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Bach_Rachs_TX
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Name: Lauree Beth
Interests: Growing in Christ, music, conversations, playing the pipe organ, reading :), playing baseball, enjoying the outdoors
Expertise: Not anything....yet.
Occupation: Writer, musician
Industry: Currently media
Message: message me
Member Since:
6/8/2006
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|  | Currently Watching
Amazing Grace
By Ioan Gruffudd, Romola Garai, Benedict Cumberbatch, Albert Finney, Michael Gambon
see related |
Greetings, fair denizens! We meet again! The link to "Facets of Life" is now working! lbethstedje.blogspot.com I sit here tonight watching "Amazing Grace" and just saw the scene where Willaim Pitt, on his deathbed, tells William Wilberforce, "We have agreed on a succession...I will be replaced by Lord Grandville as prime minister and the foreign secretary will be Charles Fox...and Wilber, Fox is already secured a guarantee from the palace. They will remain neutral on the issue of the slave trade. Next time, you will be pushing at an open door." Do you have a door the Lord has placed in your life? Are you waiting for it to open? "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds." Hebrews 10:24 "Never think that God's delays are God's denials. Hold on , hold fast, hold out. Patience is genius." (I'll have to locate who said that.) | | |
| Hello, friendly people of the world!
Last semester I neglected my poor xanga, and this semester, I shall not promise entries of a more frequency. Always under-promise and over-deliver, right? ;) However, I did start another blog: lbethstedje.blogspot.com, called "Facets of Life" for school. Please feel free to leave comments or questions on it. If the link does not work here, please let me know.
Tomorrow is Dad's birthday! He's a great dad. If you don't know him, you should. :)
What is God teaching you about life right now? I'd like to hear if you want to share.
Life is good; God is better. Take care, ya'll! | | |
| My Soul Hungered-Kurt Bestor Oh, my soul hungered,
My heart cried out:
"Please Lord, release me
From pain and from doubt."
Oh, my soul hungered
The moment I knelt down to pray,
And felt all my doubts Wash away.
Oh, my soul hungered,
He heard my cry.
The voice of the Lord
Spoke peace to my mind.
Oh, my soul hungered-
Things that were old became new
When I learned to feel
What I already knew.
With all my heart,
With all my soul,
I wrestled before the Lord
To make my life whole.
He filled my hunger-
He fed my soul.
He fed my soul.
The truth that belonged
To everyone else
Is now a sacred part of myself.
Oh, I found out what I could not find,
When I heard with my heart
What I knew in my mind.
With all my heart,
With all my soul,
I wrestled before the Lord
To make my life whole.
He filled my hunger-
He fed my soul.
He fed my soul.
Oh, my soul hungered. | |
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| Unforgettable
Jill Carattini
It is tempting to look at the ancients of Israel, particularly as they wandered and grumbled in a desert for forty years, and wonder at their behavior. After being participants in the mouth-dropping events at the Red Sea, how could they doubt God's presence among them, his power, his concern, his plan for their lives? Did they really believe they could be as touched by a golden ornament, molded at their own hands, as they were with the living God? It is tempting to keep their behavior at a healthy distance, as if in its ancient context, it is wholly un-relatable to my own. But imagining that Israel's actions are in complete contrast with mine, I repeatedly discover, is a stretch by any imagination. The behavior of the Israelites is still among us; at times, is it frustratingly close to home.
Though the events of Egypt could have been held at a distance by the psalmist, the writer stood poised to remember the events of Israel's past so as to see his present situation clearly. As if forging it in his memory, the psalmist speaks bluntly of Israel's experience in the desert. "Then they despised the pleasant land; they did not believe his promise" (106:24).
What does it take to come to despise what once seemed promising? What would it take for you to refuse to believe the one thing you want to believe most? When hopes are dashed in trying places, I don't believe their reaction to the desert is so far removed from our own. The Israelites were not unusually slow in understanding; they were perhaps no more stubborn than you or me. But they were entirely disappointed; all they longed for seemed altogether unreachable. They could not believe that the wilderness was the way to Canaan. They could not see how their current trouble was consistent with love or could work for good in the end. Who among us cannot at some point relate?
Whether people of faith or not, we long for someone or something or some place that can make right what is so obviously wrong in this world. And yet, carrying ideas of what that someone or something will look like, and not finding it, we end up doubting the promising thought we once held on to. When the route we see in front of us seems irreconcilable with the place we thought we were going, we come to despise what once seemed hopeful, holding in its place shattered expectations, fear, and anger.
When Jesus healed a man who was called Legion because he was possessed with so many demons, the townspeople had a peculiar response. Mark describes the scene and its aftermath as a crowd began to gather. "When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid" (5:15).
This man was someone they were familiar with; the crowd actually recognized him. He was the one they saw dodging in and out of nearby caves, living as a total recluse, cast out of society, an outcast even of his own mind. Yet, seeing the one they were used to avoiding suddenly dressed and in his right mind evoked within them, not delight or amazement, but fear. No one suspected that this was a shadow of all they longed for themselves. Seeing Jesus, the instrument of healing--the one who set right what was wrong--they were afraid. And they begged him to leave.
As the Israelites beheld the desert and the townspeople beheld Legion, both missed what God was doing because they were troubled by the unexpected. Do we not still oscillate between being too uncomfortable to trust and being too comfortable to believe? How do we guard against missing our deepest hope, though we fear the unexpected? How do we not come to despise what once seemed promising, though we stand broken in the wilderness?
Like the psalmist we stand poised to remember, seeing God in history, seeing ourselves, seeing today. Though I am tempted to keep the behavior of those who have gone before me at a distance, I am comforted by the proximity of God throughout their story, continually drawing them unto Himself. Though they grumbled and failed and begged him to leave, God continued to lead them, in mercy breaking each idol they put before Him, prying from their hands the things that blocked their view of the promise He would not forget.
Jill Carattini is senior associate writer at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia. | | |
| Do you know that God has really blessed the Texas Panhandle this year? He has sent abundant rain this summer; even last Saturday, God sent a soaking 4.5 inch rain to us. The farmers cannot believe the wheat harvest that just ended; a cousin cut for a man near Perryton and that man's dryland got 100 bushels to an acre! Many years farmers are happy with 35 bushels an acre. It's been an incredible blessing just to see how God's blessed all the farmers this year.
What has God sent you this last week or month? I am grateful for many things, even the "bad" days or things I do not understand. I am slowly learning I don't need to understand everything, but to simply trust God. Not necessarily without questioning, "Why," but just accepting His confidence and peace in all things, even when it seems impossible do so or that anything good could be ahead. "You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal." Isaiah 26:3-4
How many times do I let myself get distracted, or think my "trial" should be something else? "This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it." Isaiah 30:15 God is faithful despite my doubt, fear, and unfaithfulness. He knows our hearts, "This then is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our minds at rest in His presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from Him anything we ask, because we obey His commands and do what pleases Him. And this is His command: to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us." 1 John 3:19-23 "The one who called you is faithful and he will do it." 1 Thess. 4:24 I may not know what "it" is, but He only asks me to believe and obey.
"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." Phil. 4:4-7 | | |
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