with great joy

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Jude 24-25

I read this today and was met afresh with the boldness of the gospel.

About Him...

Able to keep us from stumbling

Presents us blameless

How? with great joy

It is a good reminder to read He keeps me from stumbling. Not by my might or my striving. The measure that I love God pales in comparison to how He loves me. And then even in the face of my little love for Him, my little sacrifice, my little faith, my little obedience, my little joy, and my lots of sin, he presents me blameless. And with great joy!

How he must love us.....

O the deep, deep love of Jesus

Vast unmeasured boundless free

Sunday readings

From Elisabeth Elliot's Discipline.

"The sum of our job here on earth is to glorify God. This was the sum of Jesus's task as well. How did He do it? Shortly before He was crucified He said to His Father, "I have glorified thee on earth by completing the work which thou gavest me to do."

There were endless demands on Jesus's time. People pressed on Him with their needs so that He and His disciples had not leisure even to eat, and He would go away into the hills to pray and be alone. At times the disciples came to Him with reproach because He was not available when needed. There must have been, everywhere He went, those who wanted to be healed who could not get to Him because of the crowds, or who learned too late that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, or who had no one to carry them to Him or to send to ask Him to come to them. How many "if only's" He must have left behind, how much more that He "could have" done. There must have been things, also, that Jesus Himself would have liked to do during those three packed years of His public ministry, but He was a man, with a man's limitations of time and space. Yet He took time to rest, withdrawing to the hills to pray alone and sometimes taking His disciples to lonely places where they were free of the crowds. Still He was able to make that amazing claim, "I have finished the work You gave me to do." This was not the same as saying He had finished everything He could possibly think of to do or that He had done everything others had asked. He made no claim to have done what He wanted to do. The claim was that He had done what had been given."

His entirely

I have less than little to say that is of any real use, but I'll share some of the things that have had me thinking this week......

Once and for all let us begin to be His entirely, May we banish from our hearts and souls all that does not reflect Jesus. Let's ask Him for the grace to do this, so that He alone might rule in our hearts. Brother Lawrence

No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. *Jesus

From A Chance to Die: biography on Amy Carmichael (more to come):

Is not joy better than much learning?

I have rightfully no other business each day but to do God's work as a servant, constantly regarding His pleasure. May I have grace to live above every human motive, simply with God and to God.

But there are the bight bits, too, times when a flash of Heaven's own sunshine lights up the darkness of the darkest mud hut, and one such moment is worth a lifetime's plod.

He goeth before.

She was ashamed to think that as a follower of a Savior who was "despised and rejected," she herself shrank from being merely misunderstood and misjudged. So this was what those stark Scripture passages meant: dead to self, alive to God--"dead to all one's natural earthly plans and hopes, dead to all voices, however dear, which would deafen our ear to His."

All that pleases is but for a moment, all that grieves is but for a moment, nothing is important but that which is eternal.

He has been so kind about other things that we cannot doubt but that He will care for this too.