Words to Remember... (Part 2 of "How Great is our God")

"But now, hear my speech, O Job, and listen to all my words. Behold, I open my mouth; the tongue in my mouth speaks. My words declare the uprightness of my heart, and what my lips know they speak sincerely." Job 33:1-3

These words are being spoken by a friend of Job's named Elihu. All throughout the book, Job's friends and family are giving "unwise" council, things like "Curse God and die" (Job 2:9.) But one of his friends' advise was worth heeding, and that was Elihu's. At the end of the book, God charges all of Job's friends to seek forgiveness and to offer sacrifices for their wrong judgments of Job during his trials; all but Elihu that is. He is left out of the equation. So judging especially Elihu's words, which seem to come directly form God, he alerts Job to listen carefully to the words he was about to say. He then goes on to say "For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, while they slumber on their beds, then he opens the ears of men and terrifies them with warnings, that he may turn man aside from his deed and conceal pride from a man; he keeps back his soul from the pit, his life from perishing by the sword."

God uses pain, affliction, trials, and tribulation to test us, to refine us, to strengthen us. As showed in Hosea, He leads us into the wilderness for our own good. This can be a hard thing for me to deal with. Was my accident for punishment or was it to draw me closer to Him? Not that I don't deserve punishment, but I believe that it was to draw him closer to Him. I've entertained idols, and I've had wealth and good times, and in both instances, I have been pulled from God. It's in the wilderness that you most appreciate God, that you can see him so clearly. It's in the rain, in the thunderstorm, while thunder is cracking all around you; that's when you draw close to Him.

"Then man prays to God, and he accepts him; he sees his face with a shout of joy, and he restores to man his righteousness. He sings before men and says: 'I sinned and perverted what was right, and it was not repaid to me. He has redeemed my soul from going down into the pit, and my life shall look upon the light." Job 33:26-28.

That says it all. The wilderness is where we find God, where His light shines the best. So in times where we wander in the desert place, remember Him, and know that He's there with you. Notice that He is still taking care of you, giving manna from the sky, and water from the rocks. And fall down at His feet, and praise Him, and He "restores to man his righteousness." So look upon the Light in the wilderness. He will be there.

Scripture...

"Is not just for information, it's for transformation."

"Is not speculation, but revelation."

"We may have seen it as an object of information, not of transformation."

- Mark Driscoll

Sola Scriptura- "by scripture alone," means that the Bible is our highest authority, but not our only authority.

Assuming God's Knowledge...

That's what these people have done. I'm not normally one to worry about people saying these type of things, but I can't help but point out that these people are the one's who claim so ardently that they try not to rob God of His rightly due Glory, yet they go and not only joke about a possible conversion, but claim to have the same knowledge as Him in the process. I guess it's just shameful that, whether Vick has or has not "found Jesus", that people who claim such stature would call into doubt such a claim, as if it's completely out of Jesus' power. It just makes me sick. Ok, I'm over it now. As Paul says in Philippians 1:18, "But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice." Amen!

Derek Webb (again)

Check out my MP3 player on the side of my page. The Derek Webb song "Wedding Dress" goes perfect with my previous post. Listen to it, and think of Hosea. Think of our Lord; loving us, pursuing us, leading us. The lyrics if you need them are below.


"Wedding Dress" - Derek Webb

If you could love me as a wife
and for my wedding gift, your life
Should that be all I'd ever need
or is there more I'm looking for

and should I read between the lines
and look for blessings in disguise
To make me handsome, rich, and wise
Is that really what you want

I am a whore I do confess
But I put you on just like a wedding dress
and I run down the aisle
and I run down the aisle
I?m a prodigal with no way home
but I put you on just like a ring of gold
and I run down the aisle to you

So could you love this bastard child
Though I don't trust you to provide
With one hand in a pot of gold
and with the other in your side

I am so easily satisfied
by the call of lovers so less wild
That I would take a little cash
Over your very flesh and blood

Because money cannot buy
a husband's jealous eye
When you have knowingly deceived his wife

Wow! How Great is Our God! (Part 1)

I have, in the past the past few days, been doing some reading through a few passages of the Bible, and I have been pierced through my soul with some powerful word- images in them. God sure knew what He was doing when He inspired this stuff. This post I will break up into two parts, the first being on a sermon I heard; and the second, to come some time this week, on a passage in Job. Then later on this week, I should post my study on the "unequally yoked" issue. But for now, this is really rocking my world!

I came across this while studying up on the whole marriage/unequally yoked issue that I’m doing now. It’s from a Matt Chandler sermon, which I highly recommend. I will email it to you if you would like me to, or you can get it at iTunes (The Village Church – Sex, Part 3.) He does a much better job of telling the story.

In Hosea 1, God tells Hosea to go and find a prostitute and marry her and have kids with her. Hosea does so and finds this woman named Gomer, marries her, and starts a family with her. First off, God told him to marry a whore, and to have kids with her? Does this not seem a little off to you? But God is out to make a point with them; he is going to use them as a symbol of Israel’s idolatry yet again. So Gomer gives birth to a boy and God tells Hosea to name him Jezreel, which means “God will sow vengeance.” The names of the kids are of a great importance to this story. By naming the boy Jezreel, God is telling Israel that I am going to crush you. Then Gomer gives birth to a daughter and God tells Hosea to name her Lo-ruhamah, which means “no mercy.” God is saying that He will have no more mercy for Israel, that he would “ever forgive them.” Then she gives birth to a third child, a son, and God tells Hosea to name him Lo-ammi, which means “Not My People.” So God is saying that Israel is not His people, that He is not their God.

On a further note, Gomer, while being married still to Hosea, keeps selling her body, and at one point find herself sold into slavery. And in an act that can only be described as Love (God had put it in Hosea’s heart to truly love Gomer) Hosea goes down to the market and buys her back. Imagine the shame, imagine the humiliation of this prophet of God, going into the market to buy back his wife because she can’t keep her body to herself and Hosea. STOP and think of the imagery here. How many times do we whore ourselves like Gomer, even after we have found our true love, one who loves us in the truest sense of the word. We still go back and seek pleasure and profit. And even after going so far as being sold into slavery, God comes back, into the filth of this world, endures all of it’s filth and shame and the humiliation of the cross, and buys us back, the whore of a wife, the scum of the earth. Can you fathom the amount of shame Hosea had to endure, his wife naked, men bidding on her. And He Buys Her Back! He does not leave her, he does not condemn her, and he does not shun her, He Loves Her.

Now we skip to Chapter 2:14 which has God saying I will allure her (Israel) into the wilderness. God just got done saying that he will have no mercy on Israel, that He will destroy her, that He is not their God, and here in 2 He’s talking about luring her into the wilderness. God didn’t kick her out, he didn’t cast her into the wilderness to fend for her own, he didn’t say ‘Go and see what lesson you learn.” He’s saying, “come here with me, come her and follow me, I’m with you.” God is not about punishing his people. He is about scolding them for the purpose of bringing them back from their idols. The wilderness is coming for all of us. What ever it is it is coming. When it does we have two choices, to hate God for it, or to know that He’s there with us, that He’s leading us into it.
Sometimes I have run from it. Sometimes I go through the wilderness because of my idolatry, because of my sins of submitting to a lesser love. And when I’m confronted with those sins, I run. Either out of pride or out of shame. But think about Christ, while he was here on the Earth. The whore at the well; Jesus calls her into the new Life. The woman with the perfume at the dinner, or the woman caught in the act of adultery, or tax collector Zacchaeus. Jesus responds with mercy and compassion, if we just turn form our idols, and turn to Him, acknowledge that He is our true love. Another great story is in Song of Solomon 1 where the king finds the bride hiding. She says she’s not pretty enough. And she runs and hides up in the mountain. But the kings does not turn around and goes to find another wife, but he chases her, and yells up to her enchanting, loving words of encouragement. He’s letting her know that he’s with her, even as she hides up in the cliffs. As I said the other day, again this book is yet another image of God and His love for His people, as well as how an earthly marriage should be. Solomon doesn’t turn away; he chases her, seeks her, and calls to her, shouting up words of love to his bride. Hosea, doesn’t turn around and goes on with his life, he goes to the market, slips past the guys with coins in their hands, ready to buy his wife for a day's wage, edges by the bystanders who stare her naked body down with envies eyes, and makes his way to the front, and says, in front of everyone, I’ll but her, I’ll pay what ever I have to, but I’m going home with her, my love, my wife, my life.

And so when we turn to Him, when we are so compelled to come back home, He brings us back into the vineyards. We see that the wilderness was not in vain, that they served a purpose, and we see that we were not alone, that He was there with us leading us, calling us.
At this we become aware of everything, we become acclimated to his grace. We see and remember the days of old, when we were young, when he first brought us out of Egypt. His love we can see, and our idols are cast light on for what they really were, hollow figurines, and gold painted stone and wood, quartz instead of diamonds. We see that all along He was with us guiding us from the time we fled Egypt, crossed the Sea, the Wilderness, the Promise Land, the Idolatry, the Captivity and back to Jerusalem again.

We will see the massive Sea, we will feel the heat of the desert, and the sand will lash at our skins, we will see our city walls torn down and our hands in shackles. But we will remember that He parted the sea, that He fed us bread and sprung up water to drink, and that He freed us and returned us to our home.

And here’s the best part, while we’re in the wilderness, while we are walking in circles, while we are bleeding pleading to him, as the sun wears on us, and the heat dries our mouth, we will slowly lose grip of those idols, and discard them along the way. And in that time God says something truly miraculous will happen, something truly amazing, something divine, something very spiritual to its core. Vs. 16 – “And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me My Husband, and no longer will you call me My Baal (God)” He’s not talking about something earthly here. He’s talking about the three Hebrew words for Love, (raya, ahava, dod.) In the baking sun we will get the “raya” down. We see how strong His “ahava” his. And so we get all this worked out here in the wilderness, and then when we get out, when we get back to the vineyard, then we will have “dod.”

Our hearts will crave His love, and our minds and our flesh will forget our idols.
“For I will remove the names of the Baals (our idols) from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more.” Vs. 17.

Lord, I pray with an earnest heart, help me to drop my idols, help me to look to You. May I see You in the wilderness and become more acquainted with You. May I not run with shame to the mountains tops, may I embrace You.

My Fantasy Team

I got a pretty good team I think. I ended up with my fav Harrison, and Holt and Roy Williams to pair up with him. If LJ stays healthy, he will not only lead KC to the playoffs, but the Gnostics (my team) as well. I also have Cadilac back, I had him his rookie year, and he did wonders for me them. They predict he'll be back this year. I also got my most desired pick (outside S. Jackson) in Alge Crumpler. He's the best TE out there. The big question lies in my QB's. I got Leftwich, Romo, and Cutler. Cutler might explode this year, which would be good, because I can't see Romo doing much more than he did last year, and Leftwich might not stay healthy. But if Leftwich does, then I've got a top 10 QB in him. Ive got Denver D, and Jax to back them up. Kasay as K. I'm hoping my D will be the diference this year for me. I've got Urlacher, Ed Reed, Polamalu, Freeney, KGB (who will surpass Reggie's record of sacks in GB this year,) Roy Williams and Charles Woodson. I also went ahead and got Trotter so when he signs with the Bucs, I've got another tackler in him.
So I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I'm pretty excited though. Last time I played, I only won like 4 games. But the time before that, I went to the Championship Game. So who knows.

Bike Polo