Author Archives: Becky Pliego

About Becky Pliego

I am grateful because God, in His grace, called me out of darkness and into his admirable light. When I did not look for Him, He found me. When I was in a pit of sin, He rescued me. I am not walking this road alone, my family is always with me, and we love Him, because He loved us first.

Love Hopes All Things

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100 Days of Books at My Daily Journey

Every morning after having breakfast we are reading a very important book, Loving the Way Jesus Loves by Phil Ryken. And this is an important book, because as I have mentioned before, the doctrine of the love of God (His love for us, and the love among brethren) has been abused in so many cases that sometimes it feels like it is not essential to understand and study it in the Christian life, we just take it for granted or “use” it against “the unloving brothers and sisters” when we feel offended.

In the chapter, Love Hopes, I learned many wonderful things about the love that hopes. In this chapter Ryken bring together two passages to help us understand in depth the “love that hopes”: Love hopes all things ( I Cor. 13:7), and John 17, the High Priestly Prayer.

When Jesus is praying before the Father the night before his crucifixion, he prays a prayer full of love, full of that love that hopes all things. And he prays hoping for several things:

He hoped that he would be glorified (v.1-5).

He hoped that his people would persevere (v.10-15).

He hoped that his people would be holy (v.16- 19).

He hoped that we would be one. He prayed for our unity (v.20.23).

He hoped that one day we would enter his glory (v.24-26).

Each one of these points are extremely important and beautiful when we look at them closely (and Ryken does a great job in helping us do that), but today I want to focus in one: Jesus prayed with all hope that we, His people, would become one.

Ryken says,

“We are too weak to to keep ourselves safe from Satan’s temptations, too sinful to sanctify ourselves, and too dead to raise ourselves up to everlasting life. Nevertheless, Jesus dared to hope that we would become one holy and loving church, kept safe by the end of time, when we would live in the love of God for all eternity.”

Because Jesus prayed this, I also dare to pray saying, “Lord, make us one, make us one. Make us one, help us love one another in spite of the differences, help us love one another genuinely. Make us one, Jesus. “

And this wonderful love that hopes all things has been poured into our hearts (Rom. 5:5), which means that we can love with the kind of love that Jesus loves us. We can love with the love that hopes all things. And “this hope will not disappoint us because it flows from the God of love.”

“Hope is not simply wishful thinking. It does not depend on things working out the way we planned, or having our problems solved when we expect them to be solved. On the contrary, our true hope is Jesus himself, and the promises of his love.”

This love that hopes all things brings us to our knees, just like it brought Jesus to his knees. “When we have the love of Jesus in us, as Jesus prayed we would, then we will do for others what he did for us. We will not simply hope for the best, but because we have of the hope we have in Jesus, we will pray for the best.” 

“Love hopes all things. Understand that whenever we give up hope, this is really a failure to love, because love hopes. Love hopes that someone lost in sin will believe the gospel. It hopes that a broken relationship will be reconciled. It hopes that by the grace of God, sin will be forgiven, and forgiven again. It hopes that even after a long struggle, there will still be spiritual progress. It hopes that someone who has fallen away can be restored to useful service in the Kingdom of God. It even hopes that when a body gets sick and dies, it will be raised again at the last day.”


Praying that I will learn to love with the love that hopes all things, 

Becky

Maybe you will also enjoy reading: The Doctrine of Love: Our Identity as Christians.

 

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Come Ye Children, a Book by C.H. Spurgeon (Mandatory Reading for Parents and Teachers)

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37/100 Days of Books
There are some books that I love to revisit once in a while. It is great to read my notes, and the parts I highlighted. Yesterday I pulled out from the shelves a little book that to my surprise I read in 2009 (I couldn’t believe it had been such a long time since then!), the book was written by C.H. Spurgeon and is entitled, Come Ye Children: Practical Help for Telling Children About Jesus. This is a book full of practical help based on biblical principles to encourage us (parents, teachers, and pastors)  to do well and with passion, the task we have before us of training our children in the Truth.

Here are some quotes that I am sure you will appreciate:

 

“As we sow we reap. Let us expect our children to know the Lord. Let us from the beginning mingle the name of Jesus with their ABC. Let them read their first lessons from the Bible. It is a remarkable thing that there is no book from which children learn to read so quickly as from the New Testament: there is a charm about that book which draws forth the infant mind. But let us never be guilty, as parents, of forgetting the religious training of our children; for if we do we may be guilty of the blood of their souls.”

 

“Believe me, your children need the Spirit of God to give them new hearts and right spirits, or else they will go astray as other children do. Remember that however young they are, there is a stone within the youngest breast; and that stone must be taken away, or be the ruin of the child. There is a tendency to evil even where as yet is not developed into act, and that tendency needs to be overcome by the divine power of the Holy Spirit causing the child to be born again.”

 

“Teaching is poor work when love is gone, it is like a smith working without fire, or a builder without mortar. A shepherd who does not love his sheep is a hireling and not a shepherd; he will flee in the time of danger, and leave his flock to the wolf. Where there is no love there will be no life; living lambs are not fed by dead men. We preach and teach love: our subject is the love of God in Christ Jesus. How can we teach this if we have no love ourselves?”

 

“There must be doctrine, solid, sound, gospel doctrine to constitute real feeding.”

 

“Lay much stress upon this; tell your children that the Word of the Lord is a pure Word, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Let their esteem for the Book of God be carried to the highest point.”

 

“This book is the Word of God, and if we teach it, we teach that which the Lord will accept and bless. O dear teachers -and I speak here to myself also- let our teaching be more and more Scriptural!” Fret not if our classes forget what we say, but pray them to remember what the Lord says. May Divine truths about sin, and righteousness, and judgement to come, be written on their hearts! May revealed truths concerning the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the work of the Holy Ghost, never be forgotten by them!  May they know the virtue and necessity of the atoning blood of our Lord, the power of His resurrection, and the glory of His second coming! May the doctrines of grace be graven as with pen of iron upon their minds, and written as with the point of a diamond upon their hearts, never to be erased! If we can secure this we have not lived in vain. The generation now ruling seems bent on departing from the eternal truth of God: but we shall not despair if the gospel be impressed upon the memory of the rising race.”

 

“God blessing your efforts, dear friends, your children may know all of Scripture that is necessary to their salvation.”

 

“We cannot advance a step by doubt; our only progress is by faith… Believe God and and thou hast made progress. So let us pray for our children, that constantly they may know and believe more and more; for the Scripture is able to make them wise unto salvation, but only through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Faith is the result to aim at; faith in the appointed, anointed and exalted Saviour. This is the anchorage to which we would bring these little ships, for here they will abide in perfect safety.”

 

“Sound Instruction in Holy Scripture, when quickened by a living faith, creates a solid character.”

 

“Children need the gospel, the whole gospel, the unadulterated gospel; they ought to have it, and if they are taught of the Spirit of God they are capable of receiving it as persons of ripe years… Be encouraged; the God who has saved so many of your children is going to save many more of them, and we shall have a great joy as we see hundreds brought to Christ.”

 

“It is not your instruction that can save the souls of your children; it is the blessing of God the Holy Spirit accompanying your labors. May God bless and crown your efforts with abundant success! He will surely do so if you are instant in prayer, constant in supplication.”

“I beseech you, never treat child-piety with suspicion. It is a tender plant; do not brush it to hard.”

 

“Mothers, the godly training of your offspring is your first and most pressing duty. Christian women, by teaching children the Holy Scriptures, are as much fulfilling their part for the Lord, as Moses in judging Israel, or Solomon in building the temple.”

 

“Your business is not merely to teach children to read the Bible, not barely to inculcate the duties of morality, nor even to instruct them in the mere letter of the gospel, but your high calling is to be the means, in the hand of God, of bringing life from heaven to dead souls.”

Let us not grow weary, friends, let us preach the Word of God to our children from the moment they open their eyes to the moment we kiss them good-night.

In God we hope.

Becky

The Greatest Drama Ever Staged is the Official Creed of Christendom

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The Person and Works of Christ by Jim LePage

This is the title of the first chapter of Dorothy Sayers’ book, Creed or Chaos? And in it she says,

 

“We are constantly assured that the churches that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine -“dull dogma,” as people call it. The fact is precise the opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes fur dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man -and the dogma is the drama.

That drama is summarized quiet clearly in the Creeds of the Church, and if we think it dull, it is because we either have never really read those amazing documents, or have them recited so often and so mechanically as to have lost all sense of their meaning. The plot pivots upon a single character, and the whole action is the answer to a single central problem: What think ye of Christ?”

 

  The Apostles Creed
 
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
   the Maker of heaven and earth,
   and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:
 Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
        born of the virgin Mary,
         suffered under Pontius Pilate,
         was crucified, dead, and buried;
 He descended into Hades.
     On the third day He arose again from the dead;
     He ascended unto heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
    from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
 I believe in the Holy Ghost;
    the holy catholic church; the communion of saints;
    the forgiveness of sins;
    the resurrection of the body;
    and the life everlasting.
 Amen.


The Nicene Creed 
 I believe in one God, the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth,
and of all things visible and invisible.
 And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only-begotten Son of God,
begotten of the Father before all worlds;
God of God,
Light of Light,
very God of very God;
begotten, not made,
being of one substance with the Father,
by whom all things were made.
Who, for us men and for our salvation,
came down from heaven,
and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary,
and was made man;
and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate;
He suffered and was buried;
and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures;
and ascended into heaven,
and sits on the right hand of the Father;
and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead;
whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life;
who proceeds from the Father and the Son;
who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified;
who spoke by the prophets.
 And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins;
and I look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.
Amen.
May we recite this Lord’s Day our Creeds with all our hearts; and may we live the rest of the week accordingly to what we proclaim to believe.
Becky
Visit Jim LePage Art & Design Website

When Your Friend Bites You

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Our Little One had been asking for a hamster for a long time, so last weekend, we my husband finally said yes. This was going to be the first time we would open our home to a cute rodent, while at the same time providing him with an expensive house, special food, and a colorful playground. She named him Rugby (yes, you guessed it right, her older brother suggested the name, and because she loves him so much she agreed).

Rugby has not been in this home more than a week and he already broke this little girl’s heart.

Two days ago my Little One came running and crying (and this is not common for her to do), her finger bleeding and the words coming out from her heart, “Rugby bit me! It hurts really bad!” I did what a mother is supposed to do. Not panicking (while my son is reassuring me, “Mom, it’s going to be OK. This hamster is not infected with rabies…) I washed her finger like 20 times (maybe 30) and hugged her and put a band-aid around the deep bite.

I hugged her while she was still sobbing. Then she said, “Mom, Rugby was so calm when I reached to pet him. I thought he would never bite me. I thought he was my friend.”

This is one of those hard lessons to learn: When our friends (those that we thought were true friends) bite us, it hurts deeply.

They know where to bite, they know what would hurt us, and without thinking, when we don’t expect it, they bite and we just can’t believe it. And we soon find ourselves crying. It hurts. It really does.

What do we do? Should Our Little One abandon Rugby? Starve him to death? No, we are trying to persuade her not to do so (even though she is not speaking to him anymore).

And what do we do with the friends that bite us? Ignore them? No. Let’s feed them love and forgiveness.

Jesus taught us to do this. To love the unlovable. To love our enemies. To forgive over and over and over again those that bite us.

Peter Leithart in his commentary on Samuel says about David and his response to Saul’s hatred,

“Long before  Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, David had discerned that the Lord required love for enemies.”

Learning about His Perfect Love, under His sun, and by His Grace,

 

Becky

The Love Story of a Passionate God and His Bride -Part 2-

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©Katie Lloyd Photography

 

You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore. The like has never been, nor ever shall be. You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself images of men, and with them played the whore. And you took your embroidered garments to cover them, and set my oil and my incense before them. Also my bread that I gave you—I fed you with fine flour and oil and honey—you set before them for a pleasing aroma; and so it was, declares the Lord God. And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your whorings so small a matter that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them? And in all your abominations and your whorings you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, wallowing in your blood.

“And after all your wickedness (woe, woe to you! declares the Lord God), you built yourself a vaulted chamber and made yourself a lofty place in every square. At the head of every street you built your lofty place and made your beauty an abomination, offering yourself to any passerby and multiplying your whoring. You also played the whore with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, multiplying your whoring, to provoke me to anger. Behold, therefore, I stretched out my hand against you and diminished your allotted portion and delivered you to the greed of your enemies, the daughters of the Philistines, who were ashamed of your lewd behavior. You played the whore also with the Assyrians, because you were not satisfied; yes, you played the whore with them, and still you were not satisfied. You multiplied your whoring also with the trading land of Chaldea, and even with this you were not satisfied.

“How sick is your heart, declares the Lord God, because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute, building your vaulted chamber at the head of every street, and making your lofty place in every square. Yet you were not like a prostitute, because you scorned payment. Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! Men give gifts to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side with your whorings. So you were different from other women in your whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore, and you gave payment, while no payment was given to you; therefore you were different.

“Therefore, O prostitute, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God, Because your lust was poured out and your nakedness uncovered in your whorings with your lovers, and with all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your children that you gave to them, therefore, behold, I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved and all those you hated. I will gather them against you from every side and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness.

Ezekiel 16: 13-37

John Piper says,

“There’s the picture of the faithless Israel. Her idolatry -her turning from the Lord God to foreign gods- is pictured as the work of a whore. And I say again...God created us with sexual passion so that there would be a language to describe what it means to cleave to him in love and what it means to turn away from him to others.”

God’s judgement is then pronounced (v35-37) and Piper makes us consider this,

“It may look as though God has finally finished with Israel. Judgement had fallen. The wife was put away. But that is not the last word. God hates divorce. Therefore, though he judge and separate, he will not finally forsake his covenant people -his wife. He will make with her a new covenant and bring her back to himself at the cost of his Son and by the power of his Spirit:”

 

“For thus says the Lord God: I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath in breaking the covenant, yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant. Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you take your sisters, both your elder and your younger, and I give them to you as daughters, but not on account of the covenant with you. I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord God.” Ezekiel 16: 59-63

 

“The end of the story is that God, after giving up his faithless wife into the hands of brutal lovers, will not only take her back, and not only make with her a new and everlasting covenant, but will himself pay for all her sins. Are there debts this prostitute owes? This husband will pay them. “When I atone for… all that you have done, declares the Lord.” Indeed he will pay with the life of his own Son.” J.Piper

Praise God for His Passionate love for his Bride , for His irresistible Grace, for His coming to us!

Alleluia!

Becky

Note: This excerpt has been taken from the book Sex and the Supremacy of Christ (p.29-30).

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The Love Story of A Passionate God and His Bride -Part 1-

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@Katie Lloyd Photography

“Again the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations, and say, Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.

“And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare.

“When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk. And I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. And I put a ring on your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord God.”

Ezekiel 16: 4-14

John Pipers says,

“That’s a picture of God’s utterly free and undeserved mercy. That is how Israel was chosen. That’s how you were brought from death to life and from darkness to light and from unbelief to faith, if you are a believer. “I said to you,’Live!’ and made you flourish. I married you. You are mine.” That’s how Israel began. That’s how the Christian life begins. The mighty mercy of God.” (Sex and the Supremacy of Christ)

May we never, not for a second, forget where we were when He found us.

Becky