Earth Is Crammed With Heaven-Live Barefoot!

 Wednesday, April 7, 2025  Today's lesson is a continuation of what the Spirit has been speaking to my heart. Trusting Him and having a willingness to accept whatever He brings my way, with gratitude and to consider viewing it as a growth opportunity. And how the best way to do that is to be in constant conversation with Him. I started the morning, again with Unveiling Mercy , by Chad Bird. Today he briefly referenced part of the lesson from March 28th, how worship is meant to be full-bodied. Today he shows us how it's also full-sensory, as he teached us about the incense burned that represented the prayers of the Israelites. Then he ended with a prayer from P salm 141:2 , "Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice !"  I have a note written in the margin of my Bible at Psalm 141:2 sending me to 2 Chronicles 29 where the Lord convicted me about 2015 whenever I shut the door of my prayer closet in frustratio...

Today I woke up with a terrible migraine. I don't know if it's my new blood pressure medication, the reduced dosage of my thyroid medication, or the cold front that moved through overnight, or quite possibly a combination of any of these things.  I'm also struggling quite a bit more than usual with my stomach. And I just feel much more depleted than normal. So, I missed church. This often causes me to struggle with dogmatic thinking. But the Spirit whispered to me "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" and I felt a sense of peace.  As I began my morning routine, it was done with sunglasses to ease the pain my eyes felt from the bright light required to see as I brewed my tea and doled out my morning medication.  I eventually made my way to my Bible study desk and the Lord was gracious to meet me there. The feeling is like no other whenever there is just a cohesiveness of thought and insight that connects from one devotion to the next. This morning...

So much of Scripture is written with an abundance of allegory. Today's Our Daily Bread is the story of what took place immediately after the crossing of the Red Sea. The story is found in Exodus 15:22-27 where the Israelites journey away from the Red Sea; the place where they had been delivered from their bondage of slavery, brought safely through the waters of the Red Sea by way of divine miracle. They immediately run into problems. They couldn't find water for three whole days and then whenever they finally did, it was bitter . Here we begin to see the allegory take shape. This is our first stop on our faith journey, after hearing to Good News, that our sins are forgiven because of the redemptive and sacrificial love of God's only Son, Jesus. We've been saved from our bondage to sin. We've passed safely through the waters of judgment and have arrived safely on the other side. We're invigorated. Elated. On cloud-9. Then hardship comes. This is a pivotal mome...

 Yesterday's post was long and meandering, just as much of my time being led by the Spirit is. Proverbs 25:2 says, "It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out." How privileged I feel to be able to have the time and resources available to search, pray, read and study for lengthy amounts of time.  Like I pointed out yesterday, its difficult for me to ascertain a beginning point. But I think where I tried to begin yesterday, will serve to make the point I'm trying to make.  1 John 5:20 says,  "And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true--in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life."  This verse is one of many that reinforces that understanding comes from God. Jesus himself said in Matthew 11:25  “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and ...

I'm unsure of where to begin this post because it feels as if I need to back track to a previous day in order to encompass everything I feel like the Spirit is teaching me. I have had a very intense and intimate two weeks or so with the Lord. My conversation with Him has been the closest to "constant" as I think it's ever been, making it difficult to find a "beginning reference point" whenever the conversation has been so fluid and interweaving, with one's day's focus piggy-backing on the day before, but not without a new focus of its own. It's been an amazing web of delight.  But for now, I think I want to begin with Friday, March 28th. We'll see how that goes. I expect we'll probably jump back even further in time in the process of explaining the chain of events, or the way the Spirit moves during our time together. For optimal understanding, I need to inform you of  how my typical day with the Lord evolves. It begins with a Dollar Tree...