Justice and Mercy Combined - a new post by Debra Courtney

 “The Lord is good, a Strength and Stronghold in the day of trouble; He knows (recognizes, has knowledge of and understands) those who take refuge and trust in Him. Nahum 1:7 AMP

What will you do in the “day of trouble”?  I believe we are wise to have a made up mind ahead of time concerning what we will do when trouble come.

Let me encourage you to decide to be stable. Decide to stay in faith and if your faith is on the empty side, go to the WORD of God and get more faith down inside of you, because you will need it. When difficulties have come my way I found that by staying rooted and grounded in the WORD and PRAISE keeps my mind in the right perspective. The problem is always screaming at you, you’re not going to get it, you’re going to go broke, or there are no jobs for you etc… Trials are a part of life. Jesus said they would come, but we are overcomers because He overcame. God already has a plan for our deliverance before our trouble begins. Believe it and have a made up mind to live in expectation of it!

When a defendant stands before a judge, he or she is at the mercy of the court. I understand this completely by being in the courtroom in the past on behalf of someone else.

If the defendant is innocent, the court should be a refuge. But if the defendant is guilty, we expect the court to exact punishment.

In Nahum, we see God as both a refuge and a judge. It says, “The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble” 1:7 NIV. But it also says, “He will make an end of Nineveh; he will pursue his foes into the realm of darkness.”  Vs.8.

Over 100 years earlier, Nineveh had repented after Jonah preached God’s forgiveness, and the land was safe. Jonah 3:10 But during Nahum’s day, Nineveh was plotting “evil against the Lord” Nah. 1:11. In chapter 3, Nahum details Nineveh’s destruction.

Many people know only one side of God’s dealings with the human race but not the other. They think He is holy and wants only to punish us, or that He is merciful and wants only to show kindness. In truth, He is judge and refuge. Peter writes that Jesus “…but he trusted [Himself and everything] to Him Who judges fairly.” 1 Peter 2:23. As a result, “He personally bore our sins in His [own] body on the tree…”

vs. 24.

The whole truth about God is good news! He is judge, but because of Jesus, we can go to Him as our refuge.

It should be our desire to never underestimate Him by seeing only one side of His role in our lives. We are to recognize and enjoy His love, grace and favor he has given to us, yet understand He hates sin. He loves us unconditionally and looks for a heart that trusts and loves Him, not for perfect performance.

God’s justice and mercy intersect at the cross.

  

"Why Water?" A guest post by Jordyn Redwood

Photo by I-stock photo

As a pediatric ER nurse, I understand how essential water is for life.  A newborn that has missed as little as three feedings can have concern for dehydration.  Our bodies are primarily water.  An adult’s body is made up of approximately 60% water, whereas an infant is in upward of 75%. This, along with a baby’s size, explains how they can get into trouble much more quickly than an adult when they are unable to stay hydrated.  Without water, you’ll die in as short as three days.

Generally, water is free.  Of course, you have a monthly water bill, but you can go up to a water fountain and get a drink without having to throw some quarters into a coin slot.  Businesses will give you water for free.

I do think God gives us physical examples for spiritual principles, and water pops up scripturally over seven-hundred times.

One of the more well-known verses that discusses water is John 4:14.  Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again.  Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever.  The water I give will be an Artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.” MSG

Could you imagine never being thirsty again?  Because water is readily available to us and costs very little, the imagery may be lost, but think of living in a desert and you have to trek over arduous terrain to simply get water to drink.  Imagine being the person sitting on windswept sand floors dreaming of never having dry, cracked lips or a parched tongue ever again. Ever.

This imagery came to me at church - about how something as important as water is free - and it got me thinking about other free things.

Other free things that are essential to life, free things essential to everlasting life, and then the words grace and belief came to mind.

Once, our preacher shared the follow joke.

“You are speeding and are pulled over.  Now, you really were speeding and fully deserve this penalty.  The officer writes you a ticket.  This is called justice.  But say you are having a bad day, and some tears are shed, and the officer has pity on you and lets you off with a warning. This is called mercy.  Let’s take that same example, and when you’re pulled over for the speeding ticket you fully deserve, you curse and swear at the officer for ruining your day. The policeman stand up, straightens his shoulders, pulls a key from his pocket, and says, ‘Ma’am, not only am I going to forgive the foul language that you used and your disrespectful attitude, but I’m going to give you this key to a brand new Ferrari, and I’m going to pay for the gas and insurance for as long as you own the car.’  This is called grace.”

Grace is an overabundance of underserved blessing, and maybe the way we understand grace is to couple that with how much we need something else like water.

But there is a cost for God’s grace to cover our sinful lives, and that is belief in Jesus as our Savior.

How strong is your belief?  Is it as strong as your need for water? 

Jordyn Redwood is a pediatric ER nurse by day, suspense novelist by night.  She hosts Redwood’s Medical Edge, a blog devoted to helping authors write medically accurate fiction. Her first two medical thrillers, Proof and Poison, garnered starred reviews from Library Journal and have been endorsed by the likes of Dr. Richard Mabry, Lynette Eason, and Julie Cantrell to name a few.  Proof was shortlisted for the 2012 ForeWord Review’s BOTY Award, 2013 INSPY Award, and the 2013 Carol Award.  Poison has shortlisted for the 2014 INSPY Award and the 2014 Selah Award.  In addition to her novels, she blogs regularly at Redwood’s Medical Edge and the WordServe Water Cooler, which has been named one of "Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers" two years in a row. 

You can connect with Jordyn via her website at www.jordynredwood.com.

"Celebrating Grace" ~A Guest Post

As the Christmas season is upon us, there are so many things to think about, to do, remember and most of all to be thankful for.   As we celebrate the birth of Jesus; what comes to mind as the thing you are most thankful for?  Is it the time you will be spending with relatives, the homemade meal your loved ones prepared for you, the presents wrapped under the tree?  For me it is God’s grace.  We are so undeserving of His love and mercy but He desires for us to have it.  You can never do anything to earn the grace He pours out on us.  In only a way God can do, he sent us His son through a virgin woman to live on earth for a short time to teach us lessons of love and unselfishness.  Grace is not a dormant quality or one-time event.  As Christians, we stand in grace.  The Christian life is driven and empowered by grace and we should continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.  God’s grace provided salvation although we deserve destruction.   What a great God we have to give us what we need instead of what we deserve! 

Ephesians 4:7 “But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” (NKJV)

Grace is not an inherent quality in us, like we talk of gifts or talents being given to us by God, it is the communication of divine goodness by the working of the Holy Spirit in us.  Take time to reflect on God’s grace.  It is not through our good works or deeds that God bestows His grace on us, but through seeking him and wanting to know him more personally every day.  We cannot experience God’s grace by being self-sufficient and self-reliant.  This is a prideful way of thinking and God resists the proud.  However, he also humbles the heart of the proud.  Those that think they can handle the situations and circumstances life brings on their own will be broken by God so that He may properly bless them with life with His grace.  An essential thing to living in the Grace of God is faith.  Faith partners with humility and both are necessary to the abounding life of grace that God promises. 

Hebrews 4:16 “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

The grace of God is about bearing fruit of good works.  That is tied into producing and growing a life of obedience.   Having a fruitful life is directly linked to living by the grace of God.  Whoever God has created you to be, and whatever God has purposed for you to do, He has already supplied you with the full measure of grace you will need to successfully prevail in His purpose for your life! 

Romans 3:24 “Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (NKJV)

Today's guest writer is Brooke Church...

Brooke is a single mom to two wonderful kids and a member of First Baptist Church of Woodstock for the last 20 years.  

She enjoys living life to the fullest and encouraging others along the way especially through blogging.  You can connect with her through Facebook or on her blog http://www.daysbecomememories.blogspot.com/ 

                       

"Living Water" - By Melissa Driggers

Creative Commons

On some days, I can’t look at them.  Sometimes looking at my scars is just too much.

You see, my scars aren’t just surgical.  As a result of the surgery to remove the cancer from my leg, I developed a permanent, incurable disease that leaves me with deformity, daily unrelenting pain, and which has changed my way of life in radical ways.  On some days, the pain is so bad that I can’t walk at all.

Managing the illness is challenging, to say the least.  Through it, though, I have come to rely on His presence and the peace that passes all understanding with a depth that I never imagined possible before cancer and lymphedema.  For that, I am so very grateful.  

Yet even so, I can’t lie.  Living with this stinks, with a capital “S”.  I mean it really, really stinks.  Every day, it is a challenge to reclaim the sense of femininity I once knew.  Every day, I choose to fight for a sense of external beauty that now so often seems so far out of reach when I see my own reflection.   Friends, on most days, that emotional and spiritual battle is exhausting.

After trying many treatments to “manage” the disease to the point of utter emotional and physical exhaustion, including wearing a cast from hip to toe for 8 weeks (THAT was fun!), spending thousands of dollars on physical therapy and custom compression garments, and exercising for countless hours on treadmills, ellipticals, and bikes (all of which made it even worse), I recently found myself officially at the last resort… 

THE POOL!   (cue the scary music here…)

Y’all know what that means, right?  A bathing suit.  A bathing suit would never, ever be able to hide my scars, not to mention the fact that I’d be in a public pool, and the last time I checked, “public” means that other people would be there.   Seriously, God? 

Since my surgery two years ago, I had never exposed my leg in public and had zero plans to do so, but something inside me just knew that my answer was in the water.  So, I bought an athletic swimsuit and signed up for water exercise classes at the community aquatic center.  I swallowed ALL of my pride as I donned that swimsuit and showed up for the “Get Wet and Sweat” class a few days later.  My head was down, and I didn’t make eye contact with anyone, but I was there.  

It was a lot to take in at first – familiarizing myself with the movements, trying not to drown (ha!), chuckling inwardly at the cheesy background music, and conquering the many fears that I’d brought in with me.  The instructor guided us to do a high-intensity segment of “flutter kicks”, and all at once I realized that in the water I was able to move in ways that were not possible on the ground. 

Wait…how can this be?  In the water, my pain is gone.

In that moment, I completely lost it, and started sobbing.  I don’t mean a delicate little girly cry.  I mean full-blown-snotty-faced WEEPING, right in the middle of thirty men and women doing flutter kicks in the pool to the beat of “Build Me Up Buttercup”.  Worship comes at the most unexpected moments sometimes!  The freedom and healing that came in the water was more than I could comprehend, and my gratitude came pouring out (literally).  After years of suffering on “dry land”, for the first time, I felt whole.  For the first time, I was free.

In the pool that day, the metaphor of the ages had come to life in my heart.

Jesus spoke often of living water, as did the prophets, and water was the venue for miracles, teaching, and healing in the Bible.   One well-known example of this teaching was to the Samaritan Woman.  To her, he explained, “…Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14, NIV).  She had come to the well to fill up her jar with stagnant water from the cistern to drink, but instead she encountered Jesus, who knew everything about her and filled her empty heart with streams of fresh, flowing mercy and grace. 

The water in the pool doesn’t heal me.  His mercy in the water is what makes my broken, diseased body whole again.  

Only when I allow myself to come bare and exposed, showing my scars, at the end of myself, can he show me what is possible with Him. 

What are you struggling with today?  Whatever it is, He is knocking on the door of your tired and empty heart, waiting to fill it with the living water that gives new life.  Let Him. 

Melissa is an itinerant speaker/teacher, blogger, and author residing in the South.  She is single (although she prefers the term “unclaimed treasure”) and lives with her two children, Henry and Hannah, who are “technically” canine (ssshhhh… they don’t know they aren’t human).  Her vision and passion for ministry is to shepherd others to the grace, hope, healing, and restoration found only in Jesus Christ!  Through her own life journey, God has transformed her heart, and she has experienced the true meaning of “beauty from ashes”.

You can connect with Melissa through her web site, at www.infieldsofgrace.com

Click here to view a video of "Mercy" by Casting Crowns

"The Antidote for My Wounded, Angry Heart" By Jennifer White

Photo by Creative Common Image

I am a recovering people pleaser, so my list of enemies has been relatively short.  Even with all my efforts to be everyone’s favorite, there have been a few people I couldn’t please. 

The words of Mary DeMuth lanced my recently wounded and inflamed heart.  In Wall Around Your Heart:  How Jesus Heals You When Others Hurt You, Mary reminds us how Jesus dealt with His foes:    

“He offered grace to those who violated His laws.  He dignified outcasts.  He engaged Himself in the very world that put Him to death.  Jesus is our example of openhearted living; of exhibiting wild love that dared to wash the feet of Judas, who betrayed Him; of reinstating Peter, who denied Him thrice.  Jesus, in His divine irresistibility  welcomed all, loved all, endured all.”  All!  

I’ve been trying to swallow this bitter reality.  I have been Jesus’ enemy.  I have: 

-       Relented too many times to premarital sex

-       Chosen divorce

-       Lied about my sin to protect my reputation

-       Chewed relentlessly on the faults of my husband

-       Broadcasted the faults of a family member like a spewing hydrant 

Yet, he lets me wear this robe of His righteousness.  He calls me friend.  His mercy for my attitude, my irresponsibility, and broken promises to Him, others, and myself is new every morning! 

God is love.  He loves me with 1 Corinthians 13 love.  He is patient with me while I struggle to grasp the gospel.  He is kind to me even though I have dismissed His instructions.  He is not rude to me with snarls and reminders of my weaknesses.  He does not force His rules on me but gives me the freedom to choose to say yes.  He is not irritable with me because He’s exhausted from cleaning up my messes and yours, too. 

He prays for me.

He empowers me.

His power rests on my weakness.

While I was His enemy, He pursued me with a hope-filled love.  He held out His hand to me, smiled, and offered His help. 

In Luke chapter 6, Jesus gives us radical relationship instructions. 

²⁷ “Love your enemies.  Do good to those who hate you.  ²⁸ Bless those who curse you.  Pray for those who abuse you.”  ^35 “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.  ³⁶ Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” 

There it is in verse 35:  “He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.”  You and me, we are the ungrateful, evil ones, and He is merciful.  He is kind to us. 

The one who hurt me has seemed so ungrateful for my kindness and support.  I will be merciful.  I will be kind. 

I am choosing to see this enemy as God’s little girl, hurt and walled off emotionally.  When I do, she looks much like I once felt and still do at times. 

I am choosing to take my ugly thoughts about her into the obedience of Christ; the obedience of praying for her and blessing her.  (Luke 27-36) 

I have more peace.  

“The greatest challenge of my life is choosing to commune with God with everything I am, learning to receive His wild, but abundant love, then flinging it joyfully in people’s direction.”  

Mary DeMuth, “Wall Around Your Heart”

Jennifer White pursues God in prayer with the Bible as her guide.  She leads others to do the same at Prayerfully Speaking.  Being wife to David is her highest calling.  She recently completed her first book, Prayers for new Brides: Putting on the Armor After the Wedding Dress.  #LIVEWONDERSTRUCK with her that God is and does "more than we can ask or imagine" (Ephesians 3:20). #GodAnswers 

Click here for Calling Glory's "Teach Me To Love"