#BaconAndEggs

Peanut butter and jelly or bacon and eggs - some things just go together. Then, there are some unusual connections that may cause us to stop in our tracks.  When someone is speaking gracious words, words that lift our hearts and minds, words of praise and worship and then begin words of warnings, it is disconcerting.  

Suppose you are a Jew and live in the land of Israel.  There is peace and prosperity in your country and a pleasant future to look forward to.  Your parents have told you the history of your ancestors being slaves in Egypt for 400 years and how God had raised up Moses to deliver them through the miraculous parting of the Red Sea and led them through the wilderness for 40 years.  The story of how these freed people had been so arrogant to test the Lord God at Meribah was part of their history.  You remember hearing how they had grumbled because there was no water for them to drink.  They had even begun to believe that God was not with them because of their need.  Just a few days before they had witnessed the waters part and they walked on dry land to freedom.  This done by the hand of God.  Yet, they began to doubt.  What an insult to God their doubts were displaying.

Psalm 95 is nine verses long.  The first seven verses are a reminder of the greatness of God.  It is asking people to sing for joy and thanksgiving for the Lord is a great God.  It reminds people that the whole earth, from the peaks of the mountains to the depths and the sea are in His hands, for He has made it all.  It is asking people to worship this King and give Him the praise He deserves.  Verse seven changes the tone.  Today, today, it says, if you would hear His voice, harden not your hearts as at Meribah.

Then comes the warning.  Blessings and warnings are here together like salt and pepper.  As that people had experienced God's blessings and yet tested Him by doubting Him and showed that they had not taken an interest in learning of Him and His ways, this Psalm ends with the result.  They would not enter into God's rest.  And so it went, all but two men died in the wilderness and did not enter the land promised to them.

We should take note of this sugar and spice psalm.  The thing that made God angry was that His people doubted Him.  God is faithful. God is trustworthy. We honor God by believing His Word. Let us not harden our hearts because we have needs.  There is a reason for everything God does or does not do.  Let us praise Him.  Let us worship Him.  Let us believe Him.

#BeneficialRewards

 Customers keep coming back because of Rewards Programs.  You make a purchase and get points for it and you can later use the points to purchase something else.  You are hooked.  You keep coming back because you get rewarded.  It is a good idea because it benefits the customer and the business.

The principle of rewards is an old one.  In fact, there is a statement in the Bible regarding rewards that perhaps some CEOs found.  God is telling people in the Book of Hebrews that He will reward anyone who seeks Him.  The eleventh chapter gives a long list of people who were rewarded for believing God.

There is one man who was rewarded in a most unusual way.  There are only five verses about Enoc in Genesis.  One verse tells of his birth.  One verse tells how long he lived before fathering a son named Methuselah.  Another verse tells a bit about his life after the birth of Methuselah, that he walked with God.  That is interesting, because we can assume that the birth of this son brought about a change in Enoc's attitude toward God.  The last verse about Enoc tells us that he walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.

Hebrews 11:5 gives more light about the 'taking'.  It states that Enoc did not see death because he was pleasing to God.  Enoc obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.  Being 'taken up' had not happened before, at least to our knowledge.  When Enoc obtained the witness that he pleased God, and we do not know what that witness was, he must have gotten an idea in his head.  Maybe Enoc thought that it would be a nice thing if God would just zap him to heaven.  Maybe he talked with God about this and from that conversation developed the faith that it would happen.  It did.

There are some impossible things and God is the God of the impossible.  I believe that God wants us to think of impossible things and believe Him for it.  Mundane stuff is not God's area of expertise.  Impossible stuff God relishes in doing.  Do we limit God by leaning to our own understanding and not acknowledging Him?  Do we settle for the mundane, seemingly safe way, the world's way and not give God a chance to glorify Himself?

The list in Hebrews is long of average people who believed God for the impossible.  There were so many obstacles and giants and real problems that these people faced and, yet, they found favor with God and had impossible situations turn out for good because they believed God would do it.

"Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him."  Hebrews 11:6

#RealityCheck

 It was about 8:15 in the morning and the pharmacist came through the door with her phone in one hand and headed toward the pharmacy alarm.  She has to unset the alarm or the police will come when she opens that door.  Heading to the alarm is done every single day.  She punched in her code, while still talking and turned and started walking to get her day started.  A few seconds later is saw her turn around and head back.  When she got a few feet from me, she asked, "Did I?"  I nodded yes.  She signed and turned around again.  I understood.

Have you ever been there?  We do things over and over and over again and later we wonder, did I do that today or am I remembering yesterday?  There were a few times that I drove off to work and got a few blocks away and wondered if I had closed the garage door.  I had to turn around and drive back to make sure.  When we are distracted we can do stuff and not recall.

Charles Stanley is noted for saying "Listen" in the middle of a sentence while preaching.  He knew human nature and I am sure it had happened to him.  We can sit in the pew and look so attentive and be a thousand miles away.  We can sing and hear prayers and our minds can be like a double screen TV with two or more programs going on at the same time.  I don't think that pleases God.  He wants your full attention and He deserves it.  Jeremiah was talking to the Lord about the condition of his country in the twelfth chapter of the book by his name.  He said."You" (You being God) "You are near to their lips but far from their mind."  Doesn't that say it all?  The people of Israel were going to services and saying things by rote.  Their minds were far away.  It was all an act.  God was not impressed by their act.

If someone asks you on Thursday what the sermon your pastor preached on Sunday was about, could you tell them?  Was just an empty shell dressed like you sitting in your seat?  It has been noted that getting involved greatly increases your chances to remember something.  If you take your Bible with you to church and read along with the pastor, you have a better chance of remembering.  If you take notes while the pastor is preaching, you have an even better chance of remembering.  There are three parts involved in this action - the ear is hearing, the eye is reading and the hand is recording notes.  You have a three times better chance of remembering.  The pastor has taken hours to prepare and God is using him to speak truth to you.  Church is not a social gathering.  It is a place for believers to gather together to worship the King and hear a word from God that will challenge or encourage or comfort them.  Church is a place to be blessed if you are 'really' there.

#FaithToFight

 Is there such a thing as 'wandering arthritis'?  For several years I had pain in my right hip joint. It would last for several days and go away and then pain would occur in my neck, for several days and go away.  There would be pain developing in one or the other shoulder and then go away, but last September things changed.  There was pain in all those places and it did not go away.  My bed became a torcher chamber where I could not sleep.  In addition to the pain, I lost strength in my hands.  I carefully held my coffee cup with both hands.  All this time I had been praying asking God to heal me, but no answer.  Then, I began asking Him to guide me through to the solution.  There had to be a solution.

Aspirin came to my mind and I began taking the largest dosage prescribed every night before bed.  It did relieve a bit and some sleep happened.  Not having my own physician, I Googled arthritis and found there is more than one type.  I tried to determine which, if any, type I might have. Glucosamine and Turmeric was recommended.  It was now November and I began a regime of those two supplements.  There was some relief and I quit taking aspirin.

Then along came 2020 and the Corona Virus was doing some damage here in the U.S. with shutdowns and social distancing and such.  A few days after Easter, I had severe diarrhea.  Perhaps it was something I ate or stomach flu or, hopefully not the Covid 19 flu.  I took an anti-diarrheal medication, but the next day it happened again.  Never had I experienced such a thing and it went on for days.  I was afraid that I would not be able to go to work.  Of course, I was praying. Was God trying to tell me something?  Was He trying to teach me something?  What did God want me to do?

In June, I seriously considered seeing a doctor, but hospitals were shut down and doctor's offices were shut down and I came to the conclusion that God had timed this for this time and He wanted to be my doctor.  If Jesus could heal a woman who had been ill for years and had seen doctors, but with her touch of faith on his robe she was healed, Jesus could heal me.

I quit drinking coffee and started taking probiotics and cut out spicy foods, to no avail.  I kept praying, asking for directions.  Then, I actually read my vitamin bottles and found that my calcium tablets were to be taken three times a day.  I had been taking only one a day, but immediately started taking three.  Within a month the diarrhea disappeared and the 'arthritis' pain became a memory.  By September, one year from when health issues developed, I was pretty normal, maybe even better, stronger and a couple of pounds lighter.

This gory story is told for two reasons. One, that God get the glory.  He is faithful.  He answers prayers.  He is seeing what could be with your eyes of faith and will help you get there. Two, that perhaps someone out there needs to hear that God is faithful and that Calcium is really a necessary ingredient to the body's good health along with Vitamin D3.

#FavoritismDeployed

 The call goes out. There is a constant call going out.

Abram and his wife left Ur of the Chaldeans and traveled to Canaan and settled there Genesis 11:31 tells us.  That is when the Lord spoke to him and told him to go forth to the land He would show him and made him a promise.  Could it possibly be that a universal call had gone out and only one man responded?  That one man, Abram, by responding to the call, put himself and all his descendants into a favored position with the Lord.

"The heavens are telling of the glory of God: and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech. Psalm 19:1 and 2.  The call is constantly going out.  Does the work of God's hands make you curious?  Do the stars in heaven impress you and lead you to think that there must be a 'big' thinker out there?   Do you respond by searching for the truth?

There is no partiality with the God of the Bible (Acts 10:34). He is no respecter of persons. "He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." Matthew 5:45.  As I understand the character of God from what He has told us in His Word, God does not have favorites, but there is a favorite position one can enjoy.

This first favored position was by heritage and demanded faithful hearts. The covenant keeping God remained faithful to the descendants of Abram even though they did not remain faithful to Him and there were consequences for their bad behavior.  Even while in exile, God told them that "you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with your whole heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord and I will restore your fortunes." Jeremiah 29:13 and 14.

Today, it is no longer by heritage, but by choice.  There is a new covenant and it is found in the New Testament.  The call is still going out to the whole world and we have a choice. God is no respecter of persons and has stated in the New Testament in the book of John, chapter 3, verse 16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that WHOSOEVER believes on Him shall have eternal life."  It is in your hands whether you are in the favored position of being one of God's children or not.