Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

We hear it everywhere...we see the symbol all around.

It struck me the other day ...that is what Christianity is about!

Taking the old and making something new, we are repurposed!

Reduce, reuse, recycle, renew, repurpose!

"Recycling uses old products in new ways. Reduce means to minimize the amount of waste we create. Reuse refers to using items more than once. Recycle means putting a product to a new use instead of throwing it away." (Google.com)

I have seen rethink added.

Reduce: we as Christians must reduce...our use of foul words, our bitterness, our anger, our self centeredness.

📖 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. Ephesians 4:29

📖 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Ephesians 4:31

📖 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. Roman's 12:3

Reduce anything that is not like that of Christ.

📖 He must become greater; I must become less. John 3:30

Reuse: make sure we are using over and over again; kindness, compassion, grace, generosity. humility, love.

📖 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone Colossians 2:10

📖 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Colossians 3:12

📖 Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. 1 peter 3:8

Reuse all the attributes of Jesus

📖 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Galatians 3:22-23

Rethink: realigning our thought process to that of Jesus. 

📖 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. Isaiah 55:8

📖  In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Philippians 2:5

📖 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2

God repurposes us...

📖 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. Genesis 50:20

📖 Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:8

Aren't we glad that God had the idea of recycling long before we did!

📖 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:18

📖 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 2 Corinthians 5:17

Search Me!

Have you ever responded "Search me!?"

"How would I know?"

"I don't know"
"Why ask me?"
"Search me?!"

in response to someone who may be asking you a question...searching for an answer?

God searches us, and knows us...He knows every detail, every tiny molecule...because HE put it all together.

📖 You have searched me, Lord

and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue

you, Lord, know it completely.

You hem me in behind and before,

and you lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?  If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.  If I rise on the wings of the dawn,  if I settle on the far side of the sea,  even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.  If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderfull I know that full well. 

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God. How vast is the sum of them!  Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—when I awake, I am still with you.  If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty! They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name.  Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies. Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.  Psalm 139

📖 “I the Lord search the heart
    and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
    according to what their deeds deserve.”

 Jeremiah 17:10

He has sought us out, HE searches for those of us who are lost. 

📖  “‘For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. Ezekiel 34:11-12

📖 Wouldn’t every single one of you, if you have 100 sheep and lose one, leave the 99 in their grazing lands and go out searching for the lost sheep until you find it? Luke 15:4 (VOICE)

📖 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:26-28

The Lord knows us, but I believe it is an important part of our daily walk with Him to invite Him to search our souls.

📖  Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
24 And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23-24 (NKJV)

So that He can reveal to us those things that need to be removed

📖 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Psalm 51:7-12

And then our hearts, minds and souls can be pure and steadfast, ready to serve Him and be filled with the JOY of our salvation!

❤AMEN!❤

In the Garden

Last week's post was about the need to quiet the busyness around us, even strip away our support systems, on occasion, to hear God better.

The old hymn In the Garden was in my head and it struck me that it is a beautiful picture of that very concept.

In the Garden
I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.
Refrain

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice,
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.

Refrain

I’d stay in the garden with Him
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
His voice to me is calling.

Refrain

Words and Music by C. Austin Miles, 1912

We must come alone, to a place of solitude to walk and talk with our Savior.

🎶 "He walks with me and He talks with me..."

Our first encounter with the Lord is something that has to happen on an individual basis.

Others can show us by example, point us in the direction of the cross....but we walk that initial walk on our own. The one where we walk towards a Savior, understanding our need for salvation and accept what He has done for us.

🎶 "I come to the garden alone"

As with Mary when she encountered the risen Christ.  Which is the inspiration behind the penning of this hymn. (tanbible.com)

📖 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”  “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.  He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"  Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”  Jesus said to her, “Mary.”  She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).  Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her. John 20:11-18

Christ even needed solitude in a garden to have one of His most important conversations with His Father and Lord.

📖 The Garden of Gethsemane

Then Jesus *came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and *said to His disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He *said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.”  And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” Matthew 26:36-39 (NASB)

The Hymn tells of a very personal God, not unlike the relationship in the first Garden.

📖 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 2:8-9

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:15-17

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.  But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” Genesis 3:8-11

To me it sounds like it was a very personal interaction with God. He placed them in the garden, spoke with Adam about his duties. And sought them out when sin entered. 

We can have that personal relationship.  Whether we take an actual walk outside in a garden or some where in this beautiful world He created, or it is just time in His presence....we have to opportunity every day to hear His voice, the voice that is..

🎶 so sweet the birds hush their singing

I also equate it with our quiet time

Early, First thing, first walk of the day...

🎶 While the dew is still on the roses

And He will meet us there.  

In out quiet time with Him, we come on our own to listen, learn, refresh, renew.

🎶 And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;

He will walk with us through our day, every step of the way if we choose Him,

And we allow Him to place a melody with in our heart...a song ...our song that only He can give.

🎶 And the melody that He gave to me

Within my heart is ringing.

Listen to this version of the old hymn

🎵 In the Garden Alan Jackson 

To Hear Him In the Whisper

This isn't really another installment of Giants, Mountains, and Fire, but 🤫sshhh,  some added thoughts.

For many of us our lives are busy. 

They are noisy with the demands of our daily life, jobs, appointments, family, commitments, even our hobbies, social lives, even in this pandemic.

They also can be noisy with illness, strife, tragedy etc

In times of stress and difficulty we often seek others comfort, opinions,  even approval. 

But occasionally  we find that there is silence...there aren't any demands, no appointments, nothing scheduled, no one seems to be available at the moment...no one to call on..we or they are out of  the service area, we get answering machines and voicemails, they have commitments of their own, etc.

But when reading the scripture I have used for the last several weeks a thought came to me...

📖 The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”  Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.  Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 1 Kings 19:11-13

Maybe that as a time when I am supposed to be listening.... in the silence 

Because sometimes God is in the quiet, gentle whisper.

Sometimes He needs all those distractions to be silenced for a time...so it is only Him and me.

Sometimes He needs the support network He ha provided for me to be "on pause" for a time so that I rely on Him alone and can hear Him more clearly.

Even the most spiritual, in tune, God worshipping person can become distracted in times of stress or trial and the first person turned to isn't necessarily God.

There are times when it all needs to stripped away so it becomes Him and I.

📖 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.  You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. John 15:1-4

Some things are cut away permanently, things that are not of God, that distract us from where He is leading us.

But sometimes there things that are removed are for a season, as with pruning plants ...there is a season in which you prune in order to improve the fruitfulness of the plant.

Sometimes for us the things around us that give us support or make up our daily lives are "paused" for a season to give us that time, that new perspective.

So when I can't seem to reach my support system, or they haven't seemed to reach out to me, or the things I was counting on for that day have been canceled or rescheduled ....instead of feeling desolate, isolated, even abandoned or forgotten I have to remember to take that time to be still and listen for the gentle whisper.

📖 He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth.” Psalm 46:10

🙏Praying for your opportunity to be still and hear the gentle whisper🤫❤