How God longs to cover us with His feathers and protect us from ourselves. The things of God are spiritual and can only be understood in the Spirit. The flesh will always fight the Spirit.
We can be more concerned with the things of life…and spend little time with the eternal truths of it.
As Christians we need to know the scriptures in order for our faith to grow. The Lord is gracious and the goodness of God draws us to know more and more about Him. The deep things of God are only understood by those who have understood the history of God’s intervention with mankind.
The indwelling of Holy Spirit is our teacher. He takes the written Word of God and helps us to comprehend them.
We sin because we are sinners. We are made righteous only in Christ.
1 Corinthians 2:10 But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. 11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
God is faithful and when we ask for understanding He answers. He reveals the deep things by His Holy Spirit for He searches them and explains them to us as believers. They cannot be learned in the flesh but by that which Holy Spirit reveals to us.
The natural man cannot receive the deep things of God because they are spiritually discerned. We learn spirit to Spirit.
James 3:9-10 (ESV) "With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.”I
The Greek word for "bless" in these verses is eulogeō, which means "to praise" or "to say a good word." The word "curse" here is katarōmetha in Greek, and this doesn't refer to using a bad word or simply insulting a person; it means "to condemn" or "to wish evil on a person."
When God said He created humans in His image (Genesis 1:26-27), He wasn't just talking about other people. He was talking about you, and He was talking about me. God created us in His image, and He calls us "very good" (Genesis 1:31). When we use unkind words about ourselves, we're cursing His creation in the same way as if we slander another person.
When we're tempted to speak negatively about ourselves, we can remember and pray Psalm 139:13-14: "You [God] formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well." First5
Did you know that the first thing God called holy was not a place? It was time. The time to rest. In rest, in quiet, in Sabbath, we may be able to see prayer as living the moment with open hands and open heart. Open and awake to the wealth of life's quirky offerings.
In that space my heart can expand, to receive those parts of my life, all those parts... the messy, the uncertain, the doubts, the insecurity, the shadows. Just as Jesus made space for the disenfranchised. So too, there is room in my life and heart for the fragile things. And the permission to see and embrace our inherent beauty—to be embraced by the gift of grace.
I do know we don't cut ourselves enough slack.
And I do know that when Grace appears, it's best if we don't analyze it, but just... pause, and let it seep into the core of our being. The reality of true Grace is that it does not waiver or diminish. It does not depend upon our response, performance, attitude, faith or checkered past.
It just is.
Why? Because Grace heals not by taking shame away, but by removing the one thing our shame makes us fear the most: rejection.
Yes... Because we are loved we have value.
Steve Garnaas-Holmes;
“God, teach me to love myself
as you have loved me:
to cherish myself, to delight in my soul,
to appreciate my journey, to care for my well-being,
to commit to my wholeness.
Give me grace to respect and nurture myself,
to offer myself both challenge and rest.
Teach me to forgive myself, to be gentle with myself,
to believe in myself and your hidden greatness in me.
Trusting in my belovedness, I am free and at peace:
in need but not not needy, not compulsive, not afraid,
not easily seduced by either pride or despair.
Teach me to love myself
even as you do.
Deep Blessings,”
Pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes;
Sabbath Moments
Micah 1:8-9
8 Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked; I will make a wailing like the jackals And a mourning like the ostriches, 9 For her wounds are incurable. For it has come to Judah; It has come to the gate of My people— To Jerusalem. The New King James Version
When the Assyrian king Sennacherib invaded Jerusalem in 701 bc, he surrounded the city of Jerusalem. Faithlife Study Bible
Micah’s immediate response to God’s message was an overwhelming sense of dread. Micah’s words describe mourning rites in which outer garments were laid aside in deep humility. The mourning person thought no longer about himself but only about the calamity that had overcome his senses. At first the reference is to the wounds of Israel, the northern kingdom. But the disease spread to Judah. The pronoun My refers to both the prophet and His Lord. The distress of the prophet is a mirror of the distress of God. The NKJV Study Bible
The prophet laments that Israel’s case is desperate. Gratify not those that make merry with the sins or with the sorrows of God’s Israel. Roll thyself in the dust, as mourners used to do; let every house in Jerusalem become a house of Aphrah, “a house of dust.”
When God makes the house dust it becomes us to humble ourselves to the dust under his mighty hand. Many places should share this mourning. The names have meanings which pointed out the miseries coming upon them; thereby to awaken the people to a holy fear of Divine wrath.
All refuges but Christ, must be refuges of lies to those who trust in them; other heirs will succeed to every inheritance but that of heaven; and all glory will be turned into shame, except that honour which cometh from God only. Sinners may now disregard their neighbours’ sufferings, yet their turn to be punished will some come. Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary
Isaiah 8:7–8
Now therefore, behold, the Lord brings up over them
The waters of the River, strong and mighty—
The king of Assyria and all his glory;
He will go up over all his channels
And go over all his banks.
He will pass through Judah,
He will overflow and pass over,
He will reach up to the neck;
And the stretching out of his wings
Will fill the breadth of Your land, O Immanuel.
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