new mercies every morning

He answers with thoughts

God gives us thoughts. If we miss his thoughts we end up with just a ritualistic faith.
God’s thoughts are eternal, therefore they are the only lasting nourishment for
our faith. In prayer we learn to seek for his thoughts instead of asking for things.
God answers our prayers with thoughts.
Yes, he does sometimes change circumstances and people for our sake, but when it
comes to our preparation for heaven, he gives us thoughts.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9
They are higher, not in a sense that they are unreachable, but in the meaning that they
take us further. They cover a far greater sphere of life than the visible world .
Our own thoughts stir up the dust and have a tendency to get stuck in the immediate.
God’s thoughts help us to see to the future, behind the curtain of time.
Jesus rebuked Peter for not thinking with God. Matthew 16:23
Paul gives his testimony of the thinking revolution in his life in I Cor.13:11
“When I was a child , I spoke as a child , I understood as a child, I thought as a child;
but when I became a man , I put away childish things.”
Thinking with God is the greatest adventure and satisfaction of our lives.

Jose found his best friends in Heybeli Ada

healthy pride?

Is there such a thing as healthy pride?
Apostle Paul was boasting of his ability to provide for himself and
for the needs of those who were with him. I Corinthians 9, II Corinthians 11
In Philippi he refused to walk out from the prison unless the men, who had
unjustly thrown him in there, would personally come and escort him out. Acts 16
He was boasting in Christ, but was he proud?
Pride is known to be the original sin in heaven.
It was found in Lusifer's heart.
It was a relationship problem. It defines a person's choice to act independently.
Pride is always originated in man's independency of God.
Spiritually minded person regocnizes his need to depend on God.
He draws his strength from another.
His satisfaction is not based on self-righteous
comparison, but on a free gift with no merit to boast in.
Pride in the true meaning of the word can never be healthy.
God is humble. That makes it very easy for all of us.
I Peter 5:5

a lake in Finland

cheeks speak

Turning the other cheek is so powerful and so rare.
It doesn't guarantee your physical safety, but it disarms the enemy of any
moral assets against you. It sets you free from revenge.
Somebody pointed out the importance of Jesus speaking about the right cheek.
Matthew 5:39
As most of people are right handed it's not natural for them to slap another on
their right but left cheek. Jesus is speaking about a backhanded slam.
It's more restrained than a direct hit , but nevertheless powerful enough to
challenge you to retaliate.
It's a moral insult.
When you turn your other cheek you testify about grace:
"Yes, I have deserved a slam on my face, actually I deserve more than one."
Many of Jesus' commandments seem impossible to obey.
Actually the diffrence between impossible and difficult isn't that big.
Turning your other cheek cannot be a planned reaction.
It will come from Christ- likeness. The Holy Spirit will teach us this.
Without Christ's character it turns to a greater insult and a retaliation of evil with evil.
Be ready to reveal grace in these stormy relationships.

There's a lot of good fruit around.

May our eyes not get dim.

"Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died.
His eyes were not dim nor his natural strength diminished."
Deut.34:7
Moses followed the vision that God had shown him.
He had seen to the other side of the curtain.
I believe that his eyes reflected the condition of his soul, his thinking with God.
He didn't have any beams with ta lot of dust that comes with them, in his eyes.
Mt.7:3
Without a vision people perish, they just vanish away without any eternal investment.
Maybe their steps were "right" and well calculated, but they never walked on the water.
Their steps never sounded like an army of thousands of warriors.
II Kings 7:6
They never danced on the ruins of fallen Jericho.
Their eyes were filled with things, but there was no fire from heaven in them.
Their eyes were beautiful, but empty.
"By faith Moses forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king:
for he endured AS SEEING HIM WHO IS INVISIBLE." Hebrews 11:27