tended it!

All the wisdom, revelations, discernment, knowledge ABBA gives us is ours to keep IF we tend it.  We arrive at a place of learning, a place of wisdom and discretion, understanding and yes protection and safety as we humble ourselves and take on His Uprightness.  So why not tend this gift of His Uprightness and seek to be blameless in thought and conduct so we can REMAIN in that place of ever increasing beauty and splendor?  Beats me!  Just lazy I guess.

¹ My son, if you will receive my words
And treasure my commandments within you,
² Make your ear attentive to wisdom,
Incline your heart to understanding;
³ For if you cry for discernment,
Lift your voice for understanding;
⁴ If you seek her as silver
And search for her as for hidden treasures;
⁵ Then you will discern the fear of the LORD
And discover the knowledge of God.

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

ABBA, I don’t know that I have done this justice but I pray You will take up my lack and abundantly supply to the hearts of our IDOKs and Readers what You mean in this portion of Scripture.  I pray for a salivating heart for You and Your Word  for myself and all our IDOKs and Readers.  I pray that we will overcome any laziness and preoccupation with the urgent and necessary things and become enthralled with You the Imperative.  I pray You will day by day impress upon me, in me and through and through that this frame of mine houses Your Spirit.  I am thinking about that fact these recent days and I think it should move me more than it has.  I pray it yet will.

I am so pleased and grateful to hear the good reports regarding Jason and Mike and Alice, the stepson and Baby Ryder.  Thank You.  And I pray for Alice as she undergoes the cataract surgery that it will be textbook perfect and her vision will improve, even be reversed to a  much better time.  And we pray now for the remaining names on our list for coming good reports from all of them too. And for safety and protection for our IDOK Troops. For their families to be provided for and may they all conduct themselves in a worthy manner.

Again we pray for Christian Churches that they be Houses of Prayer and particularly three congregations that they be praying as never before and each see You manifest Yourself lifting up JESUS to all who are watching.  And, ABBA, I pray for the D’Angelo Family that they will be  open and receptive to what You want to do for them and in them.    Thank You for hearing our prayers and giving to us better than we ask.  Amen and amen in JESUS Mighty and Holy Name.

IDOK DEVOTION FOR THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2010

Praise Reports, Prayer Requests and Updates:

I am certain there is more to this than I am about to say, but it’s what came to mind when I read it this morning.  Job 29:24 “I smiled on them when they did not believe, and the light of my face they did not cast down. And the note I wrote in the margin of my new Bible (in those beautiful wide margins) was ‘oh to be one that others could not bring down with their negative attitudes’!  Can I get an amen from anybody?   That’s it.

Now I’ll do some more study and see what else we come up with to write.  Back soon.

This comforts me and I hope it does you: Job 28:24 “For HE looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens. The GOD who is your Father sees everything that concerns you.  Nothing touches you or even near misses you that He does not see!  The note I made in the margin says: ‘He sees our hurts; He sees our pangs.’  And by that I mean not just our illnesses and our diseases but our pangs too.  You know what a pang is don’t you?  A sharp attack of mental anguish.  Anybody hearing me?

Whoa! Listen to this!  Job 30:24 “Yet does not one in a heap of ruins stretch out his hand, or in his disaster therefore cry out for help? Let us not be a people who waits for ruin and disaster before we cry out to ABBA.

Oh, yes!! Job 33:24 Then let him be gracious to him, and say, ‘Deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom’; Oh, yes; oh yes!  And that ransom is JESUS CHRIST and we do not have to live in a pit!  We can be delivered from ruin and disaster.  We can find help for our hurts and our pangs!  We can KNOW our ABBA, our Savior JESUS CHRIST THE RIGHTEOUS is watching and hearing and working on our behalf.  BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD!

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

ABBA, that was fun!  Thank You. Thank You for taking these 24s and pulling them together and now I ask you to minister these 24s to the hearts of Your people to give them courage and hope and confidence in Your great love and infinite power to keep us safe in this troubled world.   Amen and amen, You are the Great and Only Holy God.  Thank You for allowing us to love and worship You.

And now that we have reviewed our list of names, we remember again their requests, bringing them to You afresh and anew, knowing they are neither stale nor forgotten by You ever.   It is so neat that You let us in on what You are doing in their lives.  All of them,  including our IDOK Troops and their families here at home.  You have kept them all safe and we are so grateful and we pray for that same safety and watch care again today.  And, ABBA, as I am reminded right now there’s another church to add to yesterday’s prayer.  Another church filled with imperfect people who so need to heed You the perfect God; that need to look to You and not their own understanding; to be kind to one another; to seek Your will and not our own and so today I am praying this for three churches that I personally know with volatile situations and I’m not asking for a lid to be kept on it so it won’t blow I am asking You to do a work in the hearts of Your people so we will release all desires to have it our way instead of Your Way.  And I know, each would say it is Your Will they are seeking, I pray, Holy Spirit, You make that true in JESUS NAME. Amen and amen.

IDOK DEVOTION FOR WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 2010

Praise Reports, Prayer Requests and Updates:

Judy‘s surgery was completed Tuesday evening, the tumor was cancer but the doctor believes he was able to get it all.  Further treatment options will be discussed soon.

I’m still too much freaked out here but hoping to settle down enough to write.  I had an unwelcome visitor this morning just outside  our bay windowed dining room cool brick wall — a four foot snake!  Thanks to my beloved,  there is now one less snake in the world to torture women.   You’d think I could come up with some grand and profound spiritual application here —  but nope, not yet! The fact that three and half head-less hours later, he (the snake) is still wiggling might say something!  I am reminded that JESUS promised and did crush the head of THE SNAKE on Calvary and 2000 plus years later ‘that thing’ is STILL wiggling!  Headless and powerless to harm us (unless we let him) but still stirring up all kinds of trauma and drama, wouldn’t you say?   Seriously, get what you can from it — I’m still freaking out here –  skin crawling as I type!

HOWEVER!  I did my early morning reading (before the snake, thank you very much!) at Luke 17: 11-19.This is the account of Jesus hearing the cries of the ten (10) lepers for mercy and saying to them: 14 When He saw them, He said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” And as they were going, they were cleansed. Hold this in mind, I’ll come back to it, but first let us think about  how these ten men arrived outside the city.  Verse 12 tells us as JESUS was entering the city He saw the lepers standing at a distance from Him.  They were doing so because they had been declared by the Priests as unclean.  (You can read more about this in Leviticus  13 and 14.    In the 13th the diagnosis and the 14th what do when cured.) They were commanded to live outside the ‘camp’, keep their distance from others and upon coming within earshot of another to cry out ‘unclean, unclean’.  Can you imagine?  Yet I submit to you that sin does just this to us.  It makes us unclean, unfit to come before the LORD.  Our sins give off a horrible stench in His nostrils! We don’t have this physical depiction readily around us these days but I dare say our sins don’t smell any better  now than when this passage was penned!

So JESUS told the lepers to go show themselves to the priest.  In doing so He was observing Levitical Law. But I think that was not all He was doing.  He was giving them an opportunity to exercise faith in Him.    I think He does the same for us.    In the realm of physical and spiritual healing, He can heal us instantly and  there are times that He does.  More often though our healing comes as we follow His instructions, as we make right choices and follow His step by step instructions — similarly to these Lepers following  His command to Go and show yourselves to the priests.   If they had stayed and reasoned and argued with JESUS they would have missed their healing, don’t you think?  I admit it, I LIKE it BIG TIME when ABBA shows up and shows out with a POWER PACKED display of instant healing (physical or emotional).    But it is those encounters with Him where I have to invest myself and time to receive the benefit that stay with me for the long haul.  SO my point is sometimes JESUS heals quick, often times He insists that we WORK with Him to arrive at the healing.  Either way we are blessed that He came down to help us specimens of rotting flesh.

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

ABBA, what a day!  I long for the day when I will not be afraid of certain creatures; however, if it’s alright with You I’d rather wait until Heaven to entirely overcome this fear — I’d much rather be spared from confronting any more snakes in my back yard.   I’d throw in lizards too if I thought I could get it.   You know I’m not being entirely silly here.  Thank You for taking care of me through this ordeal and I do pray to learn something of eternal value from it.  And thank You for the laughter it has given some friends and even me as I have told the story and retold it.

We are grateful that Judy’s surgery is done and that the doctors are saying they got all the cancer.  And now, ABBA, I pray You will do for Judy what doctors cannot do.  Also tend and comfort her family I pray.

And all the others whose names we just read, including our IDOK Troops, You know their needs, LORD, and I am asking You to bless them and take care of them.

There are many things on the political scene that continues to disturb us, the appointment to the Supreme Court, the oil spill, the Fall elections and much more.  I dare not pray and I wonder if that’s enough; I can only leave this with You,  trusting You to inform us and lead us.   I can think of two churches in particular that I am asking You to watch closely and keep the Evil One from destroying what is and what remains.  Holy Spirit, please bless people with the grace and the will to do right and to be kind to one another.  And I pray for Israel, for their peace and safety.   And as we put this to post I ask for peace and rest for our IDOKs and our Readers; and, ABBA, those unspoken things that would keep us awake at night, I pray You will speak to those things and we will release them and rest in Your Name, LORD JESUS. Amen and Amen.