Good morning Lord. Thank You for all the many blessings that You give us Lord. Thank you for helping me to hear You this morning through Oswald Chambers devotion and reading Job. I have come to realize that what we think of as Your punishment when we encounter sickness or loss —the trials of life --are not Your punishment at all. Those things You use (as Your Word says all things work together) to point us to You and to the end of self and to full surrender to You. Also reading through the Bible recap and Job‘s life this morning, I realize that SOMETIMES Your punishment is actually when You allow us to have what we want (worldly things) and to do what we want, and that naturally carries us farther away from You and deeper into blindness. It is only when we— often through much pain and trials of life, that You do allow (which is a blessing) that we actually turn to You because we come to the end of our ourselves. I have often heard that the veil between You and us is thinnest in our deepest and most painful trials. Lord, I turn to You and sincerely ask You to show me my heart. I do not want any sin and any deceitfulness there. I believe that is true sanctification where we work with Your Spirit as in Psalm 139 David did in saying, Lord you know the deepest recesses of my spirit —please work with me and show me so that I can repent and turn to You and walk in the Light. Lord, I ask You that today and that has been my prayer for about a year now —Lord show me my heart. I know that there’s evil there and work with me to fully surrender and to sink down in complete humility and to live as it pleases You. Thank you, Lord for all of the beautiful things. The sunrises, the sunsets, family, and health, but Lord, I ask above all things that each, and every one on both Chris and my prayer lists would come to that point of asking You to search and reveal sin and separation, and where we are displaying to You any unpleasing thought, word, or deed that we may be blind too. And Lord help us to walk today in the manna that You’ve given us this morning in full surrender and always pleasing you. It is in Jesus‘s most precious and holy name, and with a grateful hearts to Jesus for what He did in enduring the suffering in our place for the sin in our life. I thank You that You knew each of us as Psalm 139 says as we were being formed in our mother’s womb, You knew us and You knew everything that we would ever do or think within our entire life and yet You still chose each of us. Jesus still chose to die in our place— thinking of each of us as He was being beaten and humiliated -mutilated and hung on a cross--all the while thinking of and loving us as He endured the pain and suffering. You first loved us, Lord I ask that you fill each of us with that love so that our heart and the deepest recesses of our spirits would be cleansed and that we would walk with a sincere love —God‘s love— Your Living Water pouring out of our life. And as life squeezes us Lord we would ask that love pour out and not hate or bitterness or rage or anger or slander. We just ask that as life squeezes us that people would only see Your love and Your Light. I thank You Lord for allowing me to see it differently through reading about Job‘s life, and to understand that Your punishment is in allowing worldly blessings and that your actual blessings are the many times in the trials that bring us to full surrender to you. Help us each to turn to You through the trials and to allow those trials to bring us to a closer and deeper relationship in trusting in and relying completely on Your Spirit. All things in Jesus’ most Precious and Holy Name- Amen.
Donna Shea