Earth Is Crammed With Heaven-Live Barefoot!

 Monday, April 14, 2025 5:00 a.m. Yesterday I mentioned that the discourse between Moses and the LORD that takes place in Exodus 33:12-34:9 has been lingering in my mind.  A few days ago, I came across an old post from Katie Davis Majors  that referenced 1 Samual 12:20 & 22 "Do not be afraid,” Samuel replied. “You have done all that is evil, yet do not turn away from the Lord with all your heart… for the sake of His great name the Lord will not reject His people, because the Lord was pleased to make you His own." So much is said here, but what caught my attention was the phrase, "for the sake of His great name." It's in Exodus 34 that the LORD tells us His name and expounds on it a bit further than what He had told Moses back in Exodus 3:14-15, "God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the G...

Sunday, April 13, 2025 9:30p.m. The Spirit called me to the exchange that took place between Moses and the LORD in Exodus 33 and 34 , several weeks ago (March 20th) and it has lingered there in the back of my mind ever since. This morning the Unveiling Mercy devotion dealt with the way Moses' face shone after speaking "face to face" with the Lord.  And it was no small thing then, whenever the Instagram account of Ruth de Jesus  made the connection also to this place in Scripture to Romans 3:23. Paul tells us, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." The Greek word is hustereó and it means  to lack , to fall short, to be in need , to fail.    In Exodus 34:6 we read all that we're lacking and all that we're in desperate need of when the LORD proclaims his very nature. He is, "The Lord—the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generatio...

Thursday, April 10, 2025 10:30 a.m. The more and more I read and study God's word the more fascinating I find it, and Him.  Today my Jesus Calling devotion referenced  Psalm 40:2  "He lifted me up from the pit of despair , out of the miry clay; He set my feet upon a rock, and made my footsteps firm."  Because of the conversation I've been having with the Lord in my prayer journal, this verse called to me. Not because of personal despair, but because of intercessory prayer He's called me to offer for others.  The Hebrew language is so intriguing to me. I was thinking today about how often, my time with the Lord and in His Word, feels a little like an Escape Room. I enter into the Word but in order to find the deeper meaning I have to search for clues. There's plenty of surface information, but there's often a deeper hidden meaning, if you take the time to search it out. It's also very multifaceted, having many applications.  I'm learning that the H...

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...