My Strength Comes from the Lord.

Why have a quote focusing on strength, with an art piece that is so infused with peace and tranquility? Why not instead feature soaring mountains, a sword, or bursting rays through clouds? Though it is certainly true we can seek and experience God's enabling aid during times of high emotion, it is in the quiet moments when we come away from the world, that we find a transforming strength. As we regularly look to our Father in prayer and reading the Scriptures, we are fed with His light. In all our troubles we find rest to enjoy, not only in those moments of refreshing, but to build us up for battles ahead.

Mankind has created a great deal of stress. The world is full of it. From events around us, sin, the mad pace of today, and conflict - or from our own churning hearts full of anxieties, there is much that robs us of peace. The Author of peace, the giver of life in the midst of pain, awaits for us to lay it all at the foot of the cross and listen to His truth, above all the commotion.

"Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful". John 14:27.

Life is Full of Trials

Life is full of trials. Some of them are very painful. They can be without, from events or circumstances around us, or within us with things we struggle with. Much of the time God may not remove these things – though there are times He may. It is what God does with them while He does not remove them that is significant. 

In each circumstance, by lifting them up to our Savior, God uses trials to draw us closer to Him. We find that God is not the God of the small, the maybe, the almost, or the nearly. He is a God of overcoming power. For the latter, we may sometimes get confused because we think this needs to conform to what we think victory, healing, or help should look like. Our views here may be skewed by many things. Yet, we know and are promised, that for His children all things work together for good. In our darkest hour we can lean on the enabling strength of a mighty, yet loving, Father.

In the end we are awed by the beauty of God and the personal grace of His love in Christ. We can have this love even when we fail, with the hope that though that may happen again and yet again, God will not leave us this way. We do not have to wait until the trial passes or until we finally climb out of the deep valley of our own weakness to rest in this love. We can do that right now. It is as near as a desperate prayer or the reading of His Word. It is as near as God’s tender grace in Christ, the defining truth of our relationship with Him.

Artwork: © Jeffrey M Green. "Shadows On the Moss", 8" x 10", pastels.

Looking to the Coming Year with Apprehension?

"Shadows, Water, and Light", 16 x 20", colored pencils.

The coming year is bringing rejoicing - or at least revelry - to many. Do you instead look to the coming year with apprehension and anxiety? Are there things you are burdened  with?

Having struggled with anxiety my whole life, no less now that I am no longer shut away from the world, it helps me to remember that the God we read of in Scripture is still the same God today. He is a God of power, mercy, and renewed grace each day. In the modern era we can sometimes so cloud our reasoning with science and every presumption that we miss the fact that God is a God of awesome power.

This does not mean our trials will be dealt with instantly like magic, or that we will be awash in cash like the TV preachers tell us - if we first give it to them. The victories we see in a few sentences in Scripture are often filled with many years of struggle between. Those who lived then are much like us today, they had the same trials, the same fears, the same weaknesses and sin.

God does have a purpose for suffering. Without it we can not learn to trust Him alone. One might even say, that if in the midst of our pain we do not seek Him, or have not received His Son, our trials are ultimately wasted in the sense that it could of been a tool to open up the beauty of God for us. Though no one welcomes hardship, the closer we are to Him, the more the heart knows a joy that transcends.

Whatever I am facing today, I know my God is my joy, my contentment, my strength when all else fails. I know that any so called strength of my own should and will fail. I must completely get out of the way. In the grace of Christ, a mighty God in unapproachable light is brought tenderly near in intimacy.

“Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me?” Jeremiah 32:27.

Artwork: © Jeffrey M Green. "Shadows, Water, and Light", 16 x 20", colored pencils.

Prayer

In our modern age, we think we can handle most anything. Prayer is usually a formal thing to be religious, a last resort in desperation, or a “just in case” thing. How often do we pray knowing we are heard, having faith that praying to God is a very profound thing?

God is in control of every detail of our lives in Christ. It is true that He does not need our help by any means. He does not need our input for our problems, as He knows what we will say before we even ask and they are in His own hands to work for good. Yet, at the same time, He does require us to pray. Prayer is crucial to our relationship with Him and in our care for those around us. In His grace and love He allows us the tremendous privilege to pray for others, He uses prayer in our own lives to shape us. And yes, He answers our prayers.

Prayer is a wonderful thing of first resort. We talk to, we petition, we plead in our inner painful groaning to the One we love. Through His divine grace He grants us a beautifully privileged role in His work. Not privilege in the world’s sense, that of self importance - but one of His own grace toward us that touches every detail of our lives with the utmost love and tender care. God’s wonderful grace envelopes prayer, from the first time we pray that special prayer to accept Christ, to our day to day lives, and those we lift up to Him in concern.

There are many practical things you can do to help someone. Yet, foremost, the most caring thing we can do is to pray for someone. Because God hears, He listens, and He does answer in His time and purposes.

You can not read the pages of Scripture long before you realize that God hears the prayers of the needy, the downtrodden, the poor, the desperate, those mourning, those suffering, and those repenting in sorrow for sin. Hear hears our pleas. As Christ is the bridge to God over all of our sin, the embodiment of our redemption, and the sole connection with our loving Father, it is why we pray in Jesus name.

Artwork: © Jeffrey M Green. "Carole, Prayer Series I", 16 x 20", colored pencils.

One Day We Will See Him

My dear Christian brothers and sisters, do you realize that one day we will see Jesus? One day we will be with and behold the Lord of our devotion. Like all promises God makes, it is one He will keep.

Christ has promised us eternal life and it is certainly true we will need all eternity to fully be able to appreciate the love and forgiveness of God in Christ. That wretched sinners could be washed clean and set free is a wonderfully freeing truth. It bursts the bonds complete. What love He showers us with, that we could be called His children, lavished with the overflowing riches of His mercy.

God has given us His very own Son, He who has been one with Him from eternity. This gift is a love that radiates, that permeates our being with true life and the purest joy. Heaven is beyond our finite minds, yet God’s gracious love alone will be something to enjoy and praise Him for forevermore. It will be our delight, the culmination and completion of why we exist, for God created us to enjoy Him forever.

As He has so loved us, how we see the enmity, strife, and conflict so often in the church as a whole is a terrible distraction. It can be so hard for folks to get along, it seems. We are loved by a glorious Lord; we are called to love each other as He loved us.

One day our earthly lives will cease, to let go of the sin, the trials, the bodily afflictions we carry. To live life everlasting enjoying the love of our awesome God. How wonderful beyond description it will be.

Artwork: © Jeffrey M Green. "Twilight Fields", 16 x 20", colored pencils.

Is God a Remote, Disinterested Grandfatherly Type?

Many people today have a very light view of God. As if He were a grandfatherly type smiling in the sky, or like Santa Claus to give them what they ask for when they need it. Although some kind of notion of love is seen in this, it is ‘love light”, so to speak, from a remote, disinterested God we are not inclined to want to devote our lives to.
The reason for this is because we do not really understand what real love is. It is also because, in our day, we also lack one other very important thing. We do not appreciate God’s holiness. We do not respect or care to understand His awesome righteousness, His power, His utter holiness - the fact that He is nothing like us, but far above us in sublime purity.
When you do come to understand that a Hallowed God of glory loves us in the redemption of Christ, love is no longer seen as remote from a disinterested grandfather. It is ever personal, keenly interested in our lives. This awesome God loves us in no small way.
God’s graciousness is new every day, His mercy ever ready to forgives us and heal us in our innermost being. His great love is so deep that it will not only take a lifetime of growing in Him to even begin to understand, but all eternity to enjoy. For those who receive Christ, eternity begins now. Intimate love, concerned for our welfare in a way no person can do, is now ours. God is not the God of the almost, the maybe, or the possibly - not only in His character, but in His love toward us as well.
God in His holiness makes no pretense not to deem He can say what we are or are not to do, or that we are fallen and need salvation. However, it is this very real part of God that brings to light the severity of His love at the same time. A God who is in control of all things, who can make and unmake, who rules for eternity in righteousness – such a God of power loves you so much He sent His very own Son to solve the very sin problem that separates us from Him. Now that is love indeed.
Our response can only be to love the One who first loved us. It is our joy and the completion of our being to receive His kindness and grace daily.

Artwork: © Jeffrey M Green. "Minsi Lake", 11" x 14", pastels. 

"John Three Sixteen", 11"x 14", colored pencils on slate gray Mi-Teintes paper.

Many of us are often plagued by a sense within us that we can not quite put our finger on. It can cause us stress, confusion, disillusionment with our lives, or a vague uneasiness that something just is not right. This can become quite heavy at times. We see that the modern lifestyle is filled with anxieties of every kind. Some attempt to answer this inner agitation with constant activity, working as much as humanly possible, or drugs, alcohol, and a myriad of other distractions. Some watch TV, sleep too much, or party in order to push it away. Others attempt to fill it with philosophies and gather to themselves every scientific notion that seems to render even considering the weightier things in life as unimportant. Today we fill our lives with so much noise it seems we want to shut off a deep part of ourselves and avoid it completely. We can blame this inner turmoil on external things that can be seen, such as bad marriages, difficult people, or bitterness with those who have hurt or mistreated us.

Have you ever felt a restlessness deep inside, a place that seems unreachable? Augustine of Hippo wrote, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." This emptiness has been likened to a whole in ourselves that only God can fill. A deep, melancholy, unfulfilled, yearning emptiness. Because only God can satisfy this need in us, we are left broken and disillusioned with all the things we seek to fill it with instead. The distractions or promised fulfillment in life we pursue apart from God are described as "vanity of vanities" in Ecclesiastes. If we reflect on this as we look inside ourselves, part of us knows it is all emptiness or sad attempts in the end, no matter how we try to somehow manage. Do we not get so tired of just dealing with life, simply enduring, and that is all?

The Westminster Shorter Catechism states a very important truth. “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever”. As you read the unfolding redemptive story of Scripture, you see that this is what we were truly created for. Only God can fill this void, in the person of Christ. We can not meet this deepest need ourselves. No activity, thing, or person that we so desperately try to fill it with can meet this longing. Religious notions of ones own opinions or a Christ of vague subjective ideas will also leave us unfulfilled. Every religion of man is an attempt to surmount this problem by our own bootstraps, to define God and some kind of salvation on our own terms. Before a Holy God this simply can not be done, we are fallen in sin, with hands that are empty – what can a man or woman give God? We are left bare and helpless. The only way to truly be free is to come to the living Christ. To accept the free gift of Jesus Himself - God with us, dying for us who are lost, and raised in overcoming power.

It is humbling when we finally see we need Him, that our own way is completely off target and self serving. We blame God for our problems as if we know better than He, or are somehow wiser. We seek every answer, idea, or thing that fancies, except the central truth we try to avoid. Yet, in all this He still loves us with mercy beyond imagination. It is not an abstract love, but a keenly personal one.

We wander, sometimes far indeed, until Redemption is received. How wonderful to have this emptiness filled. The security and completeness of ones self in He who fashioned us. It is a joy beyond anything one could express fully. It is not too good to be true, or a nice story or idea. In this free acceptance of God we rejoice ever more daily in Christ’s unbounded love. It is profound, sublime, beautiful. Praise God for the gift of His Son Jesus Christ.


“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16.

That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. Romans 10:9.

This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the payment for our sins. 1 John 4:10.

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. John 6:35.

Artwork: © Jeffrey M Green. "John Three Sixteen", 9" x 12", colored pencils.