The Good Life

I get it so mixed up sometimes. I think life is good when it caters to my personal comfort

rather than when I commit/submit to God’s call, all for His glory…

…Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ  and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—  that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 

Phil. 3:8-11

Life is good

Not because the wood-box is filled

and the sky or the oven spills works of art

Life is good

when I bow my want and will

To the One who sees the heart

Life is good

Not because an orchestra plays

And life is a light-footed waltz

Life is good

When I surrender pride’s chase

To worship the One that nature exalts

© Janet Martin

In Case We Forget and Become Anxious...

Put on the armor of our Lord

Salvation’s helmet, Spirit’s sword

The belt of truth, the shield of faith

Feet shod with the gospel of grace

Let righteousness be your breastplate

With prayer prepare for day-in-wait

Then raise your voice with mercy’s boasts

Rejoice and praise the Lord of hosts

For He our debt of guilt forgave

Redemption seals the sin-cursed grave

He died so when we die we live

Beneath hate’s nails love cried ‘forgive’

And pardoned with His blood the debt

That doomed us to eternal death

Then, for the loss that paid sin’s price

Take up your cross of sacrifice

For, wherever we go He goes

And what we do not know He knows

God bestows peace to hearts that trust

And hallelujah hymns where dust-

To-dust is not a hopeless chase

But prelude to that face-to-face

Where grace our reckoning secures

Through faith in He whose Word endures

© Janet Martin

Aha, Aha, Amen

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Jer.17:9

The heart, the heart of man

Is wicked to the core

We ought, we ought; all that we can

To read God’s scriptures more

The love, the love of God

Never betrays our trust

We should, we should humbly applaud

His compassion for us

The hope, the hope we have

Is found in Him alone

How cold, how cold the hostile grave

‘Neath unbeliever’s stone

Prepare, prepare with awe

For that from which none flee

The righteousness of Holy God

And Immortality

The way, the way we end

Depends Wholly on this;

Believe, believe, my soulmate, friend

In He who ever IS

© Janet Martin

It is IMPOSSIBLE not to realize it again and again,
as we turn from the graveyard filled with the dead
 back to the land of the 'still dying',
 how deceitful, wicked and worldly, when left to its own vices,
the heart is!
Let's face it; God's grace is our only, utter hope!