What a joyful surrender unto the Lord, our Maker. Dave is a precious brother in the Lord and continues to be a blessing wherever he goes.

I have been a “people” who have not known “God’s ways” and have had a hardened heart to the call of God for many years. And I will call it my desert living season. Yes, He provided for me in that season by His Grace. And He still loved me with His everlasting love upon me in Jesus Christ. I stayed accepted in the beloved Son of God. But Christ was not my life for that season. And the chastening I suffered as a New Covenant, called out one, was to eat the corruption of the sin of unbelief that was my heart’s desires.

The corruption was tremendous, picking my own jobs, my own marriage partner, reading the Word of God to study God afar. I just was in the season of rebellion unto God. And I had no presence of His Blessing over my life. I abhorred in my heart to be His sheep. To be in His Pasture, I strayed to eat of other pastures that had food of corruption. And the corruption took its toll. And I had no rest in God. All my footing was on slippery ground. I reaped the corruption of sowing to the flesh.

Even when I first came back to the church, I was in repentance to my straying, but to come back to be His sheep, I resisted and sought to be part of the other popular religious systems that are about. But I had tasted the Living water again. God knew how to draw me back here. Then He just put a heavy call on me to come back. I could feel the arrows of Satan coming against me the first time I came back to church.

Praise God that I did not harden my heart to His call! I have been so blessed in the services, in the Word, in the sermons, and the fellowship, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Sunday and at the Wednesday night fellowship meetings and all the rest of the fellowship I am experiencing here! Last Sunday, as the pastor preached on Psalm 95 and Jehovah Hoosenu, the LORD our Maker, I just was so blessed. I heard the LORD speak to me about how He blesses. His call is for us, for me to give Him the full Glory due Him FIRST and then He will bless. This sounds so obvious, but do we not all resist it so for a season? Our flesh doesn’t want to give Him all the glory. Even though He mainly calls out the “not many mighty”, but the base and the weak things of the world (1 Cor. 1: 26-31), “that no flesh would glory in His presence.” I resisted this call to bow down to Him for years.

Well, this Sunday, I was hearing Him. Bow down to me Dave, lift me up by you kneeling and giving me the Glory due me and I will bless you! And I did it. I have nothing to boast of; it is hard to kneel unto Him. Satan opposes you, your flesh rages against this deep a surrender. You feel strange kneeling unto the Lord in a day where it happens only in Roman Catholic churches. Oh the blessing of this deeper surrender and the blessing the rest of this week that has carried on each day! Now in the morning and in the evening I bow down and kneel to God in prayer! And my heart is more surrendered to Him than ever before in my walk with God!

I have His Rest now--His Rest. I have surrendered my works of trying to please God by what I can do. I am letting the Good Shepard take me to the places of blessing now with His gentle yoke upon me, as I have bowed down, and kneeled down to Jehovah Hoosenu, to my Lord Jesus. I could go on and on about the awesome time in the Word and the Spirit. It is just amazing how much grace and peace and joy that a heart can have that is “given over” to God away from self and the world!

When we truly let God be GOD! Let Him be lifted up High and as our Great King above all gods and let Him be our Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer-God over all our lives in worshiping Him, bowing down before Him. Kneeling before Him, we just will spill out with these songs from our heart of hearts:

Psa 95:1 O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
 
Psa 95:2 Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.

He has promised us that as His People, who do not err, but follow/obey His ways of surrendering ourselves to give Him the Glory due Him, that HE WILL BLESS US in the songs and hymns and melodies in our hearts and joy and peace and righteousness in the Holy Spirit and with all the necessary material things that He knows we need to live in this world for the season of life here. He is truly an awesome God!!