This is our journal of what we pray is our sojourn of life (Hebrews 11:8-10) along the narrow way (Matthew 7:14), even the old paths (Jeremiah 6:16), submitting to the Bible as a light unto both (Psalms 119:105). It is our prayer that these documented moments in our earthly time benefit whom God might choose to edify, but ultimately that God glorifies Himself through them.
This past Lord’s day we gathered together to record the next set of Psalms from the psalter we use. It is our prayer we learn His word better, and that perhaps others might be able to participate in Psalms singing as well with these.
Here are the latest:
(If the above player doesn’t work, you can click the Listen link below; or if you would like to save any of the files locally to your computer, you can right click on Download and click Save As in the popup menu.)
I believe Christianity — following Christ — is not a part of our lives…it is our life. I believe Christianity doesn’t fit into our lives with everything else — everything else fits around our Christianity and should be a part of our lives or not based on that.
The Bible indicates that it is possible to claim to be a Christian and yet not be one. For instance, in the parable of the wheat and tares, the tares look like wheat until fruition; and in the parable of the sower, some seed falls on rocky and thorny soil, both sprout (look like good fruit will grow), but eventually die.
Puritan Thomas Manton discusses an upright Christian walk in a sermon on Psalm 19:13, which you can read in full here.
How do we compare to the following?
From Thomas Manton:
Secondly, Positively. He that is upright may be known and tried by these four things – (1.) His principles; (2.) His conversation [behavior]; (3.) His ends; (4.) The fruits and effects of his constant endeavours.
1. His principles, which are –
[1.] The new nature fitting and suiting his heart to the things of God, so that he loveth them not only out of interest, but inclination: Ps. cxix. 140, ‘Thy word is very pure, therefore thy servant loveth it.’ Surely he is upright that is thus naturally carried to the things of God. In some measure the man is restored to that frame of heart which mankind had in innocency; his heart inclined him to God. God made man upright; grace giveth somewhat of this: Heh. viii. 10, ‘I will put my laws into their minds, and write them in their hearts.’
[2.] By his love to Christ: 2 Cor. v. 14, ‘The love of Christ constraineth us.’ That cureth his self-love, which maketh us act crookedly and perversely. Self is his principle, self his business, self his end; his own contentment and satisfaction is all that he looketh at. But the love of Christ maketh him readily go about those things which are pleasing to Christ, and hath a mighty force and efficacy upon the soul to overrule our self-love, that we may not live to ourselves, but unto God, and obey his will.
2. By his conversation [behavior], wherein he betrayeth [shows] a constant care –
[1.] To avoid all known sin; to weaken the lusts, to suppress the acts: 1 Peter ii. 11, ‘Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.’ But especially he is most careful to avoid his own personal sin: Ps. xviii. 23, ‘I was upright before thee, and kept myself from mine iniquity;’ which the affections of his own heart might most transport him into. He can sacrifice his Isaac, cut off his right hand, pluck out his right eye, laboureth to subdue his particular corrupt inclinations, useth no guile to cloak and extenuate them before God: Ps. xxxii. 2, ‘Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.’ This is the man who may comfort himself with God’s acceptance, and the comforts and privileges of the new covenant.
[2.] As to the other part of his conversation, his way and the constant tenor of his walk is to please God, and he maketh conscience of obeying the will of God in all his actions: Phil. i. 10, 11, ‘That ye may approve things that are excellent, and ye may be sincere and without offence’ till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ unto the praise and glory of God.’ His aim is at the constant practice of every thing that is good: ‘And having learned how to walk and to please God, so you would abound therein more and more,’ 1 Thes. iv. 1.
3. By his ends, which are the pleasing and glorifying of God. This is his main fixed scope: 2 Cor. v. 9, ‘Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him;’ 1 Cor. x. 31, ‘Whether ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God;’ Col. i. 10, ‘That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.’ There is no corrupt design of vainglory, credit, or by-respect, but [so] what he doth for God it is to God [and not for these previously mentioned reasons, because those corrupt designs are not there].
4. The effects and fruits, which is not an exemption from sin altogether, but a growth of the contrary principle, and the flesh is brought every day more and more into a subjection to the Spirit, and Christ’s interest prevaileth in the soul. The Spirit gets above the flesh, and the prevailing bent of the heart is set and fixed towards God.
Either sin reigneth or grace must reign; something must be in solio, in the throne. That which is in the throne showeth the state of the heart, be it sin or grace, and that which generally and mostly commandeth and influenceth our conversations, that is in the throne. As the sun in the midst of heaven sendeth abroad his influences on every side, so doth that which is seated in the heart, as a sovereign governs all the parts of our lives.
Well, then, here the mark must be fixed. There is no man so good and spiritual that hath not something in him bad and carnal, nor so fully addicted to God but the creature or some inferior good hath an interest in his heart. On the other side, there is no man so addicted to worldly and sensual lusts, that God hath no manner of interest in him at all. Carnal men, if they have not renounced all conscience, and outgrown the heart of a man, have some good [in terms of morals, not true spiritual goodness, which only comes from God] thing in them, and a renewed man hath much of the old tang yet left.
When, then, is a man sincere? Why, when grace gets the upper hand; not for a fit, but habitually. When the soul is more for God than against him; more against sin than for it; more for obeying, loving, serving, and pleasing God, than for gratifying and pleasing the flesh, and your inclination and love to the ways of God is greater than your dislike.
But on the other side, they that love any inferior thing above God are not sincere and upright with him; as those that love pleasure more than God: 2 Tim. iii. 4; John xii. 43, ‘They loved the praise of men more than the praise of God;’ and the profits of the world more than grace: Luke xii. 21, ‘So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God.’
These are the great sins which do more directly fight against the sovereignty of God, Therefore these we must look after to see whether they get ground or strength, yea or no, and encroach upon Christ’s interest in our hearts, or the interest of Christ gets ground upon them.
May God grant us so great a love for Him that nothing else in this world matters. May He be everything to us, and may He remove all things from our hearts that are not Him.
The Lord has graciously continued the 2018 orchard bounty through Summer, with mostly nectarines and pears!
Looking good!
God’s gracious bounty!
Ripening…
And then cut up ready for the solar food drier:
Here they are on the dehydrator:
And showing dried vs. new. Sue did a great job of monitoring this and getting them off the drier before they were too far done…good job, Honey! 😀
These things taste great…it’s tough to stop eating them! 😀
God was so gracious, we had to pressure can some of the fruit to keep up. And with the pears, because their ripening schedule is difficult to guess (they don’t ripen on the tree, and the ripe period of time is a small window and hard to detect), we just canned them as well.
In a more sad note, we lost probably our biggest tree that had lots of peaches on it, but in God’s plan, it was time for it to be done. Like last time, it’ll go to firewood:
But, we are so very grateful to the Lord for granting these provisions directly off of the land! It is always our prayer that we bear much spiritual fruit by abiding in Christ deriving nourishment from Him for His graces to grow in us and outwardly for His glory!
Sadly, our multi-colored buck Rocky was too injured to do the job, and so eventually we had to put Shakespeare with the younger nannies as well, which ended up spreading out the birthing over a couple of months.
But Shakespeare did the job, and here are some of the results! Interestingly, it was 3 to 1 bucklings to doelings:
Earlier:
(What a great picture, IMO: 😀 ):
And then on the day they went to their new home:
Sadly at the end of one day, one of the little bucklings was stammering around, and couldn’t keep his balance. With the extreme heat, we thought maybe he had a sun stroke. We got him into the barn to try to help, but over a few days, he got worse and worse, and eventually, when it sounded like fluid was building up in his lungs and I didn’t want him to drown, I gave him the coup de gras. Sigh…that’s always hard to do, especially when all your efforts are to try to keep the animal alive. But, death is a reminder of sin, and something I believe should help us understand a little as to how much God hates it.
But, we are thankful also that there were no other issues with mama’s giving birth or kids dying…thanks to God!
But, sadly also, over the winter we lost Gracie, and then Winnie. We’re not sure what the reasons were, but we are thankful to the Lord for all of the provisions He granted from them.
Winnie started it all way back when. She was always the queen goat…I called her “your highness”. 🙂 Goodbye Winnie…
And here is Gracie. Goodbye Gracie…
And sadly as well, Rocky ended up maybe too injured to do much, and after moving him into the barn to take care of him, he eventually succumbed to something, and we lost him too. We thank the Lord for all of the kids He granted from him as well. Goodbye Rock…
However, another buck that had been used by others in the fellowship became more available for us to take over care for, and so he and Shakespeare have been pals ever since, and we look forward to him going to work with our younger does this November, Lord willing:
Finally, here’s this year’s 2018 kid provisions video:
We are always grateful to God for His provisions, and try to never take them for granted. We deserve none of them, and so every one is a gracious blessing! And we now thank Him for the milk He is supplying from them!
Fifteen years ago today, the Lord granted Sue and I be married. Our fathers performed the ceremony, we appreciated our family and friends participating with us, and it was a joyous day!
For me, our marriage has been joyous, and Sue has made that possible. She is a godly woman. She is the most considerate person I know. She evidences God’s graces in her all the time, and she would be the first to acknowledge those are none of herself, and loathes her own sin.
I marvel at her cheerful and uncomplaining willingness to serve others and me, especially in bringing her out from a life of comfort to something of a wilderness, with mud and poo everywhere, often on us. 🙂 She never complains when hauling a heavy 5-gallon bucket of feed up to the goats to go milk them; she never complains when having to haul four 6-gallon water containers up to them in a wheelbarrow; she never complains when she has to carry two of them by hand from the cistern to the house to fill the Berkey and indoor elevated dishwater tank.
We have a ton in common, in beliefs and principles, and even had similar life paths growing up. For instance, we both had sung in barbershop quartets before. What are the “odds” of that happening? (100% when it’s part of God’s plan! 😀 ). We even grew up in the same general area, and attended the same church but at different times. We often wonder if we had ever crossed paths at any time. And then God brought us together in His perfect timing. By God’s graces, we get along extraordinarily well, and she makes our relationship easy.
She has forebeared much with me, and has been a great help. I am ever thankful to God for her, and other than having been given God-fearing parents, she is the best temporal gift I have received in my entire life. If God could have designed a wife/help-meet in perfection for me, she was it!
We have always viewed each other as gifts from the Lord to each other, and in fact, this was the theme of our wedding:
Jam 1:17 – “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.“
It is how I felt when I asked her to marry me, and still do today.
I considered it so much so in late 2002, with anticipation of asking her for her hand in marriage (after graciously receiving permission from her parents), that I wrote for her a song to God about her as that — a great gift from Him!
After the one time of singing it to her, the song has just been in my head all of these years, with a little help from some handwritten notes and the lyrics saved on the computer, and so for this fifteen year anniversary, I wanted to surprise her with having recorded it and putting it out in a blog post with my thoughts about her.
But, then I thought, you know, she’s the only person who has ever heard this song before, and perhaps she would like to keep it as special only to her. And so, I surprised her with it the other day, and asked what her thoughts were about sharing it as part of our fifteenth anniversary blog post, and she agreed.
To get to that point though, we thought we’d share a little about the engagement day on February 8, 2003…
We spent the day in Carmel, CA, visiting the shops and then planning to end up at the beach later. Little did she know that two of my best friends at the time, Bob and Jeff, were running around purchasing dinner, and getting a table and chairs and table cloths and flowers and a cooler of food and a piano-type keyboard set up on the beach for us…
A couple of funny anecdotes:
At one point, Sue and I went into a shop that had mood rings. She’s like, let’s try them on. Well, hers was all blue, which means relaxed and emotional, and mine was black, which mean nervous and anxious. I thought, ahhh, this stupid ring is going to blow the whole surprise! 😀 Sue did wonder why I wasn’t relaxed and romantic like she was. 🙂
And then, it was time to get down to the beach. Once there, Sue went into the restroom, and right then my friends came out of their restroom and said “It’s not set up…we need more time!” I was like, ok, I’ll try to stall her, and they disappeared before Sue came out. Whew!
And so, Sue and I walked down the beach the “wrong” way for a bit, and then started moseying back the “correct” direction, slowly as much as I could.
Well, as we got closer to the spot, I spied that my friends had completed their covert operations, and we headed toward the dinner table.
My friends video-recorded basically the whole event, and we took a few stills from the video:
Dinner time:
Song time:
Proposal time:
Putting the ring on her finger after her saying “yes”:
And right about then, we turned around to face the sun, and this is what it looked like, setting over the ocean! Wow wow wow! What a gift of timing from God!
Then, Sue and I hung out on the beach for a while drinking sparkling cider, and left when it was darker, and my gracious friends, besides setting up everything and filming it, sat there until we were done and cleaned up everything. It was a wonderful time, and we thank the Lord for it!
To Bob and Jeff: I will forever have a debt of gratitude to you both for what you did that day, handling all of that, filming it, and just waiting there until we left, and cleaning up everything. A guy couldn’t have asked for better friends!
What follows is the song I believe God specially granted me to write (besides that we can do nothing without Christ, I have never written a song with those kinds of chord progressions before). In it, I wanted to acknowledge God as God, thank Him for His many gifts, and then for the gift of Sue (my Love) specifically, my prayer for myself toward her, specific ways He used her to help me in bringing her to me, my prayer for us as a couple, and then bringing all to God’s glory in the end.
These are our continued prayers. May God glorify Himself through us, and may we be godly servants of His and others! I am forever grateful to the Lord for granting me the gift of my Love, Sue!
(Click the play button on the inline player right below the title to listen to it. It was only recorded using the laptop sitting on a pillow on the piano, and I have a slight verbal fumble at the end which I wasn’t going to re-do the whole song over after many takes, but you should still get the idea. 🙂 If you don’t see the inline audio player, you can listed to it by clicking this link.)
The Gift of My Love
Verse 1 Father, may You be praised Here and now and in the heavens Father, exalt Your name Here and now and forever
We bow before You, holy Lord Singing praise and worship at Your throne Be magnified, oh Holy Lord Praying humbly before Your throne
Verse 2 Father, I want to thank You For Your many blessings to me Father, Your endless love Is shown each day to me
You give so generously Beyond any of my dreams You give so ever freely Above all of our dreams
Chorus And so I thank You, Lord, for the gift of my Love I thank You, Lord, for her I thank You, Lord, for the gift of my love Please bind our hearts together
She’s beautiful, gentle, wonderful, so special A blessed gift of grace from You
Verse 3 Father, You gave a love, A gift who sets my heart afire Father, she’s far beyond My deepest hope and desires
Her beauty’s endless as the sky I melt when I gaze into her eyes Her smile’s as bright as the sun She’s come to me from above
Chorus
Break May I cherish her, this Love of mine May I honor her through the end of time May I love her as You love your own Thank You for this Love, from love You have shown She’s my Love, thank You for my Love
Who’s helped break through the pain Of hurt and sorrow, a broken heart You’ve mended me back together With her You have restored me
And set me free To love again Thank You for this love May it never, ever, ever, ever end
Verse 4 Father, be glorified By us, the two of us together Father, our lives are Yours May we worship You forever
We bow before You, holy Lord Be magnified, oh Lord Singing praise and worship at Your throne Our love eternally before Your throne
Chorus
Chorus
Fine For Your glory forever Be glorified forever Through us be glorified forever Praise your holy name forever
I meant to post a blog post about our garden goings-on earlier in the year, but didn’t get to it, so here is a catchup blog post about the Lord’s provisions from the gardens from Spring and Summer so far this 2018!
Here’s a freebee turnip plant from seed thrown down in previous years (more on this in the Summer part):
And then it was time to plant okra, which usually works very well around here:
Here I tried throwing a bunch in rows, just to see how it worked:
We also wanted to do sweet potatoes again this year after good success, thanks to God, from last year (see last garden update in the link above).
In fact, here’s a freebee from last year’s planting!
We tried to start our own slips, but they sadly just never grew:
And so we purchased some:
And here’s the area we cleared and where they have gone:
Summer
Sue got to processing the spaghetti squash by this time, and here are the results! Yum again!
She roasted some:
And made “pasta” from the “spaghetti”:
And here’s part of the squash haul, and them cut and preserved in apple cider vinegar:
Here’s the freebee turnip — nice!
Thanks to inspector Mimi for allowing it to pass inspection! 😉
Finally, here we are catching up to today. We’ve had a very hot spring and summer, and drought conditions, so some things are barely hanging on, although we do have rain percentages this week, during which we pray the Lord grants rain. But, here are the beans:
Separated okra plant (many which got razed by something early on):
And in rows:
And okra fruit:
Here’s the freebee sweet potato from above:
And another one that grew by itself:
And the sweet potato bed:
We are extremely grateful to the Lord for Him granting the provisions from the gardens this year so far, and we ask for those continued as He might will. We thank Him for the spots of rain He has provided to keep things going, and we always pray He grant spiritual rains of nourishment in our hearts so that we may thrive and grow spiritually for His glory in obedience to and more like Christ Jesus!
Here, the tar paper is up. Thanks again to Sue for the help!
And then all of the siding on:
And from the other side:
Since I was able to get a couple of extra panels with that month’s budget, I was able to start on the east — and final! — side:
And here we are continuing with the east side:
I forgot that I was not supposed to grab a moving circular saw blade…oops. I am very thankful it wasn’t worse:
And here is the east side complete! Wow, all done with the lower siding! Thanks to the Lord for His provisions!
Once again, we are very thankful to God for granting the materials and physical strength to continue, and we again thank those who are making the house possible!
We always pray this house will be a place of worship to the Lord!
Heb. 11:8-10 - "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."
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