"God Is There!" -2

"God is known in her palaces for a refuge." (Psalms 48:3) "Known": the actual word is 'yada', which is a verb, meaning that it describes an action or occurrence, or even indicates a state of being; not quite the same yada that my mom would use when she wasn't buying my excuse for not doing what I was told to do; then again, maybe it was a close relation, which is why she would say it several times in a row; like saying, "I know what your telling me, but it doesn't quite match your actions or your situation". The word is to perceive, to acquire knowledge, to know, or to be acquainted; and it includes the action of knowing both as commencing, and as completed. Of course the word is far more complex than that, but at it's basic meaning, it incorporates the action which is involved with faith, as in saying, "faith without works is dead" (James 2:26), because you know that a body which does not have a spirit is dead, and you can see that there is no life within it; so too, faith that does not move is faith that has no life, and will take you nowhere. This is what faith looks like, because it knows the completion, therefore it moves in that direction; if it does not move in the direction of the completion, then it has no life, and where there is no life, there is nothing to be acquired by moving forward; it's pretty much like a dead corpse just laying there waiting to decompose and be put to some kind of use in the ground. I find it interesting that David uses the word "palaces" verses sanctuary, because it speaks more to the fact that its a dwelling place more than some place used for shelter to find refuge; in other words, refuge is in the dwelling place. What this speaks into my heart about, is about where God wants me to be, verses where I usually am: God wants to be dwelling in Him constantly, not trying to find a place of refuge every time I am in a jam or have a situation. You would think by now I would "know" by experience the place in which to dwell; but then again, sometimes I think that I can take His refuge with me everywhere I go; not such a good idea, because He wants me to dwell in Him, and in Him alone. Therefore, "home is where the heart is" has a new meaning when it comes to these "palaces" that are for "refuge", because "THERE" is where our hearts need to be... "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" (Matthew 6:24-30)