Solid gold

Malachi is a fantastic book. I never realized it. Maybe it's not the book so.much as God's Word in general. I tend to love all of it. The best tidbits are what the Lord says another marraige. He tells men to be faithful to the wife of their youth because God has brought them together and they are one before gos. I also love that He gives a number one purpose foe marriage : to produce godly offspring. He even mentions how His spirit is in their union. I had no idea this passage was here. Good word.

Further, the concept of tithing is mentioned. It challenges is to give and see if God does not bless. I know He does. The more faithfully we give, the more faithfullly He gives to is. And God's. Faithfulness can't be matched...EVER!!

He is so good there's just no stopping Him. He works with us because He loves us. He moves without us because He is greater than us. What an awesome God we serve!!

Less than our iniquities deserve

Ezra 7-10 focuses on how the priest of Israel took non-Jewish women to be their wives and the wives of their sons. It seems like a strange thing to devote 4 whole chapters of the Bible to. It seems awfully racists and close-minded. What's wrong with interracial marriages? Is God prejudice?

Clearly the answer to that question is no. It's not the interracial part that God frowns upon, but He does not want us to be "yoked to unbelievers". Jesus says it. The problem with a Jew not marrying a Jew is not that Jew's are better - no! It's that a non-Jew doesn't have the covenant with God. That was the problem. A believer needs a believer as a spouse. Look at Solomon. All his many foreign wives were what distracted him from God. Song of Solomon is not written to one of the foreign wives, but to a Jewish bride. I think it's intentional...

What's interesting in Ezra is how quickly every repents. For once, Israel recognizes their mistake and repents. They mourn and feel terribly guilty. They make offerings and fast. They recognize that God could punish them more, but He is punishing them less than their sins deserve (9:13). Isn't that true for all of us? God punishes me way less than my sins deserve. Why do I never fall and rip my clothes in anguish because of the iniquities in my life?

I think these chapters of Ezra are a call to take our sins much more seriously. We have to respond according to the grievousness of our actions. Yes, Jesus has paid the price and we are forgiven. However, we still messed up and need to ask for that forgiveness. God forgave these people because they humbled themselves. We must always do the same. 

Such a time as this

Esther

I went through a Beth Moore study on Esther. Once you focus so intensely on a book for a period of time, it's hard to read it again with fresh eyes. That's the problem I have when reading Esther. Still, there's always fresh goodies to be seen. It's a great book filled with encouragement and irony. Got to love how God works things out.

I guess the best part is in chapter 4 verse 14. "For is you keeps silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" How else can you respond to that except with "If I perish, I perish". Mordecai was explaining to Esther that she has been called by God to do something big. But God, being God, doesn't need her. He is fully capable of delivering His people without anyone's help. She has been called, but God doesn't need her. Esther chooses to step up to the plate. She probably knows her Jewish history well enough to realize that her God can deliver her from anything.

And He did.

He allowed vengeance where it was earned and victory where it was needed. You can crush God's people and get away with it.

So who knows in your life or in mine. Maybe God has called us here for such a time as this? Life somethings sucks or somethings we have big shoes to fill. But who knows?

I'll tell you what I know. If you hear a call to do something that seems right but impossible, chances are you'd better do it. God doesn't call us to things that we can do alone. What's the point in that?

So good so so good

Today's reading was just all kinds of meaty. I finished up the book of Zechariah and it was so great. So much stuff about God's forgiveness and faithfulness. So much prophecy about how he is going to be looking out for is always. It was just a great way to start my day today.

Sometimes I find myself very discouraged and tired. Like I'm not making any kind of difference on my work. Its tiring. I want to bringing God glory on what o do and it is defontielg a balancing act. I feel eventually I will get it all together. I'm definitely putting a better door coward with some of my students. I just have to remember what works and embrace that.....

I just have to remember that God works and embrace THAT. Really at the end of the day its all that matters...

And I'm going to see my first 3D movie tomorrow and it happens to be the Lion King so life can't be all that bad,right?

Pants on the ground

Remove his filthy garments from him... I will remove his iniquity from him and clothe him in pure vestments.
Zechariah 3:4

How sweet it is to have fresh new clothes and more so to have every sin and mistake taken away. How sweet indeed!
It's interesting how some metaphors are so common in the Bible. Connections between clothing and cleanliness. The importance of having clean clothes and pure vestments as it were.

Praise the Lord for the good news that all our sins are taken away!!

A couple days together...

So Ezekiel 33-39...I know it's a lot to cover but ill try my best. So first of Ezekiel 33 talks about bad shepherds in Israel and how God plans on giving Israel a new shepherd, David, to tend to them. Now is it actually David? Of course not! That's what's so great! I've said it once ill say it till I die, I love how Jesus appears in the OT. Not by name but by action! It really is good stuff.

This turned into a couple of weeks...I will skip the rest of Ezekiel and move on to Daniel. I had no idea that there was so much prophecy in that book. I had always just assumed that it was the furnace and the lion's den then boom done. Au contraire! He predicts Jesus returning and reigning. Its pretty crazy stuff and for me was really exciting to read.

Yesterday I was in Ezra and today my study put me in Haggai. Both deal with the rebuilding of God's House after the captivity. It's interesting how God says he frustrate the labors of the Israelites until they started rebuilding His house because He deserves to be remembered and worshipped before they started rebuilding their own lives. I feel like that's an important concept. After anything we go through we need to make sure the first step to rebuilding our lives is rebuilding our place of worship and beginning to worship again. I know I've ignores this step and it did feel like my cause was frustrated.

For example my computer. Now ethat it's working again I need to get back to worshipping God and not worrying about downloading music....

I wish i had more to say...

My computer never works anymore so I have to type these on my cellphone...yeah for technology? It's making it used for me to keep my commitment. For awhile there I felt like. Was getting so much out of what I was reading each morning because I would have these deep insights from the Lord. Now I read the passages and can't write about them so I barely remember them. As a reading teacher I know that making connections with a text is a FANTASTIC reading strategy but it's hard to do with just any verse...especially when it's talking about the same themes as always: as a result of God's judgment and wrath people will know that He is an awesome God. And there's no doubt that He is. He makes promises that He keeps. He gives and takes away but it's always for the best...

That was the lesson I got out of yesterday...yesterday we had the memorial service for a cousin of mine. I don't know if she's with the Lord now or nor but I pray that she is. It's so much harder when you don't know where they ended up. But for reasons only He knows, the Lord took her from this earth. Just like He took Ezekiel's wife, He took my cousin. Not so we could greive and be sad. People die...it's the nature of the world we live in. We can greive but if we mourned everyone who left is it would never stop. Sure it's harder when they aren't a believer but eventually we have to move on...

I know all that comes across as insensitive but it's what I got.

In other news, I'm feeling like I'm very close to becoming like the daughter talkes about in metaphor in this book...you know the whorey ones...it's not who I want to be but I feel like it's my default setting sometimes...I know that's a lie and that my default setting is now Daughter of God but still....these are the things I deal with...

For not having much to say, my thumbs are really tired...

Maybe I'm inventing something else...

So the expression don't reinvent the wheel always applies to me a little to well. I think it must be like my favorite thing to do. That I put too much on my plate. I know God made me this way...he gave me a servants heart for a reason, but at the end of the day I feel tired. I try to do too much by myself and tend to not let others help me. I just don't like to ask for help. I don't want anyone else to be inconvenienced. I know it's a problem.

Sometimes I feel like I am my own idol. I get so proud of the things that I accomplish that I lose sight of Him who helped me accomplish them to begin with. I can't do anything alone and I often forget that fact. Often.

You'd think I would have learned by now to start relying on others because I know someday soon it will cause me problems...oh well. I tend to learn things the hard way...

In trying to be the best at what God has called me to do, I have become very prideful of what God has allowed me to do. Honestly at the end of the day I pray the kids are learning... please Lord let them be learning. Don't let me get in the way of the goal.

It may be a wheel...or maybe I'm reinventing something else...

Ain't no rest for the wicked

Ezekiel 18

Remember back when Osama Bin Laden was killed? I remember an equal number of my Christian friends quoting a certain verse on Facebook - Ezekiel 18:23. It bothered me then, and it bothers me know. It's not that it isn't true, because after all it is in Scripture. And it's not that it doesn't apply, because it most certainly can. However, this verse is talking about someone who is wicked and repents of his evil ways to become righteous. Shall he live? The Lord says "...for the righteousness that he has done he shall live. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declare the Lord, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?" (verses 22-23). So yeah, it applies, but is it the best choice to convey that point? NO! If all of these people would have just kept reading, I believe they would have found the best choice: verse 32. "For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live." Not only does it convey that God hates death, but it encourages others to avoid that fate.

The real problem with quoting verse 23 is that it gives a skewed picture. Yes, God doesn't rejoice in the death of the wicked, but that doesn't mean He doesn't think they deserve to die. He is a God of justice. All of chapter 18 is talking about how God judges people. We are judged by our own sins. "The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, not the father shall suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself." (verse 20). The wicked can't escape their fate. God doesn't want anybody to die, but justice is justice. "Yet you say, 'The way of the Lord is not just'. Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?" (verse 25).

I was sad to see this quote so much on that day because I feel like it misrepresent the Lord's perspective. So next time a major terrorist is killed - could we all just quote verse 32?