notes worth remembering

Do you write in your Bible - make notes to remember later? I do sometimes, more frequently a while ago than current days. Today though, in reading Max Lucado's devotional, "Grace For the Moment," I came to Hosea 2:19 and his comment -- "God's goal is not to get you what you want; it is to get you what you need."

This last part made me think of all my notes, which are really there for what I need, and since I was in Hosea, I thought I would share my notes from there. My comments are in (purple).

Hosea 4: 1-2: "...There is no truth (faithfulness) or mercy (faithful love) or knowledge of God in the land,
By swearing and lying, killing and stealing and committing adultery, they break all restraint, with bloodshed after bloodshed (rebellion, full strength)."


v. 6a: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. ... "

6:6: "For I desire mercy and not sacrifice. And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings." (God wants more than ritual, more than an attitude of merely paying dues to stay in the club.)

14: 4-6: "I will heal their backsliding (God will heal us when we have turned away), I will love them freely, For My anger has turned away from him. ... I will be like the dew (God's life-giving power) to Israel; He shall grow like the lily, and strengthen his roots like Lebanon (His word has great value). ... His branches shall spread; His beauty shall be like an olive tree, And his fragrance like Lebanon (fruitfulness)."

v. 9: "Who is wise? Let him understand these things. Who is prudent? Let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right; The righteous walk in them, But transgressors stumble in them."


Acknowledging God means more than having a head knowledge. To acknowledge Him means that we allow Him to invade our lives for His purposes. We acknowledge Him when we give action to our lip service about what we believe.


The way of the Lord is always right ... and true ... and just. 

Live a Holy Life

No matter what befalls us in the world, human power is not the answer. God alone, His being, His power. Only God accomplishes all that is. As human beings we are not personally capable of bringing about ultimate triumph in any situation.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “Only when we look at reality with clear eyes without any illusion about our morality or our culture can we believe, otherwise our faith becomes an ‘illusion.’ ''

We must “believe in God alone and in His power. We must have faith and utilize it every moment of every day. When we give in to ourselves, when we fail to see the world and live in the world as God commands, where is our faith? Is it an illusion? Faith is way more than accepting Jesus as our personal savior. That is the beginning. But faith is how we live our lives with God as our commander.

“Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” – Matthew 5:16

Live a holy life.

Max Lucado notes, “People are watching the way we act more than they are listening to what we say.”

I penned these thoughts yesterday before my husband shared a Letter to the Editor published in The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) that day. The letter was titled “Compassionate family was gift from God” (page 4A, 3.8.2010 copyright 2010 The Gazette www.gazetteonline.com).

Here it is in its entirety.

On the evening of Feb. 6, my husband was feeling ill. He thought we should go to the hospital. En route, his condition began to rapidly deteriorate. I panicked and pulled into the drive of the first house I saw with lights on. This was at 10:30 on a Saturday night, and as I pounded on the door, I prayed to God that someone would answer. My prayer was answered. The gentleman who greeted me at the door called an ambulance and sat and prayed with me until they arrived. He and his daughter then drove me to St. Luke’s Hospital, where they stayed with me and other family members to await word on my husband’s condition. When the doctors delivered the devastating news, they grieved with us and tried to give all the comfort they could to people they had never met until that night. On Sunday morning, I received a call from this caring gentleman asking if there was anything that he or his family could do for us. He and his family came to console us during the visitation and also at the funeral. Words cannot explain the feelings we feel toward this man whom God sent to help in our time of need. Compassion and hope are still very much alive; sometimes it just takes awhile to find. - Bev Martin, Central City

My daily devotionals come from “I want to live these days with You” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I think, Yes, how I want to live these days with My Lord. And yet I wonder how I will accomplish it. I won’t really. Not fully. Nothing will be fully completed, fully accomplished, until Jesus returns, until we have gone on to meet our maker, until we have arrived at our eternal home on that celestial shore, until we see Jesus, face to face, on bended knee. Oh yes, I want to live these days with You.

Jesus, our protector and The One to whom our allegiance is show in all we do, everywhere we go. He is with us. We are with Him. It is through Jesus we are able to endure and it is through Him we are enabled to live a Holy life. It is because of Jesus' sacrifice we have been set free. He reigns. Jesus lives in us, we live in Him.

Who is to be served?

Thought for the Day: "While Jesus and his followers were traveling, Jesus went into a town. A woman named Martha let Jesus stay at her house. Martha had a sister named Mary, who was sitting at Jesus' feet and listening to him teach. But Martha was busy with all the work to be done. She went in and said, 'Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me alone to do all the work? Tell her to help me.' But the Lord answered her, 'Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things. Only one thing is important. Mary has chosen the better thing, and it will never be taken away from her.' " Luke 10: 38-42

In chapter 6 appropriately titled "Sour Milk" of the book "He Still Moves Stones," Max Lucado discusses the above Scripture. His words ... Two sisters. Two personalities. And as long as they understand each other, it's hand in glove. But when the one resents the other, it's flint and stone.

Flint and stone. Flint is a very hard stone. So its harder and hard. And as personalities go, it doesn't have to be just between siblings. It could be between husband and wife, co-workers, friends, church members.

Philippians 2: 14-15 in the New Living Translation says, "In everything you do, stay away from complaining and arguing, so that no one can speak a word of blame against you. You are to live clean innocent lives as children of God in a dark world full of crooked and perverse people. Let your lives shine brightly before them."


To serve God.
Your heart is in the right place in the beginning, but along the way you give in to Satan's subtle hints and start believing the work itself that you do is more important that serving God. You end up serving, or feeding, yourself, and get caught up in all of the anxiety surrounding it. We look for attention, compliments, a standing ovation. But we don't get it. In all our planning, we have forgotten the very reason we set out -- to be a light, God's light, in every aspect of our lives.

To serve God.
In the workplace, perhaps it is just a job. Perhaps dreams you had have been placed on a back burner. You are in waiting ...

No matter where we are, what we are about, if we have professed to be followers of Jesus Christ, then following Him is what we must do.

In humbleness, in love, thinking, mindful always of what He is about, not what we ourselves are about. When we forget who we are, who we belong to there is a possibility we may fall. When we become so caught up in ourselves, the feeling of resentment toward another overwhelms us. Jesus has not instructed us to go there or do that. We are to follow His lead. Following only what we think of a given situation, becoming swallowed up in selfishness, draws us more and more away from forgetting who is the servant and who is to be served. Resentment, pride. Flint and stone.

In Zechariah 7: 12, we read: "Yes, they made their hearts like flint, refusing to hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets. Thus great wrath came from the Lord of hosts."

In Ezekiel 11: 19-20, we read: "Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them and take the stony heart out of their flesh and give then a heart of flesh, That they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God."

And in Jeremiah 32:39: "Then I will give them one heart and one way, That they may fear Me forever, for the good of them and their children after them."

Lucado reiterates what matters more than the type of service is the heart behind the service.

We need to remember to keep our focus on the One we are serving.

Prayer: "Create in me a clean (pure) heart O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me." (Psalm 51:10)