The full meaning of the Hebrew word ra-ah, translated "saw" in this verse (Isaiah 6:1), is significant. It means to see something with absolute clarity. To worship God effectively we must have a proper view of Him, not allowing anything to obstruct our vision. That divinely focused view only comes to those who study God's nature and character as revealed in His Word. Anyone who plunges deeply into God's Word rises highest in their praises of His glory.
From "31 Days Meditating on the Majesty of Jesus"by Jack Hayford & Dick Eastman
Isaiah "Saw" with Absolute Clarity
My morning devotion this morning happened to focus on the Radiance of God's Glory. Unintentional from my perspective, but oh so awesome when God chooses to bless in this way! :o) I feel compelled to share this quote.
Blueprints for Our Construction Project
In the weeks and months ahead on this blog here is a map of where we are going... the blueprints for our construction project:
Chapter 1: Open House at Solomon's Temple
Chapter 2: Your Master's Plan -- Checking Out His Teaching Seminar
Chapter 3: De-Junking! Ridding Your Heart of Clutter
Chapter 4: The Truth About Walls -- Embellished Pillars as an Alternative
Chapter 5: Heirlooms, Keepsakes, & Treasures -- Expecting the Rare Find
Chapter 6: Installing a Spiritual Security System
Chapter 7: Color and Accessorize! -- Reveling in the Details
Praying at least a few of these have caught your attention! We are going to be having a great time with this and learning to be in closer fellowship with Jesus all at the same time! It will be awesome.
Chapter 1: Open House at Solomon's Temple
Chapter 2: Your Master's Plan -- Checking Out His Teaching Seminar
Chapter 3: De-Junking! Ridding Your Heart of Clutter
Chapter 4: The Truth About Walls -- Embellished Pillars as an Alternative
Chapter 5: Heirlooms, Keepsakes, & Treasures -- Expecting the Rare Find
Chapter 6: Installing a Spiritual Security System
Chapter 7: Color and Accessorize! -- Reveling in the Details
Praying at least a few of these have caught your attention! We are going to be having a great time with this and learning to be in closer fellowship with Jesus all at the same time! It will be awesome.
How Large Is Your God?
Humor me today please. I'm taking this whole "the train of His robe filled the temple" image just one step further. Remember I mentioned the seamstress in me, and I'll be taking this opportunity to expand on the a bit further. :o)
When our children were growing up, to supplement our family income, I spent many hours at the sewing machine creating custom garments for the public. Rachel, our first born, did not entertain herself well for very long. (How many of you have had one of those children?) This meant often times holding her in my lap while I sewed, or snatching moments to sew late at night or during her very short naps -- she didn't like those either. When she was old enough to sit up and get into things, her curiosity and investigative skills happened onto a new "toy" -- grocery sacks full of fabric scraps! Rachel would sit on the floor where I was working and carefully dump those sacks. She would slowly inspect every single piece of fabric in those sacks as though she were looking for a rare treasure. When she finished with those two sacks, I could fill them up and she would repeat the entire search all over again. She was thrilled with this little game, and it won me 45 minutes every afternoon of uninterrupted sewing time.
You guessed it! I decided to estimate just how many grocery sacks of fabric it would have taken to fill the temple . . . . my calculation: 151,875 or so . . . That's a whole lot of grocery sacks. Now Rachel had two sacks, and she went through each of them twice in 45 minutes. So, if she had 151,875 sacks, and was willing to go through each of them twice for 45 minutes, she would spend 56,953 hours or 2,373 days, or 339 weeks or 6.5 years of her life 24/7 at this. I'm sure she would discover some pretty cool things about the fabrics a she examined their intricate patterns and textures. If you will further consider that she could go through the same two sacks of scraps for a month or more before we changed out the mix -- well you get the picture -- this could be a life long, 24-hour-a-day activity and the discoveries would not be made this side of eternity.
In future posts we will learn about our bodies being the very temple of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus lives within each believer's heart. Like He did with Isaiah, God wants us to see our own personal sin/idol (that which puts distance between us and God), so that He can come in with His powerful cleansing and help us to rebuild those places in our temples so that we will reflect His gory in a powerful and colorful way to the world around us.
As I prepared to share all of this with you, God grew mighty large in my eyes!!! As you visualized the pictures I was expressing, did your understanding of His proportions take on a new meaning?
Like Rachel with the sacks of fabric, we could spend a life time examining the wonders of our God, and continuously be amazed at what we see revealed. If you can look at your life in light of the goodness and majesty of a magnificent God, then you can see the imprint of His faithfulness on every minute of it -- 24/7/365. Do you think this ENORMOUS GOD has some big plans for your life and mine? Are you ready to allow Him to prepare you to be used for His purposes?
Look at Isaiah 6:8 (NASB) again:
Then I heard the voice of the LORD saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
Do you desire to be better prepared to boldly answer when the Lord calls on you? Preparation, restoration, and renovation of our temples as God's throne is the journey we are on -- a journey that I pray will increase your heart to serve Him only and to do it with certainty and joy!
Copyright, Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011
In the next post I'll be sharing the "chapters" that lie ahead so you will have a bit of a map. I will be spreading these over the months ahead. Remember that the entire blog is always here. You may come on board anytime. There's no time table except as you and God choose.
When our children were growing up, to supplement our family income, I spent many hours at the sewing machine creating custom garments for the public. Rachel, our first born, did not entertain herself well for very long. (How many of you have had one of those children?) This meant often times holding her in my lap while I sewed, or snatching moments to sew late at night or during her very short naps -- she didn't like those either. When she was old enough to sit up and get into things, her curiosity and investigative skills happened onto a new "toy" -- grocery sacks full of fabric scraps! Rachel would sit on the floor where I was working and carefully dump those sacks. She would slowly inspect every single piece of fabric in those sacks as though she were looking for a rare treasure. When she finished with those two sacks, I could fill them up and she would repeat the entire search all over again. She was thrilled with this little game, and it won me 45 minutes every afternoon of uninterrupted sewing time.
You guessed it! I decided to estimate just how many grocery sacks of fabric it would have taken to fill the temple . . . . my calculation: 151,875 or so . . . That's a whole lot of grocery sacks. Now Rachel had two sacks, and she went through each of them twice in 45 minutes. So, if she had 151,875 sacks, and was willing to go through each of them twice for 45 minutes, she would spend 56,953 hours or 2,373 days, or 339 weeks or 6.5 years of her life 24/7 at this. I'm sure she would discover some pretty cool things about the fabrics a she examined their intricate patterns and textures. If you will further consider that she could go through the same two sacks of scraps for a month or more before we changed out the mix -- well you get the picture -- this could be a life long, 24-hour-a-day activity and the discoveries would not be made this side of eternity.
In future posts we will learn about our bodies being the very temple of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus lives within each believer's heart. Like He did with Isaiah, God wants us to see our own personal sin/idol (that which puts distance between us and God), so that He can come in with His powerful cleansing and help us to rebuild those places in our temples so that we will reflect His gory in a powerful and colorful way to the world around us.
As I prepared to share all of this with you, God grew mighty large in my eyes!!! As you visualized the pictures I was expressing, did your understanding of His proportions take on a new meaning?
Like Rachel with the sacks of fabric, we could spend a life time examining the wonders of our God, and continuously be amazed at what we see revealed. If you can look at your life in light of the goodness and majesty of a magnificent God, then you can see the imprint of His faithfulness on every minute of it -- 24/7/365. Do you think this ENORMOUS GOD has some big plans for your life and mine? Are you ready to allow Him to prepare you to be used for His purposes?
Look at Isaiah 6:8 (NASB) again:
Then I heard the voice of the LORD saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
Do you desire to be better prepared to boldly answer when the Lord calls on you? Preparation, restoration, and renovation of our temples as God's throne is the journey we are on -- a journey that I pray will increase your heart to serve Him only and to do it with certainty and joy!
Copyright, Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011
In the next post I'll be sharing the "chapters" that lie ahead so you will have a bit of a map. I will be spreading these over the months ahead. Remember that the entire blog is always here. You may come on board anytime. There's no time table except as you and God choose.
The Train of His Robe Filled the Temple
Read Isaiah 6:1-8 again, either from your own Bible or you will find it in the very first post in this blog. In the next two posts (and before we go on) I would like to focus on God's enormous proportions -- the picture that Isaiah is poetically creating for us here.
The Scripture says God was seated on a throne above the temple -- high and exalted. It then tells us that just the train of His robe -- just the train -- filled the entire temple. That amount of fabric totally mesmerized me. The seamstress (one of several hats I wear from time to time) in me felt compelled to figure this out.
A little research uncovered this fact: Queen Elizabeth II of England donned a train made of purple velvet for her coronation. The train measured 6.5 meters (about 21 feet) from her shoulder to the tip of the train. The train had been constructed from 22 meters (about 24.5 yards) of fabric. Supposing that they used three lengths of 60 inch wide fabric -- that would come out just about right -- the train would have been 15 feet wide and 21 feet long. That's 315 square feet. How does that compare with the amount of fabric needed for the train of God's robe to fill the entire temple? Before we even start doing the math, let me add that most velvet fabrics are loomed much narrower than 60 inches, which may make the figures we will be using on the conservative side.
Looking at Solomon's blueprints (see 2 Chronicles 3) for the temple, the measurements show that the inside of the temple was 90 feet long by 30 feet wide by 45 feet high. Multiplying that out, just the square feet of fabric to cover the floor would have had to be 2700 square feet. There are 15 square feet in each yard of 60 inch wide fabric. That's 180 yards of fabric to cover the floor. Now the temple is 45 feet high, and the train of His robe filled the temple.
Must next calculation was how many layers of fabric it would take to get a stack 45 feet high. Velvet is pretty thick, and not accounting for the weight of it mashing the layers dow, I conservatively estimated six layers per inch. Forty-five feet equals 540 inches. Five hundred forty inches times six layrs to the inch is 3,240 layers of fabric.
Since each layer is 180 yards of fabric, we now need 583,200 yards of fabric to fill the temple. One mile is 1,760 yards long. That means we are talking about 331 miles of fabric. Consider, too, that He is seated high above the temple -- the train had to reach the temple before it could fill it up. We can only imagine how much more fabric that would require.
There is no conclusive evidence of what fabric this train would have been constructed, but hair of goats, sheep and camels as well as linen, flax, hem and silk were the common fibers of the day. Since Jesus is the King, and He is also the Lamb of God, I chose to learn a little about wool production. Soft fleece from the smaller sheep is produced at a rate of 2-6 pounds per sheep per year. There are two shearings each year. Since the average amount here is 4 pounds per sheep per year, if follows that for one shearing the average is 2 pounds. Are you still with me here?
Now I don't presume to know if 2 pounds of wool makes 2 pounds of yarn or not -- I'd guess it takes more ounces of the wool make the same measure of yarn, but for our purposes today, we're just going to say that the two measurements are equal. Just using an afghan pattern and dimensions and yarn weight to get an idea of how much wool it would take to create 583,200 yards of fabric, my calculations indicate that 4,665,600 sheep would need to be sheared. I can't even begin to imagine how many angels would have been employed to do the shearing, much less spin that wool and weave it! Again, this is all hypothetical, but allow it to paint you a picture of just how incredible Isaiah's vision really was, and why he saw his own shortcomings so intensely magnified.
Photo from www.mediastock-photo.com
All other content, Copyright Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011
The Scripture says God was seated on a throne above the temple -- high and exalted. It then tells us that just the train of His robe -- just the train -- filled the entire temple. That amount of fabric totally mesmerized me. The seamstress (one of several hats I wear from time to time) in me felt compelled to figure this out.
A little research uncovered this fact: Queen Elizabeth II of England donned a train made of purple velvet for her coronation. The train measured 6.5 meters (about 21 feet) from her shoulder to the tip of the train. The train had been constructed from 22 meters (about 24.5 yards) of fabric. Supposing that they used three lengths of 60 inch wide fabric -- that would come out just about right -- the train would have been 15 feet wide and 21 feet long. That's 315 square feet. How does that compare with the amount of fabric needed for the train of God's robe to fill the entire temple? Before we even start doing the math, let me add that most velvet fabrics are loomed much narrower than 60 inches, which may make the figures we will be using on the conservative side.
Looking at Solomon's blueprints (see 2 Chronicles 3) for the temple, the measurements show that the inside of the temple was 90 feet long by 30 feet wide by 45 feet high. Multiplying that out, just the square feet of fabric to cover the floor would have had to be 2700 square feet. There are 15 square feet in each yard of 60 inch wide fabric. That's 180 yards of fabric to cover the floor. Now the temple is 45 feet high, and the train of His robe filled the temple.
Must next calculation was how many layers of fabric it would take to get a stack 45 feet high. Velvet is pretty thick, and not accounting for the weight of it mashing the layers dow, I conservatively estimated six layers per inch. Forty-five feet equals 540 inches. Five hundred forty inches times six layrs to the inch is 3,240 layers of fabric.
Since each layer is 180 yards of fabric, we now need 583,200 yards of fabric to fill the temple. One mile is 1,760 yards long. That means we are talking about 331 miles of fabric. Consider, too, that He is seated high above the temple -- the train had to reach the temple before it could fill it up. We can only imagine how much more fabric that would require.
There is no conclusive evidence of what fabric this train would have been constructed, but hair of goats, sheep and camels as well as linen, flax, hem and silk were the common fibers of the day. Since Jesus is the King, and He is also the Lamb of God, I chose to learn a little about wool production. Soft fleece from the smaller sheep is produced at a rate of 2-6 pounds per sheep per year. There are two shearings each year. Since the average amount here is 4 pounds per sheep per year, if follows that for one shearing the average is 2 pounds. Are you still with me here?
Now I don't presume to know if 2 pounds of wool makes 2 pounds of yarn or not -- I'd guess it takes more ounces of the wool make the same measure of yarn, but for our purposes today, we're just going to say that the two measurements are equal. Just using an afghan pattern and dimensions and yarn weight to get an idea of how much wool it would take to create 583,200 yards of fabric, my calculations indicate that 4,665,600 sheep would need to be sheared. I can't even begin to imagine how many angels would have been employed to do the shearing, much less spin that wool and weave it! Again, this is all hypothetical, but allow it to paint you a picture of just how incredible Isaiah's vision really was, and why he saw his own shortcomings so intensely magnified.
Photo from www.mediastock-photo.com
All other content, Copyright Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011
Obedience of Faith
This quote came across my desktop this morning, and I believe it merits a brief field trip.
As I've been presenting this Bible Study to you, there has been a recurring thought. The words sin and idol are heavy words. They make us uncomfortable. The discomfort, I believe, is because our sins and the idols we hold in our hearts create separation from God. When we stop to observe the true state of our heart and our relationship with our Creator and our Savior we choose whether or not to take steps of obedience in a new direction. The quote above summed all these feelings up so well, and it came at the perfect time!
The really important thing in life is not the avoidance of mistakes, but the obedience of faith. By obedience, the man is led step by step to correct his errors, whereas nothing will ever happen to him if he doesn't get going. ~~Paul Tournier
As I've been presenting this Bible Study to you, there has been a recurring thought. The words sin and idol are heavy words. They make us uncomfortable. The discomfort, I believe, is because our sins and the idols we hold in our hearts create separation from God. When we stop to observe the true state of our heart and our relationship with our Creator and our Savior we choose whether or not to take steps of obedience in a new direction. The quote above summed all these feelings up so well, and it came at the perfect time!
Temple Under Construction
We are about to finally embark on this journey of discovery as we cooperate with God in a temple remodeling project preparing ourselves to more closely resemble the temple that He desires to fill with His glory. We will dig deep into our past, way past our failures and shortcomings and straight to the heart of God, to discover His marvelous faithfulness in our own lives up to this very moment. As we intentionally picture His hand on our entire life, the glimpses we see of His glory in our lives will grow. We will be asking some serious questions about a specific sin in our own lives that is keeping us from being the person He has created us to be and from reflecting His glory in the tasks for which He has chosen us. And finally we will look at how He is preparing us to deal with specific sin in our lives.
Another reminder -- We can't change anything by our own power, and God won't ask us to change it all at once. We will be spending our time uncovering truths about God and about ourselves, allowing Him to prepare us for the construction work He desires to do in our lives. Prayerfully, we will be allowing Him to release His grace within us to transform our lives. Our obedience to His Word is rewarded when we reflect His glory for others to see.
To find Scriptural examples we will be looking at the preparations for the building of Solomon's temple. We will look further to see how those same principles aply as God prepared some Bible characters to serve Him is such a way that His glory was magnificently displayed through their lives. We will apply God's blueprints for construction work on our own temples, and learn to recognize and follow His call to serve Him with our lives.
We will consider the lives of Bible characters, just as human as ourselves, who sinned just as we do. Yet, God in His wisdom, offered His great mercy, love, and forgiveness to each of them. Through them He revealed His glory in some marvelous ways. Rahab, a harlot, observed God's faithfulness to His people. She made preparations that helped the Israelites, saved her family, and reflected God's glory as she took her place in history in the direct line of decent to Jesus. The Shepherds tending their flocks in Bethlehem, David and his son Solomon, Job, the woman at the well and others -- they all have stories to share that will enhance our remodeling work. We will be participating in some fun, creative projects and exercises during our time together that will hopefully help us to remember and apply the truths we learn.
Let's get started. I'm excited about the possibilities and all God has in store for all of us. I wish I could be at every construction site to see you and God working on this project together, growing more intemate with each other each day. I'll be praying for you for magnificent results in each timple. They will all be so different, and so beautiful, and all a part of the body of Christ -- what an incredible thought!
Photo from www.mediastock-photo.com
All other content, Copyright, Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011
Another reminder -- We can't change anything by our own power, and God won't ask us to change it all at once. We will be spending our time uncovering truths about God and about ourselves, allowing Him to prepare us for the construction work He desires to do in our lives. Prayerfully, we will be allowing Him to release His grace within us to transform our lives. Our obedience to His Word is rewarded when we reflect His glory for others to see.
To find Scriptural examples we will be looking at the preparations for the building of Solomon's temple. We will look further to see how those same principles aply as God prepared some Bible characters to serve Him is such a way that His glory was magnificently displayed through their lives. We will apply God's blueprints for construction work on our own temples, and learn to recognize and follow His call to serve Him with our lives.
We will consider the lives of Bible characters, just as human as ourselves, who sinned just as we do. Yet, God in His wisdom, offered His great mercy, love, and forgiveness to each of them. Through them He revealed His glory in some marvelous ways. Rahab, a harlot, observed God's faithfulness to His people. She made preparations that helped the Israelites, saved her family, and reflected God's glory as she took her place in history in the direct line of decent to Jesus. The Shepherds tending their flocks in Bethlehem, David and his son Solomon, Job, the woman at the well and others -- they all have stories to share that will enhance our remodeling work. We will be participating in some fun, creative projects and exercises during our time together that will hopefully help us to remember and apply the truths we learn.
Let's get started. I'm excited about the possibilities and all God has in store for all of us. I wish I could be at every construction site to see you and God working on this project together, growing more intemate with each other each day. I'll be praying for you for magnificent results in each timple. They will all be so different, and so beautiful, and all a part of the body of Christ -- what an incredible thought!
Photo from www.mediastock-photo.com
All other content, Copyright, Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011
What Change Will God Make in Your Heart?
What does God have His finger on in your life? In what area is He calling for change? Where is your Christian walk being challenged? Does your temper control you? Are you engulfed in a sea of laziness? Is there a judgmental spirit keeping you from loving others? Are the monsters of addiction and indulgence holding you in their claws? Do you justify less than honest business dealings? You fill in the blank: ________________________ (Look at the list I've included at the end of this post. Some of those may trigger some thoughts on this for you. I suggest you really focus on one thing at a time. This study will be here for you to do again if you have other things in your life you would like to deal with, too. Pick the place to begin today.)*
You claim you've tried a hundred thousand times to change, and nothing happen. In your own power, of course not! Failure comes because the focus is on us and on our problems. What we focus on, we give power to control us. In other words, we are just plain powerless to change anything. If we want to see a real difference we will need to allow God to redirect our thinking.
All the power to change rests in the hands of the Holy Spirit living in us. We can do nothing by our own power. By learning to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, we will see the metamorphosis in our lives. He will teach us to make the choices (by His power) that will make us look different. Our focs will shift to others. We will make less destructive choices. We will be seeing God's plan for our lives.
Ephesians 2:10 (NASB) says, "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." When we recognize and internalize this truth, and seek Him with all of our heart, soul, and mind, the power of Christ's resurrection will work in us to make a difference in the lives of others. Jesus would increase and we would truly decrese along with our interest in the many areas of self-indulgence that are a such a part of our lives. Others will see more of Jesus, and a little less of "Queen I" or "King I" on the thrones of our hearts.
*Here are some of the things that may be consuming more of your heart than is spiritually healthy: TV, internet, facebook, electronic connectivity of all kinds, food, clothes, cars, shopping, hanging out, sports, drink, drugs, easy credit, money, relationships, career, laziness, anger, judgmental attitude. There may be something else that God is bringing to mind for you. Prayer is a powerful tool. Please seek God to show you specifically where He would like to change your heart right now.
Copyright, Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011
You claim you've tried a hundred thousand times to change, and nothing happen. In your own power, of course not! Failure comes because the focus is on us and on our problems. What we focus on, we give power to control us. In other words, we are just plain powerless to change anything. If we want to see a real difference we will need to allow God to redirect our thinking.
All the power to change rests in the hands of the Holy Spirit living in us. We can do nothing by our own power. By learning to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, we will see the metamorphosis in our lives. He will teach us to make the choices (by His power) that will make us look different. Our focs will shift to others. We will make less destructive choices. We will be seeing God's plan for our lives.
Ephesians 2:10 (NASB) says, "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." When we recognize and internalize this truth, and seek Him with all of our heart, soul, and mind, the power of Christ's resurrection will work in us to make a difference in the lives of others. Jesus would increase and we would truly decrese along with our interest in the many areas of self-indulgence that are a such a part of our lives. Others will see more of Jesus, and a little less of "Queen I" or "King I" on the thrones of our hearts.
*Here are some of the things that may be consuming more of your heart than is spiritually healthy: TV, internet, facebook, electronic connectivity of all kinds, food, clothes, cars, shopping, hanging out, sports, drink, drugs, easy credit, money, relationships, career, laziness, anger, judgmental attitude. There may be something else that God is bringing to mind for you. Prayer is a powerful tool. Please seek God to show you specifically where He would like to change your heart right now.
Copyright, Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011
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