Jesus, Mary and Martha

John 11


I was amazed this morning, to realize that I'd read this chapter many times, yet somehow managed to miss so very much; things that would not only improve the quality of my physical life, but would add real substance to my sometimes lukewarm life.  Perhaps these are things you may have missed too. I pray that if, like me, you missed these points, that reading them now will cause you to rethink how you live your days.

Lazarus was very sick. Mary (the one who who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair), and her sister Martha, both being extremely concerned about their brother, sent word to Jesus, saying "Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick). verse 3.

Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. But when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he did not depart to Bethany from Jerusalem, which was only about two miles away, but remained where he was for two days. When he did go to Bethany, he found that Lazarus had lain in the grave four days already.
  
 Martha, upon hearing he was coming, went to meet him; was agitated, grieving deeply, not slow to empty out the pain within her heart. The first words out of her mouth when she saw Jesus were not "How are you?" were not "I'm so glad you're here. " No...the words that came out of her mouth were heavy with pain- and I'm quite certain, laced with a bit of resentment and frustration. She said " Lord, If thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know, that even now, (showing her faith in spite of her grief), whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee."
 
Mary, grieving as deeply as Martha, did not go to meet Jesus, but sat still (my Bible reads). in her home. Still, to me, in this sense, means numb with grief. When reading this  for the very first time, I remember wondering why Mary, loving Jesus so much, hadn't run to meet him.  But...back to Martha now:

"Thy brother shall rise again." Jesus says to Martha.
"I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day."Martha replies.
    
Jesus said unto her "I AM the resurrection...."
I used capital letters for the word Am because that is how it appeared when I read them this morning.
Those four words are something I missed, though I read them many, many times. Having them sink in THIS time was almost like being newly baptized. We think of the resurrection and think of receiving eternal life. But what we overlook sometimes, what we fail to get from His words is the awesome reality of His Words, the Truth in them, that in HIM we have LIFE. Without Him we cease to be. Before He became Lord of my heart and life I did not live...but existed. After baptism, I came out of the water filled with JOY i'd never experienced in my previous life.. Amazing! I live- move- and breathe, because I am HIS.

Now back to Mary:

Mary, now having left the house, was followed by the Jews who had been comforting her, believing she was going to the grave. When Mary saw Jesus, she fell down at his feet, saying "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died."

  When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews weeping, which came with her, he groaned in his spirit, and was troubled (verse 33).
 
verse 35 says "Jesus wept."
 
  Powerful words "Jesus wept." Everybody reading them has their own opinion as to why he wept. Some say because he loved Lazarus so much. Some say because of death, though death to Jesus is nothing. He is LIFE, which is one reason I no longer fear death. I personally believe that he wept for the living; for those who were hurting, agonizing over what their life has become- desperately wanting to change- to possess something better. I think He wept then, just as He weeps now, over you and me, and all those in our world who hurt so much, who struggle to understand what is beyond their comprehension. I think he wept because his love for mankind runs so deep.He brought Lazarus forth from the grave, gave him life again. And one day he will do
the same for you and me...and that day is not to far off.

I skipped around a bit on this post, am writing it as it flows in my mind. It is how I remember things that are important to me.

Two things I learned in this chapter that will improve the quality of my life are:

1- That not all of us are like Mary (quiet, shy, loves the truth, needs to spend a lot of time at the Lord's feet).  Not all of us are like Martha ( positive, hospitable, assertive).

    Remember when Jesus was visiting at their house? Remember how Mary sat at his feet, while Martha rushed here and there, doing all she could to take care of everybody?
Feeling frustrated because she too wanted time with Jesus, Martha asked him to tell Mary to help her.
    Jesus did not rebuke Martha for wanting help. But instead explained that Mary needed this time with him. She had been abused, harmed in ways only Jesus could understand. What he was giving her, nobody else ever could.
    Some of us are Mary's. We have been abused, tossed aside by our fathers, uncles, mothers, sisters, friends, etc. We have spent our lives feeling dirty, ashamed, totally lost and out of place. We need to sit long at the LORD'S feet, need that extra time and mentoring.
 
2- Some of us are like Martha. We're hospitable, outgoing, eager to be of service. But sometimes, like the Martha in the Bible, we forget how blessed we are, fail to remember, as Martha did how strongly rooted in the truth she already was, and what a solid relationship with Jesus she had.
    
 We don't need to be Martha..nor just a Mary. What we need is to try to become a bit of both: To be quiet sometimes, become better listeners, like Mary. We need to spend more time at the Lord's feet, listening- rather than talking. We need to, after we've spent time at the Lord's feet, become more like Martha then. We can't take in all the Lord teaches us and keep it to ourselves; can't accept the blessings without sharing them- giving some away. We need to spend out all that the Lord puts in. It is only by loving as the Lord loves- by blessing as we are blessed, that lives are changed.

May the Lord richly bless you today. May you always know the honor of His presence,
the warmth of His love- the tightness of His embrace.

Love you much,
Barb

Are You Guarding Your Heart?

We think we know ourselves (or at least I thought I did), until I began looking up what
God says about the heart. I discovered rather quickly just how blind I'd been, just how off the mark when it came to "keeping my heart." The scripture tells us that the heart is deceitful, that none can know it. Studying what God says about the heart showed me the truth in this, which is the reason for this post. I am hoping it blesses those who read it as greatly as it has blessed me.

It is only by being honest with ourselves--about ourselves that we can began to grow, 
to become the men and women God desires us to be. It is in our hearts that we first 
began to lose our closeness to the Lord. Like a boat without a captain we little-by
little, unawares, start drifting away from the Lord, from all that is good- real- true. It is
here that backsliding begins.

We failed to observe the red flags: How the world was getting our affection instead of the Lord, how we failed to keep our promise to meet the Lord every morning, to sit at his feet and learn from Him. We failed to notice that we'd slipped back into the former
way of depending upon ourselves, overlooked the fact that the only time we prayed any more was when a crisis arose. We no longer prayed as we once did, prayed simply because we loved HIM and it made us happy to spend time with Him. We did
not notice that reading His Word we now see as a chore- rather than a pleasure.
 Is our faith constantly in motion? Are we living it? Is our love for the Lord hot, as once it was -or worse- lukewarm? Does the world see patience in us, and love, kindness, self-control, joy? Or does it see hatred, greed, envy, bad tempers, impulsiveness?

We are "to keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."
(Proverbs 4:23)To keep the heart means to guard it, protect it. We are to keep heart and mind walking
a straight line.  A heart cannot be set right unless it is SET right, programmed, in a way.
Think of it as a clock. To set it correctly we have to turn the hands from hate to love, from sin to holiness, from love of the world to love of Christ, from self love-to love of others. 

We cannot go through life living solely upon the occasional highs received from a song, sermon, an unexpected blessing, if those high moments do not change us, if
they do not put within us a desire to give out the good that God has put within.
It does no good to read God's Word, and understand it, if we are unwilling to do as
He asks us to do, if we remain unwilling to change.
  

Do We Really Trust Jesus?

Psalm 37:5

"Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass."

Oftentimes we believe ourselves to be trusting in the Lord, when in truth, we're really not.Why do I say this? Think about it for a minute. Can a man look at both sides of a penny at the same time? Of course he can't. Well, he can't be trusting in the Lord, yet be worried at the same time; he's either trusting- or not.


In John 14:1 Jesus said "Let not your heart be troubled."
If we read this verse correctly, we'll see that the Lord is not giving us options here, but a command. "LET NOT, which means, put another way, DO NOT LET your heart be troubled.    I'm not sure how we manage to miss this, but we do. We start our day with prayer, have the best intentions probably, yet first time something disturbs our comfort zone,we fall right back into the worrying and being afraid mode.
  
How different our lives could be, if we would just take the Lord's Words to heart; if we would, from this moment on, view this verse in the way He desires us too. He promised us peace; it is ours for the taking, but we fail to embrace it. Our years of worrying, fretting, being anxious and fearful are deeply rooted. But dear ones, just because they are, we don't have to remain enslaved by them.

God is not going to do anything to keep our hearts from being troubled. That is our job. How do we  manage to do it? We manage by every single day, asking for the Lord's help. We do it by being absolutely honest, about how we've not truly believed in Him enough, how we've claimed to- yet continued to let worry and fear be the master of our lives.

If we ask the Lord to help us break this despicable habit of distrust; if we ask Him to enable us to have the faith of a little child, He will give us that faith. But we have to do our part; which is pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps every time we're discouraged. It means doing it over and over again, whenever fear, worries, insecurities, any negative thing threatens to get in between us and the Lord.

May He strengthen and bless each of you. It is always my prayer that you may always know the warmth of His love, the honor of His presence, and the tightness of His embrace.

Love you much,

Barb

I Understand

Song I wrote on October 3, 1967

(saved it in my 1967 Spiritual Journal).

I Understand


I understand how you feel when things trouble you,
I know that some things just seem to hard to bear,
When I knelt in the Garden of Gethsemene

I could not feel my Father's presence there.
I know the way your heart fills with grief - with sorrow,
That it feels to much for a mere man,
When I carried that big cross, I felt then just like you,

So you see, I do really understand.

I understand how you feel with many burdens,
My shoulders too carried some so hard to bear,
And when the ones I depended on deserted me,

I felt alone, nobody with me seemed to care.
I too have known the agony of endless waiting,
And for you who are just a mere man,

Shouldn't lean on your own understanding, 

Lean on me, you can see, I understand.

Have a blessed day, my friends. Remember how faithful, how dependable our Lord is. He is coming back: He promised -always keeps His word.

Be good to others- and yourselves too.
Love you much,

 

Seek And Ye Shall Find

From my July, 2003 Spiritual Journal.

Luke 11:9
"And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you: Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."


Throughout the  past few years I've had many people write me regarding their unanswered prayers; serious prayers about serious problems. They couldn't understand why so many of their prayers were left unanswered. For many years I wondered the same thing.
     I believed in God. I loved Him. Yet, when i was facing problems that were overwhelming me and turned to Him for help, there was nothing but silence.
I went through some difficult years, years of crying myself to sleep, of being discouraged and sad, of feeling extremely inadequate. I felt myself to be a failure as a Christian- just could not get it right.

   One day, I was meditating upon my life, and the sorrows connected to it. I determined that I would not accept that God didn't care what happened to me; decided to study His Word at great length; study harder and longer than I ever had. My former method of study was to  read a verse and do a lesson about what I felt God wanted me to learn from it, what He was telling me. But while studying one day I came across Luke 11:9; found myself reading it over and over again. I studied it totally different than I had before. I took each individual word in the verse and made a mental note of its definition. Doing this opened my eyes for the first time; enabled me to understand (why) so many of my prayers had been unanswered.
    "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss."
I'd definitely asked amiss. I'd prayed about my problems, my needs, which at the time were all about myself. I wanted help with my children, wanted extra money so I could better care for my children. I prayed to feel better, for a good nights sleep, prayed for my family and friends and my enemies too.
 
  ...SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND.
I was overlooking the most precious gem in the universe. My prayers were not bad prayers, and God DID want to help me. But I'd narrowed my interest to what concerned me- not God. If we want prayers answered we must first get our priorities straight. We must first (seek to find God); we may know Him and love Him, but how often do we seek His company? We may do our lessons, attend church, pay tithes, pray regularly , help the poor, and perhaps even attend some seminars, but how excited do we get when we know it's time for our 1-to-1 with the Lord?
    Are we still thirsty for His Word, like when we first asked Him into our hearts, or have we become smugly indifferent- so satisfied with our spiritual life that we don't miss our private time with Him? We must not allow indifference to settle upon us. We can never give another person that which we have found, but we can make him desire to have what he sees in us.

"Knock And It Shall Be Opened Unto You"
 We must draw nearer to God. It says Knock...so the door is closed. We get nervous while waiting; become aware of what's really going on within us. We might not kill, but we're gossipers and liars; we might not steal, but we commit adultery; we might go to church and pay tithe, but we're stubborn, rude, unkind, and self-righteous; we might do our Bible lessons and pray at the family altar, but we have these hidden things nobody knows about except God.|We start to think how dirty our hands are; how dark our hearts, and now we began to truly desire for the door to open, truly desire to be closer to God, recognize now, while facing ourselves just how desperately we need Him.

   We knock a little louder- the door does not open. We stand there, sick at heart, so discouraged the river has begun to rise in our eyes. "I must purify my heart" The words float across our mind and we began to pray, more earnestly than ever before. We begin to think about ourselves differently; with honesty, perhaps for the first time in our lives. Now we gaze inwardly- deeply, at our true self. HE sees us with loving eyes, but we are ashamed and disgusted to discover we're not what we've always believed ourselves to be. We, in our honesty, began to grieve for the darkness of our hearts, for the hypocrisy we've lived with, and began to cry aloud for the door to open.
 
It does not come easy, knocking at the door, having discovered the man/woman, we really are. But we dig deep within ourselves to find courage, and having found a small measure of it, we knock as loudly as we can, and mercifully the door opens.

Faith honors God- God honors our faith.

I've written this entry out in this manner because it is what I experienced this week.

  

The Bread of Life

Matthew 4:4

"But he answered and said, "It is written. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

Deuteronomy 8:3
"And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live."

Bread of itself does not feed the whole of a man; it keeps him alive only. To live means to be alive, to have movement in our lives; to think, plan, act out. God does not say we need only bread; he says man shall not live by bread alone, which indicates that a man needs something more.

The Scriptures say (every word), so we know that we need God's wisdom if we are to understand how we are to live.

Proverbs 3:1, 2 tells us to keep God's commandments so that he can bless us with long life and peace. We are to hold tightly to mercy and truth; to bind them upon our necks, to write them upon the tables of our hearts.

Proverbs 3:5, 6 tells us to trust in the Lord with all our heart; to trust in Him, not ourselves. It tells us that if, in all our ways we acknowledge Him, he will direct our paths.

 Fear is one of Satan's favorite weapons, and for many years he used this weapon against me.
    I've always been, before finding the Lord, a fearful, insecure person. When I was that fearful person, I found night time very frightening- sleep an elusive thing because of the nightmares. After Jesus became Lord of my heart and life? Well, everything changed. I discovered the truth about his WORD, that there is LIFE in it..literal life.
     As I began to memorize Bible verses, the fear began to fade. One day I realized that fear was no longer running my life. It no longer runs my life but  does raise its ugly head once in awhile. Since Johnny's death, seven and a half months ago, I began having trouble sleeping again- the horrible dreams began to return.
    I was prepared this time. As soon as I began to feel afraid I'd say Proverbs 3:24 out loud "When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and they sleep shall be sweet." My sleep was.

Isn't God wonderful? I love him so very much. He remembers our frame, that we are but dust; has provided an exit door we can use when we feel hemmed in by life's trials.
     When we find ourselves afraid, discouraged, lonely, feeling rejected, angry, resentful- any negative thing, we don't have to remain in that state. All we have to do is walk away from what we're feeling, just have to use the exit door (Christ).

Let's remember, when we prepare our meals, that God felt it necessary, to make us know, that bread alone is not enough to sustain us. If we find ourselves unable to cope with the trials of life, perhaps we've forgotten what God wanted us to know.

Hope each of you had a wonderful day today, that you didn't miss the SHINY moments God sent you. I'm appreciating, and praising God, for the freedom that is mine through Christ, and thanking Him too, for those who gave their lives to protect us- and for those, who are at this very moment, at the other side of the world, doing what they have to in order to keep us safe. Please don't forget to include them in your prayers.

Love you much,
Barb

Thou Remainest

Hebrews 1:11

If we traveled throughout the world, we'd see numberless individuals sitting alone in  bed, in a rocking chair, in a mansion, a motel room, on a park bench, or perhaps in a cardboard box shoved against a tall, cold building, and each individual is crying.
You and I cry too when life becomes unusually difficult, when we're dealing with health issues, when we've lost a loved one, when our deepest hopes and dreams disappear like sand between our fingers.
 
On these darkest of times, I love to go to my Bible. The Lord never fails to speak to my heart, never fails to fill up those empty, hurting places so deep within me. I was reading Hebrews 1:11 and those two words Thou Remainest, in the middle of the verse glittered like stars on the blackest of night. Thou Remainest and doesn't HE? Hasn't he always, just as promised? He has! It's just that we forget he is beside us. Our aches and pains, the crazy weather, the lack of sleep, our blue moods, all these have our attention. 

How different things could be, if we'd not forget that just beyond our vision is the One who loves us so dearly, the God Of All Comfort. What a wonderful realization, to know that even as we're needing the Lord, HE, knowing how much we'd need him remained. How different things would be if we'd not forget where the Lord is.
If we would remember, our peace would be true peace, would be a pond without a ripple in it.


May that promised peace of Christ be yours today and every day. May you continue to be honored by His presence, to experience the warmth of His love and the tightness of His embrace.


Love you much,
Barb