Our journal of what we pray is our sojourn of life along the narrow way, even the old paths, submitting to the Bible as a light unto both.
Once again, one of our hens got broody this 2021, and after tucking her away in the brooder barn, she hatched out a bunch — not even sure how many…maybe at least 9, and I believe they all have made it so far!
Here are a couple of pictures of them all:
And here’s their video:
We once again thank the Lord for His gracious provisions in granting this next set of 2021 chicks! We are thankful the eggs can go to help others!
— David
That time of year rolled around again this 2021, hens getting broody, and some of ours don’t always get broody in the barn or chicken tractor…
One of our hens didn’t come back to roost one night. I think it was the next evening, I thought I’d go see if I could somehow find her out in the woods somewhere, which is where I hoped she was vs. having been eated by a predator. I circled around the back side and west areas behind our house. I headed down one direction, and saw what I thought was a plastic bag in a thicket of weeds with no leaves because it was still winter-ish, and I thought, no way was that the hen. But, lo and behold, it surely ended up being her! An amazing gift from God to find her back there, somewhere I would not usually look!
When we tried to get her, she ran off, but we were able to track her down, and so we took her and her eggs and put them in the brooder barn, and God graciously granted I believe it was 5 chicks, and all 5 are still going today, although sadly, it appears one is having a problem with its foot — she’s walking on it crimped backwards…don’t know if it’s an injury or a disorder. But, we pray the Lord might grant it healing.
Here are a couple of pictures of them all:
And here’s their video:
As always, we are very thankful to the Lord for these new provisions, and we pray they benefit His people in some way!
— David
James 2:21 – “Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?
Abraham’s Issac was his only son — the son of the promise, and yet God would have Abraham offer Isaac as a literal sacrifice on an alter. I would assume this caused Abraham at least a little angst of heart and mind. However, he was quickly obedient.
What has God required of us that causes us pause by way of reason or feelings? How are we to approach obedience to God? Are we willing to offer up our “Issacs”?
Puritan Thomas Manton in his most excellent work “A Practical Commentary, or an Exposition with Notes, on the Epistle of James” applies Abraham’s experience in a practical way to our lives in this verse.
You can listen to all of verse 21 here:
The entire book is available here: https://ia800904.us.archive.org/2/items/apracticalcomme01mantgoog/apracticalcomme01mantgoog.pdf#page=246, and this section starts on PDF page 246 (in the print, page 227), or you can get it in other formats here…
…or you can listen to the entire book on this page:
Thomas Manton – James Commentary
From Thomas Manton:
Obs 4. From that Offered Isaac upon the altar He brings this as the great argument of the truth of Abraham’s faith. It is not for faith to produce every action, unless it produce such actions as Abraham’s. Such as will engage you to self-denial, are troublesome to the flesh. David scorned such service as [that] cost nothing. There — where we must deny our own reason, affections, interest — that is an action fit to try a believer.
Let us see what is observable in this action of Abraham, that we may go and do likewise.
But Abraham was not only to conflict with natured affection, but reason; not only with reason, but faith. He was, as it were, to execute all his hopes; and all this was to be done by himself; with his own hand he was at one stroke to cut off all his comforts. The execution of such a sentence was as harsh and bitter to flesh and blood, as to be his own executioner.
Oh! go and shame yourselves without, you that can so little deny yourselves for God, that attempt duties only when they are easy and obvious, never care to recover them out of the hands of difficulty and inconvenience. Public duties, if well done, are usually against carnal interests; private duties against carnal affections. Can you give up all that is near and dear to you? Can you offer up your Isaac? your ease and pleasure, for private duties? your interests, for public? Every action is not a trial of faith, but such as engages to self-denial.
(2nd.) Resolutely: he concealed it from his wife, servants, from Isaac himself, that so he might not be diverted from his pious purpose. Oh! who is now so wise to order the circumstances of a duty, that he may not be hindered in it?
(3rd.) He denied carnal reason. In difficult cases we seek to elude the command; dispute how we shall shift it off, not how we shall obey it. If we had been put upon such a trial, we would question the vision, or seek some other meaning; perhaps offer the image of Isaac, or some youngling of the flock, and call it Isaac; as now we often pervert a command by distinctions, and invent shifts to cheat our souls into a neglect of duty; as the heathens, when their gods called for a man, they offered a candle; or as Hercules offered up a painted man instead of a living.
But Abraham does not so, though he had a fair occasion; for he was divided between believing the promise and obeying the command. God tried him in his faith; his faith was to conflict with his natural reason, as well as his obedience with his natural affection. But he ‘accounted that God was able to raise him from the dead’ (Heb. xi. 19), and he reconciled the commandment with the promise. How easily could we have slipped out at this door, and disobey out of pretences and reasons of religion! But Abraham offered Isaac.
May God grant us to be able to see the “Isaacs” in our lives that we might not be willing to easily let go of;
… may we not lessen duty because it goes against carnal selves in some way;
… may He grant us the faith and trust in Him to not hold on to any things of this temporal world;
… may we see ourselves only as stewards of anything we have, with God as the actual owner of them;
… may we cheerfully and obediently surrender and submit ourselves to whatever His pleasure is in the retrieving of these things from us at any moment, even those things most dear to us and least pleasing to our carnal selves;
… and may the Lord grant that He be our only portion, now and always!
Psa 16:5- “The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot.“
Psa 119:57 – “Thou art my portion, O Lord: I have said that I would keep thy words.“
Psa 73:25-26 – “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.
— David
Well, we had an uninvited guest flying around in our house the other night. At first, I thought it was a barn swallow, which we commonly have around the house here, since they build nests on the porch rafters. But as it flew by me at around eye level, I wondered….and sure enough, when it landed up on the wall, it sure looked like what I had now suspected it was…a bat! We figure it must have tailgaited when one of us came in from outside.
Hm, what to do. So, I went and got a fish net we have (which, by the way, works great for swooping up runaway chickens! 
), set up the ladder, and with a piece of cardboard, rounded up the bat, and then took him outside and let it go.
Here’s a little video of the event! To me, it looked like a flying mouse. The cats were sure interested in it, although I assume they thought it was a bird:
I don’t know what grief it could have caused us or the cats in the house, but we thank the Lord we were able to scoop it up and out.
— David
P.S. If you don’t understand the reference in the title of this blog post, a long time ago there was a TV commerical for a fast-food burger joint where an elderly lady was complaining of the competitor’s hamburger size compared to the bun, asking “Where’s the beef?”
Matthew 16:24 – “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.“
By nature, we are all self-centered. Every sin has some idolatry in it, where we are self-gods (ie. God said to do or not do something, and in a certain way, and we say, “No, I know better”, which is defacto saying we will not have God be our God, but ourselves). The original sin was to be God (while the temptation was to “be as gods”, Gen 3:5, in the end, since only one God can exist at a time by definition, the reality was that they wanted to be God).
According to the above verse, we are required to deny ourselves to be a disciple of Christ. Then, it seems it would follow that we really cannot be good Christians with each other without it either, which makes sense from experience as well.
Along the lines with how important I believe Jonathan Edwards’ Charity and Its Fruits as sort of being part of “Christianity 101”, that every person claiming the name of Christ should attend to, I believe Thomas Manton’s A Treatise of Self-Denial is right up there along with it.
And so, to help make it available in audio format for those who might rather listen than read, I recently finished recording the entire treatise, which you can access as one of our Readings pages here:
And if you want to read it, you can find it here: https://www.monergism.com/treatise-self-denial-free-ebook
I cannot emphasize how important I believe Mr. Manton’s exposé is. We hope you’ll take the time to go through it, and may God guide your studies.
— David
Once again, in hoping to help us learn them better, and maybe help others learn the Psalms as well, Sue & I finished recording the next set of Psalms, 90A-93A, from the psalter we use!
And here they are:
(If the above player doesn’t work, or if you would like to save any of the files locally to your computer, you can click the Download link below, or right click it and click Save As in the popup menu.)
Ps 66:1-2 – “Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands: Sing forth the honour of his name: make his praise glorious.“
— David
Previous Psalms singings:
Here’s a little around our homestead at the beginning and end of Texas’ 2021 arctic blast!
This was after the first main night — snow and cold, with forecasted windchills down to -18F. These were I believe our worst temperatures we’ve experienced here, even after the 2011 freeze. The thermometer says about 4F:
Here’s the homestead:
I was a little worried about the cattle, given there are some young ones, but thanks to the Lord, they all made it through ok!
During the week, Sue’s “onesy” (coveralls) in front of the wood burning stove was the favorite for the domestics:
On the first day after a week of these freezing temperatures, things started getting back to normal. Here’s our resident stray hanging out on the cistern spigot, which we had double wrapped with blankets the whole time, allowing us to use it too whenever we needed:
And here are all the goat accoutrements hanging on the fence after Sue took them off:
Those were just a few pictures, but we show a lot more in this video, which has the day after the first main night as above, and then after coming out of it 5 days later (including a surpise from a momma cow!):
All throughout, the Lord was merciful in granting all the animals come through (yes, that missing rooster from the video showed up!), and helping Sue and me with strength to do all the care-taking!
We have no grid electric or water, which actually worked to our advantage, as we always had electric and good water as needed. We pray for those still suffering from the effects, but also hope people might consider their situation and on whom or what they depend for life sustenance.
We also saw how we believe God pre-set up provision before we really knew what was coming, even though they seemed a little “cross” to us at the time: the boy goats had knocked off the top of their hay bale, but Sue just took that hay into the barn, and it ended up being their main food for the week; and I had pre-put out hay bales for the cows, and one had been eaten down a lot and spread out by the time the cold hit, and another spread around some, but those also afforded bedding for the cattle. Also, both the tractor and truck starters went out at the same time a few weeks ago, we needed both for this cold front, and so they were ready to go.
Once again, we are very thankful for God’s help through 2021’s arctic blast, and for the gift of the new little heifer calf!
— David
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