Obedience is More Important Than Sacrifice

Samuel was choosing the next king of Israel. Saul was rejected because he was not obedient. In the preceding chapter, Saul was supposed to annihilate the Amalekites...every person and every animal. 

“But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.”

‭‭1 Samuel‬ ‭15:9‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Obedience is more important than sacrifice. 

God chose David instead of Saul. These two chapters of 1 Samuel show the first and second kings of Israel.  If you consider the life of Saul, he does not have the traffic record of David. 

But God spoke of David as a “man after his own heart.” Again, many things about David’s life was not sin-free. He was a murderer. He was an adulterer. He was not a good dad, in many respects. 

In my worldly thinking, Saul would still perhaps be my choice of king. He kept the good stuff to offer it the Lord as a sacrifice. He had a tender heart and did not want to kill Agag. I wouldn’t want to kill him either. He was not a wicked king at all. 

But when Samuel pointed out his sin, Saul always had an excuse. Do you always have an excuse for your disobedience? Do you blame it on your parents? Perhaps, when you know that you need to give a tithe of your money, do you blame it on your financial problems? You justify that you are pretty good overall. No murders in your life. Keeping a few sheep to sacrifice here and there. 

“ The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.””

‭‭1 Samuel‬ ‭16:7‬ ‭NIV‬‬

David’s heart. When God convicted him of his sin, David wept over his sin and then accepted God’s forgiveness. He believed that God forgave him.  

I want to follow the Lord with all my heart. I want to love the things the Lord loves.  I want to accept his forgiveness and know that it is removed “as far and the east is from the west.” I don’t have to earn this forgiveness. Can’t earn it. I want to not try to offer a sacrifice with my church attendance or of reading the Bible everyday or acts of service. Can’t earn a badge. 

Saul looks good to the church goers of today. David does not try to post things that the Christian community gives a bunch of likes to reward. He reveals his weakness and his desperation. 

Brain Surgery

“We have small troubles for a while now, but these troubles are helping us gain an eternal glory. That eternal glory is much greater than our troubles. So we think about what we cannot see, not what we see. What we see lasts only a short time, and what we cannot see will last forever.”

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭4:17-18‬ ‭ERV‬‬

I love, love this verse. I love living with eternity in mind and not living for the 80 or so short years that we are going to live. The Lord is revealing  a small trouble in Mark and mine’s lives. 

I have been wondering why my brain has been “freezing” up for 30 seconds spans.This has been been going on for at least 5 years. I went to a neurologist about three years ago and he convinced me that I was too busy and stressed. When I retired, these problems would disappear. 

When I retired about a year and half ago, I noticed that the problems were increasing. Interesting. My sweet sisters noticed at thanksgiving that my mouth was drooping on one side. They said that they would nag me until I saw a neurologist again. I went to my regular doctor and he noticed I was talking with a lisp. He scheduled an MRI. 

Wow! This saved my life. I have a slow growing, large tumor that is pressing into my brain. Even though this is scary, it finally makes sense. Even more important, there is a medium sized aneurysm growing in my brain. It would have gone unnoticed and could be deadly, if not fixed. 

Mark and I want this to bring fame to our sweet Heavenly Father. He is so kind. I am not fearing the outcome but it looks promising. If one person that reads this will hear the Lord speaking to their heart, what a blessing that would be. He created you for a purpose, bigger than what you thought. This small life here is the temporary part. There is eternal part that you need to decide about.

 January 13th is first surgery to remove the tumor. The second surgery will be a few weeks after to fix the aneurysm. Thank you for those prayers. I’m ready for this 😄😄😄.

Too Much To Do

“Meanwhile, the people in Judah said, “The strength of the laborers is giving out, and there is so much rubble that we cannot rebuild the wall.””

‭‭Nehemiah‬ ‭4:10‬ ‭NIV‬‬

I read an article by Rick Warren this morning. He states: 

“Think of the rubble as the trivial things that waste your time and energy, those things that prevent you from accomplishing what God has called you to do. If you are discouraged, you may need to clear away some of the rubble in your life.”

I have spent my life trying to do three things at once...literally. It was almost a challenge to try to see how many plates I could spin at the same time. A year and a half ago, I retired from my full time job. Because I did not know any other way to live, I tried to put more things in my life so that life would be “normal feeling.” 

I want to digress at this point. I absolutely do not think that a person needs to cancel every event in their life. Many times when people think they are too busy and stressed, they cancel the things they need to keep. 

I think the most common event for people to cancel is going to church and being a part of a community group. The rationale is this a day of rest and relaxation, their only day off. 

Another common thing to cancel is exercise. No time to take care of yourself physically and frees you up for more TV watching. 

Another thing to cancel is serving others. No way for time to observe that God has placed some people in your path that need you. 

Definitely most people cancel having a quiet time with the Lord. We rationalize that God wants us to rest. We cannot wake up earlier and read His incredible word and talk to him about life. 

I have noticed that when people start canceling rubble from the life, the most important things are sometimes the things are dropped first and should be kept. 

To clean out rubble, real trash, means to be able to hear what is rubble and what is not. Nehemiah and his crew got tired...real tired. They did not make time for social media and watching their favorite TV show. 

God gave them wisdom to know who to ignore and what to ignore.

“so I sent messengers to them with this reply: “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer.”

‭‭Nehemiah‬ ‭6:3-4‬ ‭NIV‬‬

I want 2020 to be the year that I plead for wisdom to know the difference. If I lay out my life for God to examine, he would love to reveal to me what is my purpose and what is not. 

He Will Never Leave You Or Forsake You

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.””

‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭31:6, 8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Two times in 3 verses, God said that he will never leave us or forsake us. If you are a believer, you cling to that promise. There is nothing we could ever do that would cause him to turn his back on us. This gives us courage. It should take away our fear. 

“Leaving” is a physical act. “Forsaking” is an emotional act. Regardless of what we do, God will never turn His attention away from us. ~ Jimmy Evans 

Marriage is a picture of Christ and his bride. Does our spouse feel the same about way about us as this promise we receive from Christ? Does our spouse know that no sin or shortcoming would cause us to leave or forsake them?

When our spouses disappoint us, and they will, do we emotionally turn away from them? Do we literally turn our back and protect ourself from further pain? How do we react when our spouses act like a wretched sinner that Christ died for? 

We are all a bunch of wretched sinners that are not worthy of Jesus to continue to turn his face toward us. Why does he continue to turn toward us and pursue us? How is this possible? We don’t even love ourselves at times. 

When our spouse doesn’t even love themselves, the last thing they need is for us turn away from them. If we could find the strength to continue to turn towards our spouse, even when they don’t deserve it, we will be a part of the healing process. I know you may say, “But you don’t know how messed up our spouse is.” 

This something that we won’t understand until the day we stand before our maker.  God will have the words that we long to hear. 

“Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things. “

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭25:21‬ ‭NIV‬‬

I want to hear that one day in the way I treated Mark when he disappoints me. And when I disappoint him, I hope and pray that he doesn’t turn his face away from me. That is the point of marriage. In a mysterious way, we growing closer to the Lord until the day we see him face to face. 

Top Reasons to Marry(do not miss this blog)

I wrote this blog 7 years ago. I think I will come up with 5 more reasons:)

Today is the 34th anniversary of our marriage.  Mark is taking a nap(the Sunday afternoon kind) and so it seemed like a great time to blog about my thoughts about marriage. I wrote a blog about a week ago, asking the question "Should people still get married or just live together?"  My main reason to marry was to reveal your selfish nature.  Looking back, I am smiling, "Is that all I could come up with?" Not a very persuasive reason for people to jump into marriage!  So here are some other reasons why marriage was a good decision 34 years ago.
1.  Mark and I had to make a conscious decision to work at marriage. Did we work at it everyday?  Heavens, no!  We each had our seasons of expecting the other person to do all of the work and us to reap all the benefits. Many compromises had to happen along the way.  Mark likes guy movies.  I grew up with 3 sisters so I was not used to murders every 5 minutes in my movies.  I have to admit that he weaned me off chick flicks so I would probably never choose that as my source of entertainment.  Mark loves to dance.  I am so insecure because I can't dance.  Well, along the way Mark has turned me into a little bit of a dancer. He started out with dancing with me anytime we rented a movie.  The end of the movie signaled a time to dance.  Then he snuck it in when we were making Friendship bread together.  He turns up the I Pod and we dance after the bread goes in the oven. Then, the icing on the cake was last fall. We signed for for country western dance lessons!  Many compromises.
2.  We learned so much about prayer.  Understatement!  Somewhere along the way, we agreed to make reading our Bible together and praying together every morning a top priority in our marriage.  May I add a commercial here?  If you are not reading your Bible and praying on a regular basis before you marry, you probably won't be doing that together after you are married.  We decide when we need to leave for work or whatever, and we back that up by 30-60 minutes.   If we need to leave for work by 7:00, we agree to be dressed and ready to go by 6:20.  Then we sit together in living room and read our Bible and pray together. Saturdays, we spend a longer time on the back porch. We carefully selected the chairs for the back porch.  We call them "magic moment" chairs.  A lot of life's issues have been prayed about at 6:30 at the Cooper's house.  Years of stuff. Bad, good, very sad, hopeless times, times of great joy...they all cycled through prayer.
3.  Learning to serve the other person.  I look back to the time to our early days of marriage and I cringe to think about how self-serving I was.  I was honestly afraid that if I served Mark, unconditionally, that I would just be a doormat.  This is what a lot of wives are afraid of, that they will do all the giving and get nothing in return. But isn't that the essence of the Christian life?  We are obedient, no matter how crazy it seems. The Bible is full of stories where God commanded the people to do almost foolish things and the results were unbelievable. God has shown that to be true over and over again in our marriage.  If I am obedient to his word, he takes care of the marriage part.  When I serve Mark and not worry about whether Mark will reciprocate, I am in for the sweetest joys life can offer.
4.  Seeing how your mate grows in his walk with the Lord.  Mark Cooper is simply not the same person that I married 34 years ago.  Compared to the way that I feel about Mark today, I honestly did not know what it meant to love someone. I "loved" the idea of being married. I "loved" the idea of a wedding and keeping a house.  I "loved" the idea of someone giving me attention. I "loved" the idea of having someone around to talk to and do stuff with.  I "loved" the idea of the other person completing me, whatever that is supposed to mean.  But  I cannot honestly say that I loved Mark, for who he really was, warts and all.  In fact, I closed my eyes to any warts.  I wanted to marry a perfect person, not a person with faults or weaknesses. The amazing thing about living with a growing Christian, as opposed to a perfect Christian, is that the person continues to grow and become more Christlike. As Mark becomes more Christlike, I am more attracted to this person I am spending my life with.
5.  I actually was going to name 10 things but this is getting too long. My 5th reason to get married is see God use a couple of wretched sinners to make a difference in his kingdom.  We are so very flawed.  We are so average.  I laugh sometimes when I think about how un-cool I am!  No athletic ability, whatsoever.  Can't find my way to anywhere.  I am always lost. We are not much to look at, definitely not rich, lacking in talents and yet God has blessed us by using us.  How can he?  Because we keep asking him to.  We keep putting one foot in front of the other and showing up. Showing up for prayer every morning, showing up for ministry in our church, showing up for jobs, showing up to be a parent to our married sons...not feeling confident at all in our own abilities. But we are more confident than ever in God's abilities to use us.
Let me finish by saying this...thanks for reading this blog.  I really appreciate it.  I prayed that God would speak in a mighty way to whoever reads this.  So you got prayed for.

Making Marriage a Priority, part two.

When I wrote my last blog on marriage, I did not realize that many younger women were interested in reading about an older woman's perspective on marriage. Actually when I wrote the last blog, it was 3:30 AM and I was in the middle of an incredibly stressful time.  God said the words for me to type so fast, I could hardly keep up with his thoughts. I reread it yesterday and saw many grammatical errors! Yikes! They were my mistakes, not the Lord's:).

In retrospect, many more thoughts have come to my mind. I share them only in the hopes that a young married person, or any age for the matter, will take these words to heart and apply the Biblical principals to your marriage.

Ask yourself this question before you read another word. "What kind of a marriage do I want to have 5 years from now?" What kind of marriage do I want to have 30 or 50 years from now?" You can choose.  But realize that there are no shortcuts to an amazing marriage. A marriage that impacts other people. None. God does not live in a shortcut world. He does not look at my life and say, "Pat, you can take a shortcut, an easy way, a less stressful way, a non-suffering way to look more like my Son." He is clear that his way will be more difficult and he does not have to apologize about it. Jesus said in Matthew,

 “You can enter true life only through the narrow gate. The gate to hell is very wide, and there is plenty of room on the road that leads there. Many people go that way. But the gate that opens the way to true life is narrow. And the road that leads there is hard to follow. Only a few people find it.

See what I am talking about?  It makes me tremble when I read his word and allow myself to be confronted by its truth and not try to paraphrase it to be what I want it to be. How does this impact our marriage choices?

Begin by drawing a line in the sand(I love to say that) and deciding that you will make choices that will be difficult at times. Like waking up early and reading God's word and talking to Him. Mark and I wake up at 4:30 AM and read God's word and then pray together. Your schedule may not require such a ridiculous time. This is what our schedule requires this year. For years, we have made this a habit and so it was not so hard to keep this in place when my husband's job changed and he had to leave earlier this year than last year.

Here are the benefits of this. We both know what God's word says and don't have to take anyone else's word for it. We are more likely to live by the principals in the Word because we read them over and over again. They come to our mind often. God has some stuff to work with in my mind when he wants to remind me of something.

Also, it is really hard to be mad at someone if you know you are going to pray with him. Mark always has said this,"Babe, we are standing up in the foxholes and allowing the enemy to shoot at us. Let's get down and be protected together from the evil one who is trying to destroy us." That always makes perfect sense after he says that. We NEED to pray together. We HAVE to pray together to survive the bullets that are coming our way. By the way, if you don't feel any bullets coming your way and life is rosy all the time, be very worried. You must not be any threat to the enemy and he is not wasting his time on your marriage.

If you have continued to read this far, it must mean you are serious about this stuff and I am excited. Here's is the good part. The longer you continue to do this, the more attractive you will become to your husband. He will be more deeply in love with you as the years go by. You are building your marriage on a solid foundation and not on the sandy soil. When bad things come (and they will) you will be able to withstand it together. Your roots will be deep and not shallow. I love Psalm 1:

They love the Lord’s teachings
    and think about them day and night.
3 So they grow strong,
    like a tree planted by a stream—
a tree that produces fruit when it should
    and has leaves that never fall.
Everything they do is successful.

Good grief!!! How can you not want that for your life?  But it will not happen if you choose the easy way. Psalm 1 ends by saying;

The Lord shows his people how to live

but the wicked have lost their way.

If you choose the shortcut way, you will one day wake up and find that you have lost your way. That happens in a lot of marriages. It not only happens in marriages that end in divorce, it also happens in marriages where the two decide to just stay together because it is easier. You ask yourself, why did I choose this guy? I don't like the man he has become. I don't like the woman I have become. I don't know the right way anymore. 

I think I should add that the end result is not happiness and easy lives and riches and no health problems and no rebellious teens. Again, we cannot expect this side of heaven to be heaven. But we can face tomorrow with some resilience. We can face tomorrow with a clearer vision of where to walk. We can face tomorrow with the love of our life and it does not seem so scary anymore. 

I forgot to name the main reason why this is awesome for your marriage…this quiet time together every morning is like glue!  Your minds melt together. You are on the same page. Your priorities are going to start looking alike. Your desires begin to line up with God's desires so your desires line up with your husband's desires. I can say that no other single thing in your marriage will bond you together like spending time with the Lord together. Everything else is just icing on the cake. 

Giant Step For Ruth

More in Ruth...

“One day Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi said to her, “My daughter, I must find a home for you, where you will be well provided for.”

‭‭Ruth‬ ‭3:1‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Naomi is actually saying Ruth to find “rest” in the home of a husband. 

“May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”

‭‭Ruth‬ ‭1:9‬a NIV‬‬

We need to understand what Ruth is being asked to do. She has left the Moabites and their customs that she is used to. She is going to have faith in the advice that Naomi is giving her. She will throw herself at the feet of this man. 

“When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do.””

‭‭Ruth‬ ‭3:4‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Two points here...Naomi is leading Ruth to take a step. Naomi loved Ruth so much that she is willing to share the way to be redeemed by their nearest relative. Do I love my friends and family so much that I want to share the way to redemption? If we know that way to salvation, why don’t we share? 

Next point, Ruth is humbling herself big time! Would you follow the advice of someone that has not grown up with the same customs and belief system as you? She is giving up every single thing she has ever known that is safe and secure. She takes a giant step of faith in what Naomi is suggesting that she do. She throws herself at the feet of this man. 

““Who are you?” he asked. “I am your servant Ruth,” she said. “Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a guardian-redeemer of our family.””

‭‭Ruth‬ ‭3:9‬ ‭NIV‬‬

What a gospel moment! Jesus is telling us to cover ourselves with his garments. He promises to redeem us. The rewards are too great to describe. Many of those promises will be discovered long after our life is over. 

The rewards were unspeakable for Ruth. She receives much rewards for the rest of her life. But in eternity, she will find out that she became a part of the lineage of the Savior.

 When we receive the protection and security and salvation of Christ, we won’t see all the promises this side of heaven. There will be struggles and heartache and pain this side of heaven. But we can trust that we chose the best. We chose wisely when we throw ourselves at the feet of Jesus.