EAGLES AND SNAKES

excellence....

these are the few thoughts we had about excellence in our bible study today....

1. We all have God ordained qualities, gifts, spheres of influence. So my attitude in all aspects of life is quiet, surrendering and trusting relationship with the Lord.


2. The basis of doing anything for the Lord is a spotless walk with the Lord and surrendering myself to the will of God and serving Him in love.


3. Whatever field I am in I need to be a testimony for the Lord in word, life and fruits. The things God wants to accomplish through me will be revealed as I wait on Him, my spiritual perceptions as I walk through life and His word. The accomplishment of such things needs training - the Lord trains us for the things called but there is an active element of human toil, planning and execution.


4. I need to identify people around me , their callings and helping them to acheive the same by prayer, action and word.


5. No part of our life has anything to do with self exaltation - we have planted ourselves in His death and all glory belongs to Him.

the obstacles....

this happened at home wen hanny got a bicycle as a gift... so he started riding it around the house ... in the process he realized there are too many walls , furnitures in the house which made his cycling very difficult... so he came up with this solemn suggestion ... thatha! please destroy att these walls and displace all these furnitures that i can ride easily...we had a hearty laugh ! But so often I feel obstacles throttle and destroy me but like hany I fail to realise they infact liberate and make us develop better reflexes and balance (in the case of bicycle)....
the following was written by Stravinsky in Poeticsof music....
"It s in to this field that I shall sink my roots, fully convinced that combinations which haveat their disposal twelve sounds in each octave and all possible rhythmic varieties promise me riches that all the activity of human genius will never exhaust....
I have no use of rhetoric freedom. Let me have something finite and definite - matter that can lend itself to my operation only in sofar as it is commensurate with my possibilities...
In art as on every thing else one can onle build on a resisting foundation: whatever constantly gives wayto pressure, constantly renders movement impossible....
My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limt my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminshes constraint diminshes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.
Rhetorics and prosodies are not arbitrarily invented tyrannies, but a collection of rules demanded by the very organisation of the spiritual being, and never have prosadies and rhetorics kept originality from fully manifesting itself. The contrary, that is to say, that they have aided the flowering of originality, would be infinitelymore true. "

for the glory of Him....

John 11:4 When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.

can I put my failure, anxiety, problems and doubts in the same way and claim that they are for the glory of God... can I see things through eternal perspective .... Dear Lord help us!

Stand up

Mark 3:3, "Jesus said the man with a shriveled hand ' stand up in front of everyone'.. It can be understood that he would have had this hand malfunctioning for many years. And like him there were many people with different kinds of sickness assembled in that small house hoping that Jesus would heal. We see our Lord pointing out that man in the crowd n asked him to stand up.
The Lord spoke to me through this passage that when we are also hoping that Jesus would heal us, he calls us to 'stand up'. I face a lot of my 'past' mocking at me, the very look at 'my shriveled hand' is making me feel that it is impossible for any sort of restoration, and the amount of loss i had incurred mounts up to great heights. Nevertheless we see our Lord Jesus bids him to stand up facing all these only to to prove that the impossible is possible and our Lord has the authority and power to forgive and heal, restore and sustain like we read in that passage "......his hand was COMPLETELY RESTORED "

inner heart attitude

Mar 12:1 And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the winefat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country.
Mar 12:2 And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard.

Friends! may the Lord help us to realise deep inside my heart and yours that all things are given to us by Him, maintained by Him and pruned by Him when we submit to Him and he expects the fruits of our labour to be submitted to Him.

...set up my face like FLINT

As the time approached for him to be taken up to the heaven, Jesus resolutely set out his face to go to Jerusalem..... -Luke 9:51. He knew what was ahead of him and he was determined to Finish the work. we read in Isaiah where it is profetically siad about Jesus. Because the sovereign LORD helps me, i will not be disgraced. Therefore have I set my face like a FLINT and i know i will not be put to shame - Isaiah 50:7... Jesus did the will of God n walked in his life with joyful obedience. In fact we hear him cry out with joy "It is finished" (john 19). In anticipation of this moment, in His prayer, found in the seventeenth chapter of John, " I have Glorified You on earth. I have finished the work u gave me to to"...

Many a times we begin to do the will of the lord, but finds it difficult to complete it. But we see in Jesus this outstanding character of completing the task assigned to Him joyfully with reverence. How good will it be n how much pleased will the Lord be if we, His people can learn this from our saviour Jesus, that we will not be deflected but SET OUR FACE LIKE A FLINT FOR CHRIST. (The picture shows the flint which is used as arrow heads in those days!!)