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Psalm 127:

1.a "Except the Lord build the house (home, family), they labour in vain that build it:....

2.  It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep."

Ladies, as emotional creatures prone to fret and stew, there is one name of God that we all should make part of our daily lives: Jehovah the "Self-Existent God." God doesn’t need anyone or anything to enable Him to be perfectly in control of everything in the world. Jehovah means everything we need at exactly the moment we need it.

Many of God’s names are compounded with the name Jehovah to define His character as He extends Himself outside of His Self-Existence to us/for us.

One of His compounded names is: Jehovah Mekkodishkem, the LORD Who sanctifies you.

How has God provided for us to have purity in our lives and in our homes? 

How does God purify us as we yield to Him---desiring a sanctified/purified life?

In Part One I stated:

Before we surrender/die to self, all of the knowledge of God we have been taking in cannot get from our minds to our hearts to be useable until we can swallow it to assimilate it.  Our digesting it allows it to become useable heart knowledge to renew our minds and enable God and us to sanctify our lives.

Let’s think of a small baby or toddler when we as mothers try to give them ingredients/medicines that they need to assimilate/digest so their bodies can use them to help them get well and get stronger. 

What do they usually do?  Fight, kick, cry, hold their breath, refuse to swallow?  What do we do?  Just say, okay, whatever pleases you?  NO!  As a good parent we hold them tightly, often having to pry their mouths open, dump in the medicine, hold their mouths shut and blow in their scrunched up unhappy faces to cause them to swallow.  Is this trial for their good?

I Peter chapter 1:7

The purifying process:  how is maple syrup made/purified once the sap is taken from the tree?  It is boiled, and boiled, and boiled.  And it takes many gallons of sap to make one gallon of delicious maple syrup.

The dross/impurities in our lives often must be boiled and strained away.  Our sanctification/purifying process is not always done on a mountaintop of our lives...a mountaintop where everything in life is wonderful.  The process is often  done in a valley where the only place we can look is up and the only person we can be dependent on is God. 

This is exactly how our children learn to trust us and to rely on us.  When they are born they are in a prone position for many month looking UP at us. They learn to trust us because they are totally dependent on us for their every need and their every want.  They get sick and we tenderly care for them.  When they are hungry we feed them.  When they get hurt we comfort them and bandage their wounds.  And in our caring for them they learn to trust our supply, our care, our judgement, our counsel.  This results in their becoming steadfast; trusting and comfortable in our unqualified love for them.

There is a verse of scripture we seldom quote in its entirety: "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable (to make like) unto his death;" Phil. 3:10

The Bible teaches us we are to live our lives in Christ by faith and faith without HOPE has no fuel to run its engine.  HOPE is the motivating factor/the fuel for our faith and trials are a part of strengthening our faith by giving us HOPE:   "And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."  Romans 5:3-5

"These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. John 16:33

Remember God is Sovereign and He is not the Author of the "all things" of our lives. He is the Master of the "all things" promising nothing shall come into our lives that He cannot use for Good...if we will allow Him to.  This world with its decay and disease, and evil men with their evil deeds and sin, author much hurt for the unsaved and the saved. But God... is the Master and in control whether we feel like He is or not.

Remember to always base faith on facts, not feelings.

Our HOPE is in knowing God wants to use "ALL" He allows to grow us up in Him through all of the mountaintops and valleys of our lives.  And he does so as we yield our lives to Him and swallow to assimilate the lessons--His wisdom-- into our hearts so that we may be vessels fit for the Master’s use.

Many years ago my pastor asked me from the pulpit if there was anything I would change in my life?  He knew I had Polio when I was six years old, a lifetime of illness and a dozen surgeries, grew up being abused by my mother and brother and he obviously did not expect my answer of "No".  I stared straight ahead as necks turned heads with eyes looking at me in disbelief.  When he asked my why?  I thought of the line from a song that means so much to me:  "Through it all I’ve learned to trust in Jesus, I’ve learned to trust in God."

Add to the above list the deep trial when our daughter was molested by our pastor when she was five years old, and our precious son who loved the Lord with his whole heart and only wanted to serve him...and is doing so in Heaven right now, and I will still tell you I wouldn’t change a thing for without a doubt:

• I know God never leaves us or forsakes us
• I know God is trustworthy
• I know the sweetness of "the fellowship of His sufferings"
• I know the pillow of His grace, the surety of His unconditional love, and the peace that passes all understanding that is freely available as I crawl up on the lap of my Abba Father as a helpless, surrendered child, and allow Him to cover me with His Almighty wings as he pillows my head on his bosom and invites me to nurse at His Shad where we can find all nourishment for each kind of day we will have in our lives.  God’s name El Shaddai means the many breasted one....where He nourishes His children in all that we need.

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