Isaiah 2:9 uses the word “frame” in reference to the potter who shapes the clay. Just like there is the “Rule of First Mention”, “Law of Opposites”, and the “Law of Reaping & Sowing”, there is the “Law of Seasons”.

A little recap from Part I is that the idea of “framing of the seasons”, means God squeezed into shape & formed the seasons which would squeeze into shape and form the things of the earth that were in each season, including us, the people.

The Lord marked the seasons with the moon in Psalm 104. The weather warms, the daylight hours get longer, things begin to grow, thus we call that season Spring. We use the metaphor, “i feel like i’ve been pulled through a key hole”, implying a season with a reason and a cause of testing that was tough, but the good thing about that is we took the shape of the key hole, along with the tumblers and slots … squeezed into shape & form due to the season we’re in. We often feel we are caught in a pinch point, but maybe it’s really the Lord re-shaping and squeezing the clay into someone more representative of His heart. Every season has two paths, and often, we don’t see the results of the season we’re in until later, in another time.

Everyone has had, are in, or will have “seasons of storms”, it is trying and scary, true, but it should also be remembered that the very nature of a storm is transient. Rest assured there will be seasons of camping in the Valley of the Shadow of Death (don’t let it frighten you, it’s a shadow), as well as seasons of being in the desert (don’t let that one bother you either, it’s just as alive as your house, it’s just a different place). As has been said before, not every blue sky is from Heaven, nor is every storm from hell. There are “blue sky seasons” just like there are “stormy weather seasons”. In the end it all builds us into God’s people, who are coming into the likeness of the Son.

Psalms 74:16-17 speaks of the framing of seasons; Genesis 2:7 refers to God’s fashioning man from the ground, He “squeezed” man into a shape & form in that season of forming; Psalms 95:5 is an expression of the things God made, squeezed into shape, form, and function. Like when God made water, He included design parameters. He decided how it would act under numerous circumstances, how far it would go and where, and how it would look and smell to us, the people. He gave it form and resolution, He framed it, like a potter. Similarly, He framed, squeezed into form & function every other thing on the earth and they all have a design, specific to them, to say again, which defines how they act, how far they go, and what they react and don’t react to. To reiterate, because it’s important, God framed them, in His season of design and implementation, as in “…in the beginning“, Genesis 1:1. “Beginning” is the first word of the Bible, used 57 times and, “denotes the point in time or space at which something started, except when it specifies the point when time and space themselves were started”, taken from The Complete Word Study Dictionary of the Old Testament.             Daniel 7:12, “…yet their lives were prolonged for a season anda time“, or, for occasions with a reason and cause, to be enacted in specific spans as measured with time.

Among many seasons of life, there appears to be a set of four thatare connected — forming a season, seasons themselves, time, and times, and there are five that follow, as mentioned in the previous program, wisdom, Character, Authority, Ministry, and Money, and they have a specific order. All are gifts from God alone, but it requires “a season and “seasons” to bring them to fruition in our hearts.

Godly Character without wisdom is not possible, considering encountering Christ is definitely a character building, all time life changing event. And if Jesus is the very personification of wisdom, then how do we rub shoulders with God and walk away without wisdom?

Another small recap is that authority without Godly character is like grave dirt in your food, and can be degraded by sin and poor choices with the deterioration of ministry soon to follow. Ministry without authority is not empowered to do the work, and assigning ourselves a title does not gain us the authority we wish we had. Authority, real make-a-difference authority is given by God, and contrary to popular belief, we can have no tangible ministry, but still walk in God’s authority.

When the season of learning to wield authority righteously and as holiness does it’s work, even when that season is in process, the Lord will make a way for us to put our hand of authority to ministry. That is, unless we have another idea other than God’s idea, like giving ourselves titles which are not in keeping with our gifting.

Another view of the season of authority and ministry: Authority is to ministry, as a frame is to a picture. Authority frames ministry, but ministry never frames authority.

Authority and influence are like man and wife. A verb needs an object to act on, making the noun the beautiful bride of the verb. For a while, the noun can stand alone but is always more beautiful and complete when the verb describes it, like a frame surrounds and supports a picture. Marriage of a man and a woman are like the marriage of authority and influence. The man is the authority and the woman is the influence. He has a verb in his middle and she has a noun in her middle, the man “cleaves” (a verb, Genesis 2:24)) and the woman “desires” (a noun, Genesis 3:16). Authority frames the beauty of righteous influence. Do you see it? Ministry desires and literally runs after authority, craves authority and loves to be under authority, and is most comfortable when fully yielded and exposed to the right authority. When a man and woman waltz, the man is like a frame, framing the picture, the woman. The woman is like a picture, made beautiful by her frame, the man.

Authority follows character. It seems then, the Season of Character is aconstant, God calls us from cover to cover of the Bible to come up to ahigher standard of righteousness. Like the phrase in Revelation 4:1, the Lord also says to us, “Come up here”, come to a higher place where we can see and hear better. i say, immature character is a poor container for authority.

What part of us is developed when God asks us to practice “personal holiness”? i think character, and a Godly person who has many “seasons” under their belt is said to be “well seasoned”. We can observe the seasons changing by getting up to a high place to see over the tops of the trees. Similarly, from a high place, i can see my life seasons changing me by my dark hair turning gray. As my wisdom and character grow, my body dies a little more, till now my whiskers are white and i’m finally settled enough to enjoy quiet contemplation with my wife in the fall of our lives. Well seasoned indeed.

Without Godly wisdom and character we just look like dull river rock set in tarnished brass. It would appear the Season of Wisdom and Character are always in season, but seasons of ministry and exerting authority seem to come and go, and the season of money definitely seems to fly on the wings of the wind for most of us.

For man, where is the beginning, the place to begin his journey? The fear of God and wisdom is always the beginning place, and all things in God’s creation have a “Season of Beginnings”. There is a “Season of Rest”, and one of Fruitfulness. We have the “Season of First Things”, like Genesis, and a “Season of Last Things”, like Revelation. Of course, there are many other seasons of beginnings and endings for us to ponder, like the phrase, “in good season” as in a timely manner, a man for all seasons, business in the off season, and even seasons or cycles of the heart.           Everyone is invited to partner with God for Him to take us in and out ofHis seasons of our design and destiny, to form us and mold us, squeeze usinto shape and function. What season are you in?

By What Standard Did We Decide What Is Fair?

By what standard did we decide what is fair? A man yelled at me one day saying, “Christianity is not fair, and neither is God”

Cheating, or depriving ourselves or others of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud is especially easy to justify when you frame situations and cast yourself, in your own movie, as the victim of some kind of unfairness. And yes, i believe many people really do frame situations and cast themselves as the unfortunate victims of unfairness. Eve’s actions in the Garden accused God of not being fair for she felt God was holding out on her somehow. After casting ourselves as a victim of unfairness, then it becomes a matter of evening the score; we re-think about how put upon we are and tell ourselves, “i’m not cheating, i’m “restoring fairness”. Restoring fairness? That’s like my joke in reference to myself saying, “i don’t have an obsessive personality, i just do everything A LOT.”

We all have heard the common international story of good people gone wrong. We wag our heads and click our tongues and say to ourselves, “How could this have happened to them? They were good people.” It begins with small infractions or transgressions,  all so subtle, like the idea of “wandering away.” We practice to perfect a polished nonchalance, we get good at masking our deep fear of being found out as a fraud, and maybe for some it’s learning to skim small amounts from the register, or how about lies of omission — and the behavior grows by increments. And what was once a lie of omission, mastering the art of leaving out parts of our story, eventually, becomes willful commission, meaning we consciously decide. It went from a one-time occurrence, to becoming a pattern of behavior. Do you see the “pestilence which creeps by darkness” there?  It’s not the one Oreo cookie which makes us fat, it’s the lifestyle of Oreo’s that’s the problem.

No one ever wakes up one day and decides to be a thief, or a fraud artist. We don’t just wake up one day and think to ourselves, “I think I’ll begin my career as a thieving drug addict today.” It is typically a long slow seduction into chaos and darkness; a “pestilence that walks in darkness” (Psalms 91:6), or a “disastrous affliction which comes and grips our heart in calamitous gloom”.

This story of life on a gradual downhill slide makes it difficult to distinguish the process of moving to the dark side; namely, that people subconsciously seek shortcuts more than they realize. Often, we make deliberate decisions to deceive in earnest. As in game theory, with deception and other misbehavior there’s a battle between short and long-term gains, a tension between the more upright choice and the less principled one – how much sin is too much to live with? When are our choices honest and noble enough? How good is good enough, how bad is too bad? At what point do we have such a lack of peace we are willing to cry out to God for help? Yet, psychologists say, perhaps the most powerful urge to be less than honorable stems from a deep sense of unfairness. As people first begin to compete and compare themselves with others, they also begin to learn of others’ hidden advantages. Private tutors. Family money. Alumni connections. A regular golf game with the boss. Against a competitor with such advantages, taking credit for other people’s work is not only easier, it can seem only fair.

A corner cutter often begins to think everyone else is cutting corners only after they have already started cheating, not before. That’s the same as saying some dreaded disease isn’t so dreaded now that everyone else has it too. Or the daughter who says to her mother, “You just don’t want me to have a life! It’s not fair! All my friends are doing it mom!” Hmmm…are they really?

And many times don’t we use similar language and thinking about God like our teenagers do, in order to get our own way? When we don’t get our way, we say with an aiming finger, “It’s not fair! Why would you do this to me Lord?!” or “You are God! If you’re SO good, how could you let this happen to me?! It’s not fair!!” Fair? Fair!? Actually, the Lord is more than fair, He went beyond fair and gave His life for us. You’re right. Christianity is not fair, truthfully, it’s more than fair.

Everyone slips & slides around some in life, but while we’re making our way along the path towards Home, let us opt for the Fruits of the Spirit and not let our eyes get used to the gloom and dark around us. God really is just and righteous and we need to lean not to our own understanding, letting God be God, which is something He is really, really good at.

Being an adult comes with responsibilities and character we could never have imagined when we first believed.

Hebrews 12:12-14 “Therefore, strengthen your tired arms and your weak knees, 13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not become worse, but rather be healed”.

Many years ago while living in Charlotte N.C.,  i stood alone in the dark on my back porch, weeping before the Lord asking, “Why, oh why, am i always in the midst of a problem, always seeming to have a hard time, running against the wind, feeling like i’m continually in the middle of some dilemma? Why? My mind and heart are tired!”  As i stood there listening to the wind in the tree tops, quietly sobbing, tears of frustration running off my chin, the Lord gently spoke to me and said, “Most of the time it’s the only time you come to me palms up.”

i wasn’t in sin. i wasn’t aware of any gross error or unbelief.  i even repented of things i’d never thought of in case there was something i missed.  But yet, things remained the same. You know, when you’re in the middle of a miracle, most of the time it doesn’t look like much of a miracle. God was changing my heart but it sure didn’t feel like it.  Looking back i realize i was practicing “self-cannibalization”, blaming myself for everything bad or wrong, calling myself names in the mirror, regret and remorse had come to visit, but now they don’t want to leave. A “root of bitterness” was growing, entwining itself around my feet, fertilized by self-loathing, watered by disappointment and frustration. God’s intent was for me to grow up and believe Him.

Matthew 22:39, “You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.” How do i love myself; in what fashion?  Let us exactly take note of the words of Jesus, “love your neighbor as you love yourself” not “loathe your neighbor as you loathe yourself”. We all know that’s what He said, but underneath our declarations of understanding, we still maintain the attitude which says, “If i were God, i wouldn’t like me either.” Jesus said, “love”, not “loathe”.  If we’ll loathe ourselves chances are very high we will also loathe our neighbor.  Our glorious God does indeed love us, but the things that were funny when we were 3 years old will get our hide tanned when we are 10. We laugh at jokes, but honestly, if we really think about it, we’re typically laughing at someone else’s misfortune. i wonder if maybe in all things which we find funny at someone else’s expense, don’t have some root of bitterness in own heart. Our God desires we grow up and be mature believers, rightly dividing the word of truth (1 Timothy 2:15), being strong in His Name and in the power of His might (Eph6:10), comforting others in all their suffering, since we ourselves are being comforted by God (2 Corinthians 1:4). It is very difficult to be mature when we are busy condemning ourselves in the mirror.

In Hebrews 12:13, the translators used the words “turned out of the way”, but a better picture is more than just on the wrong path, but more in a medical sense, as in someone with a dislocated arm or leg. Our God is growing us into people who are willing to have the necessary honest conversation with ourselves and our friends which, by the very nature of honesty, makes straight paths for our feet and puts back in joint that which has become dislocated. Be in Christ mature believers who in character and life resemble God who brought us out, sharing His attributes with us as children resemble their parents.  Let us walk as mature believers who are governed by the Spirit of God and live at rest in His righteousness, peace, and joy (Romans 14:17).

The truth is, i believe many, many people have a poor perspective of themselves.  As our conscience looks back at us from the mirror in our homes, let us bless, not curse, ourselves in that mirror, telling ourselves the truth with kindness and grace but also reminding ourselves to whom we belong for the strengthening of our tired arms and the confirmation of our feeble knees, stirring up love and good works (Hebrews 10:24).  Be strong and courageous! That is a prophetic declaration, one of “has become” and “is becoming”. Be strong and courageous!

1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.…”

Just because God knows something does not mean He ordained it that it should be so. We complain, why would God do thus-n-such to me. Or, if He knew this was going to happen, He could have stopped it but He won’t. Or my favorite, If God loves us so much, why would He treat us this way?

i’ve heard those wounded, disappointed statements often, so i’m not making this up. For example:

A man and a woman own a car which needs approximately $600 of work done to it. Oh it runs, but it’s getting worse by the week. They don’t have $600 and they are just barely getting by every month. They can’t afford not one more penny out of their budget. They are in such a spot and have no clue what to do. They have prayed and asked God what to do, they are consistent tithers according to church law. They are good people in the eyes of the world, just in a difficult season for the time being.

One Sunday afternoon after church, the man and woman decide to go for a ride. They rode up town, they rode down town, they rode all over the place and happen to pass a large car dealership. Suddenly, there sprung into their minds the bright idea to stop and dream a little, because dreams were God’s idea and there was nothing wrong with dreaming some. In fact, playing the “what if” game in the car lot seemed like a relief from the stormy season they were presently in.

While they were looking at the cars, a salesman came out and struck up a conversation. He asked them, if they could, which car would they like to have, if they could? They assured him it wouldn’t matter which car because they couldn’t afford to fix the one they had, much less get a new one. The sales man laughed softly saying he understood what that was like. They liked him, he was a very friendly fellow with those “you-can-trust-me blue eyes”. The salesman told them the dealership was having a special that weekend and told them to just dream a little and “let’s just run the numbers, just for fun and see what happens.” So, “just for fun”, the fellow and his wife agreed to step into the sales office.

The salesman showed them how much they’d get for their old car and how much their monthly payments would be. With a warm tone in his voice, he told them if they got that car they wanted, especially now that the dealer was having a special that weekend,  they would not have to fix their old one. They could drive around in style in the new one, then he asked them, “Can’t you just see it?” They could envision themselves in that nice car, no cares, driving around smiling, and all things would be well. He asked again, “If i can can get my manager to approve the monthly payments, would you be willing to take your dreaming seriously, because, afterall, it is the deal of a life time?”

While the salesman was gone, the man and woman prayed earnestly, “If this is you Lord, we pray that those numbers would be approved, and by that we’ll know it is You who have arranged this entire miraculous event.” What they failed to realize is that a bankrupt felon could get credit in their state, and OF COURSE the salesman was going to come back, smiling, saying excitedly, “He said it’s a go!” The salesman did exactly that, he even joined them in praising God for the miracle.

They signed the papers, left their old car behind, and drove away in a new car, thinking, “It must be God! It must be God!” Singing, and being joyful at the miracle of the Lord.

Two months later, as they began to realize they were going bankrupt and they were going to lose the car because they couldn’t make the car payments, and lose everything else in the process, they had become angry and bitter, and in a fit of frustration they cried out, sobbing, “How could you do this to us God?? Why would you treat us this way? Don’t you love us?!?”

How is it that when things are well with us, we are so confident that God loves us beyond our wildest dreams, but as soon as things become a struggle and we began to sweat, and get weary, suddenly we wonder where God is and if He loves us anymore? Did He suddenly change and become someone unsteady and unreliable, or was that us?

Did the Lord do this to them? Who is responsible for the circumstances? What do you think they could have done and should do in light of their circumstances?

Did God really do this to them? No. Is the results of their actions really the active judgment of God against them or is it the passive results of poor choosing and they did it to themselves? Be honest.

If you were determined to marry the wrong person, did God do that to you? No. And even though you may be determined to marry the wrong person, the Lord will not abandon you. He’ll go with you through all your trouble, and will not leave you to your misery. Just because He knows we’re going to crash doesn’t mean He determined it should be so. i say, God’s knowing is not His ordination that it should be so. God is not cruel, ever. Again, just because He knew you were going to crash does not mean He said, “Make it so.”

The Lord is good, and all the time God is good. Not just does good things, not just knows good information, He is more than simply pleasant and reassuring, but He is the very personification of Goodness. He is perfectly good because He is perfect in every way and does not change to anything other than good as if He were like clouds in the sky, always changing shape. He is perfectly consistent, perfectly love, perfectly kind, perfectly generous, and perfectly good, all the time and does not fade.

Let us consider carefully, being honest, accountable and transparent about ourselves and our lives. His heart towards us is love in all aspects of our lives. Let us not let allow ourselves to slid backwards into blaming God, the very person, the only person in all eternity who loves us so much He gave His life for us.

What do you think?

We are coming into our inheritance as God has designed it. Many of us are beginning to wake up and realize the power and authority we have in Christ, and more than a few are beginning to walk in that power and authority. When we speak to the weather, do we fully expect the weather to not only hear but to obey, even if we whisper? Or do we say, “Storm be gone, in the Name of Jesus!”, in our most authoritative voice, but underneath we are still thinking “I hope this works.” You may find that to be adventurous doctrine, but just because it’s outside your comfort zone, doesn’t mean it’s outside God’s comfort zone.

So, there comes a question:   What do we expect of God? What are our expectations of Him?

He is God. Do we expect little of Him? …. even though He is God Almighty, Most Vehement, Self-Revelational, and Self Existent. He’s the one who has loved us from before time and loves the company of His people…God who had the character of the cross worked in His Heart from before the foundations of the universe, what do you expect from Him? It is not like our King is small and pitiful and is unable to do all, and more, than we would ever dream possible… and He has spoken to us … A LOT! Is it God not speaking or us not hearing? Do we expect Him to show up, or do we expect Him to only “dribble” a little of His presence around just to keep the hamsters spinning on their wheels? When we ask God questions, do we expect Him to answer us?

We expect a reply from our friends when we speak to them or ask them a question… in fact, we expect a full sensory encounter with people and it upsets us greatly when they do NOT respond … do we expect a full sensory encounter with God?

Sometimes we get little because we expect little, not always, but i suspect more often than we think. Do we expect God to keep His promise of peace, or do we mostly only hope He will extend us some peace, moments with a lack of pressure or violence? Do we expect God to provide for us, or do we mostly hope He will? Do we mostly hope God will give us courage for the fight, or do we expect Him to give us Strength as He has said He would?

What do we expect of God? What are our expectations of Him? i find i expect more from people than i do God, and i’m just wrong about that. i’m convinced that when we put our expectations and hope in men and ministries to validate and approve us, God becomes obligated to show us their shortcomings. The Lord alone validates and approves us, not men, but we expect of men far too easily.

The Lord is so much more capable than people, and more willing, but yet i expect people to respond and mostly only hope God will respond. When i turn on the light switch i expect the light to come on, shouldn’t we have a greater expectation of God than we do of the light switch? He is greater and more sure than a light switch, but yet i find i have a greater expectation of people and physical things than of God, and i’d like to turn my thinking around about that. i can not think of a reason why i would not have a full encounter with my Father everyday, except it is my own unbelief. i feel like most of the time i merely hope He shows up instead of being surprised if He didn’t. i expect the weather to change when i speak to it (and that’s true, i do and have been speaking to the weather as the Lord tells me to, successfully for many years now. It just seems natural to me). i truly expect the Lord will hear me and will answer me (that’s another one that seems natural to me). It is a natural thing for a father to respond to his kids, so it should be the most remote idea in our heads that God will not respond…in fact, to me, there should be a better chance that the moon really is made of cheese than the chance that God would NOT respond to our call.  i want the supernatural to become my natural, and i want to walk in “God’s natural”, and i want to stop being so surprised at the supernatural…i’ll never cease to be totally thrilled at being with God, but i want His “natural” to be my “natural”.

If the Lord prompts us and we speak to the cancer to be gone, and it shrivels and disappears, that should be normal circumstances, and we should be amazed if it DID NOT shrivel and disappear, not amazed if it did. What do you expect from God?

i got a call one day that our church was buying some property, it needed surveying, and part of the special deal with the surveyor was that some of the young men would come and help mark the property lines. i wondered why we needed to survey the land considering the county already had a plat defining the boundaries, and in case you didn’t know, a platt is a map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. And yes, the paperwork on file actually said “platt” which is old English for our spelling today of “plat”. Old English? Say what?? i soon found out that the last person to own the property was one family, who had owned it for 140 years, and before that the only other name on the deed was … the King of England. Oh. Yea, i’d certainly agree the property needed to be re-surveyed considering the plat on file at the court house was still in Old English, with the corners shown as “the big tree down by the creek”, and “at the turn in the creek past the mill”, which by today’s standards, wouldn’t, by any means, hold up as a good definition of property boundaries.

It was hot, the brush and trees were so thick we had to machete our way through the woods. There were black berry canes as thick as a man’s wrist and way over our heads with 1” thorns to match, not to mention the terrifying ground hornets nest big as a large watermelon, a wide variety of blood sucking insects, and the occasional snake. It was quite the adventure!

As we worked all day i would occasionally hear the surveyor steady calling loudly to someone far away who was holding a string, and a plumb bob over a small stake in the ground. He’d say “Left! Left! Hold! Right! Hold!” Then he would yell loudly, “HUP!” When he yelled, “HUP!”, which sounded like a dog bark, the person with the string and plumb bob was supposed to let the plumb bob down to the top of the stake and drive a small nail right where the point touched. Ugh. So tedious! Being curious, i asked the man why was he being so very precise. His answer was … that if we were off by 1/16^th of an inch at the zero point, which is where he had the transit and tripod, by the time we got out 400 yards or more, what was originally a 1/16^th of an inch error would be several feet wrong.

Well, that set me thinking. How often in my life do i fudge a little at my zero point and then wonder, months or years later, how life got so… off.. center? The problem isn’t so much being off center, God can easily remedy that, the problem is more that i am willing to cheat and lie a little back here in order to get what i want, not need, but want, while taking no thought of the long game and it’s results at a distance, there. Most of the time, the cheating and lying was within myself about my own thinking and eventually, my actions. i would tell myself, “i’m not actually hurting anyone”, until the Lord asked me straight up, “What is your idea of “hurt”, who is “anyone”, and aren’t you a somebody?”

Dishonesty is dishonesty, and cheating is cheating regardless of whether it’s 1/16^th of an inch or 400 yards. Yes, of course, the Lord forgives us our sins, but He also insists on us doing something about our thinking which gets us stumbling around to begin with. More than a few people say if they saw a nickel on your table they wouldn’t feel bad if they put it in their pocket, but they would never pocket a $10 dollar bill from the same table. So, let me see if i’ve got this right, you’d steal a nickel but you wouldn’t steal $10. We’ve established that it’s still stealing whether it’s a nickel or a $10 bill. Regardless of the denomination, there still exists a morals and ethics issue at heart.

Being honest means being honest, Proverbs 22:21, “be honest and speak the truth“, not cheating, Leviticus 19:13, “‘You shall not cheat your neighbor“,

or lying, Colossians 3:9, “Lie not one to another…”. Not to God, to yourself nor your neighbor. If we are willing to fudge stuff at our zero point, it is highly likely that months, or even years out, our error is staggering. We might say to ourselves, “Oh, it’s just a little bit.” Is it really? Think about that. The entire root idea of honesty means to bring something into being with the consequence that its existence is a certainty. When someone says “Trust me”, they are asking us to take what they say as the truth and a certainty. How many of us constantly play at the edge of this, stealing a nickel, but not, outright, stealing the $10 spot? How about when we tell ourselves we NEED that new car, but the truth is, truly, we only want it really bad, because i WANT it? We’re willing to go into serious debt to get it, and we lie to ourselves saying our “want” is now justified to being a need. Don’t get me wrong here, there’s nothing wrong with “want”… so long as we’re not willing to become “compromised” in order to accomplish it. The problem isn’t the want or desire, the problem is object of that want or desire.

Or how about changing the tense of our words so the other person thinks a problem isn’t in the “recent now” but actually, only happened long ago and the issues have been resolved. We say, “trust me, it’s the truth”, when really it’s not the truth, we are being manipulative. The error isn’t out at the 400 yard mark, the problem is at our zero point. Jesus said in Luke 6:45, “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”

If you’re too busy, remember, you’re the one who said “yes”. Why do you keep doing it to yourself?

We invited a man and his wife to eat with us one evening. We sat on the patio, the table cloth of bright sunflowers covered the handy dandy little fold out we used for eating outside. The evening was warm and was increasing toward it’s usual fading, ever deepening blue as the day moved on to becoming night. Most amazing was the towering hollyhocks and delphiniums which were at their peak. They were just blindingly beautiful. It was a delicious time of day with the smell of flowers and fresh cut grass. Oh and the great food.

The fellow and his wife had been in some real dire straights in their marriage and there was a constant brooding feel of finality, meaning he felt the relationship was in it’s last gasps for air.

As the conversation rolled this way and that, of course, we began to talk about honest things, real feelings, and the course of life which led us each as individuals to be where we were. At one point the man said that so much of his life he felt like God was always dangling a carrot in front of him, and he had begun to believe we were all like a hamster on a wheel, just running, and running, sweating and breathing hard, but never getting anywhere. Immediately, my wife held up her hand like she was calling the world to a halt, and with a bright smile declared, “I’m not a hamster on a wheel.” i followed suit with a chuckle and smile saying, “Hey now, i’m not a hamster either.” It was silent for moment, and we just let the silence hang on purpose.

Are we hamsters on a wheel? From your perspective, do you really believe God is so cruel as to dribble a little of His presence around just to watch all the hamsters run on the wheel, for the purpose of having a good laugh at the stupid little animals, mindlessly running and running, eyes bugging out of their heads, feet just flying? Does that sound like God to you? You may feel that way, but is it really the Father’s heart?

Well then, i guess i should ask, have you read the Bible? i know that sounds silly to ask, but did you read it like a lover looking for their beloved, or were you more just reading it to be able to say, “i read my bible today”? i realize sometimes we are reading to be reading, but by far and large, it’s not just reading but how we are reading. The Lord didn’t say He loved us, then died and rose from the dead for us, and daily reminds us a thousand different ways that He loves us only to treat us like He hates us. Some folks seem to think God is just standing over them with a big spiked club, waiting to pound the blood out of them at the slightest infraction. We’re not a mosquito that’s about to get reduced to a smudge on Gods arm. Is that really the Father’s heart? And if you think “yes”, considering you had the courage to aim your finger at God, also have the courage to ask yourself the question, “How did i come to that conclusion, and why do i think it’s a good idea?” Be brave to investigate to gather the right information about Him. God confirms His word, so i must ask, what are your confirmations concerning what you hold as true? God confirms His word in signs and wonders, Mark 16:20. He confirms His word in fulfillment of scripture, Isaiah 44:26. He confirms His word in witnesses and testimony, 2 Corinthians 13:1, and He confirms His word through His unwavering faithfulness, Numbers 23:19.

The whole idea of circumspection is to take a 360 degree view of things, taking all things into account, and coming to a conclusion. The basic meaning  is “to look around.” Other very similar words are prudent and cautious, though circumspect implies a careful consideration of all circumstances and a desire to avoid mistakes and bad consequences. We can resent God if we want, your business is your own, but let’s be circumspect to know His heart for us, and not simply operate out of opinion. i heard a man say once, it’s awfully hard to hear God when we’ve got an opinion.

God’s heart is towards us, He wants us to win at life. His desire is that we grow up, be responsible, act kindly toward ourselves and those around us, be hospitable, and ultimately, to take Him seriously, trusting Him. He has never lied to us, cheated us, manipulated us or brought us up by fraud and false hope. It’s not even in His heart to be that way. Where do we get the idea God is just a tooth gritting storm just waiting to pound us to dust?

While i’m pouting because i didn’t get what i want, when i wanted, or how i wanted, in order to be circumspect, i’ve got to remember Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” In this country we have gotten the idea of “Have it your way” as a way of life. i also need to take into consideration Romans 8:33 in that no one can take us to court before God and win a case against us, because God himself is the one who has declared us righteous. No one can condemn us to hell on judgment day from Romans 8:34, and no one and no thing can separate us from the love of God. Does that sound like someone who says they love us but treat us like they hate us? No. Not at all.