I find Psalm 103 to be so rich and full of the blessings of the Lord that I want in my life. David wrote this Psalm and it is a praise for the Lord’s mercies. I like to pray it out loud to the Lord directly, such as in this manner, adding some of my own prayer inspiration (one can also say “I” instead of “we”):
“We bless You Lord and all that is within us,
Continue reading“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit,…”
Continue readingIn Judges 6, we see the Israelites under severe oppression by a group of people called the Midianites. The oppression was so bad, these Midianites would come and steal the crops from the fields before the Israelites could get to them. This caused a severe food shortage for the people. (This reminds me of how the Soviet Union took all the food grown in Ukraine many years ago and the Ukranians starved by the thousands.)
Continue readingI love patterns that show up in the bible…patterns can confirm things you thought you noticed. When it comes along twice, I really start paying attention. God paints pictures through the Old Testament bible stories. As we study them, we can see spiritual lessons emerge.
Continue readingCan God’s plan be delayed? Does man determine when things happen? Does God get frustrated when man doesn’t “follow the plan”?
Continue readingThere’s another story I find interesting too, about when things don’t go the way we think they should. I am reminded of a story where the nation of Israel had to pass a severe judgment on one of their relative tribes….
Continue readingAs of this writing, conservatives are reeling, at least a bit and some maybe a lot, at the apparent loss of the Presidency to Joe Biden in our country. There’s a lot that could be said about that, but at the moment I’m thinking of a couple of bible stories…
Continue readingMoses was living in the wilderness of Midian when God approached him and commissioned him to go and challenge Pharaoh of Egypt and tell him to release God’s people to go worship in the wilderness. Moses had fled to the wilderness after his first effort to save his brethren from the cruelty of Pharaoh had failed. He fled Egypt just 40 years prior, after killing an Egyptian. You see, he really was called to deliver his brethren from their slavery to the Egyptians. (Acts 7:19-29) That was the plan of God for his life. He just blew it the first time he tried. He wasn’t ready and it wasn’t time. He tried to do it in his own strength and not in God’s strength. Moses had much to learn about God.
Continue readingI want to examine a phenomenon I see in the bible in a couple of places. There are probably more, but in the past few days I have been zeroing in on these two. The Holy Spirit has been speaking to me through them.
Continue readingGenesis 1:26….And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
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Dogtags and Pearls...the plain and the precious 