"How You Love Me"

MORNING PRAYER: Our Father in heaven, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world, feed me on this break that he may live in me and I in him. Amen.

Psalm 145, Jeremiah 31:34-40, Romans 12:1-8, John 11:28-44

What a week it has been. Everyone seemed to really know exactly how to rub me the wrong way! Negativity and cattiness was literally around every corner for me this week. Coincidentally enough however, this was the most comforting week, spiritually, that I have had in a long time. I was comforted at the very moment when I thought I would burst inside. Everyone knows that God answers prayers, but this week He seemed to be like my own personal genie. Keep in mind that I wasn't asking Him for frivolous things here, these were moments that He would use to bring me to the very end of my patience, and to the very point where I had absolutely no choice but to surrender it over to Him. As soon as I would say, "God, I need You, and I can't do this alone. I trust You." The very thing I needed was done at that very moment. He sustained me. I have been overcome with joy and gratitude every day, even when I feel sad or am having some kind of crazy emotionally distressing moment, He is right there. 

"The LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made."  Psalm 145:9

Of course, this Ashes to Fire devotional has been awesome, but this week, along with everything else spiritually, it just seemed EVERY SINGLE DAY to be absolutely perfect. God has definitely used this week to make me know that I can depend on Him to provide every thing I could ever need or ever desire. Nothing compares. Nothing compares. 

The above passages in Jeremiah 31 and John 11 talk about exactly what I have experienced so intimately this week: God's mercy. God made Israel His people, yet they continually worshiped other Gods and idols before Him. He was angered so much by them, yet through the pleading of the leaders He had set over them, like Moses and Jacob, He spared them, until all of their leaders had died out. The generation left surely did not listen to the LORD or heed His law, yet He restored His covenant with His people, a covenant unlike the one before it:

" 'The time is coming,' declares the LORD, 'when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, declares the LORD.


This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,' declares the LORD. 'I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer with a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,' declares the LORD. 'For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.' "   Jeremiah 31:31-34




This is what He does for me. He forgives my sins and not only that, but He doesn't remember them. I'm tearing myself up, and preventing myself from learning the lesson from those sins by wallowing in guilt, when He calls me to move forward. Not to allow those sins to continue to hold me back. This isn't saying that when I sin, I should just forget it and count it as one lost, but to commit myself fully to Him, never returning to the nature of that sin again, and moving on from it, but also learning from it, and turning myself, when I feel that particular sin rising again, to God, and to His Holy Word.




"Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, 
and your dominion endures through
all generations.


The LORD is faithful to all his promises 
and loving toward all he has made.
The LORD upholds all those who fall
and lifts up all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all look to you, and you 
give them their food at the proper time.
You open your hand and satisfy the 
desires of every living thing."
--Psalm 145 13-16




EVENING PRAYER: Now to God the Father who first loved us, and made us accepted in the Beloved: to God the son who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood; to God the Holy Spirit who fills our hearts with the love of God, be all love and all glory for time and for eternity. Amen.