Psalm 68:1-10

Psalm 68:1-10
The Message (MSG)


  God is on the move!
  Moving has been an interesting process.  We've discovered lots of things we don't use, possessions we forgot we had.  Perhaps now we can put them to good use, taking advantage of such things.
  With God, we don't have to worry about his power and sovereignty being wasted,stored away in the back of a drawer somewhere.  God is on the move!  His power will be used to vanquish his foes and rescue his beloved.  Even now, God is at work in the world, stirring hearts and tearing down evil.  Perhaps you get overwhelmed and despair at the work of evil, and while it can be frightening, trust God that he is tearing down evil's house, plank by plank, and one day not a trace of it shall remain.
  God is on the move!

May you trust in his power and join in his victory march!

Psalm 67

Psalm 67 
Amplified Bible (AMP) 

  What does it mean for you to be blessed?
  If we restrain our thinking of blessing to one particular avenue, such as money or good relationships, we limit God and make our understanding of God very dependent upon one outcome.  If I end up without money or a relationship falls apart, suddenly I'm left wondering if God is still good.
  If, however, I simply believe the Bible when it says that God is pouring blessings into my life and I trust that God will do the wisest thing for me, I'm free to understanding blessing in new ways and also to search for blessings in every situation, even the bleakest of times.
  By believing that God is always blessing us, we no longer let the world set the terms for how God loves us.  We allow God's wild and undefinable love to consume us each and every day in new and wondrous ways, and we can cry out in hope that the world might come to know such great love!

May you sense God's blessings today

Stuff

  Well, that was different than I expected.

  In preparation for the big move, we got a quote or two from a full-service agency, but going on the assumption that I could drive a truck in a straight line without hitting anything, I rented a 26 foot moving truck and hired folks in Chattanooga & Columbus to load and unload the truck.  I couldn't rent anything bigger than a 26 foot truck, and about a week after arranging the rental, I started wondering if there would be enough room on the truck for all our stuff.  Brad, the head of Bizzy Bee Movers (They were really, really good, if you're in Chattanooga and looking for movers), said it might be close as to whether or not everything would fit in the truck.

  When moving day came, it wasn't close.

  Not even by a little.

  Fortunately, Penske offers unlimited mileage.  So I drove to Columbus.  Then drove back to Chattanooga.  Then back to Columbus.  1,400 miles in all.  (Big thanks to John Brandon, who did the first two legs of the journey and a whole lot of work on either end.  I don't know if I would have made it without him.)

  In the end, I'm left with one clear, overwhelming fact:  we own too much stuff.

  It's odd.  We didn't think we had an overwhelming amount of stuff.  We don't spend recklessly.  We try not to buy extra things.  But over the years, it just accumulated, and we didn't throw much out.  Much of the stuff comes from having small children, and I had a lot of boxes of books, but so much of it was just stuff, stuff that wasn't particularly meaningful to either of us, stuff that we weren't in a big hurry to get rid of but that we didn't necessarily use.  Rachel and I both had a prevailing sense of shame when we looked in the back of that first truck and realized that it wasn't big enough for everything we own.  We thought about the kids we sponsor in Africa and South America, wondering what they might say about our over-abundance of stuff.  I wondered if Abraham debated what size truck to rent when God called him into the unknown.  I wondered what Jesus might say to the disciples who showed up with two 26 foot trucks in tow.

  So what do we do now?  We've talked a lot about seriously evaluating the amount of stuff, about giving a lot away and being very careful about how we accumulate in the future.  The 2 boxes of books I have to give away are a trifling amount, but it's a start.  The move was eye-opening for us, and we hope that it will create some momentum to live more simply, that our stuff might not become a burden to weigh us down and prevent us from moving forward into the future God has prepared for our family.  May we not be so concerned about stuff and be more concerned about having open hands for what might come our way.

Psalm 66:8-12

Psalm 66:8-12
21st Century King James Version (KJ21) 

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  This reminds me of the passage where Jesus is talking about good vines being pruned.  We like to think that God's love means nothing bad will ever happen to us, but I don't think that's true.  It certainly doesn't follow with most of Scripture's teachings.  It's an easy thing to think, but what the entire witness of Scripture seems to teach is that the bad things that happen will not triumph over us, they will not overcome, they will not be our end.  Silver is tried in the fire to burn away the impurities, and God will use adversity in our life to bring us to a place of total dependence on him.  The idols will fall away as they prove unable to prevent calamity.  Only God will remain, faithful as ever.

May you depend on God's strength alone