A Call to be Embraced

“Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes! Cease to do evil, Learn to do right! Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, and correct the oppressor. Defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” Isaiah 1:16-17 AMP

All through His word, God calls us to look beyond ourselves.  Scripture after scripture have jumped off the page to remind me of this so much lately.  Nothing that we do can EVER earn salvation, that is a miraculous free gift from God.  But as His children, He calls us to take action.

^"External religious worship [religion as it is expressed in outward acts] that is pure and unblemished in the sight of God the Father is this: to visit and help and care for the orphans and widows in their affliction and need, and to keep oneself unspotted and uncontaminated from the world."  James 1:27 AMP

So I guess I have arrived at the point in my life where I love God soooooo much that I can't keep ignoring what He calls all of us to do... defend the fatherless, care for the orphans, for how will they find any hope but the hope in Jesus?  Oh, how I have been shown the Father's heart!

He loves them so - just as He loves us.  How can we not hear their cries?

I am really feeling like He is about to do amazing things!  I can't wait to post about His praises as they become revealed to me!

A New Beginning for Us

This year New Year's Day fell on a Sunday.  And while it was nice having Christmas on a Sunday (nice to celebrate His birthday on His day) - this year it was absolutely amazing celebrating the New Year in church with our church family.

Our pastor preached today about the parable of the wineskins :

Luke 5:36-38

"He told them a proverb also: No one puts a patch from a new garment on an old garment; if he does, he will both tear the new one, and the patch from the new [one] will not match the old [garment].  And no one pours new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the fresh wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be ruined (destroyed).  But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins."

This really awakened something in my spirit - and Pastor's teaching only confirmed what God had already be speaking into my heart.  He is doing a new thing.  Amazing things.  But to receive the new things that He want to pour out, we must get rid of the old wineskin.  What He has done in the past was wonderful, but He has new things yet to be done.  By discarding the old, we are allowing Him to move - to make room for the new. 

There is nothing more that I desire from Him.  The new!  Oh, how I long for what is to come! 

Help me, Lord... to move on from where I am.  To discard the old and to take up the new in anticipation for all that you have planned.