Daily Thought

Today’s thought from Genesis 16-22

 

Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah, Lot flees Sodom, his wife turns to salt, Abraham receives the covenant promise, Battles are fought, Ishmael is born, circumcision is given as a covenant sign, Isaac is born, and Hagar is sent away.

When Chapter 16 opens, Abram is in his seventy’s., 4 chapters later he is a hundred years old.  Things that were promised to Abram when he was in his seventies were not yet beginning to be accomplished until he reached the ripe old age of 100.  God’s promises are guaranteed, but unlike FedEx they may not get their overnight.  If God makes you a promise, believe it, and be patient, it is going to be fulfilled, in His time.  God’s promise to Abraham to give him a son didn’t happen fast enough for Abraham and Sarah and so they took the matter into their own hands.  There was suffering for many generations as a result of their impatience.  God’s plan delivered in God’s time is awesome, rushed it is no longer His plan and the consequences are our own.  God calls us to do many wonderful things, he leads us in many directions, often times His leading has an end goal that is in sight and yet we still try and run ahead of Him to get their first.  If God is perfect (and I believe he is) then by default so is His plan.  When the world looks at us and says, your not ambitious enough, your not doing enough, you could do this if you just compromise this, we have to ask ourselves what plan is about to be implemented.  If you know what God has called you to do, and you are confident of that call, then stay that course, let the world deride as they will, waiting on the Lord is one pause that is without exception the right one to make.  Even though Abraham temporarily attempted to derail God’s plan, Abrahams overriding faithfulness, and God’s profound Grace have created a story, a relationship that has endured thousands of years.  Our blunders do not eliminate God’s ability to use us in meaningful and significant ways, but once again it is in His time.

 

Be faithful and patient as you wait upon the Lord.

Rob

 

 

Today's Thought

Today’s Thought from Genesis 11-15

 

As we continue to read along the history of the relationship we are introduced to two new faces in this section, Abram and Lot,  Abram was the Uncle of Lot and they are both in the line of Terah.   We pick up the life story of Abram after he married and he is aged, he receives his calling from the Lord at 75 years of age.  As I read through this section there are some very similar parallels that I see in what many missionaries experience to day.  Abram was leading a fairly settled comfortable life, surrounded by his family and his people.  God Calls him to move to a foreign land, strange to him and distant from his family and people. God is also vague, he shares with Abram that he has a plan for him, he will protect him, he will bless him, and he will make his name great.  That is about all we know of the conversation.  Abram must have had questions, he must have wondered, should I uproot my family, we have a good life here, and trust God to venture into the unknown.  Since we are reading about him today, it is fairly obvious that Abram stepped in faith, believing his calling to be true and faithfully trusting that His God indeed was a God of his word and would do for Abram as he had said.

 

As you read along, you see that Abram made some real bonehead decisions, some blunders, and yet he remained faithful to his word.  He overcame much adversity, to follow God’s plan, and God along this path blessed him with further blessings, tangible and intangible, and God also promised Abram a son, He and his wife Sarai were without any children and they were already quite old, and the hope of an heir had all but died in Abrams heart.

 

As we start learning of Abram’s life we see that he is a normal man, full of life’s blessings, trials, sufferings, doubts and expectations.  One place that Abram demonstrates much courage/faith is his willingness to be led by his God.   We will undoubtedly learn a lot from Abram over the course of his life, but something to remember as we study his relationship is that it started with a faithful step, in acting on a call that he received from the Lord.  He isn’t perfect he is faithful.  To very different attributes.

 

Listen and be faithful

Have a great day.

 

Today's Thought

Today’s thought from Job 40-42

 

After God has clearly demonstrated his authority, his power and his presence in chapter 38-39 Job is not one to argue. In actuality he is very humble.

 

God goes on to further describe himself and his creation, for 2 more chapters. Then Job replies, he honors God, he recognizes his authority and his power. He is repentant where he misspoke, and his repentance is genuine.

 

God then addresses the friends of Job. He shows his displeasure with them and gives them instructions on how to be reconciled to him and to Job.

 

Then when Jobs trial was over God did what God does so well, he poured out his blessings on his faithful child, Job. We learn that job is blessed from this point with greater blessing than he had already lost, his family rebuilt and his reputation restored. He lived to see 4 generations of his family and it says he died full of years.

 

Jobs faithfulness wasn’t required, it wasn’t expected by the world, it wasn’t even encouraged some closest to him. Job however knew the heart of his God. He may not have understood the mind of God but he did know his heart. He endured the trial not because of some future expectation of blessing but because of his relationship with God the father.

 

What will we endure, are we building a relationship that will weather any storm? My prayer for you and for me today is that our faith and hope are so deeply rooted in a relationship with God that we can withstand the inevitable trials that come the way of the faithful.

 

I know that many are enduring them right now. Some personal, some familial, some professional. These trials all have one thing in common.

God is in control of them and of us if we let him.

 

Have a great day

Rob

 

 

 

Today's thought

Today’s thought from Job 38-39

This is a fun section of scripture to read. God quite frankly may be the first published smack talker. And as if he needed to, God spends the entire chapter of 38 and 39 setting the stage for who he is. God is making it very clear here that he is in control, that nothing is happening in a vacuum, he is knowledgeable of Job and his suffering and he has the wisdom to know what course to set. Basically it is a look at what I-God have accomplished and, are your problems larger than these? In the same breath it is also a list of assurances. Look at the list, are the things Job is concerned with more difficult to overcome than these. Does his request require more ability than God has already demonstrated? Of course not. If the last verse of Chapter 39 were being written today it very well may have said, “Who’s your daddy now?” Ok maybe not, but the point remains that God is awesome power, his power can not be fathomed yet he is attentive to the smallest detail. Down to the feeding of the beasts, the rain in deserts where no one exists, and yet we are most precious of all to him.

If you want to be humbled about what we are asked to do and to be, read these two chapters and see what a full plate really looks like.

Daily Thought

Today’s thoughts from Job 32-37

 

What option did Job miss? I’m not sure he missed any, he sought out council, he sought solitude, he defended his actions, he pleads for mercy, he listened to accolades, he listened to condemnation. None of these were wrong, If anything Job did more right than wrong, and he definitely never turned his back on his God.  Who could fault Job for the reactions he did have and who wouldn’t try what ever possible to lighten the suffering load that Job was undergoing.  But there are trials in life that cannot be resolved fully by man.  It doesn’t mean that we don’t work toward resolution; it means that there won’t be resolution till God is ready for us to receive that resolution.  Many of us struggle with this.  We believe that regardless of our trials and struggles we can over come them, we can solve the issue.  While I will agree that in many of those instances God uses us as part of the resolution, I am more certain than ever that some trials are resolved in God’s time and in God’s way.  No matter what Job did, his suffering didn’t end by his accord.  We are about to learn of Gods faithful restoration of Job. 

Job put his faith, his very life in the hands of God and allowed God to use him as God saw fit not as Job saw fit.  Job let his faith control his life, not the other way around.  It is much to often that we as believers mold our faith to conform to our lives, our schedules, our desires, and then are perplexed when we feel God is calling us to do something we don’t want to or is just to unreasonable.  We justify ourselves by saying look at all I have done, I did this, I gave up this, I sacrificed this.  If we are to be a people who truly lives by faith, then that must be a faith that is without restriction or schedule. It doesn’t mean you will always understand, it doesn’t mean that your life will be full of fairness, but it does mean that you will serve a God and be in relationship with a creator that is in total control.  Even as Job challenged his circumstances, he never forgot about the awesome power and faithfulness of his King.  After all part of living by faith is believing that God is in pursuit of a relationship with you that draws you to him for eternity.  If that is the end, the trial will be sustainable.

 

Todays Thought

Today's Thought from Job 27-31

Job is wrapping up his dialog with his friends in these chapters. He is confident of his faithfulness to the Lord, and that regardless of his situation he will remain faithful. As he searches for answers to why he finds himself where he does he reminisces about what his life has been like. He defends his life, his deeds his actions toward others and tries to further understand how he has arrived at this place. He tries to not be bitter with others and with God as he recognizes his fall from influence, resources, etc, and how he has been left among the lowest of the low. He determines that wisdom is "the fear of the Lord" and understanding is to "flee from evil" both items he argues he has demonstrated. He defends his life and actions as though on trial, possibly self introspection to see if there is something he has missed and been unrepentant of, regardless he lists his life and actions and defends them all. He wraps up this section of dialog with lots of if statements, if I have wronged, If I have withheld, if I have caused anyone to stumble, etc… then I should be accountable.

It is comforting to me to read about such men as Job, not because of their suffering but because of their response. Job's response was in some ways exactly what you would expect, and yet in other so very, very, distinctly different. As I believe most of us do in times of trial and trouble, we self examine to see what we have done to cause the situation. Sometimes it is easy to identify other times it seems to have no clear origin, We contemplate and act on all we can do to resolve the situation we find ourselves. Sometimes we are able to resolve the issue, other times it seems that no matter what we do we can't find resolution. We justify our actions, we may defend our efforts, we may withdrawn to try and escape. These are many of the responses that you would expect to see. But Job even in these times, is faithful and doesn't blame God, He knows that God's ways are greater; God's ways are beyond our understanding. It is God who gave us life and we must trust because we have been told, that it is God who desires us even more than we desire him. (an extremely difficult concept to grasp in itself) This is one thing Job seemed certain of, that is regardless of how bleak his existence became, the God he loved and knew would remain his God. This was not out of duty, this was because Job, had a deep and personal relationship with his God. That I believe is where the difference comes into play. Had Job not know his God so deeply and personally, would have he remained faithful when in his heart he knew that he stood blameless. He had been obedient in life and this is his reward. Too often people fall way in times of trouble blaming God, blaming self, blaming others, what ever the reason is, many turn from God in insurmountable trial, sure initially we almost all always turn to God in normal crisis, But when it gets really bad, when there is no apparent hope, where will we be in those moments. We know of Jobs reward in the end and still we have many believers turn their back to God in deep trials. Job weathers this storm without the knowledge of the future restoration, Will we weather our storms with Job's patience and faithfulness.

Have a great day