A Gracefull Place

 

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Kelly at Generation Cedar is offering a Thanksgiving Special on her e-books and Scripture Songs cd!   You can get $2 off any product (see my sidebar–I have most of them listed there!  You can get a description by clicking on the link).   Just type in the code THANKSGIVING to receive the discount!    Getting Your Children to Obey is a nice, concise guide to child training.   I feel it sums up the best of many "methods" ( I know that word is overused, but you know what I mean!)!

 

Finding Financial Freedom is her story, and if you’ve heard of Dave Ramsey, you’ll recognize some of her "steps"!  I feel she distills it nicely and shows you how a real family is doing it.   Sometimes I read these wonderful books, but I need a little more help getting it where "the rubber meets the road"!   Kelly’s book does a good job of that!  (Actually, ALL of her books do!)

 

Think Outside the Classroom is a WONDERFUL resource for Real Life Learning!  Oh, you can get the info other places, too, but this is a good book if you’re just not sure how to start implementing it (or afraid to let go!) or to help someone else relax a bit.  And it’s good for those of us being more relaxed to not fear and go "back to Egypt"!   This is the book that I say, "Since Kelly has written this book, now I don’t have to!"  

 

Her By Heart Scripture songs are just beautiful!  When you click on the link, you can hear short excerpts of the songs.   Soothing and uplifting, totally focused on the Lord!

 

I am an affiliate, so you help me when you buy by clicking on the links here, but by all means do visit her blog, Generation Cedar!    This special offer is good through Friday, so be sure to let your friends know if you think they’d be interested! 

 

 

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I’m doing a little different take on Jacque’s Saturday Psalm and Praise!   I had a busy weekend, and Saturday I was trying to sort through all those partially started and such projects, then Dallas and I had a nice long afternoon/evening together!  We went to Ft.  Wayne and did some "shopping"–for free!!!   We had a gift card for Sears and got some things there, then went to Texas Roadhouse (actually, he would say we came for Texas Roadhouse, and just happened to do some shopping!   )  YUM!

 

Soooo…I didn’t get my Saturday Psalm and Praise done.  But what I want to share will fit quite nicely with Thanksgiving (including the "song", as you will see!).

 

I have been reading a wonderful book entitled The Heart of the King by Ron Auch.   (Be sure to peek inside!!)    It is a verse by verse "devotional" of sorts on Psalm 119.   It is just a beautiful jewel of a book!

 

From the back flap, this might give you a glimpse of his heart for this book:

 

"Pray-Tell Ministries’ sole pupose is to challenge the Church back to prayer.  However, odd as it may seem, prayer is not the ultimate goal of this ministry.  Ron’s desire is to get people to want God.  The lack of prayer comes from the lack of desire for God.  You cannot have great desires for God and remain prayerless."

 

From his commentary on verse 2, "Blessed are they that keep His testimonies, and that seek Him with the whole heart." :

 

"Whether self is an idol or not is determined by our prayer life.  If we spend relatively small amounts of time in prayer, it’s because we are not God-centered, we are self-centered.  We cannot just have prayer in our life.  All Christians have some type of prayer in their lives.  We must have a prayer life, which, when defined, means someone whose very life comes from their time of prayer.  That life is centered around prayer."

 

Yes, I was very convicted by those words!!!  And a few days before I read and meditated on those words,  our pastor had challenged us on…..you guessed it!  Our prayer lives!  Many Godly men and women have said that they "have so much to do, I must spend 2 hours in prayer daily".   Ah.   Where are my priorities?!

 

From commentary on verse 15, "I will meditate in Thy precepts, and have respect unto Thy ways.":

 

"No wonder God said David was a man after His own heart.  David was absorbed with his God.  He would meditate and consider the precepts of God."

 

"Without the daily practice of being in the presence of God and meditating on His Word to us, we tend to lose the reality of who God is.  We don’t lose our theological definition of God, we simply lose a real living sense of who He is.  There is a great difference between the God we know in our head and the God we know in our heart.  The head is full of rationale while the heart is full of emotion.  The head takes a very legal look at God and bases its obedience on that.  The heart takes a very loving look at God and bases obedience on that.  The head cannot change the heart but the heart can change the head.

 

"It’s the heart that is changed through prayer and meditation.  When we give ourself over to time in the presence of God, we are making ourself a living sacrifice.  Through that, our heart begins to conform to the character of  God.  As the heart changes, the head follows suit.  Eventually we are transformed by the renewing of the mind.  Ultimately we take on the mind of Christ because we have taken Christ into the heart.

 

"When we know God in the heart we tend to be more obedient to Him."

 

 

Many times I’ve met Christians who have more of  a "head knowledge" of Christ than a "heart knowledge".   They are sincere, but I feel they are missing the most important part of our salvation in Christ–our relationship with Him!

 

On another verse, he shares this gem that really spoke to my heart:

 

"When we follow God in His decisions we walk with Him.  God rarely asks us to go do something for Him.  He primarily asks us to go with Him.  The work of God is not something we do on our own.  It is something we do with God." (emphasis mine)

 

Isn’t that profound?!  How many times have I found myself trying harder, to do something for Him (whether some good deed or trying to pray more or be more righteous…) when what He is asking is that I walk with Him?!   As I walk with Him, He is my strength, my guidance, and He will not allow me to go off on my tangents–nor will I want to!–because I am walking side by side with my Heavenly Bridegroom and Lover of my soul!  But when I get farther away, dropping my "Daddy’s hand" as it were, looking down those seemingly lovely "bunny trails"…..well, my eyes are no longer on Him, my heart’s desire is no longer wholly for Him, and now I’m not walking with Him.  

 

 

For Thankgiving, the MOST important blessing is our relationship with Him!  I leave you with this final commentary on verse 12, "Blessed art Thou, O Lord:  teach me Thy statutes.":

 

 

"In essence the Psalmist is saying, ‘Through praise I learn Your decrees (statutes or decisions) because I am bringing myself under You.’  Bringing ourself ‘under’ is what submission means.  It means we are giving our will to God.  We can now pray with Jesus, ‘Not my will but Thine.’

 

"Through submission, we gain a teachable spirit.  Praise makes us teachable because of the submissive spirit we must be in, in order to worship God.  The true worshipers not only worship in spirit but also in truth.  We come into truth through being teachable.  God does not force feed us.  He waits for our spirit to open to Him so that He can gently teach us of Himself.  Matthew 15:8-9 syas, ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain.’  They worshiped God, but it was futile because their hearts were not pliable.

 

"’The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him’ (Ps. 25:14;KJV).  The secret of the Lord Himself cannot be learned through study, but through submission.  There is no way our limited minds can understand the Lord.  A person’s spirit must commune with His Spirit.  This is done through true worship of God.  As we worship Him and lay our lives in His hands, we begin to understand things about God that cannot be understood any other way.   We learn more about God through submission than we do through self-exaltation.  Pride is a lifting up of ourselves.  Submission is a lifting up of God.  When we bring ourselves down and worship from a position of lowliness He is exalted."  (emphasis mine)

 

I pray that will minister to your spirit as greatly as it did/does mine!   This book is well worth the price!  He suggests taking an hour to go through a section of Psalm 119 (8 verses), and pray and meditate on the verses.  I find that is too big of a "bite"!   I usually take 1-2 verses at a time, and maybe get through 4 in a day.  I did get in 8 today because I spent some extra time I don’t usually have during the weekdays.

 

I leave you with the beautiful piano duet my daughters have been practicing:

 For the Beauty of the Earth (with Fairest Lord Jesus).

(arrangement in Partners in Praise by Marilyn Ham with Meryl Ham)

Be Blessed!

 

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