I have had a lot of time to think while driving back and forth from Ellijay and Albany, GA. My father is quite ill and I go down to help my stepmother every other week and stay from Monday through Saturday. The following are some of these thoughts:

1. PASSION versus COMPASSION: Holy Spirit showed me that Passion is different from Compassion. What He told me was that I was passionate for the things of God, but I was not compassionate toward the lost. He said, ” Your heart does not break for those who are lost like mine does. Then He reminded me of the passage where “Jesus wept”. John 11:33-36; Luke 19:41-44; Matthew 9:35-38. Later, I looked up the definition of Passion and Compassion in The New Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language: PASSION: 1) Compelling emotion. 2) Strong amorous feeling; love. 4) A strong fondness, enthusiasm or desire for music. 6) An outburst of emotions. 7) Violent anger; wrath; rage. 8) The sufferings of Christ on the cross or subsequent to the Last Supper. COMPASSION: A feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow struck by misfortune, accompanied by a desire to alleviate the suffering; Mercy.
2. TRUSTING AND ENTRUSTING: I was thinking of how often we cry out to the Lord, but we do not really trust Him, and we do not give our heart’s cry to Him. Why? Because we do not trust Him and we do not entrust our concerns to Him. We plead with the Lord as if He doesn’t really care for us and needs a nudge from us. We want an easy out of pain and suffering regardless of the fact that in this world we are going to be impacted by the sin around us. John 16:33. We totally disregard the instructions in Philippians 4:4-9. TRUST: 1) Reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, etc., of a person or thing; confidence. 2) Confident expectation of something; hope. 3) Confidence in the certainty of future payment for property, or goods received; credit. 4) One upon which a person relies: GOD IS MY TRUST. ENTRUST: 1) To give a trust or responsibility to. 2) To place in trust for protection, care, or handling.
3. NOT MY WILL, BUT THINE. We ask, do and love the Lord according to our will Not His. Everything Jesus did, said or went was according to God’s Will. Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said, “Father, not my will, but Yours be done.” Matthew 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42; Luke 22:39-46. John 5:16-30 shows that the authority that Jesus had was from God and NOT from Himself. Philippians 2:5-11 says that Jesus, being very nature God did not consider equality with God to be something to use to His own advantage. Jesus said that we are to take up our cross daily or we cannot be His disciples. Matthew 10:38,39; 16:24-27; Luke;14:25-27; 1 Peter 4:12-19; John 17:15-19. Yet this “fairytale gospel” that is preached today teach us to think that we can “have our cake and eat it” at the same time; that we can love and relate to God on our own terms and that we can bail out when it no longer suits us. Here is the question: Are we going to be WILLING: 1) Disposed, consenting; inclined: willing to go along. 2) Cheerfully consenting or ready; a willing worker. 3) Done, given, borne, used, etc., with cheerful readiness or WILLFUL: 1) Deliberate, voluntary or intentional. 2) Unreasonably stubborn or headstrong; perversely obstinate? These are heart issues that the Lord has had me consider of late in this season that we are in. In response, I choose to say what King David said in Psalm 139:23,24: “Search me, God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. see if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the Way everlasting.”