Not long after I started up deerlife, I wrote (boldface added today):

I have been praying for some time God would bring together in a more cohesive way those of us who have a heart for revival and have  received a calling to pray for revival. I believe we are spread too thinly on the wall (think Nehemiah).

Nehemiah 4:19 And I said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “The work is great and widely spread, and we are separated on the wall, far from one another. 20 In the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us.”

I’m not quite sure how this might look in reality, but I have been feeling for some time that we need to be strategic as we rebuild the wall. By strategic I don’t mean resorting to worldly means but seeking God’s ways and God’s wisdom. The three fold cord is not quickly broken. I confess I have often been tempted to feel like Elijah, that there are no others out there (as I know others have had similar temptations), even though I know there are others. Let us remember that God always has a faithful remnant He is calling and wanting to use. Through deerlife, I pray God might raise up a fellowship of believers here who can support, uphold and encourage one another, so we can be mobilized and sent back into our home churches and communities on mission for Him. I am praying that those of us who have had a taste of revival in our own lives would be able to take that into our churches. I know there are some of us who are specifically called to this blogging community, but all of us are called to build on the home front as well.

I am also praying God would begin to raise up people in the local church to disciple and equip the saints both now and as revival does come, for there will be an influx of hungry souls needing meat. We should all be praying about our responsibility and role in that.

I love the Church and want to see her glorify God as she is intended and that starts with each one of us! I am a strong advocate of every member ministry. As Christians, we are all ministers, we are all uniquely called and equipped by God to be serving Him, His people and our neighbor in love with the gifts and resources He provides for His glory. I am praying God would be gracious to us and allow us to encourage one another to live our lives to His glory in the places He has put us here on this earth.

In the Church today the work is great and the work is widely spread. It is also crucial for us to come together because the world is united in opposition against Christ and against those who are seeking to do His will and seeking the welfare of His Church. We are separated on the wall, far from one another in many ways. I am praying God might be gracious to us here and work through Deerlife to equip, encourage and edify His people as we seek to walk in the works God has ordained for us and build up His Body for His glory.

For more information, please read my posts Welcome to deerlife and Why deerlife? (we are separated on the wall, far from one another). (Some of the thoughts I’ve shared here have been adapted from those posts.)

I would also invite you to visit my other websites, naphtali_deer (Reformed Bible teaching with an eye to experiential Christianity) and tent_of_meeting (prayer for revival).

By the grace of God may we battle with His strength where He leads us and may our God fight for us! May Jesus Christ and Him crucified be preached and Jesus Christ have the preeminence in His Church once more!

And just over three years ago, on May 14, 2010, in my post, a challenge to you (God has some secret ones in all places), I wrote … (boldface added today):

As I said when I started up deerlife, my intent here is to encourage us to encourage one another as we blog/comment here, but also to go out into our local communities and churches and work there. I truly value the friendships and fellowship I have found here. I have been truly blessed. More than I could have imagined. I am not ready to discard what we have here, nor do I believe God intends for us to discard it at this time. I also believe there are others God wants to draw into this cluster here along with us.

From the time I started up [my other blog] tent of meeting [in March 2009], I’ve had in the back of my mind to challenge those of you out there to begin praying that God might bring you to like-minded men and women in your own churches and cities and begin to meet with them on a regular basis to pray for revival for we know that God does have some secret ones in all places, who tremble at His Word. (I’ve already been doing this for myself to some extent.) I’ve held off on publicly announcing that since I didn’t want to go ahead of God, but I believe I He’s leading me to give you that challenge today. I do know He is calling me to more concerted prayer for myself in that regard.

I have no authority over any of you, but I will humbly ask you to consider praying about this, to pray that God would lead you to others in your own area who are zealous for God’s Name and are longing for revival in the Church and seeking to pray for revival… I am bringing this request to this cluster of friends here, and I am asking as God leads you, that you would begin praying this not only for yourself but also for the rest of us here.

I have a dream of many sweet knots of religious friends, clusters of friends flourishing all over the globe as they gather together in concerted prayer to seek God’s face for revival! No Doubt God has some secret ones in all places, who tremble at His Word. The thought of this thrills me! I hope it does you also.

The thought of this still thrills me today! Little by little, God has been leading me (in spite of my fears, my pride, and my stubbornness!) into fellowship with a few of those secret ones locally here in the Madison area. I’m not going to sugar-coat this at all:  this has NOT been an easy process or a painless journey by any means, but it’s been a wholly profitable one. And I confess I’ve struggled many a time as I’ve looked around at the “waves” rather than fixing my eyes on Jesus and staying my mind upon Jehovah and entrusting myself wholly to Him –– but God has continued to show Himself ever faithful and ever true, and shown His mysterious and inscrutable ways to be always loving, always wise, always good, and always beneficial to my soul…

I’ve shared a some of my journey in the local church through my blogging (see my posts tagged local church ). I’ve not been blogging as much here at deerlife (or, for that matter, on my other sites) because my mind, my heart, my energy, and my emotions have been increasingly devoted to the local church, but I still have a great affection for all the saints in all places (including those of you I’ve met via Xanga), as well as a desire for God’s Gospel to run speedily to all the nations –- and so it is with very many mixed emotions that I write today… I’m feeling somewhat like Paul and the Ephesian elders on the seashore (Acts 20):

As I’ve been blogging at deerlife significantly less often than when I started up, in light of the upcoming changes at Xanga and the possibility that Xanga may even end up shutting down (if you’ve not heard, Xanga is hoping to convert to a paid blogging platform – please see here and here) –– I’m planning to shut down deerlife eventually (whether or not Xanga continues). I believe deerlife may possibly be grandfathered in for a period of time if Xanga gets the funding it needs since I did purchase a Life membership just over three years ago. Regardless, I’m hoping to consolidate the posts I’ve written here into my other two sites. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do that, but I’ll update you here in another post with the details. I’m suspecting I may end up tagging them with “deerlife import,” “deerlife post,” or something like that.

In my very first post here on deerlife (March 15, 2010), I wrote:

I feel I already have a lot I’m already juggling (as do many of you), but if we might come together here once in a while to support each other, I pray it might be a blessing to all so we might build up the local body of Christ in our own communities.

I have been blessed immensely through blogging here, and I thank you for reading, and I thank you for your encouragements and your prayers. However, with my focus increasingly drawn to engagement in the local church, I’m definitely juggling even more –– but as God allows, I still wish to encourage and support you, particularly to spur you on to minister in your local church and to pray for revival. However, that won’t be happening here via deerlife, but, Lord willing, I hope to continue to do so through my other websites:

If you are NOT currently part of a local church, whether or not Xanga shuts down, I urge each and every one of you to go and find a local church steeped in Reformed Bible teaching. (Truly, I do love all the saints, but, well, I say unapologetically that I’m one of the saints cut out of the Reformed cloth. )

Yes, we can certainly join with other believers via cyberspace, and I have found some blessing in that for sure, but there’s a limit to that.

And yes, there will be struggles and difficulties as you seek to find a local church. People are fallible and they will disappoint you (yourself and myself included!).

All that said, I beg of you:  please pray to the Lord to lead you in this, and then to submit to HIS leading and entrust yourself to HIM as you put yourself under the regular systematic teaching of the Word of God, the leadership and discipline of church elders, and the accountability of other believers –– otherwise you are going to be tossed to and fro and you will be deceived (see Eph. 4:1-16). The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth, and as much as I do appreciate the internet and the many resources and relationships that have benefited my soul, there’s really a free-for-all out there as far as doctrine goes, and that’s a real and grave danger. The devil appears as an angel of light –– prowling on website after website, seeking whom he will devour!

And yes, it’s true that each one of us has been redeemed by the blood of Jesus and has been called out of the world as individuals –– however, we are also part of the ekklesia… (From Strong’s Concordance: 1577 ekklesia ek-klay-see’-ah from a compound of 1537 and a derivative of 2564; a calling out, i.e. (concretely) a popular meeting, especially a religious congregation (Jewish synagogue, or Christian community of members on earth or saints in heaven or both):–assembly, church.) In other words, Jesus died to purchase a people for Himself, a community, i.e. – His bride, His Body. If you are not involved in the local Body of Christ, you are quenching and grieving the Holy Spirit of God.

Whether Xanga will continue is yet to be seen. At this point, with 19 days left until the deadline of July 15, they raised just over $ 31,000 of their goal of $ 60,000, Xanga 2.0 is looking less and less likely… (link)).

If you’d like to, if you’ve never done so, you can check out my other Xanga sites (above) and/or keep in touch with me via WordPress at the site below. If Xanga does get the funding to carry on, it sounds like there’ll be a transition period around July 15, so I’ll be giving updates on my WordPress blog. And if Xanga does shut down, I’m expecting to import my naphtali_deer Xanga site to my WordPress blog, and start up another WP site for my tent_of_meeting Xanga site.

http://naphtalideer.wordpress.com
feed://naphtalideer.wordpress.com/feed/   

I’ve been reading in Daniel, and in times of uncertainty, change, and transition, what a refreshment it is to read there of our Surety, of the God who changes not, of the Stone cut with no human hand –– the Lord Jesus Christ –– and of His Dominion which is an everlasting dominion and His Kingdom which will never be destroyed! (See Daniel 2, as well as the rest of the book.) May our God grant us grace upon grace to know and to savor Him as exceedingly precious!

 
As I’ve written previously (see here and here), I’ve landed in Psalm 84 (my references here are to the NKJV, I know the phrasing in other versions is a bit different) and have been trying to prepare some lessons from that for a women’s group at our church, but it’s been going a bit slowly. For one reason, almost every day, I keep finding more that applies to the Psalm since it deals with such large themes in the Christian life. I’m really only through the first four verses (more or less), and though the pace has been a bit frustrating at times, I am absolutely loving digging into the Psalm!

I keep saying I could pretty much answer anyone’s concerns about the Christian life from this Psalm. Well, perhaps not quite, but these twelve verses of Scripture do cover a pretty wide range of territory and touch on some really meaty themes.

Off my head, here’s a little summary…

First off, an overview of the whole Psalm – the Christian life as pilgrimage. This is key. As soon as we miss this, we may as well say we’ve not really begun and we’re going to fall. We’ve got to keep our heart on pilgrimage (v. 5) and our eyes fixed on Jesus and on things above, like the men and women of faith in Hebrews 11. We’re not going to finish with the race with joy if we’re not looking at the big picture and looking to the final destination. And so, Lesson 1: The Christian Life as a Pilgrimage.

And then in verse 1 we read the Psalmist proclaiming the LOVELINESS of God’s tabernacles and then moves into the courts of the LORD and finally the psalmist Himself says his heart and flesh are crying out for the living God. In other words, the psalmist has come to see God Himself as altogether lovely. Lesson 2: The LOVELINESS of Christ. Do we see God in the ways the Psalmist does? Do we have that overriding passion to be with Him? Do we know a sense of God’s loveliness, like the Shulamite woman in the Song of Solomon, or like Jonathan Edwards described: we can know the concept that honey is sweet, but have we TASTED it – to know it IS sweet indeed?!

Then we have the Psalmist referring to God at the end of verse 2 as the LIVING GOD. How many years of being a Christian did I really have any sense of “the LIFE of God in the soul of man” (using Henry Scougal’s words there, his book with the same title)? A whole host of things on what it means our God is a living God, e.g. – our relationship to Him, our communion with Him, His desire to communicate to us, His life in us to help us to live sanctified lives, to be holy as He is holy, etc. That’s Lesson 3: The LIVING God.

As you know, I love books and one set of books I’ve stumbled onto (thank you, google books) is Joseph Addison Alexander‘s Psalms Translated and Explained (Vol. 1 (Ps 1-50), Vol. 2 (Ps 51-99), Vol. 3 (Ps 101-150) This is not really a commentary but an amplification of the Hebrew, and I’ve loved reading through Alexander on just a few of the Psalms. I don’t know about you, but when I read there are always a few choice words, phrases or sentences that keep at you, things that just won’t leave you alone and you carry with you. For me, there are Alexander’s words about the living God (re: Psalm 84:2 – “My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.”): “The Living God, really existing, and the giver of life to others.” Really existing! Do we live our lives like He’s really existing? How do our churches show He’s really existing? Do we understand He alone is the giver of life to others? What are we doing with the life He’s given us? And so on.

Then verses 3 and 4 of Psalm 84 teach us of the full assurance of our salvation in Jesus Christ and the ongoing rest available to us as Christians, something I keep seeing people missing out on. We see there the wonderful picture of the sparrow finding a home and the swallow a nest. O, by grace through faith, if we are Christ’s, we are already safe in the nest, we have found that home in the bosom of the Beloved! This is the lesson I’ve been working on lately: our peace with God – our justification, no fear in judgment, no condemnation in Christ, our standing as accepted in the Beloved, and then our ongoing peace in Christ – assurance of our sanctification and our trust in His sovereignty at all times and in all circumstances ~ Philippians 4, that nothing can separate us from His love (end of Romans 8), the joy and peace the God of hope wants us to have in believing. Also, that picture of the swallow laying her young in the nest reflects the assurance that we can cast our cares on God, for He cares for us, and so all our requests, all our “young,” we can trust Him with absolutely each and every one of them. As we find that Sabbath Rest in Jesus Christ, and as we rest in that rest, in His yoke, how can we not be blessed and praising our God (v. 4)! God doesn’t want His children to be miserable, He wants us to be blessed with such assurance, and then as we are blessed we will praise Him! Our blessing is for His blessing and the blessing of others. So, that would be a couple lessons on the God of REST and PEACE.

I struggled with assurance years after I was saved, as I came to see my total depravity and was plagued by my sins, guilt and failures. No, I didn’t think I would lose my salvation, but I had no real and true sense of Christ’s peace or rest as I kept churning around my sins and failures over and over and over again. That’s one reason I’ve written so much about assurance & fighting for joy on my other site. The other reason, as I already alluded to, is that I keep finding people who are struggling with having a settled assurance of God’s love, and, as a result, they lack any sense of His peace and rest. So the topic continues to hit home with me over and over again.

That’s about as far as I’ve gotten in my preparations, though I’ve been dipping ahead into the following verses about God as our strength, and going from strength to strength, verses I’ve loved for a while now.

As far as the study and the preparations are concerned, I’d appreciate your prayers for focus, since I’ve usually got a lot of thoughts in my head constantly about a lot of things! Our elders have been absolutely lovely about it, and our pastor so encouraging; I spoke with him a little over a week ago. I have three outlines pretty done and am almost finished with the fourth. And then we’ll see how it all unfolds. Please pray for God to put it into the heart of the women whom He is calling to delve into the living reality of Christ to come to the study. And, as always happens, when you do preparation like this, you are more blessed than you can imagine you would be, which is the case with me, in spite of the frustrations, the slow pace and so forth. I feel it a great blessing and privilege to know God and then to be able to study His Word and be allowed to speak of Him and write of Him is icing on the cake, so to speak!

In addition to the Bible, I always have a small passel of books I’m dipping into. (Small passel – oxymoron, right? )

I’ve read through Daniel Webber’s “William Carey and the Missionary Journey” (Banner of Truth Trust) a couple times. (I posted it on it recently on my other site here.) It’s a short book (116 pages), so that’s not saying very much that I read it through a couple times.

As I mentioned those words of Alexander that have remained with me, there were some things that Webber wrote about Carey that also continue to stick with me in my heart. Carey had a great God-given passion for missions, which was pretty much non-existent in the evangelical churches of the day, due to hyper-Calvinism.

Here’s the account Webber gives of a minister’s meeting in Northampton (England) in 1786 (p. 15);

And then Webber continues to describe Carey, the “passionate advocate of world mission”:

And later (p. 45) Webber adds that

The portions I continue to come back to are “discouraged but not dissuaded,” “preached about it to his little flock,” “the indifference of others around him did not stop Carey from seeking to rouse the apathetic,” and “a wild and impracticable scheme, but he continued undaunted.”

I run into discouragement regularly, it’s one of my worst enemies – and I’ll add it’s mostly discouragement from my own flesh, and yet I’m not dissuaded or daunted in the end. I keep coming back. I know that’s by the grace of God alone. I would have quit long ago, but by God’s mercies to me. As Lloyd-Jones once said, “I would have been dead long ago if I had depended upon men for encouragement.” That’s exactly it! Though other people can be an encouragement to us at times, our ultimate sustenance comes from God alone. We’ve got to go back to The Vine.

I’m no pastor, and I don’t preach in that sense, but I’m part of a little flock of people God has brought together who have a passion to see the Church revived and return to reclaim her birthright as children of God. Therefore, whomever God gives ears to hear or or eyes to read, Lord willing and by His strengthening, I’ll keep speaking and writing. The concept that God might bring something good out of this Nazareth, this blogging community is certainly a wild and impracticable scheme, wouldn’t you say? But isn’t that just how God operates – delighting to use the foolish, weak and base things of the world time and time again to spark revival in the Church, all so He alone might receive all the praise, honor and glory! Hallelujah! He reigns. Our God is in the heavens. He does all He pleases!

I’m no William Carey by any means, and at this point I have no calling to world missions directly, but rather in some sense to rouse the apathetic in the lukewarm Church to the reality of that lovely and living God I described above, to help others begin to see the all-surpassing excellencies of Christ. On my other blog and in my conversations with people, I keep speaking about the abundant life Christ wants us to have. I do this because when you begin to get a taste of the loveliness and life of God, just a drop of that Living Water or a morsel of the True Bread, you won’t remain the same, and you can’t remain apathetic about God’s glory and God’s Gospel and the condition of God’s Church and world missions. I’ve come to see this living reality of Jesus Christ as true wellspring of evangelism. A revived Church will want to give out God’s Word. They won’t have to be manipulated by men to go out or have to be put on a guilt trip to evangelize, the Spirit will do His work in God’s people and give them the overwhelming desire to make Christ known as they come to know Him as their all-satisfying portion and great reward. This has been part of my journey over the past few years. I was seeking assurance of forgiveness because I was absolutely miserable and ineffective and paralyzed in so many ways. Little did I know where that journey would lead! Now I am seeking revival in the Church. I had no real interest in it, though I knew there was something not right about the Church, but didn’t have the right way to understand it, so I started dabbling in emergent/missional theology, but then, thank God, I landed straight into Reformed doctrine, primarily through Lloyd-Jones’ commentary on First John “Life in Christ.” I had no real interest in evangelism or world mission, and now I’m finally beginning to. Yes, I confess just beginning. But, as Jesus said in John 7, if we are thirsty and we come to Him and drink of Him, the streams will flow. As you begin to know, to experientially know, that loveliness and life of God, you can’t help but want others to know of it – of Him – the God who is altogether lovely, the living God! Come and see! Taste and see the Lord is good! The Spirit and the bride say, “Come, all who are thirsty!”

For those of you who don’t know, besides my naphtali_deer site, I have a site devoted to revival prayer, tent_of_meeting. If you are burdened over the condition of the Church today, I invite you to visit there. I don’t post there as much as I used to, but I still do on occasion. God’s means of reviving the Church have always been through prayer and the ministry of the Word. (You can read more about my passion, vision and holy ambition here, here, here and here.)

Thank you for reading and for your friendship and prayers. My desire is that God might use my words to encourage those of you who are Christians and spur you on to serve in the Body of Christ, and particularly in your local congregation, or in missions, wherever God may be leading you. If there’s any way I can assist you, please comment below and/or message me.

Yours in Christ’s love, for His glory in the Church,
Karen

Habakkuk 2:14.

If you’ve been reading my other blog, you know that the past couple weeks have been a struggle for me. (Please my posts here, here, here, here and here and here.) I’m not going to recount all that here, but I will say during that time I felt about as pressed and tempted as I have at any time since I’ve been saved, and though not having been afflicted or burdened as much as Paul was, I felt for the first time that I could genuinely relate to Paul’s words in II Corinthians 1:

The week before last I pulsed

Then later that same day I expanded on that request in my post asking a hard thing.

I had seen I was beginning to look to earthly results for my joy and knew I was headed in a very bad direction, very bad.

My face was not radiant because I was not looking to Him. Psalms 34:5: Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. I was looking pretty ugly and feeling joyless.

After that time I attended a conference at which I received a hand-out on evangelism. It broke the process into three phrases: cultivating, sowing and harvesting. This was truly a God-sent blessing as I read this under the description of the sowing phase:

As soon as I read that, I thought something like, “This is me! That is just what I love to do and thrive on!” I’m not saying I haven’t ever been involved in or wouldn’t ever be involved in cultivating the soil (human hearts) or harvesting the crop (the reproduced life of Christ in hearts), but God has given me a passion and love to sow seeds, and more particularly to sow seeds among those who are already in the church to shore them up in their faith, so their faith might grow deeper. (Notice that Paul told Timothy to do the work of an evangelist and yet Timothy was a pastor.)

Since that time I’ve been praying, “If You’ve made me a sower, then I want to be a happy sower! Lord, make me a happy sower!”

A few days after that I was brought down again and had to scratch and claw back and immerse myself in the Word and God’s promises and to remember that I could always trust God as I am faithful to do what He’s called me to do and not to obsess about the harvest or results.

This is a continuing battle but I’d not had such an extended and intense period of struggle and temptation with it since over a year ago, when God brought joy to my soul in a way He’d never done before. I’ve known His joy in increasing measure since that time, and I’ve come to know that no one or nothing compares. No one. Nothing. So this whole thing continue to grieve my soul as it grieved His Spirit, I know.

I am also more convinced than ever that the messages of joy and assurance are so vital to the church since I keep meeting joyless and unassured Christians over and over and over again.

Jesus Christ came that we might have life and have life abundantly. He came that our joy might be full. The Gospel is a message of great joy to all peoples.

There is so much more I’ve been wanting to write about all this. I hope and pray the Lord will give me the opportunity to do so. This is not only a vital message for others, but I have to say that it blesses my soul to write about God’s love and the joy He makes available to all of His children through Christ and it also brings God honor and glory as we remind one another that Christ alone is our true joy and His love for us endures forever and we need not doubt or fear or waver in our faith.  What glory! What other love compares to Him! What other joy compares to Him!

I’ve been reflecting on Isaiah 55 in the past day. I put my iPod touch onto shuffle yesterday and it ended up on a John Piper message Preaching in the Power of the Spirit. It was really excellent and I highly recommend it, but near the end he referenced verses 10 and 11 from Isaiah 55, and since that time I’ve been pondering those (as well as the whole chapter):

Gospel seed is a gift from God. (Thank You, Lord, for every seed You give me!) I am learning to count Him and that seed ever more precious. I can trust God will accomplish His purposes and it will succeed as He wills.

One of God’s purposes is that I steward that seed well and do so with joy. So, as He gives it to me, I want to be a faithful steward and sower of His seed, to persevere in sowing seed with joy for the sake of the elect.

There’s another thing I’ve been pondering. On my post here, David (TravelingStranger) commented, “God bless; keep up the holy work.”

Holy work. Holy work! The Gospel is holy because God is holy. Anytime we proclaim Christ, we are engaged in holy work. What a wonder that God chooses fallible, broken and feeble vessels like us, but we know it is all to bring God maximum glory (I Cor 1, II Cor 4). What a privilege and joy! As soon as I come to my senses and see the holiness of what I’m doing and the preciousness of the seed I’m sowing, I am melted down and can’t help but weep. I love Jesus and despite my recent wandering, I have known Him as my chief joy and my greatest treasure. I rejoice in Him and treasure Him even more today as I’ve seen His love constraining me back into His fold, to feel His embrace, to hear Him rejoicing over me with singing and quieting me with His love.

Throughout the day today I could particularly relate to the apostle Paul’s words:

Realizing the holiness of the task at hand, the awesome responsibility we have, and the hungry souls needing to be fed I was humbled. I knew that in and of myself I could do nothing. That’s a good place to be. And whenever we’re not there we need to ask Him to put us there once again.

As I said, I’ve been pondering Isaiah 55, and there’s more I would like to write on it, though I’ve not really had time to sit with as much as I’d like, except to say I can’t help but look at verses 4 and 5 and 12 and 13 and see how the Church is in dire need of truly knowing the deep joy of our salvation and having full assurance of God’s love for us:

If we continue joyless and unassured in our faith, are any nations really going to run to us? If we aren’t having joy and peace in believing and breaking forth into singing, are any nations going to have joy and peace in believing and break forth into singing? Are they going to have any interest in a God whose people are miserable and whining all the time? Are we going to be making a name for the LORD (other than bringing reproach on His Name )?

However, if we know God and His love in increasing measure so we might be filled with His joy and walk in deeper assurance, in both the dark and cloudy and stormy days as well as in the bright and sunny and calm days, what a witness that will be of God’s everlasting Gospel!

I do appreciate your friendship and your continuing prayers and support as I strive to be a happy sower by the grace of God at work in me.

One more thing I would ask you to pray about is for wisdom and discernment for me regarding my place in my local church. Long story short, it appears God is presenting an opportunity to me to have an impact on the women’s ministry there. I want to walk in obedience to God’s will for me and not to jump ahead of Him in this. I tend to jump ahead rather than waiting on Him. That was something our Father has had to discipline me several times in the past. This time around He gave me grace to be able to wait and pray, and I did not push, but now a door has been opening by His hand. (This is what I was referring to in my post Trust, delight, commit (Psalm 37:3-5) a couple days ago.)

I am also privileged to pray for you, so please feel free to leave requests in the comments below and/or message me.

The Lord has rejoiced my soul and made me glad!
Karen