Hymns of Hope, Comfort, Prayer

With my mandolin I play and sing the hymn, Nothing But The Blood, by Robert Lowry and the second hymn, I sing A-Capella, I'd Rather Have Jesus, the music for that tune was composed in 1939 by George Beverly Shea, the renowned gospel singer. Shea was still performing almost up to the time of his death in 2013 at the age of 104. End hymn is, Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior, written by William H. Doane, is covered by me, o7jimmy and has a floral back ground of roses, rare flowers, sang A-Capella.

God bless you Sir.

I’m noticing more praises to the Lord in recent months, weeks, and days. It could be me, what I’ve been steered towards, or it could be a larger trend in time, as a world recently chastened by various onslaughts of evil has begun, with growing success, to look for God. Such a trend would feed itself, if present. Like the bible says the message of the gospel is a smell of life unto life.

As my own soul gets concentrated more and more by the Lord I have a way of trying to be helpful, sometimes I succeed and sometimes I just come across as a busybody which I don’t want to because that does not bless. Maybe the way you’ve put it on your home page, that the Lord loves righteousness, is enough for this time and place. But maybe it could be added to helpfully as well. I’ve been a bit of a bug lately over the specific subject of the love of God. I’ve always known that God wanted righteousness. That was never a secret to me. What I’ve been so little aware of is the embrace of a kind God who, as another hymn says, cares when I stumble and that’s not some mere euphemism, it is a promise awaiting its acceptance. I thought for many years in my heart that people were supposed to be cruel. And that when push came to shove, being cruel was the right thing. If you weren’t cruel, you weren’t someone; you were a lightweight mockery that was adrift in the world with no help. The gospel, as of course we both know, says this is not so. But I thought at best that was a touching story for others, but could not be mine.

Forced by an encounter one day (as it was in bitter irony, with a harsh, haughty minded preacher on the early internet) to drop all my defenses (which I had slowly been laying aside over a period of several years, wanting to be open to Christ if He was real even though I could not see a way to believe) and search, screaming, for the Lord, He was waiting. And I soon heard the gospel of compassion from a doctor I found in a very odd setting. I had never seen a doctor advertise an “interest in religion.” But this one did. And on the phone before I came, he told me something very odd. He told me that there was a force in the world called the devil that would tell me I was doomed when I was not. I didn’t understand then, though now I do, and it was true. The doctor had me read the gospel message for myself from a bible that wasn’t even one of the standard translations, it was a paraphrase, but it had Isaiah 53 pinned down remarkably well. As a result of hearing what I read, I began to understand the supernatural message, it began to make sense to me, I began to have peace, and within hours after I had returned home the Lord burst like spiritual sunshine into my soul and later that day I returned to the doctor to say God had brought me salvation through Jesus Christ.

The devil didn’t give up on me easy, and was soon coming back against me in force with his old song of doom, but bit by bit he was forced out of my life as God continued to show me, in my circumstances, kindness past what I could think of as deserving. I was a person much given to being proud. But the Lord humbled me little by little by the needs I continued to have in the midst of the kindness, needs that I could not arrange to have met among men, but finally found met from God.

Anyhow, maybe it isn’t for everyone’s position in the Lord, or again maybe it is. This has been a cruel age we have been through, but perhaps it is largely our own cruelty finally reflected back in our own faces, and I was just a small twig afloat in a sea of that kind of thing. But I urge all gospel preachers, never forget the kindness of the Lord. It must gall Him to get a reputation as cruel or capricious. Those are lies from hell that people have bought, and it slows down the spiritual progress even of believers. No. We are the cruel, capricious ones, having long bought that nonsense from hell. Let’s all come to the sunshine from heaven, which welcomes our return without reproach, to dispel that old spiritual mildew.

Again God bless and prosper His witness through you and many others as times of refreshing may come with the brewing storms.

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