As I have been on our trip across America, I have often watched God’s word come alive as I see the beauty all around me that He has created.

That was so true this particular morning. I was in Wyoming surrounded by beautiful mountains and cliffs. As I opened my Bible to my praise reading for that day (Psalm 90:1-2), it happened to be about mountains. : ) I love it when God makes our lessons so tied in to what we are doing at the moment.

I wanted to share the beauty of that moment with you, so I read the scripture and recorded a prayer on video with the camera pointed at God’s awesome creation. I pray it will bless you in your day today!

Pray on!

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“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Genesis 1:1

Creating is a very godlike thing to do.

I like creating many different things such as scarves, hats, home decor, watercolors, blogs, skits and memes. I am also legendary for creating my delicious  secret-recipe Fresh Strawberry Cream Cake—made from scratch. Despite my many creative endeavors, God is the master creator. In fact, we can say, creating is His specialty.

In the first book of the Bible, front and center, we learn of God’s penchant for creating … God created the heavens and the earth. Bara’, the Hebrew word used for create in verse 1 means “to shape, fashion or create, always with God as the subject.” Only God has the power of creation. 

And every time God creates, man is the beneficiary.

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What does He create?

Planets, galaxies, flowers, mountains, animals and oceans. He also creates relationships, opportunities, legacies, covenants, circumstances, dreams, hope, love, joy, peace and faith … the list is as endless as He is eternal.

From what does God create?

I like to create with the freshest ingredients, the finest fabrics, and the most vibrant watercolors. But God can create from nothing; the Great I AM simply speaks and something is. His Words drip with life and overflow with the breath of the Spirit. At other times God gets His hands dirty and creates beautiful valuable things from common ingredients like dust, dirt and clay … things such as man. This is good news for those of who’ve felt like dirt, or have been treated like dirt or who’ve been the dirt beneath someone’s feet. God creates beautiful things from dirt.

Bara’ also means to create by cutting away.

At first glance creating and cutting seem to be inharmonious. Can these two concepts possibly complement each other? Think for a moment. We can cut away activities from our schedule to create room for God. God creates in us a clean heart by cutting away sin and sickness. God cuts covenant with us and creates a way for us to be with Him forever in eternity.

The Creation Remix

God speaks His Word and scatters seeds of life into the dirt and clay of our hearts and souls. Damaged marriages, broken relationships, forgotten dreams, and tired ambitions receive new life from a fresh sowing of God’s Word. Will we nurture the seeds with Living Water?

God speaks and dead things spring forth with new life.

Nothing becomes something. Ugly becomes beautiful. Useless becomes useful.

Shadows to substance. Death to life …  a Lazarus awakening.

He is the potter and we are the clay. He forms, shapes, smooths, and fires us in the furnace of adversity until we emerge, covered with the fingerprints of God. Pure. Beautiful. Useful.

Action Points:

1. Speak His Word. God has instilled His Word with life and power and has given us the privilege of speaking His Word into our situations and challenges. What area of your life needs a redo? Your relationships? Your career? Find a Bible verse that applies to your current situation and pray it forward.
2. Create some margin. OK, you need this one … we ALL do. Stop saying you’ll be there in 10 minutes when you know it’ll take 20. Stop adding more stuff to your already too long to-do list. Everything takes longer than you think. Add ten minutes to every task on your list for today. If you have children add 20 extra minutes — for each child ; ).
3. Create something. Take some time today to create something. Create a poem, sketch a picture, write a blog post, try a new recipe, or create some time to take a nap, a walk or an afternoon off. And after you have created something, step back and say, “It is very good!”

Life is sweet. Create!

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Then he showed me another vision. I saw the Lord standing beside a wall that had been built using a plumb line. He was using a plumb line to see if it was still straight. And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?”

I answered, “A plumb line.”

And the Lord replied, “I will test my people with this plumb line. I will no longer ignore all their sins. The pagan shrines of your ancestors[a] will be ruined, and the temples of Israel will be destroyed; I will bring the dynasty of King Jeroboam to a sudden end.”                    Amos 7:7-9

~

(Just in case you’ve never used a plumb line, let me explain how it works. Basically a plumb line is a long string with a weight at the end. When you want to establish what is perfectly true or vertical, you suspend the string from the top of a structure and then let it unfurl itself so that the weight dangles straight down without touching the wall or object you’re trying to align.  When it stops moving the vertical line or true has been established. I used one years ago when I was wallpapering my kitchen.)

I am so taken with these scriptures today. I can just picture God  

a plumb line from his hand and then turning his gaze upon His children Israel to see how they line up. Now that makes me nervous. Why? Because I know I could very well be next on the test list!

Stickler for Perfection

Well, we can clearly see that God who created our world and everything in it is a stickler for perfection. We need only consider the beauty of creation in Genesis 1 to see that. Unfortunately, the perfect world God created didn’t last too long. Sin marred the garden and all of creation including people, and we haven’t been the same since. It bothered God that His world and His people were out of true.

At the stage of history that Amos finds himself in, the Israelites were a crooked mess. They had set up pagan shrines and were worshiping false gods, among many other things. We may wonder if they were helpless to do anything about it. After all, the perfect world God made was gone.

The simple answer is “No.”

God had given the Israelites a plumb line to align themselves with, and that plumb line was the law — the rules, regulations, commandments, worship, and sacrifices that God had taught them. This was the way for them to atone for their sins so that they could continue to stay in relationship with Him.  We can see that throughout the Old Testament, the Israelites spent a good amount of time in and out of true and suffering the consequences for it: wandering in the desert for 40 years, enduring the rule of evil kings, and being defeated and taken as captives to Babylon.

Throughout these many years, God sent prophets calling the Israelites to return to the Lord, to get back in true. When they obeyed the law, God would bless them. When they ignored the call to repentance, He would allow bad things like enemy attacks to draw them back to Him, to straighten them out. Sometimes they did. Many times they didn’t. Can’t you just see Israel swinging back and forth like a pendulum on a clock? Something had to give.

Finally, God is silent for 400 years. I can’t imagine going 400 years without hearing from God, but that’s what happened. The Israelites had to wait that long for the next plumb line to appear.

We’ll talk about that in How To Measure Up to God’s Standard, Part 2.

In the meantime, share your thoughts in the comments below about why the plumb line of the law didn’t work so well for the Israelites.

Pray on!

photo credit: Wayne Hatcher via photopin cc

“That you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;” Colossians 1:10

Happy New Year!

The start of a new year is always exciting, because I feel like I’ve got a clean slate ahead of me with lots of possibilities. One theme that has been running through my mind is that I want to live a life of purpose in 2012. Mary and I have jotted down some ways we’re going to try to do that this year, and we wanted to share those with you.

So, here’s the first four items on our list:

1. Get involved in something bigger than yourself. It’s easy to get so caught up in our own lives so that all we think about is ourselves and our situations. When we are going though a difficult time, we tend to think the world revolves around us and our situation because we are so inner focused. Having a cause that is outside of yourself is one of the best ways to maintain your stability and a healthy spiritual and mental outlook. It’s a wonderful antidote to depression.

Even if you are physically incapacitated, you can still be involved in world matters simply by praying. I know two women who are just about housebound because of health problems. One of them is actively involved in placing at-risk children in temporary housing, and the other one has a vibrant prayer ministry for people all around the world. Both of them do these activities from their homes.

Here’s a few ideas to get you started on finding a cause to be involved with:

•  Volunteer at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter.

• Extend a micro-loan to a struggling entrepreneur through Kiva and then pray for that person.

• Become a tutor for adults or children.

• Prepare a meal for shut-ins.

• Volunteer at your church.

• Pray for persecuted Christians. You can find information at Open Doors or Voice of the Martyrs.

• Mentor a person younger than you.

• Join something God may be calling you to like the choir, drama group or teen ministry at church.

• If you are housebound, ask some of your favorite ministries at your church if there are ways you can volunteer for them from your home. Maybe you could put together their monthly newsletter. Many ministries are also in desperate need of someone to handle grant writing for them. This is a skill that you can easily learn from your home through an online class. Here is a class that you pay for that teaches you the grant-writing process (http://www.ed2go.com/online-courses/grant-writing-a-to-z.html), but I’ve also seen free tutorials;  also often times the ministry itself will train you to do this if you volunteer for them.

2. Pray faithfully for your family. Sometimes we forget to pray for our families because we are busy praying for other people. Or, we may get discouraged if we don’t quickly see the changes we want to see. Make it a priority to pray for your family. Write down in a safe place detailed requests and perhaps some scripture that relates to the situation and then pray for them several times a week. Remember to record any changes you see in your family–and you– so that you have a record of God working in your lives.

3. Pick a Bible study and see it through to the end. I know I often start a new Bible study with enthusiasm, but half way through it, it can become hard to maintain that motivation. I’ve found that if I stick with it and finish the study, God always does a work in my life. Check out some studies from Beth Moore and Kay Arthur (Precepts) just to name a few to get you started.

4. Take a few minutes each day to connect with God through His creation. Have you ever tried keeping a nature journal? I’m not particularly artistic, but I really enjoyed this activity when I tried it a few years ago. It forces you to slow down and really see things. Study a snow flake. Set up a bird feeder and watch the birds for a few minutes each day. In the warmer months, grow some flower and vegetables. Learn the names of the different trees in your area.

You can keep a traditional nature journal by purchasing a blank artist’s notebook and colored pencils. Sketch as best you can what you see. Or maybe you want to try an online version. Take pictures with your digital camera and upload your pictures to an online gallery, such as Picasa Web Albums or Flickr. You can also use Mixbook, Walmart, Meijer, or any of the other myriad photo applications to make an actual printable book with your photos.

As you begin to observe the world around you, God’s hand prints become so much more noticeable, as does the verse from Ecclesiastes 3:1 “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.”

I’ll continue this series in the next blog post. If you have any of your own ideas to add, please leave us a message. Until then, pray on!

Image: vichie81 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net