Double Vision

The eye is an amazing organ! It is another great example of how our body is "fearfully and wonderfully made"!

One day this week I had to have dental work done in preparation for getting a new crown on a tooth. My dentist has a limit on how high a person's blood pressure can be when she works on them and sometimes mine exceeds that limit. I'm not scared of the dentist. I'm just scared my blood pressure will be too high....therefore it usually is! Crazy! Sooooo... the past couple of times I've had work done when she had to numb up my mouth she's insisted I take some prescription meds for anxiety.

Early that morning I put the two small white pills in the palm of my hand, asked the Lord to bless them to my good, and then put them in my mouth and swallowed them down with a bit of water. All seemed to go fine until my husband was driving me the hour's distance to the dentist's office. I suddenly noticed that I was seeing everything that was very far away from me in pairs! I was seeing double! Not blurry vision but two separate everythings! Something that had never happened to me before and it was a little scary to say the least!

Every car or truck we met on the highway had a twin. Every light pole came in pairs. Every stop sign had a double. The scary thing was that there was no way that I could tell which one was the real thing and which was the mirror image of it! I'm not sure just what caused this but I did not like it at all and hope that it never happens again.

A few days later as I thought about that experience it reminded me how important it is for us to know that what we are looking at is the real deal. Especially in spiritual matters. Maybe you've heard that Satan has a counterfit for every good thing that God has created. So we need to ask ourselves...is this of God? Or is it a counterfit from Satan?

James 4:8Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.

Seeing double is not a normal thing. It's not a desirable thing. It can be a very dangerous thing! These statements are true whether talking about our physical vision or our spiritual vision! To keep our spiritual vision healthy, we must keep our eyes on ONE Person.....the Lord Jesus Christ!

Matthew 6:22The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

What's your vision like today?

Marilyn

His Eye Is On the Sparrow

Early this morning I was mulling over Isaiah 26:3 in my mind and heart..."Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." As I sat at the kitchen table with my head bowed in prayer asking God to help me keep my mind on Him more and telling Him that I wanted to trust in Him more, I heard a very unusual noise. At first I kept on praying but in a minute after the noise increased I had to open my eyes and see if I could discover what was going on.

I looked in the direction the noise was coming from and there was a bird...perhaps a sparrow...holding on to the screen on the kitchen window over the sink. The little bird was hopping and scratching from place to place on the screen and that's what was making the funny noise.

Immediately I knew God was sending me a message as my mind went to the lyrics of an old song I used to hear sung a lot...."Why do I feel discouraged? Why do the shadows come? Why does my heart feel lonely, and long for heaven and home? When Jesus is my portion, my constant Friend is He. His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me!" (lyricist Civilla D. Martin and composer Charles H. Gabriel)

It was like God said to me "Don't be so worried about everything! I take care of this little bird on your window screen. How much more will I take care of you!"

Just to reinforce this promise, I turned to Matthew 10:29-31 and read these verses: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.
But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows"

Lord, help me to remember today and everyday that I am Your child and that you are watching over me at all times! Thank you!

And my prayer today is that each of you who reads this will realize this same thing!

God bless!

Marilyn

Victory Is Ours !

Who doesn't want to experience victory? Who wants to lose? Not me and not you! So how can we be sure that we can be on the "winning side"? It's according to what we're talking about I suppose. If it's a physical or mental opposition we're facing such as a tennis match or a chess game (neither of which I play by the way!) then the way to experience victory lies in getting stronger physically or mentally than our opponant. But if it's a spiritual victory that we're wanting then the answer is found in Scripture: "But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." I Corinthians 15:57

Spiritual victory is found in letting God fight the battle for us and not trying to get "strong enough" to do it on our own. Remember what David said when he fought the giant Goliath: "And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give you into our hands." I Samuel 17:47

In just a few days many eyes will be glued to TV sets all over the world to see who wins the Super Bowl. Who will have the victory. And this is all right....to some degree. But to some people, this is their religion! I read on a news article this morning where someone remarked that they were getting to the Super Bowl in spite of the raging frozen precipitation falling even "if they had to crawl". How many of us as Christians would say that we were going to go "wherever" God was calling us even "if we had to crawl"? Die-hard sports fans put us to shame in their tenacity! Oh that I could be that much of a fanatic about the cause of Christ!

In the January issue of the AFA Journal there was a very interesting commentary by Matt Friedeman. The title was "Thank God my College Football Team is Losing". Here is an excerpt from the commentary: "He commented...jokingly...that now he could forget all about them and lift up his heart totally to God. He also told the story of on time one of the members of the board of Wesley Biblical Seminary said a friend had said to him that he quietly feared that his children might not want to attend Ole Miss. The board member responded with...'Not to worry...You drink from Ole Miss cups, give money to Ole Miss, never miss an Old Miss ballgame, wear Ole Miss clothes, have scrapbooks full of Ole Miss in your home, talk/joke/dream Ole Miss....of course your kids are going to go to Ole Miss.' Remembering Deuteronomy 6:5-7 ("And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.") it appears the friend had replaced the law of God with a school. Wonder how many of us have done the same with sports teams."
[Go here to read the complete commentary on Matt Friedeman's blog.]

Real victory in our lives comes only from God. Eugene M. Bartlett who wrote the words to "Victory in Jesus" realized this. Here are the words to the chorus of his song:
"O victory in Jesus My Savior, forever He sought me and bought me With His redeeming blood; He loved me 'ere I knew Him And all my love is due Him He plunged me to victory Beneath the cleansing flood. "

And so my friends....Victory is ours through our Lord Jesus Christ!

Marilyn