Tag Archives: praise

Random Devotional Thoughts

More Snippets from Ezekiel

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      I wrote last time about a vision Ezekiel had seen, and  continued reading through his writings. I was intrigued by the following thoughts from the first part of verse seven of chapter forty-three which says… And He said to me, “Son of man, this is the place of My throne and the place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel forever.”     It is amazing to think that God’s desire has always been to live among His people. There are many pictures in this vision that are applicable to us as believers. We are told that we are the temple of the Living God as a body of believers on earth at this time…..

     God’s one great desire is that people follow him with all their heart, and mind and soul (Matthew 22:36-38). Since we see that the sacrifice for our sin has been met by Jesus Christ and that the Holy Spirit of God is now living within us, does this then let us off the hook of having to offer any further sacrifices? Can we just take this free salvation and then live our lives how we want to? No, most definitely not! What then are we expected to do?

    The first offering to give to God is to give our own selves to Him and to live for Him in a way that is honouring to Him. We are not to give way to things like bad temper, immoral living of any sort, dishonesty in  business deals or in private life, or in using bad language.. (Romans 12:1; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11)    We are to have a humble attitude before God, and not demand things just because He has promised them….it may not be right for us at this time! (Psalm 51:17)    Then we are to give Him the sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving. It is so easy to complain about people and things….it just comes naturally right from childhood to say, “Not my fault, I didn’t do it!” It is a real sacrifice to have to put these complaining thoughts to one side and find something positive to say instead!  ( Psalm 107:22; Hebrews 13:15)    We are to be helpful and kind, to do good to others, and not try to be the top dog, but take the lower place. But on the other hand, we must also be ready to step forward and do our bit….it’s just as bad to say we aren’t good enough when something needs doing !  (Hebrews 13:16, and Philippians 4:18)  

    Believers are part of a holy priesthood to God by reason of our salvation, and as such, we are obligated to do the sacrifices of giving praise, living a holy life and sharing what we have with others.  (1 Peter 2:5)

God has given His only Son, We must take the work that’s done, Giving back the praise He’s due, Is what He wants us to do.

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Devotional Poems

Where do I get Comfort From?

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       The last few times, we have been thinking about the perilous times we are living in, and the panic that some people are experiencing, and even those who have God’s hope within are feeling the strain of these days of restrictions, rules and mandates.    Recently, I’ve been reading the book of Psalms, and what a lot of comfort there is in these! Even if they start off on a doleful note, they nearly all end up looking to God above and taking comfort from Him! Truly, there is no other way to receive  comfort of a lasting sort apart from what He can give us!     Let’s look at Psalm 116 and see what we can get from it….

I love the Lord for He has heard, My supplications,  every word, Because He hears when I call, He brings me up from depths of gall. Even when we feel down in the dumps, God will hear our every cry to Him….there is another little ditty I sometimes remind myself of…  “Whenever I am in a fix, I’ll think  of Philippians four and six!” . This says,  “Don’t worry about ANYTHING, Instead pray about EVERYTHING! And DON’T forget to give God thanks for the answer!”

We may be sad and full of woe, He’ll free me from my every foe! He is the Gracious One above, He is the God of righteous love.    We don’t just have the foes of things we can see…there are other foes that attack us. Worries about our family, ill health that might be lurking and making us feel down, or even broken relationships. But as we take all these to the Lord in prayer, we can feel our spirits lift, and  know that He has all our worries in His hands. But we have to remember to leave our worries behind, and that’s not easy, I know. But it’s no use taking them to the Lord in prayer and then picking them up again and taking them away with you!!!

Return unto your rest my soul, He delivers and makes us whole, From death and tears, and feet that fall, He will deliver from them all.    

These few lines remind us that He is the Great Deliverer….we just have to hang onto this in faith. The Bible says  that if we don’t have faith, we can’t receive anything from Him (Hebrews 11:6)  It also says that those who seek WILL find (Matthew 7:7-8)

What can I to the Lord now give, For the fact I move and live? I’ll take salvation that’s His gift, Pay my vows, my voice I’ll lift!     This verse shows us that we have to have a thankful heart….this is what God is looking for from us. We all feel disappointed if we give a gift to someone, and they just take it with no thanks given, and no appreciation for it. How many of God’s gifts we take for granted…we never think to say thankyou for our homes, for the other blessings we have, for the good health that we enjoy, and for the friendships and family that we have. These are all gifts from God….too often all we do is complain and grumble if things don’t work out as we would like! Most of all, He is offering us salvation from our sins and shortcomings….have we even bothered to take this, let alone give thanks for it??

Precious in the sight of God, Are those who in His ways have trod.   These last lines of this psalm remind us how God views His people as being precious. Not only in our lives as we  look to Him, but also when it comes to leaving this earth for ever. He says in verse 15 of this psalm…. “Precious in the sight of the Lord, is the death of His saints!”  This is because He will have them with Him forever….there will be no more parting from Him, and we will see Him face to face….what a glorious prospect His people have! No wonder the Psalmist could end this Psalm by saying, “Praise the Lord!!”

Random Devotional Thoughts

Beauty out of Dry Ground.

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    I have been growing amaryllis lilies in pots this year. A friend who was moving away from the district gave me several of these beautiful plants of hers which I had always admired, and I didn’t want to miss a minute of their beauty. So when the flowers began to come, they were brought in to the living room so we could watch them open and develop.

   It always amazes me how such beauty can come out the same soil….how do these plants know when the right time to grow is? How do they know when to send up their flower shoots? Yet each year, we could almost set our clock by them! We have a lot of a certain type of cherry tree that grows wild around our town…how do they know when July comes and that it is time to  begin to flower?

     There is the Belladonna lily that follows a  regular pattern too…every year without fail it sends up long stalks from the ground with its flowers of either pink or white. There are no leaves around this flower stalk and it stands up stark and naked on its own. After two or three weeks, the flower dies down, and the plant is dormant again until about July when the first leaves start to appear. It is a very luxurious looking plant, quite handsome in fact, and fills the empty gaps in the garden. Then about October the leaves start  to go brown and die down, and the whole plant goes to sleep. In fact, if you didn’t know better, you would think the plant had died! But when the next February comes, the whole cycle starts again!

    The creativity of God to put these patterns into the plants He has designed, is amazing!  When we stop to think about it, everything He has made is amazing. Mankind is no less amazingly made, and it is a lesson to us to look for the hidden talents that each one of us has, and to use them for God’s glory. No matter what our surroundings are or the environment we are in, there is always something we can thank Him for. As the Bible says, “Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31)

If you think that you don’t have anything you can do, we can ALL give praise and thanks to Him for what we see in His creation around us!!  (Philippians 4:20)

Morning Musings

A Joyous Christmas!

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    ANGEL1    And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord (Luke 2:10-11).

None of the characters in the Christmas story were important or famous people from other people’s point of view…in fact, they just seemed very ordinary. Elisabeth and her husband Zechariah the priest, were two older people with no children. At the other end of the spectrum was Mary, engaged to Joseph the local carpenter, young and looking forwards to what life had in store for her. Both these couples had had a visit from the angel Gabriel telling them that they would each have a miraculous child born to them. Elisabeth was too old, and Mary was not yet married, but they both accepted this news as from the Lord Himself with Whom nothing was impossible. Once Mary had ascertained how this miracle would take place for her, she humbly said, “Let it be so as the Lord has said”.

Elisabeth was already six months pregnant by the time the angel visited Mary, and after talking with him, she immediately went to visit her older cousin. We wonder what these two pregnant ladies would have said to each other! We are told some of their conversation….it was not their condition or their symptoms they spoke about. It was the babies that they were carrying. In fact, Elisabeth the older lady, deferred to Mary the younger girl, recognising the importance of the child that Mary was carrying. She referred to her as “the mother of my Lord” and said how her baby had leaped in her womb at Mary’s greeting.

Mary immediately burst into a song of praise….this was not a song of someone else’s, this was a spontaneous series of quotations from the book of Psalms that she knew off by heart, and that glorified God for what He was about to do with and through these as-yet unborn sons that she and Elisabeth  were carrying. God’s plan of salvation for mankind was about to be unfolded, and these children were to be the means of bringing great joy to the world.