Unless We Seek...

How can we gain great confidence

In seasons of distress

Or find hope and deliverance

Without God’s promises

How can we know God’s promises

If we, worry-inclined

Still try to fill heart-emptiness

Through channels of the mind

How can man’s ignorance maintain

The things we ought to think

How can Living Water sustain

If we don’t stop to drink

How can we think on purer things

If we have never sought

The richer and the surer things

That the Great Teacher taught

How can a ship without a sail

Be steered from rock and reef

How can a man survive the gale

Without anchored belief

How can belief be absolute

It never can unless

The seed of faith has taken root

Within God’s promises

How can the seed of faith take root

And yield sweet recompense

Only when repentance bears fruit

In meek obedience

How can obedience begin

A life of happiness

When we find kind assurance in

God’s faithful promises

How can we find His promises

To empower the weak

Alas, we never can unless

Unless we truly seek

© Janet Martin

Seek and ye shall find...
Matt.7:7

 

2 Peter 1:2-10 KJV

 Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,

³ According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:

⁴ Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

⁵ And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;

⁶ And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;

⁷ And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.

⁸ For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

⁹ But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.

¹⁰ Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:

Light of Eternity

 Gorgeous break of day...

May we proceed in the Light of eternity!

John 12:46
I am come a light into the world, 

that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.

As we navigate nuances of what has never been

As we exchange what we bear witness to, for the Unseen

As we begin another day on life’s highway, pray we

Proceed with conscience keen in the light of eternity

As we face what is waiting let the grace of God instill

More than futile debating, but dependence on His will

The taper of today is like a candle on the sea

A sallow halo hinged to the light of eternity

As we draw closer to the shore where only souls dismount

And we approach the solemn bar where we will give account

Help us, oh God to trek this sod with awed solemnity

Until hope’s flame is snuffed by the Light of eternity

  

© Janet Martin

Relinquishing Wishes...

 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns;

 yet your heavenly Father feeds them. 

Are you not of more value than they?  

Matt.6:26

I kept rubbing the computer screen till I realized the smudge is on the window in the photo!😉...

 (the Baltimore orioles are offering non-stop entertainment these days!)

I'm so accustomed to kiddo-kisses on the windows I hardly notice them anymore

(until the sun shines!!)

Surrendering to Thee

How often Want conflicts

With the Higher Authority

Of love’s flawless edicts

The wishes we employ

Like farmers planting fields

Cannot produce the sweeter joy

That true surrender yields

Then Lord, help us resign

Our will without regret

Beneath Supremacy Divine

To trust Thee for the ‘Yet’

© Janet Martin

Complete Confidence

Oh Lord, our Father, how uncertain we would ever be

Without the confidence we have by simply trusting Thee

We do not need the answers (much, at times, to our dismay)

But only Lord, to learn to trust thee each step of the way

How often we are torn between the laws of faith and sight

Where what is seen is but the surface of Mercy’s delight

So Lord, we pray that You would let our confidence increase

Lest with fear or impatience we prejudge Your Master peace/piece

How prone we are to groaning from a wilderness of doubt

While Canaan flows with milk and honey, we complain and pout

Forgetting that the Keeper of His Word waits to fulfill

The Plenty of love’s promises according to His will

© Janet Martin

 And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt 

into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites--

a land flowing with milk and honey.'

Exodus 3:17

A Wedding Blessing For Couples Getting Married During Covid-19

 Sometimes my oldest sister calls to ask if I have written or would/could consider writing a poem about a certain topic. This was such a time. She was looking for a poem to put in wedding cards where they are invited guests but are unable to attend due to social distancing. I am sharing it in hopes that it may bless and comfort the couples who do  not have the joy of a traditional wedding...

Love suffers long and it is kind; bears and believes all things

It endures and secures us in the troubles that life brings

Love never fails, the Great Sustain-er in times hard and strange

When cruel disappointment allows things we cannot change

Dear Lord, we know that You behold this lovely bride and groom

And how they miss what’s missing in the Ceremony Room

Then Lord, instill the absence of dear friends and family

With Your fulfilling Presence and love’s divine sympathy

Be near to we who are with them in thought if not in form

Grant us Thy perfect peace, (not as the world gives) in this storm

Satisfy pain with promises that nothing can replace

Surprise the bitter blow with joy possible by Your grace

Thou, Favoured Wedding Guest, fill emptiness with comfort sweet

Lord, bless this day with happiness and make their joy complete

Where, as from this day forward, they, no longer two but one

Have learned, from the beginning who Greater, to lean upon

And as they vow to love each other faithfully always

Lord, fill us with thanksgiving that will fill Your courts with praise

And Lord we pray that You will shelter them close to Your heart

With Your goodness and mercy to follow till death doth part

© Janet Martin

Surely Goodness and Mercy will follow me all the days of my life

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever

Psalm 23:6