To Do – “Begin to do if you want the furniture of God’s place put in order.”
Forsake – “Keep the vision and bring your ships to land. Forsake all and follow him”
Sell – “Sell everything you have…”
Give – “…and give to the poor.” – Mark 10:21
Fish – “Every fish in the lake tried to get into that net; they wanted to see him. I must see Jesus.”
quotes by Smith Wigglesworth
Ephesians 2:10 –
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
“The Greek word translated “workmanship” is poiema, from which we derive our English word poem.” – Warren W. Wiersbe
As God speaks his Word to us, in us, and through us, we become a poem, with all the marvels of its structure: A life expressed that is more than the sum of words, to be read between the lines, revealing him.
The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in our mortal bodies. He is the first fruits. He has a future glory that he hasn’t entered into. He’s waiting for us. He won’t go in without us. The glory he has now, he lives through us. We glorify him.
You who were formally dead in your transgressions and sins have been raised to new life. And this life is in Christ. He is the head of his bride, the church. In him we live and move and have our being. What the head feels, the body feels. What the mind intends, the body does. He is our source. We have the mind of Christ.
All things are being reconciled to him. His enemy wars against him. We take back what is stolen by the enemy. The kingdom of God is at hand. Where he goes, we go.
I pray the Holy Spirit strengthen your inner being, that he might dwell in you.
I had no idea, NO idea, when I first started this blog, what the Lord was up to. I only knew that I was full. So full of his love, and needing a place to express it. So I began this blog, writing each morning the inspirations the Lord had spoken to me in that day’s devotions.
I was on sabbatical. I was at the Alton Bay Christian Conference Center for the summer. The children grown, my husband not yet retired, I was alone. But the Lord spoke with me, daily.
A week earlier, I was returning from an unexpected and plentiful breakfast at the dining hall. I had enjoyed fellowship and song with others, and a workshop on “Hearing God’s Voice”. I knew I had heard his voice often, many different times. Not audibly, but in all those wonderful ways he speaks to us by his Spirit.
I was full.
I told the Lord so. He said, “You ARE full. Feed the hungry.”
It struck me. It was as if he had literally just walked up beside me and said that out loud.
I had no idea. NO idea.
I thought he meant spiritual food. The Lord is so generous. He had poured into my lap, shaken what he had poured, tamped it, and poured in even more all through the summer. And so gladly I wrote. I wrote a series of workshops, based on a seminar I had attended. I wanted to feed others out of the blessings he had poured into me. I started planning a women’s retreat. I began this blog.
And yet I realize today, I had no idea. It wasn’t only spiritual food he had in mind when he told me to feed others. And he knew I had no idea. I can just see him now, smiling over that, as I wrote.
I had seen his love expressed through Trades of Hope. I recognized his love that reached out to the women who had made the pieces of Trades of Hope jewelry I had purchased the previous spring. Every time I had put them on over the summer, I had thanked God for the lives of these women, and prayed for them.
The same week I was blogging, I came to a slow realization that God’s love permeated Trades of Hope. For a people in a distant land, his heart moved with compassion, he caused people here to help them. And he showed his love not only in a distant land, but here as well, providing for those who partnered with Trades of Hope.
And I knew, just knew, that I wanted to do more than just buy Trades of Hope jewelry. I wanted to be even closer to God’s love expressed through Trades of Hope. I wanted to be where he was. I saw what he was doing, and I wanted to be a part of it with him.
I became a Compassionate Entrepreneur with Trades of Hope. Today, reading through my blog entries in the sequence I wrote them, I can clearly see that step by step through that week he was leading me to become a CE, I had been on a path straight as an arrow as he prepared the way, and prepared my heart.
I’ve been a CE for a month now, and have finally realized what he meant that long ago day. When he told me to feed the hungry, he meant that I would be feeding physically and even spiritually hungry people in far off lands, through Trades of Hope.
Today I say to the Lord:
I see what you did there…I like how you do things.
For it is God
who works in you
to will (God’s desire is expressed)
and to act (God gets it done)
in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Phil 2:13).
My prayer: Forgive me, Lord Jesus, for the times when I’ve thought that I should live for you, as if you couldn’t live for yourself. Lead on, oh King Eternal.
“When we take a charitable approach to poverty, we are often hurting the world rather than helping,” stated Gretchen Huijskens, fair trade company co-founder. In 2003, Huijskens co-founded Three Angels Children’s Relief in Haiti, a non-profit orphanage, school, and medical clinic. “We touched many lives in many ways,” says Huijskens, “but I started wondering how Haiti would change if we enabled parents to keep the babies they were bringing to us.” She was finding that a community’s physical, economical, and cultural health are severely altered when people attempt to use charity as poverty’s solution. Micro-financing and sustainable business was heavy on her heart when Haiti’s earthquake in January 2010 shook up Three Angel Children’s Relief’s plans. “The earthquake gave us a clean slate after all of our orphans found homes in America just days after the disaster,” Huijskens recalled. She took that clean slate as her opportunity to pursue a…
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Three weeks ago, a hopeful, creative Ugandan woman sat in a chair rolling paper into beads. One after another she rolled beads, hung them to dry of their wet varnish, and then strung them into a necklace. But today, those beads are halfway around the world in L.A., hanging on a model’s neck. Lights are flashing, people are bustling, and the crowd is humming in anticipation to see this new statement piece all the way from Africa. A synchronized gasp quickly followed by a round of applause erupted as those beads reached the top of the runway.
“Every product has a story of where it’s been and where it’s going.”
Nakate has these words branding their website. Their African products are made deep in the heart of Uganda by women working their way out of poverty; and they are making their way to American runways. We learned how fair trade products…
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Endow the king with your justice, O God,
the royal son with your righteousness.
2 May he judge your people in righteousness,
your afflicted ones with justice.
3 May the mountains bring prosperity to the people,
the hills the fruit of righteousness.
4 May he defend the afflicted among the people
and save the children of the needy;
may he crush the oppressor (Psalm 72)
Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. 2 As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. 3 For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. 4 They are surprised that you do not join them in their reckless, wild living, and they heap abuse on you. 5 But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit (1 Peter 4).
I died.
So that I might live for God, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
I do not set aside the grace of God by seeking to attain life by earning it for myself.
Christ lives in me.
The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:19-21).
Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace (Romans 6:11-14).
The prince of darkness reigns over nothing, for darkness is nothing.
We are dead.
Seek ye first his kingdom, and you will find satisfaction for your soul.
“But”, you say, “I am not satisfied. Where are these added things?”
The Lord answers: “You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it. (Haggai chapter 1).
Look and see. Consider this: Have you attended to the Lord’s building? Where is his temple in your life? Having laid a foundation, have you now folded your hands to rest?
You say, “The time has not yet come for the Lord’s house to be built (Haggai 1:2).”
The Lord replies, “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?” (Haggai 1:4) “What misery is mine! I am like one who gathers summer fruit at the gleaning of the vineyard; there is no cluster of grapes to eat, none of the early figs that I crave (Micah 7:1). Therefore, what you brought home, I blew away, because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house (Micah 1:9).”
The hand of the Lord divorces us from the sin that so easily entangles.
The people of faith have not kept themselves separate (Ezra 9:1).
Now make confession to the Lord, the God of your fathers, and do his will. Separate yourselves. (Ezra 10:11)
Oh what injury, what pain we cause when we become a mixed bag, intermingling the kingdom of God with the kingdom of his enemy.
Choose you this day whom you will serve. Send away those things that would lead you astray.
Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Stop trying to provide for yourself what God alone can provide.
Keeping Fervor 