Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Psalm 35:11-18

Published by S.M. Wibberley on November 25, 2016
 
Today we return to a dark part of Psalm 35 where David lifts his soul to God in distress, seeking relief in the attacks coming against him.
 
Psalm 35:11-13 “Ruthless witnesses come forward; they question me on things I know nothing about. They repay me evil for good and leave my soul forlorn. Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth and humbled myself with fasting.”
 
In the daily spiritual battle, Satan often uses those around us to pressure and accuse us. Those we have done good to now stand and oppose us, attack us, blame us.
 
This can be disorienting, as two versions of the past collide, perhaps causing us to question our own sanity. David needed a touchstone of reality, so he remembered how he had been so kind and concerned for those who were now attacking him:
 
“When my prayers [for them] returned to me unanswered,
Psalm 35:14 I went about mourning as though for my friend or brother. I bowed my head in grief as though weeping for my mother.”
 
[But these same people had a very different response when David was down.]
 
Psalm 35:15,16 “But when I stumbled, they gathered in glee; attackers gathered against me when I was unaware. They slandered me without ceasing. Like the ungodly they maliciously mocked, they gnashed their teeth at me.”
 
[Note that these are “like the ungodly” meaning they were probably believers, people who had been close to David.
 
So we, too, can experience injustice and evil from fellow believers who are pursuing their own agendas rather than God’s. And, like David, we must look to Jesus for help.]
 
Psalm 35:17,18 “O Lord, how long will you look on? Rescue my life from their ravages, my precious life from these lions. I will give you thanks in the great assembly; among the throngs I will praise you.”
 
[Your timing, O Lord, is right, but to us some suffering seems to go on too long. Thinking of my wife’s illness, I cry out, “Act, Lord, and bring the changes, bring the deliverance that is needed. Lord, help us to wait through well, learning what is necessary, giving you glory in praise through it all.
 
Answer for the sake of your Name, for the sake of your Glory, O Lord. And I can and will praise you now for how and when you will respond, for you are wise and good and gracious.”]
 
Filed under:

Thanksgiving Day

Published by S.M. Wibberley on November 24, 2016
Today being Thanksgiving Day, I want to list out 100 things I am thankful for. For your edification, here are the first fifty-seven.
 
Spiritual reasons to give thanks
 
God is real.
He is eternal.
He is holy with no sin, evil or negative.
He is perfect.
He is wise beyond comprehension.
His ways and thoughts are far higher than ours.
He knows everything.
He understands everything.
He created everything giving each thing its complexity and superb design and did so just by speaking!
He is present everywhere, all the time.
He is Sovereign.
He is powerful beyond conception.
He is beautiful in perfect and full-orbedness.
He loves beauty and shares it with us in His creation.
He is love.
He is light
He is life
He inexplicably loves His enemies.
He desired to buy us back from the kingdom of darkness.
He rescued us from Satan, sin and self.
He has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in the Kingdom of light.
He chose us before the foundation of the world to be His children.
He then predestined us to hear the gospel.
He convicted us of sin and righteousness and judgment.
He revealed Himself to us through whatever means each of us needed.
He sent people to share the good news with us.
He pinned us down to listen.
He gave us faith and repentance.
He is our Shepherd.
He has made His Spirit dwell in us.
We have become the temple of the Living God.
He has made us members of the church universal.
He has given us a church local.
He has given up purpose and meaning.
He has a plan for our lives laid out in detail.
He is running with us in the race He has set out before us.
Nothing comes to us randomly.
Every bit of suffering has meaning and purpose.
He helps us in every weakness.
He chastens us when need it (which is much of the time).
He is tender, gracious, loving and kind.
He will make us into the Bride of Christ.
When we die we will go to be with Him.
There will be no sorrow and suffering, no tears or terror.
He has given us peace and joy.
He wants us to trust Him so our lives can overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
He invites us to join Him in His great plans.
He has given us the gift of prayer.
We can enter His presence any time.
He has made us His ambassadors.
He has promised to never leave us or forsake us.
He has given us the three things all human beings long for: belonging, worth and competence.
He gives us rest for our souls, if we seek refuge in Him.
Jesus loves us as the Father loves Him.
He has given us all the significance and security we could ever need.
Because He is always good, we can give thanks to Him in all things.
And the list could go on. What a wonderful God we have, far better than we could ever have thought up. Let us be in awe, fall before Him in worship and live lives that bring Him both joy and honor.
 
Filed under:

Over heard

Published by S.M. Wibberley on November 23, 2016

Perfectionism is a form of self abuse!

Filed under:

God Has A Plan

Published by S.M. Wibberley on November 22, 2016
It is so good to have Barbara home. Yesterday she started a daily group therapy program, got a new and sympathetic doctor and most importantly, has begun to lift her soul to God, with almost immediate improvement. The road is still long, but we are thankful for the progress.
 
In this difficult and challenging journey of Barbara’s illness there is one truth that has kept my faith strong: God’s Word is trustable: “Trouble and distress have come upon me, but your commands are my delight” (Ps. 119:142).
 
And His Word says that God has a plan (“run with endurance the race that is set before you” Heb. 12:2). Nothing is random, nothing is out of His control, in every event He has a purpose and every purpose is good.
 
So in every heart-wrenching twist and turn in this illness adventure, I can say, “Lord Jesus, I look to you, I trust you because you are the great Shepherd, intimately concerned and involved with each of us every moment. The Truth is,
 
• You know us completely.
• You supply all that is necessary.
• You design the next lesson we need.
• You make us lie down in green pastures.
• You give us rest in the midst of turmoil.
• You bring transformation.
• You guide us in the right way.
• You lead us into and through the dark valleys.
• You know exactly what you are doing.
• And we can trust You.
 
May Your commands always be my delight no matter what you may cause me to experience.
 
Prayer: “Praise you for your great wisdom, your love, grace and goodness. We bow before you in worship, we lift up your name in awe, we exalt you in your perfection, and we surrender our hearts to your love in joy.
 
We rise up now to obey you in each decision as part of our worship. May you be glorified in our lives today. Amen.”
Filed under:

The God of Suffering

Published by S.M. Wibberley on November 21, 2016
More encouraging words from EDIFIED!
 
Psalm 119:141-144a comes to mind, “Though I am lowly and despised, I do not forget your precepts.” Our response to feeling this must be to go immediately to your Word, Lord, to find our comfort, perspective, help and direction from you. People may not understand us, but you do. We may not understand what’s happening and why, but you do and will help us through it.
 
“Trouble and distress have come upon me, but your commands are my delight.” In the midst of stress, trouble and despair, I can still delight in your commands. In fact, in the midst of such difficulty your Word is sweeter still.
 
“Your righteousness is everlasting and your law is true. Your statutes are forever right….” Praise be to you, O Lord God Almighty, that you, as revealed in your Word, are the measure of what is true and right and good.
 
We so easily confuse comfort and convenience with good; but you so carefully teach us that weakness, hardships, insults, persecutions and difficulties are also things to delight in, if we have your perspective, think your thoughts and see with your eyes (2 Cor. 12:9,10).
 
Praise you that with your Word you give us the big picture, you help us understand what you are doing. You draw us up above the rebellious thoughts and snares of the world, the flesh and the devil.
 
Thank you for the shield of faith that we can raise with praise to ward off the fiery darts of self-pity, anger, frustration, impatience, self-centeredness and hurt as well as short-term thinking and feeling.
• Praise raises the barrier of protection.
• Praise heals the wounds.
• Praise opens our eyes.
• Praise produces perspective.
• Praise brings freedom.
 
All this is true because you, Lord Jesus, are the great Shepherd, intimately concerned with each of us each moment. Praise be to you for your inexplicable, unreasonable, unending love. Help us to abide in it especially when things are hard and you seem for far away, for you are actually always right the with us and in us.
Filed under:

The Good of Suffering

Published by S.M. Wibberley on November 20, 2016
Today’s reading in EDIFIED! is a very appropriate reminder to us as Barbara goes through this dark valley.
 
“Trouble and distress have come upon me, but your commands are my delight.”
Psalm 119:143
 
I praise you this morning, Heavenly Father, for you are the Sovereign One, controlling all that goes on, all that comes to me. You hold back the tide of evil, allowing Satan only so much rope, and you use the fury of his attacks to advance your Kingdom.
 
Just yesterday I read of how many thousands in Haiti have come to faith after the great earthquakes of 2010. You used this tragedy to plow the hard and rebellious hearts of people, opening them to hearing Truth and surrendering to you.
 
Suffering is an unavoidable part of life in this sin-warped world; you are the One who allows what suffering comes to us, regulating it according to what we need to grow and give you glory, as well as what we can bear with your grace.
 
In the suffering that comes, you have reasons and purpose, you have goals, you have growth and privileges for us.
 
And we have the responsibility to flee to you, to turn to your Word, to take up and use your grace, to praise, to rest in you, to embrace what comes as opportunity to bring you glory.
 
I praise you, Lord Jesus, my good and great Shepherd:
• for your wisdom, which is far above our understanding;
• for your grace, which is more than enough;
• for your compassion, which provides all we need;
• for your love, which you pour out on us every moment.
 
Filed under:

Psalm 34:18

Published by S.M. Wibberley on November 19, 2016
 
Praise be to you, Elohim, the Creator God, the Powerful One, the Faithful Ruler. You are perfect in your character, unchanging in your goodness, complete in your maturity, absolute in your righteousness, all pervasive in your wisdom.
 
How unlike us: we waver, vacillate, are up and down, fearful one moment, overly aggressive the next. I praise you, Lord, for your great and wonderful patience with us in this.
 
Today I thank you that you have brought Barbara home from the hospital, thinking clearly, stable physically, able to function adequately. This is your great answer to the prayers of many and I praise you for it.
 
As it says in Psalm 35:18 “I will give you thanks in the great assembly; among throngs of people I will praise you.”
 
[One thing I praise you for is giving the faith to offer praise before this beautiful answer came. You reminded me often that you have a plan, that you are sovereign, that I could trust in the darkness what you taught me in the light. Or as one person described it, when the train went into the tunnel, you kept me from getting off, but had me rest in you until it came out the other side into the light again.
 
Truly, you are good, Lord, all the time. Most often people say this after everything works out according to their desires—which requires no faith.
 
But it is in a sense even more true that you are good when everything falls apart, when we lose what we cherish, when nothing seems to work right, when all goes from bad to worse. Then we have the opportunity to praise by faith, to live by faith.
 
And then when you do bring us out into the light again, it is more more delicious, marvelous than ever because we are closer to you, especially on an emotional level, having joined you in your work in the darkness by rejecting the desires of our emotions to complain and instead offering the sacrifice of thanksgiving.
 
Lord help us to ever respond this way, remembering that no matter how bad things look, you have a plan, a plan for good to prosper us, to give us hope and a future (Jer. 29:11). Yours is a plan to lead us out into a wider space, a deeper walk with you, a more effective life. May you ever be exalted for your unwavering goodness, Lord.
 
May we ever remember that we can trust you no matter how bad things get and in the midst of distress, in faith, willfully, wholeheartedly offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving so that you may be honored, opening the way for you to show us the salvation of the Lord (Ps. 50:23).
 
Filed under:

God in His Greatness Answers

Published by S.M. Wibberley on November 18, 2016
Barbara comes home today! Nat is here to visit! God is answering prayer!
 
Praise be to you, Lord God, the Righteous One, Hater of sin and Judge of rebels. I praise you that you found a way to eliminate evil, to remove it from the future, while offering mankind a way out of the dominion of darkness into the Kingdom of Light.
 
I praise you for saving us from Satan’s power, from sin’s slavery and from our own depravity. I thank you that you have made us your children, given us your Spirit and equipped us to be more than conquerors.
 
You are the God of Glory, the King of Freedom, the Lord of Love and the Shepherd of Grace. I praise you that you are sovereign, capable of controlling every single detail if you want, yet granting us the ability to make real moral and ethical choices in our everyday lives. You have given us important and significant roles in your great plan to bring about a sin-free Kingdom with a new heaven and earth.
 
You are marvelous in your wisdom, wonderful in your desires, majestic in your might and supreme in your rule. To you belongs all glory and honor. To you belongs all credit for what is positive and right and lovely. All that is good comes from your hand and we should and do give you worship for this.
Filed under:

Psalm 34:5-10

Published by S.M. Wibberley on November 16, 2016
Psalm 35:5,6 “May [those who seek my life] be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the LORD driving them away; may their path be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD pursuing them.”
 
[May you, Lord, deal with those who oppose us because we are yours. May you powerfully work to make them unsuccessful and fruitless in their pursuit of your children’s death and destruction. Send your angels to frustrate them, and bring them to a realization of their error and to a vision of your righteousness, Lord Jesus.]
 
Psalm 35:7,8 “Since they hid their net for me without cause and without cause dug a pit for me, may ruin overtake them by surprise—may the net they hid entangle them, may they fall into the pit, to their ruin.”
 
[Yes, may they be caught in their own traps, and see the error of their ways. I praise you for how you did this to the Al Quaida cell in the Middle Eastern city where we lived. They had planned to kill pastors and bomb churches in the city, had their lists and addresses ready, their weapons prepared—but were caught before they could carry out their pans. Thank you for your protection, Lord.]
 
Psalm 35:9,10 “Then my soul will rejoice in the LORD and delight in his salvation. My whole being will exclaim, ‘Who is like you, O LORD?’
 
[Yes, Lord, we praise and exalt you with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, for you have given help and protection—and will continue to do so. There is no one like you, Lord God, who knows all, sees all and is able to protect from all true harm.
 
Sometimes you do allow hurt—believers are killed, persecuted, beaten and driven from their homes–but even in that you have a greater purpose for their lives and deaths in the over-arching and magnificent scheme of your plans.
 
And you have a plan for Barbara as she and I battle the forces causing confusion and despair, hopelessness and disorentation.
As you lead us through this valley of the shadow of death, you know where we are going. You are our Salvation, our Rock, our Fortress, our high Tower in whatever may come. You are the One we can trust.]
 
“You rescue the poor from those too strong for them, the poor and needy from those who rob them.”
 
[And this you have done for us, the poor and needy, in rescuing us from the kingdom of darkness, bringing us out into the Kingdom of Light. And you rescue us every day from the schemes of Satan, self and sin, you protect us from those who oppose you.
 
You have also equipped us to join you in this rescue plan: “This is the victory that HAS OVERCOME the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God” (1 John 5:4b,5).
 
“Put on the whole armor of God that you MAY BE ABLE to stand against the wiles of the devil” (Eph. 6:11).
 
“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, SO THAT CHRIST’S POWER MAY REST ON ME” 2 Cor. 12:9).
 
Help us Lord, to join you daily in the battle against self, sin and Satan, to cooperate with you in your plans to rescue us from evil and harm, to take up your provision of faith and armor, to obey you in what we know to be right.]
 
Picture below: He gives us light in darkness, as with this full fall moon reflected in the pond
 
Filed under:

The Lord's Provision

Published by S.M. Wibberley on November 15, 2016
Thank you all who have written to say you are praying; it does make a difference. Barbara was transferred to the hospital’s mental health ward for evaluation. Pray that she will be released in the three days as promised. Nat is coming tomorrow to see his mother for a few days.
 
The following devotional from EDIFIED, written in 2008, was a great encouragement to me this morning.
 
“My soul finds rest in God alone.” Psalm 62:1
 
My poor old Bible was worn out, the cover falling off, pages coming loose, so I took it to a bookbinder to have it rebound. When I picked it up, it looked great and I was pleased–until I opened it to the back and found my 5 pages of notes missing. The bookbinder had thrown them away! For years I’d collected sermon outlines and verses on different subjects, resources I’d found very useful. Now all that work was gone! It was like losing an old friend!
But praise God, He immediately brought to mind that phrase, “Knowing Jesus is enough for joy!” Although my emotions weren’t lining up with this as I embraced Truth, and exercised volitional faith (giving thanks when I don’t feel like it), I was able to thank God for this loss, knowing that He has something good in it.
It seems lately that God is giving us lots of opportunities to put into practice trusting and praising Him when we would rather complain. Here are some things from the last few weeks:
• In getting ready to move to Germany, we got the unexpected news of the need for a stent in my heart.
• We were unable to make an exit to a Greek Island to renew our visas because Greek harbor workers were on strike. This complicates our leaving for Germany, forcing us to go several days earlier, scrambling to complete the end tasks necessary—but God knows what He is doing!
• A fellow worker had his pickup truck stolen from in front of his house, along with his cell phone, plus the registration for another vehicle and equipment. We suspect that this was engineered by the police who would like this particular worker to leave.
• A business started by a local pastor fell into a legal trap and everything in his business was confiscated by the small claims court.
• No word on my stolen car or on a solution to a difficult and expensively unjust situation with a hotel where we held conferences last month.
However, in the midst of all these unresolved difficulties, the truth is: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9), and “Knowing Jesus is enough for joy.” In the midst of unresolved pressure and problems we can find our rest in Him, knowing that He will carry us through in the way He knows is best.
 
Prayer: “Praise you, Lord God, for your care and protection in my life. Thank you for all you allow to come to me. And thank you for the privilege of offering the sacrifice of thanksgiving to honor you. Help me to do this consistently and fulfill the purpose of my life by bringing honor to your name (Ps. 50:23). Amen.”
Filed under: