A Watered Place

'The Best Way Out is Always Through...' - Robert Frost.

Psalm 66 v 9 - 12

'Who hath placed our soul in life, And suffered not our feet to be moved.

For Thou hast tried us, O God, Thou hast refined us as the refining of silver.

Thou hast brought us into a net, Thou hast placed pressure on our loins.

Thou hast caused man to ride at our head. We  have enterd into fire and into water, And Thou bringest us out to a watered place'. - Youngs Literal Translation.

This Shabbat ... wherever you are, or whatever it is that you are going through ... know that you can rejoice in the knowledge that YHVH will bring you out into ' a watere place'.

He has promised - and He is faithful!!

Shabbat Shalom!!

May His peace that passes all knowledge surround you and keep you

May His love encourage and establish you

May His presence be made known to you in a very intimate way on this beautiful day...

His day

His Shabbat!!

His Heart - My Heart

"He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me" (John 14:21)

Just what are these commandments, which I must obey in order to show Him that I love Him?

Yeshua answered:  "The foremost is, 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is One, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:29-31).

The Shema is a statement of faith and truth, as well as the prayer that finds its way up from the depths of our heart to become precious words in the sight of Yah that are uttered from our lips. These words are not only a statement of faith ...  but they are words that at their very core demand sacrifice. They demand the 'living sacrifice' of the one who not only believes in these words but proclaims them to be truth.

If I am to love the Lord my God with all my soul, I must realise that this will involve spiritual cost. There is a price to pay in giving Him my heart ... I will have to let Him love through me those whom He desires to love (even the seemingly unlovable and ugly) ... even if this at times seems to break my heart. Loving Him with all my heart will demand emotional cost. I have to give Him my will, my right to decide and choose. I must hand over to Him all my relationships ... allowing Him to guide and control, even when I do not understand.

If I am to love the Lord my God with all my mind, ... this will involve intellectual cost. He asks that I give Him  my intelligence, all my powers of reasoning. I must trust Him to work through them, even when He may appear to be acting in contradiction to logic or our much prized common sense.

To love the Lord my God with all my strength will demand physical cost. I must allow His Ruach Ha Kodesh to indwell me, to lead and guide me ... through the words that I speak, the thoughts that I think. I must relinquish and hand over every desire and every fear. I must trust Him, whether He chooses sickness or health, strength or weakness ... that the outcome is in His hands and that He IS good and working all things out to and for His purposes. 

 YHVH graciously and tenderly 'invites' each one of us to trust Him enough to allow Him to work the desire to lay down all for Him into our hearts ... He will do the stripping away and sandpapering. He will snap off the thorns of hidden jealousies and unknown pride. He will do the  stripping of the bark which is finally death to self ... self defence ... self pity ... self justification ... self sufficiency.

I guess the only question is ... am I willing to pay the price? Some-days the cost of being a 'living sacrifice' and loving Him in this way seems too high a price to pay.  Praise Yah ... these unrefined emotions do not last too long when I am gently reminded of His great love for me ... of the greatest price that He paid for my freedom.  He paid the highest price in order to give me life. I am reminded once again that the Shema is an invitation ... an invitation to offer up to Him the response of my heart ... of my whole being in gratitude for what He has done in that one full, perfect and suffcient sacrifice offered up on my behalf.

Once again I ask myself ...in order to keep His commandments and to show Him that I love Him, there is a price that I must pay ... am I willing?

Yes Yes and again Yes!! For it is the only way of expressing my gratitude to YHVH  for all that He is, and for all He has done and given for me.

There is no other way to do this...

I must Shema ... 'Hear and Obey'.

Those Boundaries

I guess that I am no different to alot of ladies out there struggling with personal issues particularly within our marriages. I am married to a man created in the image of YAH and precious in His sight ... I sometimes forget this :o( ...
We have had some REAL ups and downs and come through many challenges. We are not always on the same page when it comes to our individual walks with YAH ... he struggles alot, and more often than not gives in to the temptations that assail him. He struggles to commit 100% to his relationship with YAH and there has been alot of hurt sown and consequential reaping. I am writing all of this ... not to put him down  but instead to let it be known that in spite of all these things by the grace and love of YAH I will continue to love him and to be committed to him. I will continue to strive to be the help-meet that I was created for and I will trust all the rest to YAH ... he will rise up one day and be the man YAH intends him to be!!
A well meaning friend of mine gave me the book 'Boundaries' by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. I did not feel all that comfortable with the title and left it unread for awhile, that was until yesterday. I went straight to the chapter that deals with boundaries within marriage and started to read. At first I felt that alot of what they had to say made sense, it sounded good and made sense. I forgot that the enemy loves to hide in a cloak of light. I decided to implement some of what I had read ... and my husband and I had a terrible night argueing till 2 am this morning!! So much for that :o)
The whole morning I have felt nudged by YAH ... 'When to say yes and how to say no to take control of your life' - these are the words on the front cover. Have I not given YAH control of my life .... this includes my thoughts, my words, my actions and my heart. His Torah should be teaching me how to respond in matters of conflict. How I should treat my enemy and definately how I should treat and respond to my husband with whom I am now one. I don't think taking control over my life and setting up self once again on the throne of my heart is the counsel I or any other daughter of YAH should be taking. In Proverbs we are constantly told to 'get wisdom', 'seek wisdom' and James says if we lack in this area all we need to do is ask.
Below there is a link to a very good article concerning the pitfalls of the above mentioned book.How so many marriages are being affected negatively through it and even ending in divorce. I encourage you to take some time to read it :o)

http://www.cephas-library.com/psychology/psychology_boundaries.html
http://www.emilysfavorites.com/BoundariesInMarriageHeresy.html

Will the Men of YHVH Please Take Their Place?

What makes a man a real man?

Is he prince charming riding gallantly on his steed to rescue his princess in distress? (The Proverbs 31 woman certainly doesn't need rescuing but I guess somebody forgot to tell Disney this).

Is he perhaps the image that Hollywood has spent years and billions of dollars selling to us ( Picture any of the silver screen heroes we are all so familiar with).

Maybe it is not only we women who are confused by what makes a man a real man .... perhaps our men are just as confused. Perhaps they too have bought into the lie that is sold to us on every magazine rack and billboard advertisement? The world has packaged them in all different shapes and sizes. We have the metro -sexual (don't worry ladies I am also still trying to figure out exactly what this means), so far I think ... he's the man that isn't ashamed to be in touch with his female psyche, and will give any woman a run for her money when it comes to salon treatments, moisturiser and eye cream. Then we have the more 'manly man', he is made a better man  by the brand of jeans he wears, the beer he drinks or the brand of cigarette he smokes. Unfortunately... just as women are sold the' perfect' female image by the media, so too are men. Perhaps though, in order to understand things a little better,  we should take a couple of steps back. 

1 Corinthians 11 v 3 - 'and I wish you to know that of every man the head is Christ, and the head of a woman is the husband, and the head of Christ is God'. How many times does our focus fall on 'the head of a woman is the husband,' which is absolutely and unequivocally true ... but ... who exactly is the head of the man?? Should and does this govern the way a man lives his life?? Why does Rav Shaul state firstly that the head of every man is Christ?? How many men forget this. How many men forget that not only will they have to give an account for themselves .. but .. for their families as well. Many men want to be treated and respected as the head of the home but fail to fill that exact position. They fail to be the provider (which is not only physical), protector and nurturer that Yah has ordained them to be. They fail to take their place as the spiritual head and sadly are content in allowing their wives to function as such in their place. Some are abusive... physically, verbally or emotionally and don't realise that this does indeed hinder their prayers and ... mould their children. The worst part of all this though, is that these men are not unbelievers but professing men of YHVH.

These men do not realise that not only are they in the process of shaping the next generation but their walk very much shapes a large part of their wives walk too. Maybe there's a much deeper level to Yah's words 'The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children even up to the third and fourth generation'.

Yes, by Yah's grace He uses each one of these situations to strengthen and sculpt the prayer life and heart of His daughters .... and when a man fails to rise up to the task Yah will and has used women (think of Deborah in the book of judges) but I often wonder just how much His heart aches each time one of His sons chooses not to be a man and step out into the life and strength that His heart and death secured for  them  or  for every tear that falls from His precious daughters eyes. By no means do I intend to sound as though I am lumping all of YHVH'S sons into one basket. I am very well aware that there are true men of YHVH who are not perfect but on the journey ... who love Him with all of their heart, soul and strength and whose lives are governed by His heart ... His Torah. Men who love their wives and are showing and training their children to know what a real man looks like and how and by what a true mans  life is governed. Yes real men make mistakes, yes real men fall ...but... real men do not take Yah's name in vain and are very well aware of the  consequences of doing so.

So .... what makes a man a real man?

The same thing that makes a woman real woman.

The heart and Torah of YHVH.

I have often wondered why we have such a clear cut description of a woman of Yah in Proverbs 31 and nothing similar for a man. But then I realised the entire word of Yah is filled with the  description of the men of Yah, from Abraham and Moses, Joshua and Caleb and of course the entire account of the life of King David himself who is called a man after Yah's own heart. These men's lives were governed by the Torah of Yah and even though they fell by Yah's grace they always got up again.

Whether they have bought the lie the world has sold or are sitting in passivity the men of YHVH need to realise that only they can make the choice ... the choice to rise up and to take their rightful place.

It's been empty for far too long.

Let Me Not ......

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken,
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken
Love's not times fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickles compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved

This is truly one of my favourites :o)

This Sonnet in particular never fails to remind me of just what true love is and should be ..... but somehow it also has the ability to to fill me with courage!

I guess this lies in the fact that Shakespeare has so beautifully expressed the 'bench-mark' or 'test' of what true love is. It goes beyond emotion and once again lands squarely in the realm of choice :o)

Some-how this also causes me to ponder on the Saviours love for us  'Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove ...' .

I pray that this Shabbat will find us meditating on this great love that the King of the Universe has for each one of us ... His love that does not alter or is ever in danger of being removed ....instead it is an ever fixed mark!

I pray that we too will learn about choosing to give this 'true love' to others ... to walk in this kind of covenant love is most definately a choice, one that we can make moment by moment (I am still learning).

May the blessing of YHVH rest upon each one of our lives and our homes this Shabbat.

Blessings and Shalom

Love .....A Choice

I was not planning to do a blog post today. For  a while now YHVH has been dealing with deep rivers in my soul, but He has promised to bring me through and to still and quiet the storm :o)

Today I read the blog of a beautiful daughter of YHVH...     Passing Through The Valley of Weeping   .... today was definately one of those 'For such a time as this' moments. Running beautifully alongside this blog and story of this precious woman, YHVH has used this last Torah portion 'Vayera' to revive me, to lift me above the confusion and to give me a much needed  re-newal of perspective. In the previous Torah portion 'Lech Lecha' we are told of the account of Abram and Sarai his wife going down towards Egypt for there was a famine in the land, and we see Abram asking Sarai to say that she was his sister because of her great beauty and the possisbility that Pharaoh might kill Abram in order to gain Sarai. The beauty is in the way Abram consults with Sarai ... ' Lo, I pray thee, I have known that thou art a woman of beautiful appearance, and it hath come to pass that the Egyptians see thee, and they have said, 'This is his wife,' and they have slain me, and thee they keep alive ... say I pray thee, thou art my sister, so that it is well with me because of thee, and my soul hath lived for thy sake.' - Youngs Literal Translation. There are many interpretations on why Abram did what he did, and truly we will never know the true intent or motivation of his heart, but YHVH has opened my eyes and taken me a little deeper to teach me a lesson I really need to learn. This time ... I see a man gently 'asking' his wife to do this ... for both their sakes. Could they have known the out-come of all of this? I see a woman submitting to protect her husband which in the end is protecting herself -  the two shall become one flesh -  (was this always there Abba?I never saw this before) and I see a God who is so wonderful and Big and PRESENT .... He undertakes for His daughter. Regardless of how the plan 'back-fired', God was there making sure that Sarai was not harmed. He had her back even when her husband could do nothing about the situation. He was her protector when Abram could not be and He was her deliverer ... Abram was not. Did Sarai need this lesson all those generations ago just as much as I need it today peering down through time through the window of the Torah? Did Sarai also need to know who this God was that she was entering into covenant with? The covenant was not only made with AbraHam, but with SaraH too, and we know that we serve a God that wants to be known. How did this experience affect and change Sarai? We know that 8 chapters later we see what seems like the same plot unfolding once again ... Why?? Well again ... will we ever really know? But again we see the protection of this daughter of YHVH, she is delivered once again, and we are even more astounded by YHVH's grace as He keeps Abimilech from sinning against Him in v 6!!... Abraham prays and  Abimilech's household is healed.
Loving a man that is not perfect is not easy but trusting a God who is ...is a lesson I think I am going to spend the rest of my life learning!!  And maybe this is a lesson that Sarah spent her life learning too :o) I must remember that Abraham... and... my Matt had/have to spend their lives learning to love imperfect women and learning to trust a perfect God too!!

The haftorah of Vayera was 2 Kings 4 1-37 and WOW!! It seems to be the same thread running through (I should not be surprised!) How have I missed this before?? In the beginning of the chapter we meet a widow who is in debt and is being threatened with her children being taken away from her if she cannot pay what she is owing. Again we see a God who loves His daughters.....and she is provided for. All her debt is taken care of and she even has leftover on which to live. The next account is if a great woman, who didn't need much and instead provides for the prophet of God. But YHVH knowing the hearts of His daughters ... was about to bless her with a son. We are not told the reason for her barrenness, but once again God provides her with the desire of her heart even though she didn't even ask and she is blessed with the birth of a son. Later this same child is restored back to life again by God's great love and grace toward His daughter. All of these above accounts were there to teach these women that they could rely on the God of Israel, who is faithful ... a God of covenant, whose word is sure. A God who wants to be known, trusted and loved. When Sarah's husband could not defend or deliver her .. who could? When the widow's husband died and could no longer provide for her .. who could? And when the woman who seemed to need nothing except her deepest lonings fulfilled ... well... who gave her the desires of her heart? The answer is the same...the God who has His eye on us ... His daughters. We were never meant to put our husbands up on a pedestal, although young love does encourage this!! :o) There should only be One on the throne of our hearts. We are to love our husbands but expect every-thing else from our Father. Our husbands were never meant to fulfill our deepest longings and desires and to calm and eradicate our deepest fears., or to bring us endless happiness....that is not their calling. Our beautiful husbands are meant to be sacred influences with in our lives. To help mould us and to challenge us to become the true daughters of YHVH made and formed to His image. Being married is the hardest thing I have ever had to do and the reason for this I am discovering... is because having things cut-away, character flaws challenged and the very core of who I am changed is the most painful thing I have ever had to go through. BUT at the same time my marriage has also brought me the greatest treasures I have ever known........

I have been pondering on these matters for awhile, but reading Denise's blog today made me cry, as I realised that I as a woman am guilty of not appreciating the gifts tha YAH has so tender heartedly given to me...and that too often the one on the throne in my heart is sadly ... self.
I want to take this moment to thank YAH my God, my King, my every-thing for this life that I have, for this husband that I have the opportunity to choose to love every-day, for the privilege of knowing that I am greatly beloved ... these gifts that make up my life (family) are evidence of just that.

Thank you Denise for sharing.

Blessings and Shalom

Gray Is Beautiful?

I woke up this morning and I am sure that there are a few more gray hairs visible today than  yesterday :o)  Maybe not ... maybe today is just one of those days where I have to remind myself that growing older does not necessarily mean growing old :o) that acceptance of the natrual evolution of the ageing process that our Father has ordained for us contributes to the wealth of the spirit and shines through the windows of the soul!
If I consider all the money that I have wasted trying to achieve the 'perfect' colour for me, or the hours wasted in the salon having streaks put into my hair .. when YHVH already gave me the perfect colour just for me, and is now blessing me with streaks all for free :o)
In the book of Proverbs gray hair is esteemed as a crown of glory. Isn't it wonderful to see a mature woman who walks in elegant assuredness as she adorns herself with her natural crown of glory? On some days though I think we all need a little assurance that graying hair is just the next stage in the maturing of our beauty. The beauty of youth is represented by blondes, brunettes, red-heads and every shade in-between, this same beauty never dies but is simply transformed into the deeper beauty that gray hair signifies. Wisdom gained from life lessons and spiritual growth in Torah and our relationship with our Father, a life lived sensibly and in righteousness is all evidenced by the crown of glory that is a testimony to this incredible journey that we are on.
It is sad that the glory of gray hair which our Creator has blessed us with is being suffocated in the days in which we live.  More and more women believing the lie that they cannot and must not be satisfied with who they are or might become ...  not only dye but also nip, tuck, inject and implant.
May we, the daughters of YHVH, accept the beautiful gift that we may already or are in the process of possessing and may we very much look forward to attaining it in its fullness.
I encourage you and myself to wear our gray hair with a smile ..... your beauty will shine through as you bring glory to the One who gave it to you.

Blessings