Do you enjoy spending time in the Word?  Do you enjoy sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to His word?  I don’t know about you but I go through seasons where I delight in it and seasons where I just do it half-heartedly.  I really don’t like those dry seasons where it is too easy to not even pick up my Bible and read.

I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating why it can be so difficult sometimes, especially as I am getting ready to encourage the ladies at our church to join me once again in reading through their Bibles in the coming year.  I can’t say that I have the answer for everyone, but for me it boils down to how I view this time.  I have always loved the story of Mary and Martha, that time when Martha gets upset at Jesus and Mary because He is letting Mary just sit at His feet and listen to His Word.  That is actually where the name for my blog came from, Sitting at His Feet.  If I found myself in a room with Jesus, I can only imagine my reaction to being in His presence, but I think that nothing else would matter.  Anything else that might have been on my to-do list would fade in importance, because there He is, my Savior, my Redeemer, the One whose body was broken and blood poured out for me.  My relationship with Jesus would be the consuming passion of that moment-oh, just to be near Him.  And I think that for me, that is the key to coming to God’s word with joy and delight.  Do I view this time as a chance to be in His presence in a tangible way-to really experience sitting at His feet and listening to His word.  It’s hard to have a relationship with someone you cannot see, but thank God He has given us a way to spend time with Him, to hear from His heart, and so learn of Him and know Him more.  When I come with the attitude of relationship instead of duty my time with the Word becomes more precious to me.  I pray this morning that it becomes more precious to you as well, dear reader.
 
So when I came across Ezekiel 18:30-32 my heart rejoiced in God my Savior.  He truly is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.  How often I have heard even believers say that the God of the Old Testament is so different from the God of the New Testament.  The Old Testament God is the angry old man children fear to be near.  And this again, is why I encourage you to spend time in God’s word, in all of it, for we see today that God’s love was not something new that appeared in the New Testament.  We do not have to struggle to reconcile the two when we look at Ezekiel 18.  Here God is responding to Israel’s cry that He is not fair, that His ways are not right.  (I have heard that from people in our day as well.)  But God has an answer to their charge and I want you to listen to it. 

Are My ways not right, O house of Israel? Is it not your ways that are not right?
“Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, each according to his conduct,” declares the Lord God. “Repent and turn away from all your transgressions, so that iniquity may not become a stumbling block to you. Cast away from you all your transgressions which you have committed and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! For why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies,” declares the Lord God. “Therefore, repent and live.”

Now listen to it from the New Living Translation:  

“Therefore, I will judge each of you, O people of Israel, according to your actions, says the Sovereign Lord. Repent, and turn from your sins. Don’t let them destroy you! Put all your rebellion behind you, and find yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O people of Israel?  I don’t want you to die, says the Sovereign Lord. Turn back and live!

God takes no pleasure in the death of anyone, righteous or not.  God’s response here may sound very familiar for we read in 2 Peter 3:10, The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

This is the God I met when I opened up my Bible this morning.  As I continued my reading  into Hebrews 9 God spoke to me about the past and the present once again-the Old and the New covenants.

 This is an illustration pointing to the present time. For the gifts and sacrifices that the priests offer are not able to cleanse the consciences of the people who bring them. For that old system deals only with food and drink and various cleansing ceremonies—physical regulations that were in effect only until a better system could be established. (Hebrews 9:9-10, NLT)

Here we learn that the old system with priests and sacrifices could do nothing to change one’s conscience.  In that passage I shared above from Ezekiel the people are told to “make for yourselves a new heart and new spirit.”  Make for yourselves.  And there we see the problem.  All of our effort will never be able to do that.

That leaves me looking forward to tomorrow when the writer of Hebrews will share how Jesus can indeed solve the problem of our consciences being made clean.  Which brings me back to my attitude and my love of God’s grace.  His grace is sufficient not only in that moment of salvation, but in all of my moments because He is always at work in me, His grace is working in me from the inside out.  When I am struggling it is because I am relying on my own strength, I too often still find myself trying to win God’s favor with my works or to make for myself a new heart.   But I already have His favor-nothing I ever do can change that.  And as for my heart-He has taken care of that as well.  God’s great grace has given me a new heart that is so much better than anything I could make of it.

So, grace, peace, and mercy from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ be upon you dear reader.
Debra

Have you heard the phrase, “God works in mysterious ways”?  Anyone who has spent much time reading the Bible has seen that over and over again.  But God has not changed and He still works in ways that surprise me.  And His word is still powerful in transforming us.

I have been down this past week with a cold which meant that I missed going to church on Sunday.  Instead I was stuck at home watching it online.  In general we celebrate the Lord’s Supper the first Sunday of each month.  As this was the first Sunday, when the time came I gathered  a slice of bread from the pantry and poured myself one little sip of red wine.  I was going to just use the red grapes that I had in the fridge, but they had expired and were not fit for consumption.  In a pinch I have in the past just smooshed some grapes to make my own grape juice, lol.

So there I sat, watching and participating from my own quiet place.  When I took up my slice of bread I tore it in two rather than just breaking off a little bite and in that moment tears started to fill my eyes.  Jesus body was broken for me and there was something in my action of tearing that bread that just made it seem so real.  I thought back to my reading from Ezekiel that morning.  I was really struck by the way God describes Israel in Ezekiel 16:1-41.  In those verses God paints the picture of a poor, abandoned, abused child whom He rescues and breathes life into.  Then when she comes of age, God takes her as His precious bride and adorns her with riches, jewels and a crown.  And how does Israel respond?  Adultery with everyone around her.  It’s a really striking, heartbreaking picture.  Israel broke its covenant with God in such a dreadful way that even the Philistines are appalled by her behavior.  Even Sodom was not as evil.  That is a really awful statement.  And so God is done with them and is about to destroy them in ways that are just hard to imagine.

And as I broke that bread yesterday morning, my own unfaithfulness to God hit me hard.  All of those things that take priority in my life, how are they any different from Israel’s adultery?  And as I sat there in those moments I cried out for forgiveness through my tears. 

Then we took the cup.  And as I waited and stared into my glass of red wine I looked into its redness, much like blood, and I thought about the blood of Christ that was poured out for me.  For ME.  The blood of the New Covenant.  And again the tears flowed in thankfulness to Jesus for what He endured on my behalf.  In gratefulness that this new covenant does not depend on my actions.  Christ Jesus is the only one it depends upon.  My sin, o the bliss of this glorious thought, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more.  Praise the LORD O my soul! (from the hymn It is Well)

This morning in Hebrews I read of that new covenant, the new covenant that God speaks of in the Old Testament in both Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second.  For finding fault with them, He says,
“Behold, days are coming, says the Lord,
When I will effect a new covenant
With the house of Israel and with the house of Judah;
Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers
On the day when I took them by the hand
To lead them out of the land of Egypt;
For they did not continue in My covenant,
And I did not care for them, says the Lord.
“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
After those days, says the Lord:
I will put My laws into their minds,
And I will write them on their hearts.
And I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.
“And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen,
And everyone his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’
For all will know Me,
From the least to the greatest of them.
 “For I will be merciful to their iniquities,
And I will remember their sins no more.” (Hebrews 8:7-12)

And in the previous verse it states, “But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises” Jesus is the mediator and obtainer of this more excellent covenant.  And I wonder if perhaps I need to be reminded of this on a much more frequent basis than just a once a month gathering for the Lord’s Supper.  What if I start my meals with a moment of specific remembrance, however that may look.  I certainly don’t think I need to start every meal by breaking bread and having a sip of wine, or do I?  “As often as you do this remember Me” Jesus says. Yesterday I felt that I do not remember this deeply often enough.

I had to acknowledge a lot of stuff in my life yesterday that did not look good.  But I rest in the sure knowledge of God’s amazing grace and am thankful for His mysterious ways in my life, for it just so happened that I had a cold that kept me home on a day when His words in Ezekiel would hit me hard and then it just so happened that I was alone with Him when I needed to be for this time of sweet communion.  All of the things that hit me yesterday would not have happened with crackers and juice in a crowded room.

May grace, peace, and mercy abound,
Debra