Showing posts with label submission. Show all posts
Showing posts with label submission. Show all posts

Monday, November 22, 2021

Tell Me, What Good Can a Good Thought Do (without God)?


A few Good Songs to start a New Week on...

Promises-Matt Boswell & Matt Papa

  






 

'Think good thoughts' and 'think positive thoughts'
are becoming popular phrases in this age!

Please tell me what good can a good thought do
without God?
(without yielding thought to prayer)

James 1:16-18
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 
Every good and perfect gift is from above, 
coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, 
with whom there is no change or shifting shadow.
He chose to give us birth through the word of truth,
 that we would be a kind of firstfruits of His creation.

Tell me, what good can good thought do
When we are down and out
If Good Thought is not first thought through
To Who ‘Good’ is about

Good thought is good but cannot turn
The tables of despair
To hope if we rebel and spurn
Good thought turned into prayer

For if the Good Thinker refutes
Goodness by Goodness blessed
Mortal’s inferior substitutes
Are pitiful at best

Dare we with atheistic bent
Omit the Name whereby
Goodness, mercy and love prevent
What law would justify

Ah, what is thought (both good and ill)
But our utter need
To submit to the Perfect Will
Of God to intercede

Good or positive thoughts alone
Are like trying to fly
While we, manacled to a stone
Are leaping for the sky

Tell me, what good is Good Thought’s sum
Without the power of
The One all Goodness proceeds from
God’s Never-failing Love

Therefore, the goodness Mind suggests
Flows not from mortal aught
But from God's grace that manifests
His love in noble thought

Tell me, what good are good thoughts when
By True Goodness bereft
Bids a façade without God, then
Is any goodness left? 

© Janet Martin

Lots more 'goodness' where these verses came from:
God's Word

You are good, and do good; 
teach me Your statutes. 
Psalm 119:68

You also gave Your good Spirit to instruct them, 
and did not withhold Your manna from their mouth, 
and gave them water for their thirst. 
Nehemiah 9:20

Hear me, O Lord, for Your lovingkindness is good; 
turn to me according to the multitude of Your tender mercies. 
Psalm 69:16

The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; 
and He knows those who trust in Him. 
Nahum 1:7

No one is good but One, 
that is, God. 
Mark 10:18

He loves righteousness and justice; 
the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. 
Psalm 33:5

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; 
blessed is the man who trusts in Him! 
Psalm 34:8

Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. 
For the Lord is good; 
His mercy is everlasting. 
Psalm 100:4-5

Oh, how great is Your goodness, 
which You have laid up for those who fear You, 
which You have prepared for those who trust in You 
in the presence of the sons of men! 
You shall hide them in the secret place
 of Your presence from the plots of man; 
You shall keep them secretly in a pavilion 
from the strife of tongues. 
Psalm 31:19-20


Saturday, August 1, 2020

'Wasting' of Self...


 So many forsake/deny/reject faith in God, 
disillusioned by circumstance and feelings...
rather than realizing after His grace and mercy detailed and explained 
in the first 11 chapters of Romans what our response ought to be...
 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters,
 in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, 
holy and pleasing to God—
this is your true and proper worship.
Romans 12:1

These pages from the book Building of Character by J.R. Miller


Not in vain, the pain of learning
‘Neath the chisel as He shapes
Hearts agape with hope and yearning
As the artists sculpts and scrapes

Harsh and hard may seem the process
Firm, the Artist wields the knife
As He carves away, with losses
At the fabric of a life

Many with stubborn refusal
Flee His method; present-blind
Never becoming the vessel
That the Artist had in mind

We must let the Master labour
As He chips and strips at pride
Teaching us to love our neighbour
Until we are Self-denied

Until what we once thought worthy
Outside of the Artist’s plan
Lies in waste, as grace and mercy
Shapes a truly godly man

© Janet Martin

Monday, January 14, 2019

Of War-Lords and Score-Boards




No one knows
But God
The bergs and floes
Of wars within
The woes and foes
We battle with
Beneath these
Common
Clothes of skin
Or how the Poet
And the Person
Are often at
Utter odds
Between the verses
His love authors
And the curses
Lust applauds
And how to unlearn
Selfish pity
or keep score
where urges  brim
With forces that
conflict with 
"less for me
and
all for Him"

© Janet Martin

 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, 
do it all for the glory of God.
1 Cor.10:31

Saturday, December 29, 2018

A Fine Intermingling


  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, 
and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. 
Are you not much more valuable than they? 
 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
Matt.6:26-27

 

The way flood waters rise and ebb leaving drenched aftermath
The way the wind will leave chaos in its riotous path
The way the sun will rise and set tinting the land and sea
And stealing our very breath amidst adversity
This is the way of love and life; Beauty and brokenness
A fine mingling of joy and strife and chosen happiness

Where fear will drive its victims mad but faith will set us free
Where hope will make our hunger gladder than doubt’s misery
Where what we cannot see ahead is like a tender dare
To trust in He who calms our dread and hears each humble prayer
This is the way of love and life; fine-mingled want and need
As we surrender He provides His strength to intercede

© Janet Martin




Thursday, December 27, 2018

Solace of Surrender


Fear is a predator that Faith will conquer!

Fear looks like this...
 ... to the little birdies at our feeders

Fear takes the fun out of love/life
It stalks it prey, paralyzing prayer!
But, as we pray Fear relinquishes its prey

Bigger than the storm before us
Greater than our deepest fear
Love’s Author never ignores us
Always and forever near
Waiting for our heart’s surrender
Waiting for our will to yield
To His Mercy, kind and tender
Through faith’s fire-tempered shield

© Janet Martin

 I sought the LORD, and he heard me, 
and delivered me from all my fears.
Ps. 34:4

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

On Finding Peace...

PAD Challenge day 6: today’s Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
  • Write a lost poem. Or…
  • Write a found poem.
Sometimes joy and peace are hard-fought battles! 
Impossible unless we release our hold on the controls...



The heart, where tempest-torrents crash
To shatter hopes and dreams
Where what it holds should stretch its sash
‘til bursting at the seams

Where wars the force of good and ill
Where Self and Godhead spars
To harbour quite a spectacle
...Impulse Tattooed With Scars

Where finger-pointing attitude
Can damage and destroy
The cup that should hold gratitude
And be the mold of joy

Where nothing in the world can grant
With capital increase
The Thing that we all seek and want
Found through surrender; peace

The heart can be a stubborn mule
Fueled with foolish pride
But there is one who pulls the tulle
Of flesh and blood aside

…and sees that root of prized evil
And knows what we do not
Who cannot give us peace until
We do the Thing we ought

And to the One who calmed the storm
With three words, ‘peace, be still’
The heart also can find this calm
With three words, ‘not my will’

© Janet Martin