Stevemidkiff's Blog

Repeat these basic essentials over & over to God’s people.

Warn them before God against legalistic & Pious nitpicking, which chips away at our faith.

It just wears everyone out.

Concentrate on doing your best for God,

Do things you won’t be ashamed of,

Lay out the truth plain & simple.

Stay clear of religious talk that is only self righteous empty chatter.

Just blathering Words that are mere frivolous words, you know what I mean.

If our on & on drownings aren’t backed by a Christlike life, they accumulate as poison in the soul.

This hair brain nonsense can throw us off stride & make us miss the truth by a mile…

2 Timothy 2:14-18 MSG

Hear our voices with Your ears, Lord!

Understand our cries to You!

Listen to our prayers’ voice, our King and our God,

We will pray to You! Lord, You will hear our voice early.

We will stand before You first thing of the day.

We will see that You are not a god who wills treachery,

You will refuse to allow the malignant to live beside You

You will not let the unfair endure before Your eyes.

You hate all who work treachery.

You will destroy all who speak fake deceptions and lies.

You Lord detest bloody and deceitful men.

But we will enter Your presence by Your mercies

We worship toward Your beauty, in Your fear.

Lord, lead us in Your fairness, because of our enemies!

Guide our outlook in Your way,

Truth isn’t in their mouth!

Their heart has no honest purpose.

Their throat is an open decaying grave.

They’ve acted deceitfully, we hear it in their words.

Make their ideas fail and make their lawlessness crash.

Drive them out.

Reveal how they’ve provoked You, Lord!

Let us, all of us, who hope in You be joyful in You.

Let us exult.

Live in us,

Let us glory in You

Let us delight in Your name.

Please bless us by Your grace, Lord,

Protect and shield us with Your crowning love.

Psalms 5 paraphrased

We come before You today with a heart filled with concerns.

We’re concerned about our children

We’re concerned about their future.

We’re concerned about harm coming to them.

We’re concerned about our failings as parents.

We’re concerned about so many things.

We find ourselves consumed by our concerns.

Our burdens keep us up at night & we think about them all during the day.

So we come to You today because You are our Maker & Creator.

You know our frame, our weaknesses & our frailties.

You know our inward thoughts.

You know our sin & defeats

You know when a sparrow falls from the sky

You know the number of hairs on our head.

You know all things

You also rule over all things.

You are the King of Kings

You are the ruler of the universe.

You sustain all things

You by Your Word hold everything together.

You are not a distant ruler;

You are our Abba

You are our Father.

Through Christ, we have been adopted into Your family.

We have the privilege of coming before You and you hear us.

Because You are our Father,
You don’t want us to worry.

We know that when our burdens turn to worry

That this is sinful, because it keeps our heart distracted & turned from You.

Forgive us for worrying.

Forgive us for looking to our worries rather than seeking You.

Forgive us for all the ways that we seek to control everything we worry about.

Forgive us for trying to find peace in anything apart from You.

We know that you love us as much as You love Your Son, Jesus.

Help us to remember that & dwell on Your amazing love.

Help us to see just how much You love & provide for us

Help us to comprehend Your depths of Your love that gave us your Son.

Help us to look at & truly see all the ways that You watch over

Help us to see Your care for us and
our family.

Help us to rejoice in Your amazing compassion & to give You thanks.

Hear our prayer today

Listen to every burden that’s in our hearts.

We entrust them into Your hands,

We know that You will do what is good and right and best, for You are a good Father.

Take all our burdens Lord Jesus & give us Your peace in return.

A prayer excerpt from Sufficient Hope

GOD is a safe-house for the beat and battered

GOD is our hideaway during bad times

GOD is our asylum when pain and problems attack

The moment we arrive before GOD

We relax in His presence

We’re never disappointed when we talk to Him

We’re never sorry when we trust GOD

Prayer is what we do now & until God intervenes

to straighten everything out.

Prayer is God’s gift to help us cope with life

Prayer rests us in Christ in this mess of a world

Prayer pleads as we ache & get distracted

Prayer confesses as we struggle with sin & fail repeatedly

Prayer is designed in a world where others hurt and

we get hurt

Prayer cries when let God down & ignore him

even though we belong to Him.

Prayer is a temporary balm in a world where we so

often feel cut off from Jesus Christ

Pray is about our needs as we feel alone & discouraged

and frustrated.

Prayer is for the feeble, failing, falling & the fractured

people to find salvation for their faults

Calling On The Lord

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave the way open for God’s wrath;

for it is written, Vengeance is Mine, I will repay & requite says the Lord.

But if your enemy is hungry, feed him;

if he is thirsty, give him drink;

for by so doing you will heap burning coals on their head.

Do not let yourself be overcome by evil,

but overcome & master evil with good.

Romans 12:19-21 | AMP

Vengeance is God’s prerogative.

When we take revenge into our hands
We pierce ourselves through with many sorrows
We will discover at last that vengeance is a bitter fruit.

When God avenges a wrong
He does so with perfect equity & justice,
God never reacts in in retaliation

Retaliation is what characterizes our schemes of vengeance.

Bill MacDonald notes:

We must resist the tendency to avenge wrongs that are done to us.

The expression give place to wrath may means

to allow God to take care of it for you,
so we submit passively in a spirit of nonresistance.

We stand back & let the wrath of God take care of it.

Since Vengeance is God’s prerogative.
We should not interfere with what is His right.
He will repay at the proper time & in the proper manner.

Lenski writes:

God has long ago settled the whole matter about exacting justice from wrongdoers.

Not one of them will escape.

Perfect justice will be done in every case & will be done perfectly.

If any of us interfered, it would be the height of presumption.

Wisdom says:

Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers all wrongs Prov. 10:12

A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult Prov. 12:16

Fools mock at making amends for sin, but goodwill is found among the upright Prov. 14:9

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger Prov. 15:1

He who covers over an offense promotes love,
but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends Prov. 17:9

Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam;
so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out Prov. 17:14

An angry person stirs up dissension Prov. 29:22

So we reach after tolerance & leave the injustice in God’s hands

We rejoice with those who rejoice
We weep with those who weep

A sorrow shared is

But half a trouble.

A joy that’s shared is

A joy made double.

As The Deer pants & longs for the water brooks,
so we pant & long for You, O God.

Our inner self thirsts for God, for the living God.
When will we come & behold the face of God?

Our tears have been our food day & night,
while others say to us constantly, Where is your God?

These things we earnestly remember
We pour ourselves out within us:

how we went slowly before the throng
how we led them in procession in the house of God

like a bandmaster before his band, timing the steps
to the sound of music & the chant of song

with the voice of shouting & praise,
like a throng keeping festival.

Why are you cast down, O inner self?
Why should you moan over us & be disquieted within us?

Hope in God & wait expectantly for Him,
for we will praise Him, our Help & our God.

O our God, our life is cast down in us
we find our burden more than we can bear

therefore will we earnestly remember You from the land of Rivers
therefore will we earnestly remember You from the summits of Mountains

to our Roaring deep calls to Your roaring deep at the thunder of Your waterspouts;
all Your breakers & Your rolling waves have gone over us.

Yet You Lord will command Your loving-kindness
in the daytime & in the night for us

Psalms 42:1-8 AMP

The deep of our need calls to the deep of God’s fulness;

and the deep of God’s fulness calls to the deep of our need.

Between our emptiness & His all-sufficiency there is a great gulf. . . .

Deep calls to deep.

The deep mercy of God needs our emptiness,

into which it might pour itself. . . .

Nothing can fully meet the depth of our need

but the depth of His Almighty fulness”

His grace is great enough to meet the great things,

The crashing waves that overwhelm the soul,

The roaring winds that leave us stunned and breathless,

The sudden storms beyond our life’s control.

His grace is great enough to meet the small things,

The little pin-prick troubles that annoy,

The insect worries, buzzing and persistent,

The squeaking wheels that grate upon our joy.

Annie Johnson Flint

It is the branch that bears the fruit that feels the knife;
To prune it for a larger growth, a fuller life.

Though every budding twig be lopped, and every grace
Of swaying tendril, springing leaf, be lost a space.

O thou, whose life of joy seems reft of beauty – shorn,
Whose aspirations lie in dust, all bruised and torn;

Rejoice! Though each desire, each dream, each hope of thine,
Shall fall and fade; it is the hand of Love Divine,

That holds the knife, that cuts and breaks with tenderest touch,
That thou, whose life has borne some fruit may’st now bear much!

Annie Johnson Flint

Affliction is the dark soil in which is deposited the heavenly seed, that germinates,

and brings forth fruit to the glory of God.

Affliction is a furnace, in whose ardent flame the Refiner of souls

is consuming our human imperfections.

Affliction is a rod, under whose kindly chastisement the Father of Spirits

is educating us for immortality.

Affliction is a baptism, from whose cleansing wave believers in the Most High

come forth fit for the marriage-supper of the Lamb.

Affliction is a cup, whose bitter draught is administered by the good Physician

to purify our spiritual natures.

Affliction is a dark cloud, on which the God of covenant has painted the rainbow of hope,

and which He has irradiated with the halo of celestial glory.

Would we, then, bring forth much fruit?

Would we be purified of remaining imperfections?

Would we be trained for immortality?

Would we be fitted for the marriage-supper?

Would we be sanctified in your spiritual nature?

Would we be encircled in the bow of promise or adorned with the halo of glory?

We must needs suffer affliction; for “it is through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom.”

Unknown but we’ll known