The Small Branch

"Blessed be the LORD, Who has not given us to be torn by their teeth. Our soul has escaped as a bird out of the snare of the trapper; The snare is broken and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the LORD, Who made heaven and earth." Psalm 124: 6-8      I love this passage.  It goes through my mind over and over daily.  "The snare is broken."  We don't have to be caught up in our sin, because Jesus broke the snare holding us captive.  He smashed it.  And "we have escaped."  "We have escaped," beloved.  Escaped.  Does it make sense for an escaped prisoner to voluntarily go back into captivity, not just once, but over and over?  But we do.  We go back over and over.  I do, at least.  But now, God brings this passage to mind and I ask myself, "why?"  Why do I go back?  It is illogical.  It is self-destructive.  "The snare is broken and we have escaped."  Let's stay out of that broken snare, shall we?  Thank

"Come, let us worship and bow down, Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker." Psalm 95:6      This summer, on a recommendation from my BSF substitute teaching leader, I have been studying Psalms.  God led me to a group working through Beth Moore's Stepping Up , which is a study of the Psalms of Ascent, so I folded that in to my summer study.  In the beginning of that study, Beth challenged us to actually take the posture of bowing down on our faces before the Lord to begin each day - giving it to Him and recognizing Him as the King He is.  I had also read recently a book called Follow Me  by David Platt, which said something like this about salvation:  we are not asking Jesus to be Lord of our lives, we are acknowledging that He IS  Lord.  All that to say, what a difference physical posture can make in our spirits.      It amazes me the difference in my day when I actually take the posture of being on my face, in physical reality, not just in my spirit, before the Lor