GOD, THE ONE AND ONLY

"Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.  I even I am the Lord; and beside me there is no savior....therefore you are my witnesses that I am God.  Yea, before the day was, I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand....I am the Lord and there is none else, there is no God beside me....for I am God and there is none else; I am God and there is none like me."  Isaiah 43: 10, 13; 45: 5; 46: 9.

This past weekend I was on a long drive alone.  To keep myself awake I had a Mercy Me cd playing.  It was the Incredible Mr. Lovewell album and it has some cranking music on it!  I had listened to it there and most of the way home, when suddenly a line from one of the songs caught my attention.  The line said "you are the uncreated one."  Isn't it amazing how you can listen to a song over and over before you actually HEAR it?  

Anyway, that phrase "the uncreated one" has stuck in my mind.  God is so unique.  He is the only one who is uncreated.  Everything on earth, and for that matter above the earth and in the sea, the billions of stars and the entire universe was made....created by Him.  But, He, God was NOT created for He has always been.
Incredible thought!

He says He is the great "I AM"; not the I was or I will be.  Nope, He and He alone is the great I AM.   He has always been, He will always be.

Everything else had a beginning.

Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the earth."  They had a beginning and He was their creator.  He spoke and they were.  For man and woman, He touched them.  They were the only created things that God actually put his hands on.  He formed them with His very hands and breathed His life, His ETERNAL life into them and "they became a living soul".  More importantly they became eternal souls, for from that moment on they were eternal beings.  Though our outer man perishes and decays after death, our soul lives for eternity.  WE had a beginning, but will have no end.  God had neither a beginning nor will He have an end.  That makes Him unique over every other created being.

He is immortal, we are mortal.

He is perfect, we are sinful.

He is holy, we are unholy.

He is righteous, we are unrighteous.

He is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent; we are none of those.

Yes, God is the one and only.  The creator  and sustainer of the universe.  The Master Designer.  Savior.  Redeemer.  Lover of our souls.  And amazingly HE loves us!!!  Can you grasp that?  God, the great I AM, the one and only God, loves YOU and ME?!!!  Think on that amazing fact today and be blessed!!

KINGDOM TAPESTRY - Part 4

I had thought I was through with this series, but I read a statement yesterday that was SO much a part of the whole idea of Kingdom Tapestry that I just had to share it!

First a little background....


It's not a sight any parent is prepared for, their child in a hospital bed with a trachea tube in their neck, but Jon and Kari Underwood say it's far better than what they could be dealing with.

"I wouldn't like a scar on my children, but we'll take this scar," said Kari Underwood.

Wednesday night two and a half year old William Underwood fell in the nursery at Bellevue Baptist, hit his neck on a piece of furniture and broke his wind pipe.The woman watching him knew something was wrong and took him to another nursery worker who immediately jumped into action."Within 30 seconds of falling his breathing was in distress," said Penny Williams.

Without even thinking about it, Penny Williams told someone to call 911, kicked off her shoes and ran with William to a first aid station. By then he had already stopped breathing."We put oxygen on him and tried to contact his parents," said Williams.

Penny, who wasn't even suppose to be in the nursery that night, also sang to William and rode with him in the ambulance to Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center.

"I have daughter with medical problems. She has some of the best surgeons (at Le Bonheur) and on the way I was just praying the right doctor would be here and when we got here it was Dr. McDonald and when I saw him I knew he was okay," said Williams.

William had to be rushed into emergency surgery to repair his trachea. His parents had no idea how serious the situation had been until the surgery was over, but say the outcome couldn't have been better.

"I didn't know Penny's story that she had a child here, I didn't know she knew what she did, but God did and he put her in that hallway," said Kari Underwood."One thing that became clear to me is the minutes counted. If there had been any delay we could have had a completely different outcome," said Jon Underwood. (copied from WREG.COM)


I saw this story on the news on Thursday. I was thrilled that this little boy's life had been saved and just as thrilled that all of this was allowed to be told on the 5:00 news! (Hats off to WREG in Memphis...God bless you!!) How often do we get to hear God given the glory for anything in the media these days, but HE was all over this story.

Yesterday while on FACEBOOK, I saw an entry by Kari Underwood, William's mother. One paragraph just jumped off the page to me,


"God uniquely prepares us for events in our lives that we don't see coming. One question Christian detractors often ask is, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" We may never get the whole answer to that question until we meet again in Heaven, but I can give you a tiny piece of the answer right now. Penny [the nursery worker who ran with William] did not know 18 years ago when her daughter was born needing multiple surgeries, that one day she would be at the right place at the right time and know just what to do when William was injured. She didn't know. But God gave her the grace to handle that experience at that time, and the preparation for my child's distress and my own subsequent measure of grace. She learned empathy through that experience. It changed her life. This will change mine. Picture the butterfly making its way through much effort out of its cocoon. Or imagine the chick breaking its way through the egg. Science will show that the effort is part of the process; without the trial during transformation, these creatures can fail to thrive and develop. As His creatures, God uses our trials to develop us and help us to become better people.

God wove the threads of Penny and Kari and William's lives together over a number of years to suddenly intertwine on Wednesday night. It was no accident. It was not a coincidence. It was all part of God's Kingdom plan.

As I read from JESUS CALLING by Sarah Young this morning, she echoed those thoughts,

"Come to Me with your plans held in abeyance. Worship Me in spirit and in truth, allowing My Glory to permeate your entire being. Trust Me enough to let Me guide you through this day, accomplishing My purposes in My timing. Subordinate your myriad of plans to My Master Plan. I am sovereign over every aspect of your life! "(May 18)

"I am your Lord! Seek Me as Friend and Lover of your soul, but remember that I am also King of kings---sovereign over all. You can make some plans as you gaze into the day that stretches out before you. But you need to hold those plans tentatively, anticipating that I may have other ideas. " (May 16)

"Oh Father...today I pray that you will order my steps in YOUR way. I recognize that you are weaving the threads of my life into a pattern that I may not be able to see. But help me to trust you...to yield my will and my way to You. Help me to submit my plans and my TO DO list to you today and allow you to orchestrate my day as You see fit. Help me not to turn to the left or the right, but to follow Your steps where You desire me to go. Put the words in my mouth that You want me to say. Help me to give encouragement and comfort where needed; to lavish grace with patience and kindness when my flesh would rather be otherwise. Help me to turn a deaf ear to the whispers of Satan who desires to steer me off course and to distract me from Your way. You, O Lord, are the Master Designer. Make something beautiful out of my life....in Jesus' name I pray. Amen"

KINGDOM TAPESTRY PART 3

My daughter loves to take her daughter to the zoo...it is one of their favorite things to do. She also has a group of friends who often meet her there with their children which makes it a fun outing for all. A few weeks ago, she had not planned a zoo trip, but received a call from one of their group who called to say she was going and just wondered if my daughter might be going the same day. Since she had planned to be in the area, she thought "Why not? We can stay for an hour or so". So the two of them hooked up and began their trek with their little ones through the zoo.

As they were walking they were also catching up with each other. Somehow the conversation came around to church and my daughter remembered that this friend went to Bellevue Baptist Church. She asked her if she happened to know Jean Stockdale. "Oh yes!" her friend replied, "I'm in her Mom to Mom group. She is a fantastic Bible teacher! Why do you ask?" My daughter told her that I had been teaching Mom to Mom at our church and that we were using Jean's videos and how much we loved them.

Then her friend went on to tell her that Jean was just amazed at how well these videos had been received. "In fact," her friend told her, "there is this one group that has planned a dinner party just for her with all their women because they are all so anxious to meet her! Can you believe it?! Jean is just blown away and almost a little nervous. She doesn' t see herself as anyone special...and because we've known her so long, she's just "Jean" to us...not a celebrity like Beth Moore or Kay Arthur. But to others who have never heard her before, they are just blown away by her teaching! So Jean has had us praying for her that she won't be a disappointment to these girls when they meet her in the flesh. She is just so humbled that they would go to this much trouble just to meet her."

My daughter was speechless and then began to laugh. "Uhhhh....you're not going to believe this, but that woman who is hosting the dinner party would be MY MOM and that group is HER Mom to Mom group!" How ironic is that?!

Again, we see the threads of God's amazing tapestry weaving their way through our lives. Here we see a godly woman God has raised up to teach and disciple young moms. She's been doing this for over 20 years now...it is God's calling on her life. She doesn't see herself as anything special. Yet God has blessed her ministry and now enlarged her territory as she has been lead to write out and publish her material and create the video series to go along with them. (See her blog on my blogroll) Now she is able to reach even more young mommas for Him. Still, she just sees herself as a momma and now a grandmother who is teaching what God taught her along the way. She is humbled and amazed that her name is being spoken of in the teaching realms of Beth Moore, Anne Graham Lotz and Kay Arthur. But those of us who have sat under her teaching would have no problem saying that. She is without a doubt a very gifted teacher.

It was my joy to host this dinner party in honor of both my girls and Jean. I felt it would be a blessing to them to get to meet her up close and personal. We have done two of her studies and they have been such a blessing to all of us. Seeing someone week after week on a video is one thing, but getting to actually meet them, sit down and talk with them over a meal and see them face to face, just intensifies your relationship and deepens their credibility with you. Jean was so gracious to agree to come and meet with us and I was shocked to learn that she was a bit nervous about meeting us.

But, I thought how sweet it was of God to allow me to know how Jean felt before she got there, so that I could pray for her to be at ease. However, my greatest prayer was that God would honor that time of fellowship in the lives of those who came, that they would be blessed by the evening and most of all that HE would honored and lifted up.

You see I believe with all my heart that is why God gave us this house...to use for His glory and to point others to Him. So it thrilled my heart to be able to host this dinner for these young mommas and to bless Jean by affirming to her that God is using her in a mighty way. I believe that Kingdom fruit will be born from that evening. I may never know this side of Heaven what it was, but I believe with all my heart God blessed and it will be used of Him for His glory.

And all of that was orchestrated BY Him as part of His Kingdom plan. Threads of the tapestry being woven together in our lives. There were 14 women there, not one of them (including me) was there by accident. He was weaving threads of His tapestry in each of our lives that night. Threads that will cross and interweave in the days and weeks and months ahead. It will be exciting to see how they fit into the total picture one day.

It is the glimpses of these threads God is using to weave His marvelous Kingdom tapestry that has thrilled my soul! It has encouraged my heart because it shows to me that even when we don't SEE the threads being woven, the Master Designer is STILL at work, behind the scenes, orchestrating, weaving our lives into His plan in ways that we cannot begin to fathom. It encourages me because there are situations that I have prayed over, lives that I have prayed for for years and I see very little that appears to be changing. I will not give up trusting in Him. I know that He is at work even though I cannot SEE what He is doing. And just as we have studied in our Esther study, His timing is always, always, always PERFECT!! But He has been so gracious to allow me to see in just these few scenarios how He weaves our lives together, people that we don't even know are praying for us. He is using people to cross paths with those we are praying for that we don't know about and that they have no idea HE is using. There is much going on in the unseen realms and we must learn to trust Him, the Master Weaver, as He orchestrates and weaves the colorful threads of His Kingdom tapestry. One day soon the tapestry will be complete and we will get to see it in its entirety....all the threads of our lives woven together over all the ages and it will do one thing...........magnify and glorify HIM, the one and only true God, the King of King and Lord of Lords.

WHAT A DAY!

"Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy" I Timothy 6:17

I had one of those days yesterday that we don't get too often. Just a quiet, leisurely day. What a blessing!

I began my day on my back porch, the favorite feature of my entire house! I sat there with my cup of coffee, just drinking in the morning stillness. The dew was glistening on the grass, the birds were singing a Hallelujah chorus from the trees and a light breeze was blowing through the trees in our small wooded area.

I delighted in the beauty of a cluster of yellow daylilies in full bloom. They made me think of Mother who grows them and delights in them like no one I've ever known. In fact, she joined me later in the day as we sat in the lounge chairs in the woods, again savoring the surroundings. She had given the daylilies to us when we built our house and they have never been more beautiful than this year. The spring rains have caused everything to be exceptionally beautiful this season. Jesus thought a lot of daylilies too. He said that Solomon, the richest man in the world who could afford and did have probably the most exquisite wardrobe of any man EVER, was never outfitted as beautifully as just one of these lilies! Any wonder my mother loves them so? Each one is a masterpiece of the Master Designer.

Not to take anything away from the daylilies, but just past them in a shady area of the woods is my hydrangea bed. My hydrangeas are blooming with mopheads of blue and a blush of pink. They are a thrill to me because after several years of babying them, this is the first year they have bloomed. And I LOVE hydrangeas. So I routinely find myself just staring at them with joy and delight at their beauty.

It is so seldom that we are able to be quiet and still, to enjoy the beauty that God has placed for our enjoyment around us. We live in such a fast paced world that our schedules don't allow for much "down time" or else if we stop, we feel guilty for all the things we SHOULD be doing.

Yet God created times for us to do just that. To stop, to feast our eyes on His creation, to enjoy the quiet stillness of the day. He said "Be still and know that I am God".

So make time today to obey His word. BE STILL. Take a look around you at the beauty He has placed in YOUR path today for your enjoyment. It may not be daylilies or hydrangeas. It may be the face of your child, the warmth of your spouse's hand in yours, a huge bowl of delicious ice cream or swim in your pool. But just recognize that these simple pleasures are for your enjoyment. Your Heavenly Father delights in providing them for you so that you may relax and unwind and be still before Him. May you hear Him speak in the quietness of those moments.