" How sweet and awsome is the place"

How sweet and awesome is the place with Christ within the doors,
While everlasting love displays the choicest of her stories.

While all our hearts and all our songs join to admire the feast,
Each of us cries, with thankful tongue, " Lord, why was I a guest?"

Why was I made to hear your voice, and enter while there's room,
When thousands make a wretched choice, and rather starve than come?

Twas the same love that spread the feast that sweetly drew us in;
Else we had still refused to taste, and perished in our sin.

Pity the nations, O our God, constrain the earth to come;
Send your victorious Word abroad, and bring the strangers home.

We long to see your churches full, that all the chosen race may,
With one voice and heart and soul, sing your redeeming grace.

Hymn by Isaac Watts " How sweet and awesome is the place"

Nehemiah's Prayer

We are studying the book of Nehemiah on Wednesday nights. Last week and this week have been in working through chapters 1 and 2. Well in looking at the life of nehemiah I have been humbled by the prayer which he prays. You will find it in Nehemiah 1:4-11.
It starts off by saying that immediately after he had heard the report about Jerusalem he wept and mourned and fasted and prayed to the God of Heaven.

I think about that... and I ask myself is there a time that I would respond with those emmotions and actions. What would it be?


Then just looking at the rest of the prayer there are so many things which could be talked about. To summarize God lays on his heart a vision for the rebuilding of the walls. Nehemiah responds with an obedient heart and physical actions by first crying out to God then seeking to obey the proper channels of authority. We also find that he was persistent with his prayer. Finally he prays again in Chapter 2 when the king asks him whats wrong. Then he answers the king, the king responds favorable and Nehemiah responds in v 2:8 with a recognition that it was all because God's hand was upon him.

Looking at the life of nehemiah I am challenged to look at my life and see am I responding to the present world the way GOd would?

Will I respond to the call for Godly leaders?

Nehemiah was more concerned about the people of God and the city of God then he was about his job or even his life. Of this I am convinced.

The desert road

It is a liberating freedom and joy which I have found in Christ which compels me to tell of His great love which has been demonstrated and given to us. I have over the last few years been struggling with an understanding of the truth. Or maybe a better way to say it is to say that I have been struggling to see the application of the truth lived out in my life. This has been a long arduous task which God has patiently been bearing with me and pulling me through. When I think about it I can best explain it as a road running through a desert. Wandering in the desert, perpetually parched, off the road and lost in the dunes and the oasis. This oasis which I sought would continually turn up as a mirage. The incredible joy is that I have found the road or maybe it would be more accurately to say that it has been revealed to me. So what is the road and this desert which I have spoken of?

Well to explain that it may be better to first talk about from where is the road from and to where is it headed. This road is the one we enter onto when we are justified in Christ. That is it is the path of life, the one which leads from the lost deadness which we had out of Christ and separated from God. The road leaves from a city which we all find ourselves in at birth. (Rom 1:21-25,Rom 5:12-21, Eph 2:1-3, Rom 8:7-8) This is a place of false realities and superficial happiness, yet it seems so real and so good. This is reality as we know it. It is the place we are born into at birth and the place in which we stay until Christ delivers us out.

So we are placed on a road but to where does this road lead? This is the road of life in Christ, the one we live until by death or by His return we enter into His presence. This is the Christian life lived out know in theological terms as sanctification or the process of being conformed into the image of Christ. The race and walk which Paul so often talks about. ( ICor 9:24, Heb 12:1-2, Gal 5:7,16,25) We find ourselves placed on this road and we begin to run for this is exciting. Soon just like in any race we find ourselves in difficult circumstances. Those could be tiredness, dehydration, or hunger. The situation is still the same, what we find is that we have started to walk. This ultimately either leads to stopping in the race or turning towards whatever we see which we hope can offer a relief from our present distress. The reality is that we cannot stop in this race this is a race in which we must continue to move forward in. There are of course oases in our desert.

These seem to be offer an enticing means of satisfying and meeting our current distress. These oasis stops are not given by God. Instead He has provided means of nourishment and encouragement to come while running; not while stopping. God provides us with His Word, with His Spirit and with the Body of Christ which serve as the means of our nourishment and strength which is supplied in Christ. ( Jn 6:35,7:37,8:31,16:12,Eph 4:1-16) The Body of Christ or the church are our fellow racers who are journeying down the same desert road. God has designed the church to be a source of encouragement, support, and tool to spur us on. ( Heb 10:24-25)

These are situations which we find ourselves in continually, and without having our direction being that of the road we find ourselves heading from one mirage to the next. For it is only the hallucinations which seem to offer the relief but really no relief is found and only a sense of utter lostness and despair sets in.

This of course is something that God being all knowing, made a way for us to get back on the road. It is the Gospel message. The Gospel is what put us on the road to begin with and it is what drives us back to the direction of the desert road. I say the Gospel because it is Christ who is the direction of the road and the means by which we travel the road. (Heb. 12:2 Rom 5:11, Heb 10:19-23)

This wandering in the desert pursuing oases and finding only a mirage; results only in the sense of despair. But praise God for his patient pursuit of me. For it is no longer a sense of despair in which I find myself. (Rom 8:1, Rom 5:1-2)Instead it is back on the road with my eyes fixed on Christ in which I find myself. Drawing from His strength and the means in which He provided for my strength and nourishment along the way. Knowing that the destination at the end of the road will be reached and that nothing I can do can keep me from reaching it. Even my wanderings and resting in the oases of life only serve to detour me and to waylay me from the road but do not ultimately keep me from my destination.

All of the desert wanderings have come from focusing on the things of this world. And pursuing them rather than pursuing Christ. These would be areas of sin in my life which produced guilt and shame and a sense of continual defeat in my life. There of course is the father of lies who would seek to remind continually of the accusations. Praise God that the accusations are false and have been conquered in Christ already. It is also the pride of my own life which would serve to drive me in the wrong directions and keep me from admitting that I was desperately lost. This of course was my reality before I was put on the road to begin with and it is the reminder of that which drives me back to Christ.

My aim and my pursuit in life is Christ. Through repentance and remembering the gospel truths I find freedom and joy in Christ. No matter the cost, no matter the suffering, there is joy in Him always.

Songs of encouragement and truth.

· You make everything glorious ( David Crowder)

· It is all because of Jesus I am alive ( Casting Crowns)

· The Stand ( Hillsong United)

Walk worthy of your calling

Eph. 3 & 4

v14 -19 " I bow my knees before the Father...that He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit.. that you may have strength to comprehend.. and to know the love of Christ.. that you may be filled with the fullness of God.

Therefore

v1 -3 "Walk in a manner worhy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness with patience bearing with one another in love eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

Thy Mercy my God

I was recently introduced to this song. The words are so rich and are definitely the cry of my heart.

Thy mercy my God is the theme of my song,
The joy of my heart, and the boast of my tongue.
Thy free grace alone, from the first to the last,
Hath won my affection and bound my soul fast.

Without Thy sweet mercy, I could not live here.
Sin would reduce me to utter despair,
But through Thy free goodness, my spirit's revived
And He that first made me still keeps me alive.

Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart,
Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart.
Dissolved by Thy goodness, I fall to the ground
And weep for the praise of the mercy I've found.

Great Father of mercies, Thy goodness I own
In the covenant love of Thy crucified Son.
All praise to the Spirit, Whose whisper divine
Seals mercy and pardon and righteousness mine.
All praise to the Spirit, Whose whisper divine
Seals mercy and pardon and righteousness mine.