Garry and I had the honor of being among the groomsmen and bridesmaids for a wedding Saturday, January 23, 2010.  A friend took this photo of us at the reception after.

Hindsight is 20-20, Foresight is Faithbased
Doing our first lesson, we are asked how God was faithful to Joshua, to Israel, to Rahab, and to us as individuals.  To see His faithfulness we have to read ahead.  But we can't read ahead in our own lives as we are still living them.  Even so, we can do as the Psalmists and reflect on God's past faithfulness to us.  Many times it is that review that keeps us going forward.  While Paul wrote that we need to forget what lay behind, he did not mean that we forget God's history of faithfulness to us. 
What is God's history of faithfulness with you?  Think about it and rejoice in knowing because He does not change, neither will His faithfulness toward you.

Joshua
Our men's and women's Bible studies at church will be studying Joshua beginning tomorrow and going for several weeks.  We have been encouraged to read the book of Joshua beforehand so we have a framework already.  In rereading the first chapter, this promise of God to Joshua stood out to me:  "No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life.  Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.  I will not leave you or forsake you." (1:5).  What a tremendous set of promises!  And the last of those is repeated for us in the book of Hebrews:  "I will not leave you or forsake you." (13:5).  And that brings me to Romans 8:31-39:  "What then shall we say to these things?  If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?  Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?  It is God who justifies.  Who is to condemn?  Christ Jesus is the one who died--more than that, who was raised--who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.  Who shall separate us  from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?  As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered."  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height not depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Comfort
We were challenged in a Bible study to write a prayer. I lifted many of my thoughts in this from the Psalms and from 2 Corinthians.
Prayer:  Comfort
Father God, I thank You for the comfort which You have given me in my past because I know that You will also give me comfort in the future.  You are indeed the God of all comfort and Father of all mercies.  When, like the psalmists, I do not sense Your presence Your comfort, I too look to when I knew Your comfort Your presence and rely on it once again even if my feelings are not in line with the facts; the facts prevail and the feelings follow.
How grateful I am to You who are the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts me in all my affliction, so that I may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which I myself am comforted.
You comfort me through Your word and through Your body, the church.
You comfort me in the night when I cannot sleep as You remind me of Your word and of Your words, and the history we have, You and me, of times past when You comforted me.
You comfort me in the day when I think of others who need Your comfort, bringing scriptures to mind to share with others as You have with me.
You comfort me in crowds and in solitude, in hurricane-like circumstances and those earthquaking moments others feel, which I have felt.
As You are and have been my refuge and strength, grant that through me You become refuge and strength for others, both in and out of Your extended family.
In no way can I sufficiently express either my thanksgiving or my desire to minister as I have been ministered to.  I can but offer to You all You have graciously provided me, and willingly offer to all who need it the comfort You have graciously given me.
In Christ's Name, for Your glory, in awed amazement, amen.

Grace
These thoughts came during the year that our small group Bible study focused on grace.
Grace
Father, Before I thank You for the freedom Your grace has provided for me, I have to ask forgiveness for not appreciating it, not even giving it much thought most days.
If I give it thought apart from Sunday--church, Sunday school--it is when I am in the Bible and in prayer, and all too often even at those times I end up lacking full focus on You.
I need to ask forgiveness for that too, for letting my mind wander, and rather than bringing it back with my will, letting it take me, let inertia dominate.
I think I have a lot to repent of.
But Father, if not for Your grace, I would still be dead in my trespasses and sins, and think I was alive.
If not for Your grace, I would neither be the woman I am or have any hope of being the woman I am in the process of becoming.
Help me understand and appreciate the ramifications of Your grace--and mercy and peace--in daily life and to apply all of them to my life with my husband and everyone else--even those who call at inopportune times.
Before I can appreciate the freedom Your grace has provided, I have to be more aware of all that grace itself includes--and be able to give an answer if someone asks me about grace.
Way too often I just go and do not see grace even when grace is going with me.
Way too often when someone mentions even saving grace, my thoughts go to life's end rather than to life's present, or even life's past; how limiting that thought is!
Way too often I don't come to the well of grace but go dry and more dry, then complain about the dryness of my life/heart, when that is my own fault--and fault I do not seek grace for.
Way too often--let this be the end of that; let there be no more way too oftens, no more regrets for choices made without thought.
And then there are the consequences:
When I do not receive grace, I cannot deliver grace to others who need it.
When I do not receive grace, I cannot appreciate its full value.
When I do not receive grace, I fall back into the so-called gospel of works.
When I do not receive grace, I, in essence, abuse it, frustrate it, turn from it.
But God,
But God, Your grace pursues me, through circumstances and Scriptures,
Through messages from others and through messages from Your word in study,
And oh, my Father, how grateful I am for
Your pursuing grace.
May I so live that others realize that is what it is, and that it pursues them as well.
May Your grace work in Your glory in all, to all, through all, for all.