Month: March 2023

I know that is an obvious, but as I sit here in my home study, it doesn’t look or feel much like Spring. We had snow day before yesterday so it doesn’t seem too obvious with our eyesight. However, the miniature iris’ in my front flower bed are ready to look like the photo above. I took the photograph a couple of years ago and am really looking forward to seeing them shortly. The white board slats behind them (in the photo) are not from a fence. In fact, those slats are only about a foot tall and are meant to put in front of the bed. So the actual flowers are about 2-3 inches tall and about an inch to 1 1/2 inches wide. They are very sweet and are the first heralds of Spring among my plants.

Spring brings with it so much new life, that of course, it reminds me of what happens to us in the life of the Lord. Whenever the Holy Spirit begins to move He always brings new life to us. It is time to embrace joy and begin to take walks outside in the freshness of the fresh breath. I will wait a few weeks for that walk, to insure no ice is left to trip on, but soon, very soon.

You see, Jesus comes over and over in us and to us. He is the ever-present Lord of all, adding new life to old things as He moves. I am so deeply thankful to Him and for Him. New discoveries in the Scriptures add to the excitement of what is just around the corner. In Psalm 19, we are experiencing a newness of the Lord in His presence, movement, and His power. It is happening all over. I am deeply bless by all the reports among my friends whose church body is experiencing a new “presence” in their services as well. How wonderful it all is.

As we move through the next few days and months, let’s be eternally grateful for all He is doing! Oh I know our country and our world is a mess, but He is moving among us!!! That is what we need to embrace and live it.

Let’s (me and you) do this today and begin to allow to Lord to pour His goodness and fire on, through, and to us as we move forward into warmer weather – and a deeper embrace of that life-giving breath.

“But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood:” Galatians 3:15-16 KJV

The gospel is simply Christ in me, the hope of glory. Present day evangelism does not know this — it only knows ‘Come to Jesus.’ But we have not truly responded deeply enough until we have begun to purposely ‘see’ the mystery — Christ in ourselves. This calls for me to be willing to be seen (not just waiting on whatever, but actively moving in His glory), so He can be seen. It is not the elimination of me, but the becoming of me into His form, nature, image, reflection, and manifestation; to be the miracle of the incarnation — to have Christ revealed in me and through me. This is the gospel! 

Paul is not talking about behavior modification, but behavior transformation. The life of faith in His glory called me to die to all I thought I would become and purposely submit to His person (the Holy Spirit) in me that this Lord of mine can been known, seen, and heard though His incarnation in me. 

“But we all, with open face beholding as in glass the glory of the Lord, are changed (transformed) into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 3:18 KJV

“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” Philippians 3:13-14 KJV. 

Now we also press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus — Christ in me the hope of glory! May He be unfolded and manifested in every thought and movement as we press forward into this mystery revealed in us