Real Friendships

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face us with the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

In the hour of distress and misery the eye of every mortal turns to friendship; in the hour of gladness and conviviality, what is your want? It is friendship. When the heart overflows with gratitude or with other sweet and sacred sentiment, what is the word to which it would give utterance? A friend.
--Walter Savage Landor.

The hurried quest of some people to get hold of new friends is so perpetual that they never have time to get acquainted with anyone.
--M. B. S.

Thine own friend, and thy father's friend, forsake not;
And go not to thy brother's house in the day of thy calamity:
Better is a neighbor that is near than a brother far off.
--Proverbs 27. 10.

My Lord and my Friend, I pray that my sympathy may be sincere and comforting, and with a glad heart I may bring rejoicing to my friends. May I learn from thee how I may be a permanent friend. Amen.





When over the fair fame of friend or foe
The shadow of disgrace shall fall; instead
Of words to blame, or reproof of thus and so,
Let something good be said.
Forget not that no fellow-being yet
May fall so low but love may lift his head;
Even the cheek of shame with tears is wet
If something good be said.
--Author unknown.

The right Christian mind will ... find its own image wherever it exists; it will seek for what it loves, and draw out of all dens and caves, and it will believe in its being, often when it cannot see it; and so it will lie lovingly over the faults and rough places of the human heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard, and black, and broken mountain rocks.
--John Ruskin.

To him that is ready to faint kindness should be showed from his friend.
--Job 6. 14.

Lord God, grant that after years of climbing I may not find the mist in my soul has dulled the vision of thy glory. Keep me from the habit of looking for faults, and missing the virtues in others. Forbid that I should be so occupied in taking measure of other lives that I neglect to measure my own. Amen.





It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.
--Sir Walter Scott.

No action, whether foul or fair,
Is ever done, but it carves somewhere
A record, written by fingers ghostly,
As a blessing or a curse, and mostly
In the greater weakness or greater strength
Of the acts which follow it.
--Henry W. Longfellow.

And he said unto them, Look on me, and do likewise: and, behold, when I come to the outermost part of the camp, it shall be that, as I do, so shall ye do.--Judges 7. 17.

Loving Father, may I remember that from the beginning, all things were created beautiful and were given for love. I pray that I may be willing to be guided to the beautiful things of life and receive from them the delight of thy love. Amen.

Colossians 3
The Message
by Eugene H. Peterson

He Is Your Life 1-2 So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that's where the action is. See things from his perspective.
3-4Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you'll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.
5-8And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That's a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God. It's because of this kind of thing that God is about to explode in anger. It wasn't long ago that you were doing all that stuff and not knowing any better. But you know better now, so make sure it's all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk.
9-11Don't lie to one another. You're done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.
12-14So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.
15-17Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.
18Wives, understand and support your husbands by submitting to them in ways that honor the Master.
19Husbands, go all out in love for your wives. Don't take advantage of them.
20Children, do what your parents tell you. This delights the Master no end.
21Parents, don't come down too hard on your children or you'll crush their spirits.
22-25Servants, do what you're told by your earthly masters. And don't just do the minimum that will get you by. Do your best. Work from the heart for your real Master, for God, confident that you'll get paid in full when you come into your inheritance. Keep in mind always that the ultimate Master you're serving is Christ. The sullen servant who does shoddy work will be held responsible. Being a follower of Jesus doesn't cover up bad work.

Christ Is Our Life

Introduction to The Supplied Life Devotional

The very nature of the Christian life requires that we live a life of being daily supplied. We begin this life by receiving, and we go on by receiving. The Christian life is a supplied life. It is a life that has already been lived out and preserved for us in the Holy Spirit. Now, that "lived out life" is received and supplied to us. The Christian life is not dependent on our own resources or any potential in ourselves. It has everything to do with the rich resources of Another life. Indeed, The Supplied Life is Christ Himself. He has been prepared by God for us and is now being supplied and furnished to us. The way God does this is by organically joining us as branches to Christ, the true Vine (John 15:1, 4-5). Thus, the supplied life comes by abiding as a branch in the Vine. Our daily need is to spend time with the Lord cultivating our life of abiding in Him so as to receive all the riches of His Person and work.
Our understanding of the Christian life needs to be renewed to see that our one unique need is to learn how to receive from the Lord. Paul's statement to the Corinthians sums up this spiritual principle: "What do you have that you did not receive?" This shows us that everything in the Christian life is supplied to us. It is for this reason that we need to spend time cultivating such a life. For Christ to be everything to us in our daily life, we need daily supply.
In our time with the Lord, a number of things may take place. To begin, we may need to cast all our preoccupations and anxieties upon Him (1 Pet. 5:7). Then we may spend time just feeding upon the Word by praying over a verse or part of a verse. We can take the very words of Scripture themselves and make them our prayer, as the apostle Paul tells us: "Take . . . the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, by means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit." Following this we may sense the need to wait upon the Lord quietly, allowing the love-life of the Father and the Son to be cultivated within our hearts (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 5:5). We may find ourselves making melody in our heart to the Lord by singing a hymn or chorus. Paul and Silas blended their praying with singing: "Now, about midnight Paul and Silas while they were praying were also singing praises to God, mingling petition with songs of praise . . ." Our time with the Lord may include a blend of several ways of contacting Him. However we spend our time with the Lord and whatever we do during that time should usher us into God Himself. It is a time to have direct contact with Him in spirit, where nothing is mere routine. It is this contact that nourishes, supplies, and furnishes Christ to us as The Supplied Life.
The selections here have been taken from spoken messages that are now published in various books. May these daily selections be an added stimulus to feed upon the Lord Himself, in order that His eternal purpose would be fulfilled through a daily supply of His life.
— Bill FreemanNovember 1995

The New Covenant Operating
2 Corinthians 3:6
"Who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." 2 Corinthians 3:6
The new covenant is based on the divine operation of the Lord's life in us related to everything in our living. We are enjoying Him—His very life and nature, His soul-life with His thoughts. As we merge with Him, we find that our spontaneous reactions become just Himself. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, and long-suffering. This is not something you are trying to be. It is something that has grown and manifested itself because you are dealing with the Spirit. Christ is operating and becoming the very content of the church in every member by our participation in His life—by eating His flesh, drinking His blood, staying before the tree of life. As we participate in Him, He operates. Apparently we are just common, ordinary people. Yet hidden within us is the divine life operating and the church becoming the expression of Christ Himself. This all happens by our participating in this Person. In the new covenant God says, "I am going to write My laws within you." It is not going to be a ticker tape. It is not going to be something you read outside of you telling you to love the saints and to follow the Lord in your daily life. You are going to have an aversion within you to not touch that unclean thing. You yourself will have an aversion. That aversion is the work of Christ in your mind, in your emotion. Follow that feeling, follow that aversion. Just say "Amen." Just be one with that life, that little feeling of life. It is not a bolt of lightning. It is not going to overwhelm you. It is a little feeling of life. Follow that impulse. That is the new covenant operating in our being. And the more we follow the movement of God within us in our daily living—in our attitudes, in our thoughts—the more we are participating in Him. Then the church is just a Person. You meet a Person. You meet Christ in the saints.
- Bill Freeman, The Supplied Life

Abigail Today...Over 365 Days of Trusting Jesus

Abigail is well into her journey with her Father and as you can see in this picture she is enjoying the journey so far! In my previous post below you will see a picture of Abigail Jewell Walker sound asleep a few weeks after her arrival.(Take a second and scroll down to see her pic) I have always loved pictures like this one where I get a living illustration of real trust. Abigail didn’t know alot of things yet in that picture but whether she knew it or not she was one little bundle of needs. She is fortunate enough to have loving parents that care for her needs and they also provide a healthy mixture of wants and loving correction where it is needed in her life. As a result of this Abigail is thriving mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Creating a healthy environment of love and trust isn't always easy. Satan loves nothing better than to throw a 'monkey wrench' into Abigail's healthy environment of love and positive reinforcement. Why, one word or act misunderstood between any member of their family could result in a week long ( no make that month long...year long?!) 'set to' between any of them and the snowball gains momentum until Abigail's world doesn’t feel so safe anymore. Her family is there but her experience of security can be shaken until everyone in the home regains the harmony needed to provide the security everyone needs to feel it again. Thankfully most 'monkey wrenches' are worked out in a couple of prayerful rounds of intentional communication. Actually I did not intend on making an example out of the Walker family but I did want to bring home the point that just as Abigail's picture is one of absolute trust and dependence, Father wants us to depend on Him in just the same way every single day of our lives, its just plain ole wise to live this way. It may sound simplistic to believe this much less live like this but in reality its the only way. Father is the only one who knows all of our needs even before we do much like a thoughtful parent anticipates their child's needs. Father is also there to clean up any messes we make. If you've ever been told, ''You've made your own bed now you have to lay in it'', I feel sorry for you. That one lie, believed, has the potential to produce years of agony and misery and performance based living until you come to understand what David did in Psalms 56:9b where he cried out, 'this one thing I know, God is for me'. Wow! I love that! God is FOR me! Today Abigail 'knew' this and demonstrated her trust in me during a time of correction she was experiencing with me. She kept pushing the buttons on our DVD player and when I told her to stop the first time she slapped at the button in a bit of defiance to my words. As I corrected her first reaction she then tried another approach to regain her sense of 'rightness'. She proceeded to slap at herself while simutaneously spitting out her pacifier. Note the similarities to our responses as adult children to Father's loving corrections. When she spit out her pacifier she looked at it longingly as if to say, "Ok, if you want me to give up my security I will". But was that what I was asking her to do? I encouraged her to pick up her pacifier while reassuring her of my love and still helping her to understand that button pushing was not the thing for her to do and finally she reached up her hands for all she was worth and cried out for me to take her and hold her! Yea! I had won her heart! She no longer wanted to keep pushing the buttons nor did she want to inflict pain on herself to appease my 'percieved wrath'. She finally realized that where she really wanted to be was in my arms experiencing our fellowship we had had before she started pushing buttons. What 'buttons' are we pushing that Father may be trying to tell us to stop pushing? We may be pushing other people's buttons like Abigail was on 'my' DVD player. He is faithfully and lovingly correcting us and wants is to understand it as such. He even tells us to reach out to Him boldly where we will find His mercy that He is waiting to give us and ask Him for His help when we are made aware that what we are doing is something that is not wise and not of our new nature as His child. Because Father is FOR us we will NEVER experience condemnation from Him. HE WANTS US TO GET IT RIGHT! He is there to help us get there...oh yea, and all of this by all of the power He possesses to bring about the change. If you find you are needing to change for Heaven's sake don't keep on doing the same thing like Abigail did on her first attempt. Secondly, don't condemn yourself or inflict any kind of pain on yourself thinking that that is what you need to do or worse yet, what Father wants. Rather, for ALL YOU ARE WORTH REACH UP TO OUR FATHER WHO HAS ALREADY ANTICIPATED YOUR GREATEST NEED WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW AND HE WILL LOVE YOU and do whatever it takes to get you TO THE PLACE YOU NEED TO BE ...in His Arms.

Thanks Abigail, I needed someone to teach me. MawMaw Susie

For a wonderful testimony of an adult child finding and experiencing the Love and Mercy of our Father you can listen to the podcast 'Living in the Arms of Mercy' by clicking on The God Journey podcast archives under MY FAVORITE LINKS here on my blog. Scroll til you find Living in the Arms of Mercy. Listen and be forever changed. Blessings.

Abigail Asleep In This Troubled World

Left Ahead
"In this world you will have trouble." John 16.33
The fact that God is good does not mean that he will insulate us from all suffering. Rather, it means that he will be with us in our suffering and accomplish good through it (Isa. 43:2-3)... J.I. Packer writes, "We see that he leaves us in a world of sin to be tried, tested, belaboured by troubles that threaten to crush us--in order that we may glorify him by our patience under suffering, and in order that he may display the riches of his grace and call forth new praises from us as he constantly upholds and delivers us."
Taken from The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflictby Ken Sande, Updated Edition (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2003) p. 63
Food for Thought
Imagine this scenario: Jesus is ascending back to heaven as his disciples are looking on and he tells them, "I've got to go now. Hang in there, and best of luck." Sound ludicrous? It would be almost impossible to continue following someone who left you like that. Even those of us who have blood type D (duty) would eventually need a transfusion of something; something to give us hope in this broken world. If that had been the case, then Jesus would have truly left us behind. But that's not how the story goes.
He left us ahead; he told us what it was going to be like, no surprises (John, chapters 14-16):
The world will hate you.
They will persecute you.
They will put you out of the synagogue.
They will think that killing you is a service to God.
And he told us right where he would be:
I will be with you.
As we suffer conflicts, insults, and other hardships, we must remember that Christ is our Emmanuel--God with us! We press on through those valleys of the shadow of death, but we don't press on alone; no, we have the presence of the living Christ guiding, encouraging, refining, strengthening, and protecting us all along the way. And as our faith matures, God does more and more of what God loves to do--display the riches of his grace and call forth new praises from us as he constantly upholds and delivers us.

Resources to Help You Respond to Conflict Biblically
What does peacemaking have to do with the Masele Plant? Answers to this and many other questions can be found at Peacemaker Ministries' blog; Route 5:9 Reflections on the Journey of Living Out Matthew 5:9. Our desire is to reflect on the peacemaking journey, gospel-centered relationships, and life in the church.
We encourage you to take a few minutes, jump over to our blog, and then make it a regular part of your blog reading. We trust it will be a blessing and encouragement to you.

Travis and Carley's Wedding!