James 4:7 – Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.

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When the first couple of earth made a decision to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, they thought their actions would do no harm. But there was harm. The harm was a separation from the creator. When Adam and Eve committed the first sin against God, subsequentially they ran to hide from Him. People are still hiding from God today. We hide because of the guilt. We hide because of the shame. We hide because we do not want to be caught. Hiding away from God will not make Him disappear. Those who want to retain their sin will keep it hidden. But God will not be hidden from. If you want to be blessed, you must expose sin—bring it out of the dark and into the light—so that you can obtain mercy.

Do not hide. Do not let your failures, flops, or fears stand between you and the people who love you and want to share your frailty and allow God to lift us all up together.

#JustLarry

Mark 2:7-11 “Why does this man speak this way? He is blaspheming; “who can forgive sins but God alone?” Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.”

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What is life but our response to the world in which we live? When we are hungry, we seek out food. When we take a dive in a pool we want to go to the top to get air. When we stop this response, we die physically. The same principle applies to our spiritual lives. When we respond to it, surrender to it, and receive our very life from it – then we live happily and abundantly. This miracle of healing from Mark reveals both a physical need being met by the healing of a body and a spiritual one of healing of a soul. As much as the man on the pad needed something to be fixed for his body, Jesus saw the greater need for his soul.

It was a choice of Jesus to address the spiritual before the physical. Forgiveness, love, and cleansing are more helpful than the straightening of legs. I have the same choice this morning. Sure, I can pray for less pain in my physical life, but more important than squeaky knees and pain in my back is the state of my soul. I have everything and nothing if I do not have the spiritual first.

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Help me Lord to seek the Kingdom of God first.

#JustLarry

Hebrews 10:22 “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.”

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Every culture, every tribe, all peoples, and every age is drawn toward something more than self.  An unseen wind flutters our sails ever so gently pushing us toward the divine. It is a spiritual confirmation, an inward knowledge or witness that makes us human. This kind of confirmation and witness was taught and treasured by great souls throughout the ages. This gentle wind of conscious awareness of the presence of God still moves!

Some would try to ignore this gentle breeze of the divine, but it is still there. Jesus is that gentle breeze.  Jesus is the loving call. Today, I will turn to the direction of God.  Today, I will be drawn with a pure expectant heart. I no longer will I chart the course.  Today I will let go of the rudder and allow God to steer me. Only when I give in to the guidance of God, will I ever find peace.  Only then will my heart be full of assurance of my faith.

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Dear Lord, I pray your wind of direction will remain strong and will guide me today. Renew my conscious acknowledgment of your direction.

#JustLarry

Deuteronomy 7:9. “Therefore, know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments.”

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Grace and mercy are not the same. Grace is the unmerited care, concern, and favor shown to me.  Grace is given because of love. Grace is God reaching out to me before I need Him.  Mercy is compassion in our failures.  Mercy is forbearance toward an offender.  Mercy is looking beyond my acknowledged failures and showing love. 

Today the thought that raises my spirit is the inexplicable quantity of kindness that follows me.

My love of God and keeping his commands bleeds down all around me. My goal for today is to be a purveyor of God’s mercy. If mercy is for me, then mercy must be given to all I encounter daily.  I must not surrender to thoughts that would choke off the supply given to me. My mercy is a responsibility to have mercy. I must be filled with thoughts of love and acceptance. We are expected to have mercy in the same amount as we have received.  The scales are always tipped toward the provision God has poured out for me. We love the unlovely so that they may also be bearers of mercy.

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Lord, pour into my life mercy so that I might share examples of mercy in my thoughts, attitudes, and actions.

#JustLarry

Hillside Thoughts for Friday

Matthew 5:28  “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

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The teaching continued with a comparison between the law of the Pharisees and the living law of Jesus. In this comparison, Jesus used an example from the big 10 handed down to Moses.  Infidelity, the unfaithfulness of love, an act of betrayal. The disciples look at each other with a calm assurance, “Not much of that going on here.” But Jesus goes further and points to the attitude of betrayal.  To look with a wrong motive is now out of bounds. Jesus was explaining to us hillside dwellers that betrayal is more than an outward act.

Quite a few of the multitude take a dramatic breath.  They are shocked.  It is easy to say I have not betrayed anyone. Nevertheless, Jesus was saying a simple and seemingly uncontrollable desire brings with it guilt. Jesus was making us all guilty before God. If the constraining law was only the outward act there would be puffed up chests and egos. The inward was a betrayer.

This view into the intent of God had little to do with outward acts. My outward righteousness is not enough. My ability to do the right thing at the right time in the right place was not enough.  I need God’s righteousness in my life. It is provided by Him for me.  The law should drive us to Jesus.

May 2, 2024

Ephesians 2:4-5 “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”

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I grew up in the shadow of a military training base. My Boy Scout leader was an Army senior drill instructor.  Many of the adults in the periphery of my life were in the military. My father was in the Naval Reserve and wore his Senior Chief uniform proudly. He tried to keep my sister and my two brothers in shape and in order.  Everything had its place, and everything should be in that place. To his dismay, it was seldom as he would expect. I grew up with absolute expectations of proper behavior and most often came up short of my father’s spit and polish.

I have spent years living and breathing in the world of expectations of other people. I lived in constant threat of disappointment to the socially acceptable norm.  My ingrained nature is one of trying to live up to someone else’s imposed expectations.  I fail a lot. Trying as I might, I could not be what the world expected because their expectations never included mercy.

I have found a new life. Now I live in mercy. I have experienced it.  I have cultivated it.  I have a great need for it. I cannot exist without it. And when it becomes a part of me, my life finds truth, purity, holiness, peace, wisdom, completeness, delight, joy, and victory. My years of living in this great mercy, it is now the cause for me to show mercy.

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Lord, remind me again and again that in your mercy I need to show mercy.

#JustLarry

Day 1 of May – it is MERCY Month,

Hebrews 4:16

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

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Where in today’s culture is mercy to be found? It has been split into a thousand victim groups. All screaming for respect. We are all people in need of grace and mercy.

As it was at the beginning with God.  It was seen in Adam’s first step.  It was in the promise to Abraham.  It was in a split Red Sea and manna six days a week. It was a blind man seeing for the first time.  It was in healed legs and learning to walk in a flash of a moment. Mercy always finds itself in our needs.  It comes upon us when we do not deserve it and yet when mercy is supplied and is transformational.

When we look at our culture, it is all about what we deserve.  I have a right to be heard, I have a right to a free this or that, all with a “my way or the highway” attitude.  What we need most is love, grace, and mercy. I need it from you.  It would help if you had it from me.  But ultimately, we need it from God.  We all are people in need of grace and mercy.

#JustLarry

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April 30

Luke 1:18-20  “And Zechariah said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” And the angel answered him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”

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“How am I to know I am saved?”  “How shall I know this?” That hidden and nagging doubt of God’s unmerited love and forgiveness has touched us all.  We want some evidence.  Some sort of brand on our arm or a seal of becoming part of the grand Holy club. The Angel Gabriel came down and told Zachariah he should have a son, the old and shriveled man wanted a further token than the angel’s word.  “How shall I really know? The answer was, “I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of the Lord”. Zechariah responded with “I know all about that, but I need something more, a token, another sign”.  Gabriel said, “You shall have a token: you shall be speechless till your son shall is born.” I must quit asking for more evidence and be assured of God’s word.

Today I woke up to shouts and protests telling all that would hear, a demand for radical change.  I also woke up to the simple phrase, “If my people shall humble themselves and pray, and seek My face, turn from their wicked ways then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” I think the second choice is better. It is the better sign, the better choice.

#JustLarry