Praise God for His goodness and mercy and that, because of His understanding heart, they follow us all the days of our lives.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Ps 23:6 ESV
Dwell. I love that word. It means we live in it. We are not visiting. We are not just passing by. We are settling in and making our home in God and His Love. Or this is what we are growing into anyway. As I have said, sometimes we forget we have already been united to Jesus and set free from all our past sinful ways. We begin to act like we used to act before we gave our lives to Jesus and we wonder if there has been any change in us at all. But this is part of spiritual growth. We have our moments of highs and then our times of lows. Think stock market here. By the Grace of God, our overall trend is higher, but in between, there are highs and lows that can make a person dizzy! This is why it is so important that we remember we are never alone.
We talked about mountaintops and valleys last week, but I want us to see that both are valuable to our growth. If we were always in the valley where it is challenging yet full of opportunities to grow, but we never experienced mountaintops where we can be in the full Presence of God as we reveal Him to the world, then we might start to get weary of all the testing. But then again, if we only lived on the mountaintops revealing Christ in us, we might get a bit prideful thinking WE are the source of all that goodness. No, we need both and praise God He is right there with us in both instances. Why? Because we dwell in His house.
Join me in memorizing 52 verses this year:
January: 1- Jn 3:16; 2- 2Co 5:17; 3- Jas 2:26; 4- Eph 2:10
February: 5- Jn 10:10; 6- Ro 6:23; 7- Rev 21:4; 8- Php 4:13
March: 9- 1Pe 5:7; 10- Jn 8:32; 11- Dt 30:19; 12- Jn 3:30; 13- 2Chron 20:3
April: 14- 2Chron 20:12; 15- 2Chron 20:15b; 16- 2Chron 20:17
May: 17- Ro 8:28; 18- 1Co 13:13; 19- Php 2:12; 20- Mt 5:4
June: 21- Lk 23:42; 22- Jas 4:7; 23- Pr 22:6; 24- Mt 5:3; 25- Jn 14:6
July: 26- Jas 2:19; 27- Dt 31:8; 28- Jn 14:15; 29- Jn 8:11
August: 30- Ro 8:1; 31- Pr 4:23; 32- Pr 18:21; 33- Ps 118:24; 34- 1Jn 4:4
35- Mt 16:24
36- Isa 53:6
37- Ps 23:1-6
<>< Peace, Diane
