Psalm 112, Living Bible

Psalm 112 in the Living Bible is so good. Unfortunately, the Living Bible is no longer being printed. So...I felt compelled to type up the psalm for you, so you'd have it/ and could share it with others. I've shared it with so many, that it's just one of THOSE psalms. So here you are:

Psalm 112

    Praise the Lord! For all who fear God and trust in him are blessed beyond expression.
Yes, happy is the man who delights in doing his commands.1
    His children shall be honored everywhere, for good men's sons have a special heritage.2
He himself shall be wealthy, and his good deeds will never be forgotten.3  When darkness overtakes him, light will come bursting in. He is kind and merciful 4 ---and all goes well for the generous man who conducts his business fairly. 5
    Such a man will not be overthrown by evil circumstances. God's constant care of him will make a deep impression on all who see it.6   He does not fear bad news, nor live in dread of what may happen. For he is settled in his mind that Jehovah God will take care of him.7  That is why he is not afraid, but can calmly face his foes.8  He gives generously to those in need. His deeds will never be forgotten. He shall have influence and honor. 9
   Evil-minded men will be infuriated when they see all this; they will gnash their teeth in anger and slink away, their hopes thwarted. 10

All Glory To God.
   

Day 3

Today I met a Christian friend for lunch. I gave her my tract and she exclaimed, "I want to write one of these!" Cool!  We also gave our waitress one. Later today, the Culligan man came to fix our water softener. As he was leaving, I gave him my tract. I am excited. Our UNITE conference is themed, JUST SOW IT.
It just couldn't be easier to sow seed, than to write/ and hand out your personal testimony tract. Glory to God.

FILLING THE EMPTINESS: a God Story

“There’s a God-shaped vacuum in everyone’s heart…” is a quote that explains my former life. I lived that vacuum, feverishly trying to fill it with people [usually men], entertainment, and any physical pleasure you can name: food, drink, drugs, and sex. To be loved was my primary goal in life. I wanted to be the most popular and the most loved girl in my world. If I didn’t have a boyfriend at all times, I was on a quest to attract the next cute guy.

My senior year in high school, my then-boyfriend dropped me to date a sleazy sorority girl, leaving me heart-broken. I decided then and there, it didn’t pay to be good. I gave up my good morals to get what I wanted—love.  My four years in college were a whirlwind of changing boyfriends, and an escalating experience of sex, drugs, and alcohol. I heard a quote once that said, “Men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love.” That was me. My life was spiraling out of control.

My then-boyfriend and I talked about getting married. One day he laughingly told me that he expected to be married and divorced six times. Six times? I wanted to be married once, and wanted that one to last. This made me take a long, hard look at my love life.

While this drama was going on, I graduated from college and was hired to teach high school English. The math teacher at the high school turned out to be a ‘Bible-thumper’ who would try to talk to the other teachers about their faith. I tried to avoid him, but he engaged me several times in conversation, asking me questions like, “Are you a Christian?” and “Do you know where you are going when you die?”   He drove me crazy, so I had to stop going into the Teachers’ Lounge.

All of this got me thinking about my life and my faith. I had been raised Catholic, and believed in God, but I abandoned my faith during high school. I wanted nothing to do with the church, or Jesus Christ, or being good.  When I was young, I believed I was good enough to go to heaven.  By the age of 23, I knew I was bad enough to go to hell. 

But God didn’t want me to go to hell. He used the math teacher to tell me about the love of Christ, by sharing the well-known Bible verse John 3:16: “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son [Jesus], so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”  I knew God loved people, but I never knew that He loved me personally. I didn’t realize that Jesus died on the cross for ME, to forgive all of MY sins.

Math teacher Les explained to me that I could ask Jesus for forgiveness and receive eternal life, just like one receives a gift: by accepting it. He explained that I could ask Jesus to come into my life, to make my life new. Since I was hating myself and what I had become, I decided to try it, and I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and come into my life. And it worked!  Immediately I knew I was forgiven and that He came into my life. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, ^“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” One pastor said, “When the Holy Spirit comes into your life, you become not just a better version of your old self, you become a new person altogether.”

Jesus Christ immediately started changing me from the inside out.  The things I wanted out of life, like peace, love and joy, came to me: not from external things like drugs, but from my new personal relationship with God. By God’s help, my marriage has LASTED over 30 years! I no longer crave the popularity, love, and acceptance that I used to so covet.  Instead, this prayer now expresses my life’s goal:  “God, your presence and your acceptance are all I need for everlasting joy.”  I am thrilled to have discovered that the “God-shaped vacuum” I was experiencing in my life, could only be filled with Jesus Christ.
If you have questions, or would like to talk more about this, call or text me at 952-895-5921, email me at: knobhill13@aol.com, or friend me on facebook.
I’d love to talk more, Mary Knox

My new testimony tracts

   Well, this is really pathetic, that I post here about once a year. But I hope to do it more. I have a new goal in life. To be more 'mission-minded' and devoted to sharing my faith more regularly. I just completed writing and publishing my personal gospel tract. And I came up with a goal, that I think I can accomplish, by God's grace. I hope to share my tract personally, every day for a year: 1. Either by hand 2. or online: via Email or Facebook.  Yesterday I gave it to Jim, the Office Max guy, who helped me print it. Today I gave it online to three "friends": a gal I met at a birthday party, and two of my Somali Muslim high school friends, that I tutor.

   I am so excited about doing this. Here is a passage that inspired me yesterday: Acts 22: 14-16: 

¹⁴ “Then he told me, ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and hear him speak. ¹⁵ For you are to be his witness, telling everyone what you have seen and heard. ¹⁶ What are you waiting for? Get up and be baptized. Have your sins washed away by calling on the name of the Lord.’

Please pray for me, that I can be faithful and fruitful in this endeavor.

Obedience.

I'm doing the Faithful, Abundant, True Bible Study at Evergreen. Today I read the quote by Charles Spurgeon, 1861. "Surely, though we have had to mourn our disobedience with many tears and sighs, we now find joy in yielding ourselves as servants of the Lord. Our deepest desire is to do the Lord's will in all things. Oh, for obedience! It has been supposed by many ill-instructed people that the doctrine of justification by faith is opposed to the teaching of good works, or obedience. There is no truth in that supposition. We preach the obedience of faith."
A modern day version of that quote is by Bill Hybels, of Willow Creek Com. Church. "If you hear God's whisper...ACT! Or you may never hear from Him again."
Priscilla Schirer asks, "What does the expression 'delayed obedience is disobedience' mean to you?"
When God asks you to do something, change something, stop something, Priscilla calls it "A Holy Spirit-inspired action." I like that. It's like Mark Bowen's "a visceral movement: a movement of God inwardly."
Then Priscilla ends the day's study with, "Whatever God has asked you to pursue, He will accompany you to complete. You can move forward with confidence, since His ability will equip you to accomplish any task that He places before you. The time is NOW to pursue all that the Lord has for you."
Phil. 2: 15, NLT says, "God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him"
Have a great day, dear one, as you take your next steps of obedience.

Ps. If you have time to read the document in full that Spurgeon wrote, it's quite interesting: long, but interesting. The times are the same today, as then.

Tweets by Rick Warren

I follow Rick Warren on Twitter. I love how he tweets pithy, little statements, comments, verses. Yesterday's was on the mouth and speech. Thanks Rick.
Here they are.

"To become a master communicator: shut your mouth & listen first."

"Even fools can be thought wise & intelligent if they stay quiet & keep their mouths shut" Prov.17:28

"The more you talk, the more likely you are to sin. If you are wise, you will keep quiet" Prov.10:1

A Heart Breakthrough

This is from a friend: on what God did in her heart in 2010: her big lessons. And what God might do in her heart in 2011. It's good stuff.

"I'm writing to you in particular today because you were the women God had close to me last year... Since I do not believe in accidents, I believe there was good purpose and the Lord's special plan for us to be together last year. 2010 was QUITE a year for me. LOTS of loss, lots of change, lots of letting go ---- and can I just say those are 3 things I have never been good at and have used a lot of energy to resist most of my life.

I remember saying something at one of our times together like I felt my life was kind of like one of those empty billboards you see that says "watch this space" or "advertise here". I don't think the billboard's new message is totally clear yet, though something big has changed in my heart and I think it's a good thing to share with you.

As you know -- I'm a thinker and it takes me a while to process things to my satisfaction, so what I share today may be revised later :) ... and I'm still very much a work in progress.

I don't really know how to put in words how GRATEFUL I am for the heartbreaking year I had last year. God is so absolutely beyond what my teeny brain can get and so much more fabulous than what my itty bitty heart can hold. I do get some things though! All of the "loss" I experienced last year (job, Mom, friends, control, income, security, comfort) was so worth it and so hugely heart changing.

I feel like a much "lighter" person for having let go of some things. And really, I didn't have a choice about the things leaving or ending or changing --- those things were going to happen anyway. But, I did have an ENORMOUS choice about how I let those changes affect me. I think somewhere along the line last year I finally got it that the changes were for my GOOD and not for my harm or hurt. There were lots of days that those changes did not FEEL good (you probably all observed some of those and had to listen to my whining). I went through plenty of mad, hurt, confused, sad, unsure days. I KNEW in my brain all along that God was at work and that He'd do something good .... but the change came when I really really really had it in my heart that ALL of HIS PLANS for my life are for my good and for HIS purpose. I sort of had to get over myself and realize that the comfort zone I had going in my life for so long, in so many areas, was getting shaken and I could either try to fight the inevitable discomfort or I could hold onto God and let Him take the pain for me.

I can't tell you exactly when that happened -- probably over time --- but it really did happen. My heart is different. My expectations of others, myself and God are different. My perspective on change is different. I'm kind of liking it ... and, of course, I have a ways to go ...

I KNOW this is true for sure ... God's not done with me, but He is at work; and I want, more than ever, to be about Him. I KNOW this also -- the things and people and comfort zones that I have let go of have made more room in my heart for new, fresh, exciting things to happen in my heart and life. I think the Holy Spirit came in and did a roto rooter major clog removal in my life. I'm learning too that a huge side benefit to letting go is that I have a new level of joy and peace. It's really nice to not feel as if I need to be in control of so many things ...

I'm CONVINCED that the benefits of accepting the changes in 2010 are setting me up for a wonderful 2011 and beyond. 2010 was a life changing year in many ways. My priorities are different and that changes everything.

Am I glad 2010 is over? YUP! It was hard --- but it was so so worth it. I am excited to see what God has in store for me in 2011 --- really excited!!!! I can feel a new posture in my heart and life with open hands -- open to let things in my life go and open to receive whatever HE has for me.

My verse for 2010 But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, That I may tell of all His works. I think it will be a lifetime verse. :)


2011 revelation --- hot off the presses. The lesson continues! In 2010 I was forced to "let go" of really BIG and IMPORTANT things and people in my life. This year I need to let go of a whole bunch of stuff. It hit me yesterday afternoon that one of the real reasons I am a "keeper" of stuff is from a root of fear ... we didn't have much growing up and I just really got it yesterday that part of my reason for having too much is that a part of me remembers not having much. THere's always the "what if" question ... So, the Lord and I have begun a conversation about if I really DO trust Him as my provider or if I have been doing a lot of my own providing. I kind of know the answer. The adventure will be in applying whatever He shows me. I don't think the unsettling of 2010 is completely over, but I am resettling into a new place with God and it's a really good new place.

It feels like yesterday was the beginning of something really good --- I'm so glad to be in the Potter's hands. He is so patient, so gentle, so good, so unchanging, so persistent and so WORTH IT. I can tell there is something different in my heart already -- an excitement and willingness to let go of stuff --- and I KNOW there is freedom and joy on the other side. (still, I'll need prayer to break old patterns of thought and behavior) please do pray :)

Bottom line and motto: HIS WAY IS BETTER!!!!"