Join in What the Holy Spirit is Doing

The Holy Spirit is ceaselessly active. The Bible word for Spirit is “wind” or “breath” in both, New Testament and Old Testament, Greek and Hebrew (pneuma and ruach). Jesus spoke of the Spirit in terms of wind. “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going” (John 3:8, NIV). There is no such thing as a wind that does not blow; that would not be a wind. A wind is power in motion. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God, the wind of heaven in ceaseless activity. Asking for a move of the Spirit is like asking Him to be what He is. We don’t need to ask fire to be hot or water to be wet. The Holy Spirit is always moving and asks us to move with Him. God bless you. REINHARD BONNKE

Please pray

Pray ER

needed!

I need prayer warriors to bombard heaven about something! Please ! The LOrD knows all about it! Who will pray in agreement on behalf of a 5 year old who desperately needs God to move on his behalf? I confess I need your prayers- Father, raise up your true Intercessors— unite them by Your Holy Spirit!

NACR: Learning

Daily Meditation for Saturday 08th of March 2014
I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.
Jeremiah 9:24
God delights in kindness, justice and righteousness. None of this is easy for us to believe.
Kindness is difficult for some of us to imagine because we do not have extensive personal experience with kindness. We can imagine God as a weak, codependent, ineffective being whose specialty is being relentlessly nice to people. But what of the God who exercises kindness? What would that look like?
Justice is difficult for some of us to imagine because we have not had extensive personal experience with justice. In dysfunctional families justice is either chaotic or completely absent. But what of the God who exercises justice? What would that look like?
Righteousness is difficult for some of us to imagine because we have not had extensive personal experience with righteousness. We do not have instincts for doing what is right, we do not delight in doing righteousness, we expect it to be boring, dreary and out-of-date. We may delight in caretaking and codependent niceness, but is that the same as delighting in righteousness? Probably not. So, what of the God who exercises righteousness. What would that look like?
God is capable of delight. God is not the Unmoved One. God is the Most Moved of us all. God's compassion and kindness are free and full. God's commitment to justice is beyond all our imaginations. God pursues righteousness.
Learning to share in God's struggle for kindness, justice and righteousness will require significant changes for us. It cannot be done in a one time event. It will be a life-time quest. We will forget and remember again. We will run away and come back again. But each day in the struggle we will grow in our capacity for delight. Until, in the end, when God's purposes are complete, we will be filled with delight at the triumph of God's kindness, justice and righteousness
God of kindness, I want to understand you better.
God of justice, I want to live in solidarity with you.
God of righteousness, help me to delight in what pleases you.
Increase my capacity for delight, Lord.
Let me discover you afresh today.
Amen.
Copyright Dale and Juanita Ryan

God will not abandon me....

March 1

Anxiety attack!

“[The] Power that brought us to this program is still with us and will continue to guide us if we allow it.” Basic Text, p. 27 ––––=–––– Ever had a panic attack?  Everywhere we turn, life’s demands overwhelm us.  We’re paralyzed, and we don’t know what to do about it.  How do we break an anxiety attack? First, we stop.  We can’t deal with everything at once, so we stop for a moment to let things settle.  Then we take a “spot inventory” of the things that are bothering us.  We examine each item, asking ourselves this question:  “How important is it, really?”  In most cases, we’ll find that most of our fears and concerns don’t need our immediate attention.  We can put those aside, and focus on the issues that really need to be resolved right away. Then we stop again and ask ourselves, “Who’s in control here, anyway?”  This helps remind us that our Higher Power is in control.  We seek our Higher Power’s will for the situation, whatever it is.  We can do this in any number of ways: through prayer, talks with our sponsor or NA friends, or by attending a meeting and asking others to share their experience.  When our Higher Power’s will becomes clear to us, we pray for the ability to carry it out.  Finally, we take action. Anxiety attacks need not paralyze us.  We can utilize the resources of the NA program to deal with anything that comes our way. ––––=–––– Just for today:  My Higher Power has not brought me all this way in recovery only to abandon me!  When anxiety strikes, I will take specific steps to seek God’s continuing care and guidance.

Copyright © 1991-2014 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved

chesed

Biblical scholars have often complained that the word חֶסֶד in the Hebrew Bible is difficult to translate into English, because it really has no precise equivalent in our language. English versions usually try to represent it with such words as "loving-kindness," "mercy," "steadfast love," and sometimes "loyalty," but the full meaning of the word cannot be conveyed without an explanation, such as the one given in the article below. This article, by Norman H. Snaith, is reproduced from A Theological Word Book of the Bible, edited by Alan Richardson (New York: MacMillan, 1951), pp. 136-7.

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Loving-Kindness. This is a biblical word, invented by Miles Coverdale, and carried over into the English versions generally. It is one of the words he used in the Psalms (23 times, plus Hosea 2:19) to translate the Hebrew chesed when it refers to God's love for his people Israel. Otherwise he used 'mercy,' 'goodness,' and 'great kindness' in the Psalms for God's attitude to man; and, outside the Psalms, such words as 'mercy,' 'goodness,' 'favour' for God's attitude to man, and 'kindness' for man's attitude to man. It is important to notice that Coverdale takes pains to avoid using the word 'kindness' of God's attitude to man, though he is not followed in this respect by the Authorized Version and the Revised Version. There is one case in the Psalms (141:5) where the word chesed is used of man's attitude to man, and even here Coverdale avoids 'kindness' (so AV and RV), but has 'friendly.' The nearest New Testament equivalent to the Hebrew chesed is charis (grace), as Luther realized when he used the German Gnade for both words.

The word is used only in cases where there is some recognized tie between the parties concerned. It is not used indiscriminately of kindness in general, haphazard, kindly deeds; this is why Coverdale was careful to avoid using the word 'kindness' in respect of God's dealings with his people Israel. The theological importance of the word chesed is that it stands more than any other word for the attitude which both parties to a covenant ought to maintain towards each other. Sir George Adam Smith suggested the rendering 'leal-love.' The merit of this translation is that it combines the twin ideas of love and loyalty, both of which are essential. On the other hand, it does not sufficiently convey the idea of the steadfastness and persistence of God's sure love for his covenant-people. His other suggestion, 'troth,' is better in this respect, but the etymological core of the word is 'eagerness, keenness,' and, whilst there is considerable development from this, the word never belies its origins. In Isaiah 40:6, for instance, the word chesed is used to describe man's steadfastness, or rather the lack of it. ¹ The English versions have 'goodliness,' following some of the ancient versions, but the Targum (old Jewish Aramaic paraphrase) was right when it said 'their strength.' The prophet is contrasting man's frailty with God's steadfast reliability. He says that all man's steadfastness is like the wild flowers, here today and gone tomorrow, whilst the Word of the Lord is steady and sure, firm and reliable.

God's loving-kindness is that sure love which will not let Israel go. Not all Israel's persistent waywardness could ever destroy it. Though Israel be faithless, yet God remains faithful still. This steady, persistent refusal of God to wash his hands of wayward Israel is the essential meaning of the Hebrew word which is translated loving-kindness. In Jeremiah 2:2 the word chesed is rendered 'kindness,' the reference being to 'the kindness of thy youth,' and this phrase is paralleled by 'the love of thine espousals.' The meaning is not that Israel was more tender in her attitude towards God or in her affections, but that in the first days after the rescue from Egypt she was faithful to the marriage-covenant with God. The charge of the prophets is that Israel's loyalty to her covenant with God (Hosea 6:4, 'goodness' in the English versions) is 'as the morning cloud, and as the dew that goeth early away,' a regular feature of the Palestinian climate when once the spring rains are past.

The widening of the meaning of the Hebrew chesed, used as the covenant word and especially of the covenant between God and Israel, is due to the history of God's dealings with his covenant-people. The continual waywardness of Israel has made it inevitable that, if God is never going to let Israel go, then his relation to his people must in the main be one of loving-kindness, mercy, and goodness, all of it entirely undeserved. For this reason the predominant use of the word comes to include mercy and forgiveness as a main constituent in God's determined faithfulness to his part of the bargain. It is obvious, time and again, from the context that if God is to maintain the covenant he must exercise mercy to an unexampled degree. For this reason the Greek translators of the Old Testament (third century BC onwards) used the Greek eleos (mercy, pity) as their regular rendering, and Jerome (end of fourth century AD and beginning of fifth) followed with the Latin misericordia.

The loving-kindness of God towards Israel is therefore wholly undeserved on Israel's part. If Israel received the proper treatment for her stubborn refusal to walk in God's way, there would be no prospect for her of anything but destruction, since God's demand for right action never wavers one whit. Strict, however, as the demands for righteousness are, the prophets were sure that God's yearnings for the people of his choice are stronger still. Here is the great dilemma of the prophets, and indeed the dilemma of us all to this day. Which comes first, mercy or justice? Rashi (eleventh-century AD Jewish commentator) said that God gave 'precedence to the rule of mercy' and joined it 'with the rule of justice.' But this much is clear: when we try to estimate the depth and the persistence of God's loving-kindness and mercy, we must first remember his passion for righteousness. His passion for righteousness is so strong that he could not be more insistent in his demand for it, but God's persistent love for his people is more insistent still. The story of God's people throughout the centuries is that her waywardness has been so persistent that, if even a remnant is to be preserved, God has had to show mercy more than anything else. It is important to realize that though the Hebrew chesed can be translated by loving-kindness and mercy without doing violence to the context, yet we must always beware lest we think that God is content with less than righteousness. There is no reference to any sentimental kindness, and no suggestion of mercy apart from repentance, in any case where the Hebrew original is chesed. His demand for righteousness is insistent, and it is always at the maximum intensity. The loving-kindness of God means that his mercy is greater even than that. The word stands for the wonder of his unfailing love for the people of his choice, and the solving of the problem of the relation between his righteousness and his loving-kindness passes beyond human comprehension.

Bibliography: N.H. Snaith, Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament, London (1944).

N.H. SNAITH

1. Snaith maintains that in Isaiah 40:6 the word chesed should be translated "steadfastness," but others have concluded that here the word is used in the sense of "grace" or "beauty." I note that the RSV translators rendered the word "beauty" without giving a marginal alternative, and that in the most recent English edition of the Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament by Koehler and Baumgartner, the meaning at Isaiah 40:6 is explained as "charm" (vol. 1 [Leiden: Brill, 2001], p. 337). —M.D.M.

 retrieved from : http://www.bible-researcher.com/chesed.html, Feb. 28, 2014

Tears are good...for whatever the reason

Tears... If you don't cry - what does that say about you and your life? In private moments when you release those emotions -- tears are purifying, defining, and in the end; a resting for the weary soul... Afterwards you sleep or are energized; either way -- you feel better. I don't trust people who have never cried about anything - for I suspect it means they haven't cared much about anything or anyone...
Unknown

It's ok to grieve, to cry...

Daily Meditation for Monday 17th of February 2014
A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.
Matthew 2:18
There are times when there is no consolation for grief. There is no comfort. In these times we feel that those who try to comfort us do not understand the vastness of our pain. All we know, all we see, is the terrible loss we have suffered. The world feels as if it should stop. Nothing matters but our loss.
We weep and rage and long for the return of what we have lost.
This happened to many of the families living in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus' birth. In hopes of killing the Messiah, Herod ordered that male child under two years old in that town be put to death. It was into this world of violence and terror that Jesus was born. The Christmas story is not a fairy tale with happy endings, but a story about real life and terrible loss.
There are times in our lives for weeping without comfort, for weeping with anguish and rage. God has come before into times like this. God comes as well into our times of anguish and rage. Because God comes there will eventually be a time to be comforted. And a time to heal. And a time to go on.
But there is a time to weep. It cannot be rushed, or bypassed. There is a time for weeping.

God, hold me when I weep,
when I refuse comfort,
when I cannot see beyond this pain.
Give me courage to grieve deeply, Lord.
Help me to tolerate the silence,
as I wait for you to speak.
Help me to survive the loneliness
as I await your coming.
Help me to grieve in ways
that draw me closer to you.
Amen.
Copyright Dale and Juanita Ryan