A Pair of Bartletts

Milk And Honey

It's amazing where the Lord will sometime lead us in our study of scripture. For whatever reason, I was lead to Deuteronomy 11 while in another scripture. I landed there through a cross reference. At any rate, when I got into the chapter, the Lord just made this passage jump off of the page for me. Isn't it amazing how He speaks? And I don't know about you, but there is no sweeter place to be than dwelling with the Lord in a land of milk and honey. Now please don't think that I am so naive to think that as a Christian, everything is going to spring up roses with Mary Poppins singing in the background. BUT, I do believe that obeying His statutes and walking upright is HIS word will bring forth fruit in our lives and we will dwell in a much better place than if we were wandering as aimless as those in the world who do not know Him.

Dear friend, seek HIS face. Take possession of the land and live long in that land. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and soul. I can't speak for you, but only for me....and I want to cross over Jordan and take possession of everything that the Lord has in store!

What scriptures are speaking to you in your study and quiet times?

Deuteronomy 11

1 "You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always. 2 And consider today (since I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen it), consider the discipline of the Lord your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm, 3 his signs and his deeds that he did in Egypt to Pharaoh the king of Egypt and to all his land, 4 and what he did to the army of Egypt, to their horses and to their chariots, how he made the water of the Red Sea flow over them as they pursued after you, and how the Lord has destroyed them to this day, 5 and what he did to you in the wilderness, until you came to this place, 6 and what he did to Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, son of Reuben, how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households, their tents, and every living thing that followed them, in the midst of all Israel. 7 For your eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord that he did.

8 "You shall therefore keep the whole commandment that I command you today, that you may be strong, and go in and take possession of the land that you are going over to possess, 9 and that you may live long in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their offspring, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. 11 But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, 12 a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

13 "And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14 he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. 15 And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. 16 Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; 17 then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.

18 "You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19 You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 20 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21 that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth. 22 For if you will be careful to do all this commandment that I command you to do, loving the Lord your God, walking in all his ways, and holding fast to him, 23 then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourselves. 24 Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours. Your territory shall be from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River, the river Euphrates, to the western sea. 25 No one shall be able to stand against you. The Lord your God will lay the fear of you and the dread of you on all the land that you shall tread, as he promised you.

26 "See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, 28 and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known. 29 And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, you shall set the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. 30 Are they not beyond the Jordan, west of the road, toward the going down of the sun, in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Arabah, opposite Gilgal, beside the oak of Moreh? 31 For you are to cross over the Jordan to go in to take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you. And when you possess it and live in it, 32 you shall be careful to do all the statutes and the rules that I am setting before you today. 

 

Be so blessed!

Thankful Thursday~~Who Is Your Champion?

 
Dear Jesus,

Thank you for my precious husband.  Thank you for the blessing that he is in my life and every day of my life.  I thank you that before the world was formed by Your mighty hand, You had the sweetest treasure on Your mind for me.  In the very core of my being, I could have never in my own strength have thought of, dreamed of or found a soul mate more precious than the one that You created for me!

I humbly pray that you would saturate his every thought with Your precepts.  Conform his thoughts to Your thoughts.  Teach him Your higher ways.  Urge him to make his requests known to You, O Lord.  Guard his heart and his mind through You, Christ Jesus.  Give him daily courage to fend off the ways of this wretched world.  Continue to bless him as the leader of this home.

I ask all of these things in the name of Jesus, my Savior....AMEN

Ruth 1:16-17 (New King James Version)

¹⁶ But Ruth said: 

      “ Entreat me not to leave you, 
      Or to turn back from following after you; 
      For wherever you go, I will go; 
      And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; 
      Your people shall be my people, 
      And your God, my God.

 ¹⁷ Where you die, I will die,
      And there will I be buried. 
      The LORD do so to me, and more also, 
      If anything but death parts you and me.”

 

There Is NO OTHER Way

 

 (My sweet sister-in-love, Julie and little Will)

As I woke up this morning, I could not get the song out of my head....."Trust and obey, for there's NO OTHER way to be HAPPY in Jesus, but to TRUST and OBEY"!  I have listened to that song over and over in my life, with one of my favorite versions being on my iPod from Big Daddy Weave's album "Every Time I Breathe".  It's a good thing that you really can't wear out an MP3 like you used to wear out LP's....because if that were possible, I would have worn this one out by now!  (If you don't have this album, I HIGHLY recommend it....it has been a HUGE blessing to me)

Today was a big day for our family.  As my regular readers know, my sister-in-love, Julie, was diagnosed with colon cancer in March.   After her diagnosis, she underwent chemo and radiation, in hopes of shrinking her tumor prior to surgery.  As for the surgery, it was today....and WOW, are we all overwhelmed or what with our God?  Not only did the tumor shrink to the point that the physicians couldn't see it in the pre-operative testing, but the surgery itself was a total success.  I'll have to tell you, for me, it's been really hard totally "trust" God (in my own flesh) to completely see Julie through this trial.  But I have had to "obey" and know that "worry" is the opposite of "faith". God promises believers that He will "supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus". (Philppians 4:19) 

 I fully believe that as a believer, "trusting" and "obeying" should go hand in hand.  I don't think that you can "trust" and not "obey".  By "trusting" His infallible Word to do the things that He tells us that He will do, it is a requirement that we "obey" Him, in order to receive the promises that we are trusting Him to fulfill.  And in the case of my sweet sister-in-love, thousands upon thousands have been obedient to the call of Christ to pray and intercede on her behalf.  And for that, God receives the glory.  And in the midst of this trial, there have been scores of people who have come in contact with Julie's story who may never have heard of Jesus and how He can save them.  And to boot, the amount of trust in our Lord that Julie herself has had to exhibit is just overwhelming.  In the midst of a trial of this magnitude in her own life, she has had to trust God to use something as serious as cancer for His glory.  And through it all,  she has been and example of obedience to all of us by remaining faithful to Him and to  His word for the duration of this trial.  And the trial is not over...there is still recovery ahead, but I have no doubt that Julie will continue to handle it with the beauty and grace that she has to this point.  I wish that everyone could know her...because as beautiful as she is on the outside, she is one hundred fold more beautiful on the inside.  She's our sweet Julie and to know her is to deeply love her.  

So, in case you don't already know it, our God is GOOD!  He is faithful and He is just.  And today, tomorrow and forever, we will trust Him for our every need.  It will not always be easy, but as the song says...."Trust and obey, for there's NO OTHER WAY to be HAPPY in Jesus...but to trust AND obey".

 

I Finally Found My Niche....I Mean nook

Sheer...

Reading...

BLISS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Blue moon to shine on New Year's Eve - CNN.com

via www.cnn.com

 ³ When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

         The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
 ⁴ What is man that You are mindful of him,
         And the son of man that You visit him?
 ⁵ For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
         And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
          (Psalm 8:3-5, New King James Version)

As the blue moon rises for us tomorrow night, let us not forget the One who will be hanging this glorious decoration in the night sky for us to behold.

 

Thankful for Thursday

I found these great reminders for all of us this Thanksgiving week.  I hope that you will enjoy them as much as I did!

 

 I pray that you will spend incredible family time together doing the "little things" together.

 

I pray that you'll get "the perfect bird" for your perfect Thanksgiving table.

And lastly, that you stay one step ahead of the arrows of the Enemy! 

From my family to yours I pray that you will have a very peaceful and very meaningful Thanksgiving celebration with your families.  I pray that you will speak words of edification that others may be built up.  I pray that you will stop and remember all of those things that should make us fall to our knees in humble gratitude.  I thank God for my precious family and friends, but most of all I thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for my salvation in Him.   I'll leave you with one of my favorite Puritan Prayers, "The Valley of Vision". 

The Valley of Vision

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision. Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells, and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine; let me find Thy light in my darkness, Thy life in my death, Thy joy in my sorrow, Thy grace in my sin, Thy riches in my poverty, Thy glory in my valley.

 

 

He hasn't forgotten

With all of the tragic news being pelted at us through the media recently, it seems that at every turn that there is a very public divorce, a public admission of adultery and even today, two very public deaths.  I know that in all of these tragedies, the one thing that I struggle most with is the thought of the children involved.  Since Rob and I still have not had children yet, I think I have this extra sensitivity to those children who find themselves caught in the middle of all of these things.  My heart cries out for them.  My mind races with thoughts of "Lord, why couldn't they be here with us?  We would want them to have a home of safety, security and peace!"  But, I am reminded that God is sovreign.  He knows these children, one by one.  He has a plan and will reveal His plan in His time. So for now, I am just gently reminded of the words from the Lord.... Matthew 10:29 (New King James Version) 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will.

Thankful Thursday

Hang with me folks....this is my first attempt to post from my Blackberry. The computer is already off and I'm winding down with my sleepy dog, sleepy husband and an episode of Frasier. I was reflecting on how thankful that I am for everything that I have. The Lord has been so good to us, even at a time that most of the
country is in a crisis. Thank you Lord for my wonderful husband, our  home and our incredible families. You have given me far more than I deserve.
--
Sent from my mobile device

Labels: Thankful Thursday