Earth Is Crammed With Heaven-Live Barefoot!

The Lord has been so generous in walking me through so many lessons, that He knew I would soon need on days like today. Today I'm drawing from all of them. Today I'm wrestling with feelings of frustration, disappointment, sadness, disregarded, bitterness, anger. I could go on. The prayer of my heart tonight is Psalm 51:10, that the Lord would see me and do the work of repairing the part of my spirit that is disquieted within me. To make my spirit "steadfast" implies the act of directing or making something ready for a specific purpose . In a theological sense, it often refers to God's sovereign action in establishing His purposes and plans. Hasn't He prepared me for dealing with all of these emotions recently? Isn't He kind and gracious to have given me this as a practice run at applying all these hard lessons? It's almost like an open book test, isn't it? I have to smile even while feeling so heavy hearted. So let me review, what He has taught me....

 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 ...