Psalm 103:2 “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits;”

It was morning, but the dawns early light had yet to peak out over the bows of the trees or the gentle waters of the lake. A smattering of various alarms went off, disturbing the early morning quiet. The birds came out of their nests and began warming up for their daily concert. Yet for a moment, nature’s choir was interrupted briefly by the gathering of a small group of people. Every age from school to retirement could be found in the pre-dawn prayer gathering. Prayer began with each person at first silently meditating on God and His wonders. Then the group joined together in corporate worship.

Prayer continued and the birds again struck up their chorus. For some few minutes, the songs of men and nature were joined together to worship and magnify the Creator while the rest of the people in the camp slept, oblivious to the praises which rose with the sun.

The Lord provides each of us with special blessings and special gifts every day. We only need to observe or understand them; a blessing from God could be as simple as listening to a bird chirp or even a chorus of birds singing a glorious counterpoint to a dusty old hymn sung in the early morning air. God gives freely to all, giving what we need to be encouraged, giving us what is opportune to show us more of Him, and giving us a momentary glimpse of perfection (James 1:17).

The only thing God wants back from us is us. We then worship Him out of the fullness of His gifts to us. We worship with our gifts of health (or lack thereof), with our gift of breath, a gift of solitude can lead us to further understanding, and a gift of fellowship can lead us to greater love and mercy. We can even worship Him out of our gift of salvation and renewed holiness. Our worship blesses the Lord. He does what He does for us out of love. When we respond and we adore Him, He is pleased. If we come before the Lord in true worship, how then are we able to forget what He has done for us? How can we ignore His gifts to us? How can we scorn Him by praising Him, but not sharing Him? If God is God, He is more than capable of being shared with everyone! We cannot forget the very nature of God if we are to truly worship Him; when we worship the Lord in spirit and truth we are able to bless God. We are able to exalt Him and Magnify Him. We are able to bring Him glory. If we are thus enabled to return some of what He provides, then we too can join with the psalmist in verse one and say “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name.”

Begin, my tongue, some heavenly theme

And speak some boundless thing;

The mighty works, or mightier Name

Of our eternal King.

Psalms 40:2 “He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, and He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.”

I was recently talking to a friend whom I have not seen for nearly a year. We were planning a get together since both of us (and probably a couple of other mutual friends) were going to be in the same area at one time this summer. One of the activities we discussed was about visiting a corn maze. Now a Corn maze is just that -- a maze that is cut out of one of the many corn fields in the Mid-west. To get through it, one just needs to walk through it, following the twists and turns and avoiding the dead ends. These mazes are fairly simple, but the corn is tall enough that you can not see over it and figure out the maze ahead of time. You have to take each turn, each corner as it comes.

Later I was thinking about the twists, turns, and trails that we follow in life. Just because we see footprints in the ground leading towards one path, that path may not be the correct one to get to the exit. As we follow a selected path in the maze of life, we do not know how many turns we will make, we do not even know if this is the correct way, but there is something about the way that draws our attention, and our footsteps become joined with those of everyone else who followed that path.

God, however, has promised to lead us, to show us His way which is the righteous way. It may not be the easy way, it may not be the nice way, but it is the Holy way. God promises that if we listen to Him, that we obey Him, and we that we trust Him, then He will show us the way and He will help us out of the muck and mire that sucks us down. This is the same muck and mire created by the tremendous number of footsteps following their own desires, their own wishes, and their own ideas. Through out it all, Christ is there for us.

Through each perplexing care and strife,
That marks the checkered path of life,
My Savior’s guiding hand I see,
And know that still He leadeth me.

Micah 7:18 “Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity And passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, Because He delights in unchanging love.”

Over the course of this past year, God decided to show me His love and the greatness thereof (as much of it as I can comprehend). Looking at God’s loving kindness, at His grace, and at His mercy is indeed a complex and time-consuming project. There is no way in heaven, or on earth, that I will ever completely understand all of what He is showing me.

Learning His love is a process, not an event. I did not wake up one morning and decide that I desired to know His love and suddenly “it happened.” We experience aspects of God’s love, but from that one experience, we are unable to determine the breadth of this love. We will experience mercy and grace, but again from that one experience, we are unable to know completely the extent of His mercy and grace—even in that one experience!

God decided to start teaching me love by allowing me to experience love. He showed me the failures of my love, the myriad of points where my love and His love are not the same. He showed me that my love was not His love. My love was human and fallen. His love is perfect and holy. His love is an example of what we should aim our love to be like.

God allowed me to learn His love. He brought someone into my life that I learned to appreciate. I learned to enjoy her company. Eventually, I (in my hard-headed and stubborn way) learned that I had affection towards her. This affection blossomed and grew. I learned to love her.

God then took her away. God showed me that she and I were not His plan. God showed me that she was not the girl that He had made for me. Actually, God beat it into my head. I am stubborn and willful and did not initially listen to Him; why did He bring her into my life, why did I care for her so much if she was not the one He wanted for me? Questions raced through my head. (Many still bother me.)

God was teaching me parts of Himself.

During one week, I was reading through the prophets and was struck by a thought; it was as though a veil was lifted from my eyes and I could further understand these verses! God loved his people, and He still loves them even after all the problems that they have caused for him. God’s love does not waver. God’s mercies are constant. God’s grace is eternal.

I still cared for her, but she ran. She denied my affection and only seemed to talk to me when she needed something or was in some trouble. She knows that I am there for her whenever she needs it. I did not know why I still cared for her. I did not know why I still cared for her even after everything that has gone on, but now I do. God compared my care for her to His care for us.

We as people are inherently sinful. We all know this. We also know that God loves us. In our innermost hearts, we have determined that we will do what we want to do and God is there to help us. We view God as condemning and judging because He disapproves of our actions and our methods for taking care of ourselves. We see God as beneficial only when we are in dire need, and there are no more options for us, nothing more that we can do.

With this view of God—our constant denial and our constant attempts (even unknown to ourselves) to spite Him—He still loves us and cares for us.

Whenever this young girl talks to me and spends time with me—even though I know that she is only around because she needs something from me—I enjoy it and appreciate it. I do love her a lot. I know that there is no way that we will end up together; I know that she is not the one that God has for me. Yet I do know that I have a greater appreciation of what I put God through now that I understand some of what I have experienced. I understand some of His pain at our rejection of Him. I have only been rejected by one person whom I loved, yet God is daily rejected by over six billion beloved people!

With this love that He has for me, how am I not able to love others even more? Because I have a greater understanding of God’s love, I am now responsible to love more like He does.

Romans 5:8 states, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

God has given up more for us that we can ever imagine. I understand this now to a greater degree than ever before.

Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.”

I made waffles for breakfast, but since waffles are not a standard part of my small repertoire of food, I had to look up the recipe for making them. I gathered the ingredients and then I rummaged around and found the waffle iron. I looked over the iron and began trying to decipher how to use it. Obviously I plugged the iron into the wall, but I had to find the on/off switch. I couldn’t find the switch, but I did find the temperature dial. I could chose between light, medium, and dark. The machine seemed to be on whenever it was plugged into the outlet. There was a light on the machine, but did the light mean that the iron was on? Did it mean the iron was ready? Or did it mean that the waffle was done? I assumed that light came on when you lowered the lid of the waffle iron, and when the light went off, the waffle was ready.

I could have made a pancake batter, and just used that for my waffle batter, but no, I wanted to do things correctly. I read through the recipe and began mixing the ingredients. It could have been easy to take what I knew of pancakes and use that, but then I could have ruined the recipe. Noticing the various ingredients and their measures, I began to wonder if these waffles would taste okay or not, but I had to trust in the writer of the recipe and in their knowledge.

The batter was ready and the waffle iron was hot. I turned the dial to ‘medium’ and poured the batter in. I closed the lid, and noticed that the light was on. I waited.

I waited for two and a half minutes, and the light still had not gone out. I cracked open the lid of the waffle iron, and the waffle looked good, so I revised my guess, the waffle iron light seemed to just show that the waffle iron was on. I pulled out the limp waffle and wondered if I had followed the recipe correctly. I put the finished waffle on a plate and began cooking the next waffle. While I waited for the second waffle to be done, I tried the first waffle. It was gooey on the inside – it was not fully cooked! I was distracted by this and when I finally looked at the waffle iron, I noticed that the light had gone off. I opened the waffle iron and removed the nice, crisp waffle. I cut into it and saw that it was good.

I did not trust what I thought I new. I did not trust the recipe as I should, and I did not trust the waffle iron and what common sense had told me. I tried to rush things, and just ended up ruining a waffle. Fortunately, a waffle is not a life. Fortunately, God allows us to make mistakes and then he will graciously re-bake us. We just have to wait, have patience, and trust God to know what He is doing.

Trusting God is often difficult. Often times, it seems that we wait overlong and things just seem to be getting hotter and hotter. It takes the master chef too cook a masterpiece meal, it takes the master surveyor to plot a straight road, it takes the master architect to build a building, and it takes the Master of Creation to know what is best for all creation. Let us trust God in everything, large and small, and look for His advice in everything. If we do so, then things will end up well according to His design and plan.

Trust under every condition
Till thou shalt reach thy home;
Trust, till in perfect fruition
That which is real hath come.

Ephesians 6:12 “For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.”

Fighting against flesh and blood is a struggle we all face every single day. We fight against ourselves, against our passions, against our desires, and against our prior accomplishments. We strive, not only to outdo the others around us, but to outdo ourselves. This is not wrong and evil, it is a natural desire that God created in us. We desire to achieve and improve. We desire to create and to leave a mark. This all is part of who we are and is a driving force from the time we were born.

The problem comes when we begin to view ourselves and our flesh and blood as a problem. When we see sin in our lives, and then try to remove it. We wonder why the temptations, the problems, the sins do not go away. While Jesus spoke on sin and it’s effects (Mark 9:43) we see that we are told to remove the offending bodily member, or at least that is what it seems like. What Jesus said is that it is better to remove the sinning body part so that we do not continue sinning than to end up in Hell. This then is the principle that we must follow. Remove the root of the problem. Our struggle is not against our flesh, although the flesh is weak. Our struggle is against Satan and the principalities and powers of darkness. We then are called to stand firm in the glory that is God, in His power and might. We stand and pray, we set our standard and go to battle against Satan and his influences in our lives.

Our flesh is weak, and if we, without God’s assistance try to force our bodies, our minds, our strength, and our spirit (everything that should be dedicated to worshipping the Lord) to follow our will, to stop the fleshly desires, then we will surely fail. It is only with the assistance of God that we are able to move past ourselves. The fight to better ourselves, to improve our lives, to leave a mark of meaningfulness will only be won when we bring God’s strength against the putrid powers and principalities of Satan, the Great Deceiver.

We do not fight ourselves and our problems since that is, in effect, trying to cure the symptoms. Instead, we need to face the cause with the one thing strong enough, mighty enough, powerful enough, just enough, and merciful enough to overcome it – God.

We are not alone in our fight, God stands with us. The Lord is our defender and our provider. Let us, therefore, approach Him and request Him to help us. Let us pray that He will show us where we are being assaulted by Satan, the parts of our lives where we are being influenced by sin.

Sometimes we know we aren’t being real.
Then times, we just live by how we feel.
Is there some way we could ever deal with self?

Just by calling Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!
Every moment, each day!
Calling on the name of Jesus
We're finding is the way.
It's Jesus! Lord Jesus!