Making a Difference in your Life, in the Parts that are for Keeps!
“The plot clots.”
—–Ed Young THE CREATIVE CONNECTION 3-29-26 on afr.net, in message on Joseph, when Joseph’s brothers bowed before him to buy food
Imagine those poor brothers, painfully, step by step, by God’s design, and by the hand of Joseph, coming ‘face-to-face’ (LITERALLY) with their sins against their brother and lies to their father.
PAIN
before
REPENTANCE
before
FORGIVENESS
before
RECONCILIATION
As a Christian, I do not subscribe to murphy’s law—but someone keeps sending me a gift subscription.
Job got a double, triple subscription from that someone himself—and Job didn’t know the back story for the source.
–
“Though He (my God) slay me, yet I will trust in Him.”
“The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
“Should we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity ?”
“In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”
“They gave of their abundance. She gave all she had.”
“If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry . . .”
“. . . satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you always;
He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
GIVE SOME ?
SPEND YOURSELF !
– – –
(Read SACRIFICED LATELY ? on this site)
“The debate is no longer beteeen right or left.
It is between normal and crazy.”
—–Sarah Huckabee/Sanders
“These people are CRAZY.”
—–Donald Trump, directly to democrats in the room refusing to acknowlege anything good, anything heroic, anything American, any brave Americans recognized in person in the room, during his State Of The Union address
Man is made for more–
— more than the animals
— more than this life
— more than survival instincts
— more than work and worry
— more than money
— more than sex
— more than ourselves
“Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed in Him, ‘If you continue in My Word, and My Word continues in you, then you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.'”
We recoil at the description of helicopter parenting.
Perhaps that is why we resist the thought of God literally running every detail of our life.
–
How can Jesus’ relationship with His Father show how we can relate with our Father ?
The same Father !
Personal, prompting this article–
Psalm 90 is a bit hard, unless you’ve been there, unless you’re there.
God sends stuff.
God sends a boatload.
And more.
And you ask—and I ask,
Why all this ?
Why now, after all these years ?
☆ What I have learned ?☆
What have I not learned ?
There is still hope !
Something I wrote over 15 years ago, still ringing true today:
“What I don’t deserve is the goodness of God graciously sending me consequences for my sin to lead me to repentance.”
That is helicopter parenting by God !
Is anything off-limits for God in our lives, in my life ?
Re-worded—Anything God can’t do in my life ?
Re-worded—Anything I don’t want God to do in my life ?
We may say–
There are some things I have to do, that God might not.
We may say–
God gave me a brain, to figure out some things myself.
Sounds so American, to Americans.
Sounds so arrogant, to God.
–
I want to get something done today.
And–
God wants to get something done today.
What does it take for the two to match ?
Which one has to move ?
“Have Your own way, Lord.
Have Your own way.
You are the potter;
I am the clay.
Mold me and make me
After Your will,
While I am waiting,
Yielded and still.”
Is the center of God’s Will something that I achieve (must achieve) in my life ?
Is living in the center of God’s Will a lifelong search, like “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven . . .”
Are we destined to frustration because we haven’t ‘arrived’ at the place where we want to be, or where God wants us ?
Contentment includes believing I am in the center of God’s Will, even if I’m not in the center of my will.
The question is this:
Would it work in our lives if we took the Bible verses just as they are written, and applied them ?
“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”
If we don’t believe it would work, then the Bible continues in the next verse with how it works.
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her . . .
In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.”
Nowadays we think we improve on many things the Bible says, to make us more comfortable or more excited.
For decades now there has been a plethora of ‘upgrades’ to fit our enlightenment—book after book and programs galore explaining how marriage and family really work.
Doesn’t anybody raise a healthy skepticism over the compulsion to write a new list or formula that gets it right—meaning we didn’t have the secret before ?
How is it that we have created such a demand for new answers from psychology, and authors and talk show hosts capitalize on the ‘market’, boosting the search for even more.
Mutual submission does not come out of Eph 6, unless you are trying to ‘soften the blow’ of wives submitting.
If your marriage is great, you don’t have to listen to all the new presentations.
If your marriage is not good, then you ‘have to’ pay attention and try to follow every new book that fixes thousands, guaranteed.
The Bible gets to the heart of things.
It also gets to the gut of things.
We’ve ?smoothed over? some nitty-gritty things of life by changing words from older translations to soften the reader impact.
“filthy rags” (menstrual cloths) – to – “polluted garment”
“dung” – to – “rubbish
“bowels” – to – “mercy, deep compassion”
“kidneys” – to – “inmost being?
“peculiar” people – to – “chosen” people
This is the Secondary Sidebar Widget Area. You can add content to this area by visiting your Widgets Panel and adding new widgets to this area.
Copyright © 2026 A Word For Thought · Genesis Framework