09.23.2006

Hey everyone,

First, for any new additions: This is a weekly email that I do for the purpose of encouraging brothers and sisters in Christ. Typically it is a compilation of my own thoughts, observations, and readings (Scripture, sometimes literature). Although sometimes, now and again, I’ll toss in some of my poetry; this would be one of those times.

Logos:
Greek. n.
Judaism.
1. In biblical Judaism, the word of God, which itself has creative power and is God's medium of communication with the human race. 2. In Hellenistic Judaism, a hypostasis associated with divine wisdom.
Christianity.
In Saint John's Gospel, especially in the prologue (1:1-14), the creative word of God, which is itself God and incarnate in Jesus. Also called Word.


Colossians 1:15-20
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

John 1:1-5, 14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. … The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

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Logos

What are words, but that which gives ephemeral form
to thoughts and pictures,
or syllables weaved together to create a new sound?
And from whence does it come?
A box that cannot contain that which it produces:
foreign creatures with wings,
anxious to break free and be taken away by the wind,
left to ride the backs of thunderheads
This is the immersion of voice, buried deep yet exposed,
raised letter by letter like the resurrection of saints
and falling as a holy waterfall

Yet so much more are the strokes of a pen
that grace the surface of a sleek white virgin page,
truly allowing it to breathe some new thing
Word given form, shape and purpose
bringing to potential paper and ink, united as a bride to a groom
The result leaves humanity colliding with divinity,
drawn in by a shepherd's hook that brings the cold close
and holds her in a warm embrace

What are these words that fall off the tongues of cherubim,
cresting the edge of the world like satin white horses?
The lungs of man will be filled with poignant pictures,
and trifold 'holies'
The pen will make his mark on internal walls,
saturated with the sound of glory

These new things, these shapes and figures-
whence do they come?
Not from the depths of the sea, nor bellows of the earth
is it heard or seen or smelt or tasted
A voice of such words that are foreign,
yet inviting the Dark to be pierced by Light
and speaking in a beautiful spectrum that is hidden by angels
The syllables are deep and brought to the surface,
the infrastructure of the world cradled in the palm of one Word
and blazing into unseen cardiac highways
--YB 06 8/25
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Isaiah 6:3 ; Revelation 4:8
Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is filled with his glory.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.

Psalm 103
Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—
Who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,
Who redeems you life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,
Who satisfies your desires with good things, so that your moth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel:
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever;
He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;
As far as the east is from the west, so has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
For he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field;
The wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him,
And his righteousness with their children’s children—
With those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.
The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.
Praise the LORD, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word.
Praise the LORD all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will.
Praise the LORD, all his works everywhere in his dominion.
Praise the LORD, O my soul.

In love and in Him,
Your sister,
Yvonne

09.17.2006

Romans 12:2
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will know what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Ephesians 4:22-24 (see also Col 3:9-10); 5:8-10
You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.

Hello everyone-

Before I get started, I’ve added a handful of people (Team Philly) to the list so here’s an explination.. Howdy. This is Yvonne, and the Weekly Thing is a weekly email that I send out for the purpose of encouraging/challenging brothers and sisters in Christ… usually through a collection of my observances, readings, experiences, etc. If you’d rather not be on this list, just let me know!

At the end of this week, I went to my very first Staff Seminar as new staff with the CCO. I learned a lot, and I got to see again the fantastic people that I lived with over New Staff Training (although I didn’t get to talk with many of them as much as I wanted to… yes, this is a shout-out to all of you). It was pretty awesome, and the things God had to teach us through the speakers were great.
But this isn’t really about the seminar, rather it is about a key idea that was brought up: transformation.
Now, usually when I hear the word “transform” I immediately think about the popular cartoon called Transformers, which had various spin-offs. I’d be shocked if anyone in this crowd doesn’t know what it is, but to be brief, a Transformer is a robot that would transform back and forth into vehicles or other things to be – well – in disguise. To have that kind of association really shows that I’m a product of television. But I digress. When the Bible talks about something being “transformed,” it talks about a complete and total change that does not revert back to a previous state.
The example of a butterfly or other metamorphosizing creatures seems to be an appropriate example of our lives as Christians. 2 Corinthians 5:17 is the popular connection: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Even if you’ve grown up in a church your whole life, there is still a proclamation of faith that draws a line between the old and the new. Yet, although this is a profound truth, sometimes it is hard to see because we look more like a Transformer than we do a Butterfly.

It may be cooler for some of you to be called a Transformer instead of a Butterfly, which I totally understand, but hopefully I won’t lose you in trying to make the analogy work.

The fact is that we constantly go back and forth between falling into sin and staying on the path. I can be doing really great one day, totally pacing with God; then the next day struggling to fight against sin or failing to acknowledge sin completely. The latter are the days that I know I feel like a dirty rotten scoundrel, hiding behind the husk of the old self hoping no one noticed the lapse. Like a robot to something else, we go between the Old Self and the New Self... we tend to hang onto or pick up again the habits that belonged to the old self. If you don’t know what the Old Self even looks like, I would suggest looking to the Bible for some answers or asking someone you think could help you look.

We are called to be completely transformed and to toss the Old Self out the window. A butterfly, or other critter like it, starts out one way and ends up totally different. The kicker to it all is that a butterfly absolutely cannot go back to being a caterpillar. As crazy as it sounds, God is telling us to be the same way! Hard to do? You better believe it. Not just that but it is impossible to do without Christ as the center of our world. However, as crazy as it is, you and I are to strive to be changed and no longer act as someone who doesn’t know Christ. Our actions, thoughts, motives, speech and everything else about our human existence is called to be conformed towards Christ-likeness. On one hand I would like to encourage those who question their New-ness in Christ, and on the other hand I would like to challenge all of us (including myself) to seek total transformation and not become lax. If it is your goal and your prayer, your earnest desire to be changed, the change will happen. And, the change will finally be completed when we get to see God in all His awesome glory.

I pray that the Lord through the Spirit would continually be changing our lives, transforming us by the renewing of our minds so that we can become more like Christ so that He would be more evident to those who don’t know Him. I also pray that the Spirit would give us strength to fight temptation and the knowledge to know when we have sinned so that we may be humbled. May we have grace with one another, knowing that we are all in a process of transformation, and be unified in love as children of God.

In love and in Him,
Your sister,
Yvonne

09.10.2006

Hello everyone,
Guess what? For those of you that knew the situation concerning my bedroom ceiling, everything has FINALLY been completed, and I've been in the slow process of "moving back in" as it were. During this time, I thought about how our bodies are the house for God the Spirit and a story I heard once... While I know that I retold the story in a Weekly Thing long ago, I couldn't find the email. Briefly, the story was about a house that was suddenly being remodled by the architect. Walls were knocked out and things were changed and replaced. Didn't feel all that great, but in the end, the house became amaaaaazzing. Relate this to your own life: there are things the Architect does in our hearts that doesn't always feel that nice, but in the end it is a lot better.
While my room is not amaaaazzing... it is better. The ceiling is all in order, AND I now have a ceiling fan (which is nice because we don't have central AC.. my room has typically been the hottest during the summer). Took a while, and I didn't like waiting nearly two months to have my room back, but boy am I glad to have it back--especially with the ceiling fan. But this all comes to a bigger story in the Bible that I was brought back to read in the Old Testament book of Haggai. A scant two chapters, the small book by a lesser prophet can pack a punch. I suggest you read it and study the context. The premise: God needed his temple rebuilt and His people were too busy working on their own houses; the temple may as well have looked like a shack. And so He called them to action, and they rebuilt it.
I will now share with you another Weekly Thing from December 2004 that went where I want to go next:

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Isaiah 55:1, 2
Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

Haggai 1:7-9
This is what the LORD Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored," says the LORD. "You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?" declares the LORD Almighty. "Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house."

Matthew 6:24-27
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

So, I'm flipping through my bible the other day to find a reference to Isaiah from Romans, and I came to Isaiah 55. It wasn't the reference I was looking for, and I've read Isaiah 55 several times before. But, because the Word is indeed the Living Word, something I hadn't thought on popped out to me. Normally, I look at this verse from the context of non believers being invited to drink from the spring of living water, invited to believe in Jesus, so that they might have life. What came out, however, was "Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?" Specifically, 'labor on what does not satisfy' came through the speakers loud and clear.
As believers, why DO we labor on what doesn't satisfy us? I don't have an answer to that. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon talks about how he did EVERYthing he possibly could, and he was still left unsatisfied. I bring into this a connection that a good brazillian friend of mine brought up concerning a Finger11 song, quoting,
"If I traded it all, if I gave it all away for one thing, wouldn't that be something?"
If we really traded all that time we spend doing other things - like looking for a music group for hours on end, guilty as charged, here - for spending time enriching our relationship with God as well as others I wonder what that would look like. Our true satisfaction comes from our Abba Father in heaven, and seeking His will. Granted, we also have to learn to be content with what He does in our lives as His will whether we might like it or not. We cannot neglect the time we spend with our Lord, above all things. It's been a long time since I've read Haggai (LONG time), and I'm glad I have a study bible to find the verse above. If we neglect our time with God, then of course the spiritual part of our life is going to be damaged - God's house is going to get really dusty if we're not living in it, as it were. We're going to lose some of the things we had, whether that's knowledge or physical. We can't lose our salvation if we truly have it, mind you.. we are promised it, and the LORD Almighty does not break His promises or covenants. But He certainly gave His all for us. He gave all of it away so that we might live. Shouldn't we give it all back?
Again, wouldn't it be something if we traded it all?

I pray that each one of us learns how to give it all back to Christ, even though we will never be able to match the oustanding price He paid for us. I pray that we learn to labor in His word, in our communication with Him, in doing HIS will above our own - not so that we can earn our salvation, because we can't work for what we already have given to us, but so that we can be enriched in Him. I pray that our heart's desire will be to bring glory and honor to the LORD, our most precious Adonai that should be Sovereign in every aspect of our lives. I also ask that each of us will be changed and molded more and more into Jesus Christ's image with each passing day, and that we learn to rely on His Holy Spirit. I pray that we learn to love one another, and be united as brothers and sisters under one holy banner. Above everything, I pray that our Father will be glorified in all things.

In love and in Him,
your sister,
Yvonne

09.02.2006

Hello everyone!

My apologies for not having sent a Weekly last week. Things were a bit busy, and I had also found myself in a bit of a rut. I won’t get into the fine details since they aren’t important right now, but know that I was beginning to worry and doubt the Lord, struggling to trust Him… But you know what He did yesterday, Friday? He encouraged my heart through a certain event as though to bend down and say, “And you thought I didn’t have this taken care of already.”

Actually, come to think of it, I read Matthew 6:25-34 and Luke 12:22-34 that same morning. I’m sure you know of them, or have at least heard bits and pieces from them. These are the passages in which Jesus is speaking about how we as believers ought not to worry because our Father in heaven knows our needs and has them taken care of. Talk about God’s actions as evidence for the validity and relevance of God’s word.

This is a realization-moment for you, unfolding as a type up this email. Let me take one step further back… a few days ago I was at a group meeting, and something someone said has specifically stuck in my mind since: ‘The Lord’s word does not return to Him empty.’ Looking it up thanks to a handy-dandy concordance, this is a reference to Isaiah 55:10 and 11 where it says, “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth … so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty…”

So, right now, I see crazy things at work involving Scripture. What come from God’s mouth here are His promises, which are expounded upon in the rest of the Bible. One in the New Testament, in Romans 8:28, says that, “…we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” The rest of Isaiah 55 also mentions that God’s thoughts are higher than our own. It brings to mind other passages in Scripture, a few of which some friends of mine recently pointed to in order to encourage me.

When I started this email, I was thinking of writing about faith (again), and while although faith is still woven into this, it would seem as though I’ve been turned to write of the importance of the Bible. I’ve written before that it is imperative that we as Christians know and understand the Bible… Why? It is the text that we learn about the relationship between humanity (that’s you and me) and divinity (that’s God); the nature of humans; the nature of God; and God’s promises to us. There’s a lot more to it than that, but I think those four things pack a pretty powerful punch on their own. It isn’t a nice collection of stories that give us warm fuzzies on a rainy afternoon; they are collection of stories that reveal quite a lot about the history of God’s people and God’s character. It’s as though every page is a solider in an army meant to revolutionize our way of life. Well, it can do that only if we have life in Christ and want to model our lives after Him. I do not have the intention of exalting a book to the status of something divine – but I do have the intention of telling you that, if you believe that Jesus Christ is your one and only Savior, the Bible is designed to be your handbook on how to live your new life under Him. Not just that, but as you can see from my experience, it has the power to encourage us when things are in disarray. In turn, we praise and give glory to God.

So you see, God’s word really doesn’t return to Him empty.

I pray that each of us are given a desire to learn and understand Scripture, and to seek it when we need encouragement from God – even if we don’t know where to start. I also pray that each of us, when encouraging each other, would point towards Scripture. I also ask that the Holy Spirit would change our attitudes about God’s word and give us discernment while reading.

In love and in Him,

Your sister,

Yvonne

(I did not refer to Scripture at the top like I normally do, because this Weekly is peppered with it throughout. I encourage you to look up those passages on your own to read and meditate on them.)