Speak Lord

I decided to create a new category called “Journal” for when the Lord speaks. I need to keep track because I’m challenged with remembering. He is always speaking, but I’m not always hearing. When I do hear, I’m not always listening. When I am listening, I’m not always doing. I easily forget His guidance for my life. I get these flashes of the Lord speaking – I say, “Speak Lord”, He does, and then they are forgotten. When the Lord speaks, it is always extremely important. I have to start keeping track and I pray that journaling will help. Here is my first –

The following song, came to mind after I said to a friend “Peace be with you” –

After listening to the song, I opened my email and read an email by the late Pastor Wilkerson. Oddly enough, the devotion is from Pastor Wilkerson’s son who is sharing his dad’s journaling notes that were never published –

After the Word tells us that it is God who makes wars to cease, this is added: “Be still and know that I am God…” (Psalm 46:10).

The Hebrew word for “still” is raphah, which means to cease; let alone; become weak, feeble. It is from the root rapha, which mean to mend and be made thoroughly whole by the hand of a physician.

How thoroughly consistent the Word of God is. He makes wars to cease and until he finishes his work, we are to cease our self-righteous efforts, trust everything into his hands, confess our weaknesses and feebleness, and trust our future and restoration into the hands of Christ, our Great Physician.
Loving believer, is your inner conflict tearing you apart? You may be buffeted by Satan, but he cannot hurt or destroy you. Most likely you are being stripped down in preparation for a deeper revelation of the cross so you can be made ready for greater service for God.

You are like Peter, who was stripped of everything before going to Pentecost. See this great man of God wandering aimlessly over the Judean hills—at rock bottom. Peter once walked on water and helped feed multitudes miraculously. He experienced the actual glory of God and was a blessed, prominent, useful, Christ-loved servant. But he sinned grievously, failing the Lord as few others did, and afterward, he wept and grieved, thinking he had lost his salvation and his ministry.

“What is wrong with me?” he must have asked himself over and again. “Why did I have no power or strength when temped? Why no moral reserves—no will to resist the enemy? Why did I have to be the one to fall? How could a man of God do such a horrendous thing to his Lord? How could I have preached to others when I have no power in a crisis?”

God did not cause Peter’s failure, but great good came out of it. It was a part of the stripping of God’s man—permitted to reveal what was rooted deep in the inner man. Only failure could expose the pride and self-sufficiency. Failure broke Peter down and revealed to him his need for absolute dependence on his Lord for everything, including his purity and righteousness.

It is in the shadow of the cross that we endure our greatest temptation and failures and then break through to resurrection!

Then a friend posted a new blog entry –

I had a dream, contrived, it seemed.
You were there, in gasoline.
The song you sang, a whispered cry.
The words ignite, the flame divine.
Within your eyes, a vision lost.
Within your mind, a vessel tossed.
Within your heart, an empty space,
In which to harbor sad embrace.

I saw it clearly.
The script of a thousand hands written upon your mind.
I felt it merely.
As though they were mine.

In the dream, the fire fades.
Expecting black, and tones of gray,
I blow the smoke and ash away.
Reveal.

My eyes are scorn, but I can see,
The figure of integrity.
Your embers glow, you speak to me.
I feel.

I am here, to offer you,
A solace piece of knowledge true.
In this life, we often find,
Ourselves in fractured states of mind.
Eventually our bodies heal,
And shed away the skin surreal.
Along the ground our feet will mold,
the path to our enlightened soul.
Trust in time, for I have seen,
You defy the gasoline.

Finally, the scripture I came across –

Proverbs 26:11 As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

Matthew 6:24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

1 Kings 18:21 And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.

Galatians 1:10 For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.