Relaaaaaax...

A verse Dad used in sunday school popped out at me. He was talking about Moses questioning God's wisdom and timing, with using him to bring the Israelites out of Egypt. He used Psalms 37:7 as a counter point, and I realized how much it applied to me.

Psalms 37:7 

Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.

Here's your 3 point message wrapped up in one verse:

I. Rest in the Lord

II. Wait patiently

III. Fret not.

                                                All of which are easier said than done.

I. Rest in the Lord- We (I) get so caught up in life, and then wonder why I'm so stressed about everything.

Because.

I'm trying to rest in my own strength and ability, and it's not workin' out so well. If I could just remember to rest in the LORD...

II. Wait patiently- I'm not good at that part. Recently that's the one thing I have to keep reminding myself of. Pretty soon I won't be in school anymore, and I don't have a solid plan for what to do next. I REALLY like having a plan. Preferably ahead of time. BUT, I need to wait patiently until God shows me what HIS plan is. I also feel like I should have a back-up plan, just in case I don't know His plan by the time I graduate, which is MY preffered timing. How's that for faith...? 

III. Fret not- (there's a good song about that...the Marshall family sings it.)  I know this part is saying not to worry when the guy who's not doing right seems to be getting away with it, and that definetly applies to me, and is a reminder I need. But what if I just take those two words by themselves? Fret not: just don't.

Another reason I like this particular verse is because it tells me exactly  what to do and what not to do. Simple.

Clear cut.

I appreciate that.

Isaiah 40:31 

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Luke 12:24 

Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?

Proverbs 11:5  The righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way: but the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness.

Commit thy way unto the Lord.
All you need He will afford.
Never fret and be oppressed.
Commit and Trust, Delight and Rest.

Fret not! He’s watching over you.
Fret not! The Lord will see you through.
Fret not! You’re sure to stand the test,
Commit and Trust, Delight and Rest.

Trust in Him, His Word is true.
He will do what’s right for you.
Praise the Name you have confessed.
Commit and Trust, Delight and Rest.

Let the Lord be your Delight.
Delight in Him both day and night.
You the host and He the Guest
Commit and Trust, Delight and Rest.

Rest in Him, wait patiently.
God knows all and He can see.
In His answer you’ll be blessed.
Commit and Trust, Delight and Rest

When you have time...listen!

Bro. Shemish preached at our missions conference last year. GOOD STUFF. Wait till you have time to pay attention, and then listen....(it would be good to click the link first)

I know you weren't expecting this, but: nuggets!

John 14:10
Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myslef: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.

I know that Jesus was the one speaking here, but shouldn't we be able to say the same thing? That the words and works seen in us are from the Father?

 John 15:10
If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.

John 15:13
Greater love have no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:19
If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

John 16: 21,22
A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.
And ye now therefore have sorrow,: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy shall no man take from you.

John 16:27
For the Father himself loveth you, because ye hath loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.

And my favorite...

John 16:33
These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world, ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

What happened??

My Dad is the Youth Pastor at our church, and we have been doing a study in Exodus in Sunday School.
This week we started chapter 5, and he pointed something out that I've never noticed before:
Exodus 5:3
And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the LORD our God;  lest he fall upon us with the pestilence or with the sword.

 Wait a minute. Is that what the Lord actually told them to say?
Exodus 4:22, 23
And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Israel is my son, even my firstborn: (23) And I say unto thee, let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.

No, that's not quite what the Lord told him to say. So Moses and Aaron altered the message!
And you know what the world is hearing today? An altered message.
Why is that? Why did they tweak what God said?
1)The fear of man.
2)To be accepted
3)To remove the negative
4)To weaken the truth

And how are things today? The same.
 Not just with the different Bible versions, but also with the churches and leaders. They are so worried (or afraid?) about being accepted that they are willing to remove the negative, and weaken the truth. So they don't preach about hell, they don't tell people they are sinners, they hide the "thou shalt not's".
So people end up in a hell they never even heard about.
Sad.
On a sidenote, I wonder if things might have been different in Egypt if Pharaoh had been given the original message. Maybe not, since we know God hardened his heart. But it's interesting to think of the possibilities. If Pharaoh had known what was at stake right up front, maybe he wouldn't have been so stubborn. Maybe all the plagues wouldn't have been necessary.
Or maybe not. God did all those amazing catastrophies to show Egypt  (a type of the world) his might and his glory.

Exodus 14:4 
And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, that he shall follow after them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the LORD. And they did so.
 So I don't know. What I DO know, is that today having the true message is important. The Lord is glorified and honored through souls being saved, and THAT comes about through the message.
Romans 10:17 
 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

A warning and a promise

I try to read through the book of Proverbs once a month. You may have noticed there are 31 chapters: one for every day of the month.
When I started with chapter 1 this month, I noticed something I've never noticed before, even though I don't know HOW many times I've read Proverbs 1. As I read what Wisdom was saying, I realized that Jesus Christ could be saying the same thing.
Some parallels:

First off, what they both offer:
(vs. 22, 23)
 How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?
Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.

How the world responds :
(vs. 24, 25, 29, 30)
Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded.
But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof:
...For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord:
They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.

Later, when the tables turn:
(vs. 26-28, 31)
I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;
When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.
Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.

Those who DO heed the call:
vs. 33
But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.

who? me?

Tonight we had a missionary present his work. I had nursery duty, but I ended up working in the morning instead, so I was excited!
I was thinking, Sweet! I should get some good notes! Maybe I can do a bog post tonight!
Well, he didn't even really preach. He just had his presentation go for the duration of the service. And it was good, don't get me wrong!
He is excited and ready to get to work in Peru.
But by the time I realized the presentation would be too long for him to  preach preach, I was kinda disappointed. Then, at the conclusion he said, " If you don't remember anything else, remember this: 1, God uses regular people and 2, it is an HONOR to serve God.
Ok, so that's not awfully original....
BUT!
It's true!
Who was David? A shepherd. Culturally, that's a pretty lowly occupation. Like, the youngest-in-a-big-family's job.
Who was the lad with the five loaves and two fishes? We don't even know his name...
How about the little servant girl who told Naaman about the prophet Elisha? Same story.
And the majority of the disciples? The people who were closest to the creator of the Universe? Fisherman. No offense, but they aren't exactly the most sophisticated folks in the world.

So it's true. The Bible shows it clearly. Just in case you had that as an excuse in the back of your mind for not being on fire for the Lord, pitch it.

Which brings me to my next spiel. Yep, you guys are gettin' a double whammie tonight.
LAST Sunday we had a guest preacher speak, and it was fantastic.
I wont give you the full outline. I'll skip the introduction (just kidding!)
He told about a young man who was called to witness to the Muslims of China. He went to Egypt for a while to learn and become accustomed to the culture. During that time, he contracted (some kind of very painful disease related to paralysis). He kept a journal, and in intervals, these points could be read:
No reserve.
A little later
No retreat.
Then
No regrets.

Wow. To me, that speaks volumes.
That's takes commitment.
That takes dedication.
That's a lifestyle.

I had to question myself: Am I living that way? Do I have any reserve? Do I ever retreat? Will I have  regrets?
To live this way is a great aspiration, and yet, how can we consent to live any other way?? We're serving the Creator and Ruler of the universe here! Our purpose is to bring glory and praise to the one who left Heaven's throne to sacrifice himself on a shameful cross, to be separated from the heavenly Father!!
How CAN we live any other way?

Lord, give regular, old me the grace, give me the patience, give me the fortitude  to live with no reserve, no retreat, no regrets, for You. 
Because I may be regular, but my God is not.
PS. Please remember to pray for the Miller family, missionaries to the people of Peru.

The miracle of Pizza

Right after Christmas, our youth group had a winter retreat. We brought over Bro. Collom from Meridian, Idaho for our speaker, and he did a fanatstic job. Copy and pasted below is a part of a post from my other blog that I wrote based off the notes I took for the sermon that dealt with me the most.

Exodus 16:1-4, 31
 And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt.
2 And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness:
3 And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.
4 Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no.
So compare manna to pizza. What if, one morning, you woke up and looked out your window and saw a pizza sitting on your front lawn. So you went to check it out, and you noticed that your neighbors had a pizza on their front lawn. In fact, everyone on your street had a pizza! Think how amazing that would be! And what if EVERY morning there was a pizza on your front yard! That would be a miracle!
Numbers 21:5
 And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.
They loathed the manna?? Why? It was a miracle! How can you LOATH a miracle?
Exodus 16:35
 And the children of Israel did eat manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna, until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan.
Well, they HAD been eating it for 40 years (He gave this list of all the things they might have made out of manna : mannacotti, manna burgers, mannaroni etc.) You would probably get tired of pizza after one year of nothing but, let alone 40. So the miracle got old.
Think of what you got for Christmas this year. Now something you got last year. And something from the year before that. How about three years ago? Four years ago? Now when you first got that favorite gift four years ago, you used it all the time. You thought it was the best thing ever. You used it everyday. Is that still the way you feel about?
How about your first job? Remember when you were always excited to go to work? And your first pay check? It was awesome- at first.
So how does a miracle become loathed? Well, it's a transition. There are five steps:
Miracle becomes routine, then you become unthankful for the routine, which leads to being discontent. You then think that the the thing you are discontent is keeping you from something better, so you get to where you loathe it.
Miracle---->Routine---->Unthankfulness---->Discontentment----->Loathe/Disgust


Church = miracle (Remember when you were little and you LOVED going to church? He gave the example of his two kids who are nine and six)
 Parents = miracle


 A prophet is not without honor save in his own house...
Honor thy father and thy mother...
Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft...


Satan's greatest masterpiece is to drive you away from the people who can help you


Having grown up in church I know just how easy it is for church to become routine. This was really a great warning to watch myself so I don't become unthankful and discontent till I loathe this amazing miracle God has blessed me with. And not just with church, but with parents and even my salvation. Anyway, I hope you were able to get the gist of what he was talking about.
On the last morning, right before we all left he said if you can just maintain a spirit of thankfulness, your life will be much sweeter, even if its not smooth.

Leviticus 15

I wonder how many people would read that title and think "Oh no...Leviticus...what can we possibly learn from that? We're free from the law, right?"
Well, yes. We are.
But there is obviously something in there for us, otherwise God wouldn't have included it in his Word. And I don't claim to know all of everything you can learn from this part of the Bible, but this morning I noticed something that may or may not be applicable.
And it's not in this chapter only. This is just one of the chapters talking about what qualifies as unclean, how long a person is unclean, what they do to be clean, and all the things that they use are unclean.
Yeah.
No offense, Lord, but bring on the coffee.
And then it talked about how if someone touches anything made unclean by the unclean person, they will be unclean too.
Lev. 15:10 And whosoever toucheth anything that was under him shall be unclean until even;...
"Ok, so where are you going with all this?"
Well, I was thinking, ok, how can I apply this to my life? CAN I apply this to my life? I've been making an effort to ask that question more often in my Bible reading, instead of just cruising along and waiting for something to smack me in the face.
So, with that mind-set, I thought:
Well, I live in the world.
John 15:19  If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the
world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

It's a very unclean place.
So sometimes (being human and all) I get dirty. I know I can't lose my salvation, But since I'm in the flesh, and this fleshy (dirty) world. So it's stands to reason that I get dirty, that I become unclean.
And guess what.
According to 1 Corinthians 6:19, my body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.
And see why God had them do it then:
Leviticus 15:31  Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness; that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is among them.

So since I'm the temple now, maybe I should be purifying myself, when I come in from the dirty world.
Just get rid of all the filth I was exposed to all day.
But how exactly would I do that?

Well, I wanna get my mind off the world and on my Saviour.

Sounds like a classic case of prayer and Bible reading.
So many problems we as Christians deal with can be fixed, or at least helped, with this simple practice.
And that brings me to another subject. Kind of. Really, they're both related.
Bible reading and prayer. I have a hard time keeping them consistent.
I know if I don't do it first thing in the morning, I WON'T end up getting to it sometime during the day. I've tried convincing myself that I will get it to it, but I never do. Or if I DO, it's not really REAL quiet time and I'm not focused because, I have all these things going on.
But.
My flesh REALLY doesn't like getting up extra early if it doesn't ABSOLUTELY have to.
So this is one are going to college has benefited me in: I have to get up at the same time everyday.
And even if I try to sleep in, there's my brain clock waking me up at 6:00 on Saturday, adhering to the rigorous training I put it through.
And it makes sense that you would give the first part of your day to the Lord.

Going back to the "unclean" idea, what do you do when you first get up every morning?
You shower, brush your teeth, and get yourself ready for the day.
Why?
Because you got dirty yesterday. You need to clean up.
So it is with your Christian walk. You were out in the yucky world. Chances are, if you walk through a pigsty, you'll get dirty.
So take your shower, wake yourself up, and devote some time to cleaning your mind with God's Word.
By no means did I exhaust the benefits of consistent Bible reading and prayer, but trust me, it's worth a few yawns!