a multitude of Bible translations may have the design to get more people reading but there are disadvantages. i remember being in groups of totally disparate people and all saying psalm 23 together as well as saying many psalms with the family, nuclear and extended (as it was custom in my father's family), after evening meal together. my own path has been around two translations, the king james version (1611) and the new american standard version (probably sometime in the 1960s). the first i used until seminary at which time i switched to the second. as far as memorization as i child many psalms and individual verses were memorized as a result of 'just being there' as a psalms were repeated and Bible teaching based around many key verses in the Bible. as a young adult i began to seek to have an ongoing practice of every day Bible memorization and review. the practice has been staccato, more off than on but for the past few years has been resuscitated. it is a constant battle. i keep being led to get more intentional about it, even bulldog like in tenacity to make sure that this happens every day and that the 100 verse a day cycle of review happens. since dearborn, through which i fought extremely hard to keep the review cycle going every day, i have fallen apart. the cycle is now about 11 days long and i finally completed the first cycle since dearborn...43 days. God seems to press me not to 'run through' my daily allotment but to slowly let it run through me. have a lot of static from the evil spirit. its amazing all the methods by which he seeks to unsettle, disturb and finally dislodge me from the daily commitment. as far as new memorization it stalled about 6 months ago at about verse 21 of ephesians 1. may God enable me to refuse to allow the evil spirit to continue this blank space that the Spirit presses upon me as so crucial every day on to the end of my alloted 70 years here...i started talking about translations. God has brought bill to 54 as a roomer. since thursday night he has occupied the back 2nd floor bedroom. we got to talking about translation and said he would give me a couple of new ones he uses. this am looked at the new living translation of john 3.16 to see what they do with it. two difficulties, as opposed to say the kjv, are 1. kjv - for God SO LOVED the world...that whosoever BELIEVETH in Him should not perish.. 2. nlt - for God LOVES the world SO MUCH...that whoever BELIEVES in Him should not... some thots..God's love was expressed in a past historical action wherein He took on human flesh and allowed sinful men to put him to death on a cross so He could pay the penalty for man's sin. the actual idea of the greek is that God IN THIS WAY LOVED. loving so much can, depending on how the reader is filtering it can give a very deficient idea of God's love. any person familiar with the kjv may realize that all the words that end with eth, such as BELEIVETH, express present tense verbs..those with action that is continuous or repeated. only the one who continuously, repeatedly believes God will not perish. on the other hand one who believes today in the sunshine may stop when the storms come.
my back problems that started directly after resisting the police (it was my heart attitude not what i actually did that God seems to be focusing on...i could have done exactly the same thing but with a heart totally submissive to God's authority as embodied by the human authority in front of me and that would have been, i believe, entirely acceptable) at the baby murdering center in warminster and i am now in the 16th day of continuous pain there. i have been asking the Lord if there is a particular sin that He is trying to put His finger on..yet that does not seem to be it. while recently going thru the words of Jesus in the Gospels i came upon His word to peter in john 21.18, 'verily, verily, I say unto thee, when thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest but when thou chalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not'. i have been led to begin preparing for the increasing physical, mental, ?, ?, ? debility that descends toward the end of earthly life. i have been concerned about this because i have had, i am thinking upon observation of people, much less than the average share of physical difficulty and pain to this point. God has on numerous times miraculously protected my body from far worse than i have experienced. peter was heading for an upside-down crucifixion but in a more general sense we are all heading for the last great battle..the battle with LESS in every area, the battle with pain and the concomitant magnification of difficulty that comes with increasing debility. my life has gone by very rapidly and at this point i will be gone in a nanosecond for we are all like the grass that flourishes in the morning and in the evening is cut down and the place of it knoweth it no more. ah, the wonderful twin elixers that come..david's desire to show YOUR STRENGTH to those coming behind and paul's LIGHT affliction which is but for a MOMENT which works for us a FAR MORE EXCEEDING AND ETERNAL WEIGHT OF GLORY..what a gain is possible over the wretched trail of pride, rebellion, sin and vanity that have marked my trail to this point. ah Jesus thank You, thank You, thank You for Your bloody, suffering love over me..oh let me somehow disappear completely so You may appear....
my rebel spirit has finally surfaced in the use of the lot. for three weeks running i have cast a lot on this ? - Lord do You want me (the third week - MAY I) to take my bike down to the murder place so gerry can fix it up and i can paint for him? friday was going to be my last. (I AM SO SPIRITUAL!!!!) i was modeling it after paul's thrice repeated request that the Lord take away the thorn in his flesh rather than follow the normal pattern of NO MEANS NO. this friday am the lot yielded yes! i, with great effort, took all my paint things out of the car again and somehow shoehorned the bike in (over the back seat that still stubbornly stays upright) with joy in my little heart that God would allow me to have what i want..went down and........(gerry is ALWAYS THERE, he has never missed a day even in the bitterest cold or when the murders are not being committed that day) NO GERRY. as i am increasingly experiencing i was tracking responses on two levels. the spirit was gently bemused with God's sense of humour, while my flesh continues to roar defiance and shake its little fist.
this week finished, completely, the final book of the lord of the rings. merry, pippen, frodo and sam come back home to the shire after the great battle against the evil one has been won. the writing...oh, the only way i can describe it is DELICIOUS and savory. i enjoyed every word. the three great joys were: 1. tolkien's wise and wimsical chronology of how a free people put away tyranny (especially delightful as we are slipping into tyranny and social/political slavery right now because we are incapable of doing as a society (and it must be done AS A SOCIETY) what these four did to those whom tolkien delightfully calls 'the ruffians". 2. sam's effective efforts in leading the cleansing of all that the ruffians had besmeared the shire with and he and rosey cotten's love..and all the fruitful product of that into the future. 3. frodo's transformation in the area of becoming like Christ and his departure with bilbo across the sea (out of this life). many times in these last 50 pages i wept with JOY as tolkien delicately portrayed with beautiful, apt words the recovered societ and this (frodo's) most beautiful of 'human' metamorphoses. i bless Your Name, i bless Your Name, i give You honor, give You praise YOU ARE THE LIFE, THE TRUTH, THE WAY, i bless Your Name, i bless Your Name.....
am afraid to cast a lot but was so powerfully spoken to by Jesus as i read His recorded words again (this time, off-the-charts more vividly real than ever before...You stepped right off of the page!) especially His most oft repeated two words..FOLLOW ME. i know we as Your professed followers have allowed ourselves the liberty of spiritualizing those words into some hazy, ill-defined concoction of spirituality but this time You wouldn't let me do that. every time it seemed that You were saying TO ME...FOLLOW ME...oh..i am scared because every one You said that to left everything...i don't wnt to..helpme..help me step off the edge and
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment