Framed By The Word Of God

Tuesday Gathering — 26th October 2021

We felt to begin our meeting by listening (and joining in) to Stuart Townend and Robin Mark’s version of ‘I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene’. It set the direction of our gathering in The Lord’s purpose. This is easy — maybe even trite — to say, for it is something we all know, surely; that we hear Him and follow in His ways. But, as our quote last week from Isaiah 30:15 said, but you would not. This suggests a deliberate waywardness on our part, at the very least a suggestion of “I’m not listening right now!”

8 The words of a talebearer are like tasty trifles,
And they go down into the inmost body.
21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
And those who love it will eat its fruit.
[Proverbs 18:8+21 NKJV]

A lot of the not listening to His voice comes from liking the sound of our own; and what we say echoes what is in the depths of us, and the way that anything embeds itself in the deep recesses within comes from what we hear. This is a principle to which many a physician will testify — that the voice we hear affects our state of being. Basically, if you tell yourself often enough that you are a hopeless case, that precise thing is what you can become.

that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
[Ephesians 4:14-16 NKJV]

It is only listening to that One who is greater than I, that we can no longer be children, but may grow up in all things into Him. Notice that here again the words we speak are essential; paramount in that maturing process — we must be speaking the truth in love.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.
By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
[Hebrews 11:1-3 NKJV]

It is so important that the worlds — our world especially — is framed by the word of God. What does that mean, exactly. It means that everything which surrounds and hedges and feeds our natural life must have its source in the word of God. The living water of His word is what sustains and heals, whether it be read in scripture, or heard from His Holy Spirit.

As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So pants my soul for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
While they continually say to me,
"Where is your God?"
When I remember these things,
I pour out my soul within me.
For I used to go with the multitude;
I went with them to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and praise,
With a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast?
[Psalm 42:1-4 NKJV]

We sang many songs of praise after this — I only recall a few — and they need not be mentioned. You will have your own praises to sing by now, but after this, as we shared tea and coffee and a biscuit or two, the conversation turned to the damage that anxiety can do to us. Jesus frequently exhorted us to not let our hearts be troubled. This is not mere platitude, but truth pointing to the pathway to healing. Let our every thought and action be framed by the word of God. It is good for you.

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A HOLY WALK: Oswald Chambers on Faith

The love of God! We have turned our back on the ocean of it and are looking for it out over barren colourless hills. We need converting again — turning around, and there basks the ocean’s fullness, whose waves sparkle and ripple on fathomless deeps.
We are too introspective today, we mourn and wonder, then, lifted on waves of feeling, we glow and say we love God. But again our feelings ebb and flow and we mourn. Christianity is not a thing of times and seasons, but of God and Faith.
[from ‘The Love of God’]

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“I Stand Amazed In The Presence” — Robin Mark

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'Meditate on these things'

For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.
[Colossians 1:9-12 NKJV]