Refreshing Our Spirits With Scripture

 3.19- Where is God working?  Where do you see things happening that seem like a God kind of thing? Sometimes it is a person who pays for the groceries for a family that doesn't have the money. It can be when a elderly person needs someone to help fix up their house. It can be after a natural disaster.  People come from all over to help out. We just got through a hard time in Texas.  Some of our people in  Fort Worth still don't have water after three weeks. America has as much famine in our country as we have had in many years.  People have shared with each other.  Some have gotten food from food banks and share with others when they didn't have much themeslves. John 5. 19  Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them,  “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless  it is  something He sees the Father doing; for whatever  [ e ] the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.   20  For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all t

 3.18- If we do what we have always done, we get what we have always got. Do you really want to get well?  Do you like having someone to wait one you rather than serving others? Sounds like an odd question.  Really we can become satisfied with our disabilities when we could get better if we pushed for more discipline at times.  Do we want it that badly? John 5. 5  After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2  Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep  gate  a pool, which is called in  [ a ] Hebrew  [ b ] Bethesda, having five porticoes.   3  In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, [ [ c ] waiting for the moving of the waters;   4  for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.]   5  A man was there who had been  [ d ] ill for thirty-eight

 3.17- The Battle Psalm 39:1-7 Tim Gustafson As artillery rounds fell around him with an earth-shaking whoomp, the young soldier prayed fervently, “Lord, if you get me through this, I’ll go to that Bible school Mom wanted me to attend.” God honored his focused prayer. My dad survived World War II, went to Moody Bible Institute, and invested his life in ministry. Another warrior endured a different kind of crisis that drove him to God, but his problems arose when he avoided combat. As King David’s troops fought the Ammonites, David was back at his palace casting more than just a glance at another’s man’s wife (2 Samuel 11). In Psalm 39, David chronicles the painful process of restoration from the terrible sin that resulted. “The turmoil within me grew worse,” he wrote. “The more I thought about it, the hotter I got” (Psalm 39:2-3). David’s broken spirit caused him to reflect: “Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is (verse 4). Amid his

3.17-Listening without interupting I am slowly learning to listen  without interuption by watching others who are excellent. James 1.19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,

 3.16- Righteous Among the Nations Esther 4:5-14 Lisa Samra At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel, my husband and I went to the Righteous Among the Nations garden that honors the men and women who risked their lives to save Jewish people during the Holocaust. While looking at the memorial, we met a group from the Netherlands. One woman was there to see her grandparents’ names listed on the large plaques. Intrigued, we asked about her family’s story. Members of a resistance network, the woman’s grandparents Rev. Pieter and Adriana Muller took in a two-year-old Jewish boy and passed him off as the youngest of their eight children from 1943-1945. Moved by the story, we asked, “Did the little boy survive?” An older gentleman in the group stepped forward and proclaimed, “I am that boy!” The bravery of many to act on behalf of the Jewish people reminds me of Queen Esther. The queen may have thought she could escape King Xerxes’ decree to annihilate the Jews around 350 BC because she

 3.15- Free From Frostbite Psalm 119:33-48 Jennifer Benson Schuldt On a winter day, my children begged to go sledding. The temperature hovered near zero degrees Fahrenheit. Snowflakes raced by our windows. I thought it over and said yes, but asked them to bundle up, stay together, and come inside after fifteen minutes. Out of love, I created those rules so my children could play freely without suffering frostbite. I think the author of Psalm 119 recognized the same good intent in God as he penned two consecutive verses that might seem contradictory: “I will always obey your law” and “I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts” (verses 44-45). How is it that the psalmist associated freedom with a spiritually law-abiding life? Following God’s wise instruction allows us to escape the consequences that come from choices we later wish we could undo. Without the weight of guilt or pain we are freer to enjoy our lives. God doesn’t want to control us with dos and don’ts;