Wednesday night was a great night in the word at our little study.  We looked at a good number of scriptures on pride, God’s opposition to the proud, and the needfullness of dying to ourselves and living only for God.

Next week is our last study for the summer.  We will conclude with a session all about our Great High Priest, Jesus.  I have grown so much this summer in our studies together….I hope it has blessed you as well.

Tonight we had a sweet time in the Lord looking at more verses and in more depth at the issue of covetousness and trusting the Lord.  Your homework is here on the blog, week #9…..I promise a better post tomorrow, but as I fell asleep mid sentence as I started this post, I’ll finish tomorrow.

I pray you will each have a rich day in the Lord! m

Tonight we had a great time together being in the Word and  looking at the sin of covetousness and the need to battle for faith in our lives.

Covetousness can be defined as  desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God. 

Martin Luther speak on this great truth:

Faith honors him whom it trusts with the most reverent and highest regard since it considers him truthful and trustworthy. There is no other honor equal to the estimate of truthfulness and righteousness with which we honor him whom we trust . . . When the soul firmly trusts God’s promises, it regards him as truthful and righteous, and whatever else should be ascribed to God. The very highest worship of God is this, that we ascribe to him truthfulness, righteousness, and whatever else should be ascribed to one who is trusted. (Freedom of a Christian, in Dillenberger collection,

Our desires must begin and end in God.  Our ability to do this ONLY comes to us by the Holy Spirit’s ministry and help.  Any works done without faith in His work in us are just that, works, not righteousness.  Day 2 of your homework is listening to a  John Piper sermon….it’s so good.

I hope you will seek to be childlike today in your work, your joys, and your failures….seeking the Father’s pleasure and help in all you do.  Just like a young child seeks out its parents.  You are simply a vessel to be filled with His goodness to be poured out on the service of others….Anything inside your vessel that is of yourself is simply “filthy rags.”

I’m a bit behind today.  Owed you a few good posts on impatience this week….Many, MANY opportunities to work on that.  I got to throw out dinner last Thursday night in the funniest of those….

But as I worked on patience this week, I grew increasingly unsatisfied with the focus on me.  I wanted to shift off of this work and back onto Jesus in my meditations…Did you feel the same?  I know that my patience is required.  I know that it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit and of Love.  I cannot turn my back on it….BUT how much better to long after it because my heart is full of Joy in who Jesus is and what He is doing for my moment by moment.

The only way I am ever patient (in holiness) is if the Spirit of Holiness infuses me with a heart of worship and a mind that is renewed.  All other fruitfulness in this area will only result in pride and a Pharisee’s heart.  Our work this week will focus on getting the right view of obedience and dependence on God in it.  It is an interesting and compelling balance – I must “work out my salvation with fear and trembling” at the same time that “it is God who works in you both to will and to act according to His good pleasure.” (Phil 2:12-13)

A life of obedience requires much of  a child.  The child must really focus on what his parents want  throughout his day to even come close.  This required him to think on past instructions and listen for his parents’ voices constantly.  Otherwise, he will know that life of obedience through his failures to do this and the retributions that follow.

I hope you have a wonderful day resting in the goodness of God.

We looked tonight at the battle over impatience.  This is a deeply prideful sin and a very common one.  Many of us have laid down our fight against it long ago, accepting curt and short and harried responses to the chaos of this world as unavoidable…..Just the way I am.

I suffer with more than an average serving of impatience.  Frequently I am overwhelmed by my need to be intentionally kind and gracious. Both requiring deep levels of patience.  Both undone immediately by harsh impatience.  I am reminded of the woman in Prov 14:1 that tears down her house with her own hands….she must be an impatient sour soul.

What is impatience anyway?  John Piper identifies it eloquently this way

Impatience is a form of unbelief. It’s what we begin to feel when we start to doubt the wisdom of God’s timing or the goodness of his guidance. It springs up in our hearts when the road to success gets muddy or strewn with boulders or blocked by some fallen tree. The battle with impatience can be a little skirmish over a long wait in a checkout lane. Or it can be a major combat over a handicap or disease or circumstance that knocks out half your dreams.

The opposite of impatience is not a glib, superficial denial of frustration. The opposite of impatience is a deepening, ripening, peaceful willingness either to wait for God where you are in the place of obedience, or to persevere at the pace he allows on the road of obedience—to wait in his place, or to go at his pace.

Isn’t that a lot of meat to chew?  Get to work, my friend, I have a feeling you might get cut off a lot in traffic this week.

To wait in his place, or to go at his pace.

Using the Word of God to combat defeating thoughts and anxieties is the key to having a biblical mindset and overcoming the world in this life.

John Piper has a great illustration in his sermon “Battling the Unblief of Anxiety” (www.desiringgod.org) that helps here……(the mud is our anxious thoughts)

Suppose you are in a car race and your enemy who doesn’t want you to finish the race throws mud on your windshield. The fact that you temporarily lose sight of your goal and start to swerve does not mean that you are going to quit the race. And it certainly doesn’t mean that you are on the wrong racetrack. Otherwise the enemy wouldn’t bother you at all. What it means is that you should turn on your windshield wipers and use your windshield washer.

What I mean is this: when anxiety strikes and blurs our vision of God’s glory and the greatness of the future that he plans for us, this does not mean that we are faithless, or that we will not make it to heaven. It means our faith is being attacked. At first blow our belief in God’s promises may sputter and swerve. But whether we stay on track and make it to the finish line depends on whether we set in motion a process of resistance. Whether we fight back against anxiety. Will we turn on the windshield wipers and will we use our windshield washer?

The Testimony of Scripture

Psalm 56:3 says, “When I am afraid, I put my trust in thee.” Notice: it does not say, “I never struggle with fear.” Fear strikes and the battle begins. So the Bible does not assume that true believers will have no anxieties. Instead the Bible tells us how to fight when they strike.

For example, 1 Peter 5:7 says, “Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you.” It does NOT say, you will never feel any anxieties to cast onto God. It says, when the mud splatters your windshield and you lose temporary sight of the road and start to swerve in anxiety, turn on your wipers and squirt your windshield washer.

Will you fight today?  Turn your wipers on!

We had a good study last night looking at the sin of anxiety. 

If unbelief is a turning away from God to your circumstances…Not trusting in His promises….Then anxiety is a sin of unbelief.

Hebrews 3:12 

  ¹²See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

So the encouragment was to see to it that we do not have a sinful anxious heart (an evil heart is an anxious heart).  We talked about using the word and pleading for the help of the Holy Spirit to overcome our anxieties…..

I am out of time today….More soon, but check out the homework for week #4 and get started. 

I’m pretty much on adrenalin at this point and it’s only Monday!  I love holidays.  But I am wondering how to recover the rest of the week.  Also!! friends of ours are on their way home with a new baby – sheltered from a  neice in trouble – that just might make the week even more busy and blessed.

The puppy is still amazing…Handled a 21 canon salute at a Memorial Day Celebration today very calmly.  Almost house broken.  Almost crate and basket trained.  Very sweet…..Named him Stetson, nicknamed  Cowboy Hat Dog.

I  am thankful today for all the soldiers who bought us our freedoms with their lives.  No one can measure what we owe them.  Even more, I am thankful for a Savior that has purchased my pardon from a death sentence to hell with his own “full measure of devotion”…to His Father to my benefit. 

He himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live to righteousness.  IPeter 2:24

I am the new mother of a golden retriever puppy.  He is asleep on my 7 yr old’s bed with him petting him right now.  If there is such a thing as a perfect puppy this is it (watch for updates eating those words)….such a temperment I have never seen.  So trainable.  So sweet. ……Best part Bridal Gown reader is that my husband, Greg, was against getting the puppy.  I fretted a bit and turned it over and over to the Lord (silly, I know, it’s a puppy) counting the right to have what I want loss.  Then, Greg said yes, and the puppy is beyond amazing….wow!    

Phil 3:7

 ⁷But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.