Tag: Faithfulness

Digging in Deeper: Exodus 3:1

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“Meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

On occasion people will compare the times in which we live our lives to those before us. Usually this is done in a spirit of nostalgia, and we don’t come off looking very good. I’m not typically a fan of this. Nostalgia is a deceptively tough master that will leave us longing for a past that never really existed and discontented about the present. That being said, there is one point in particular at which we come off looking worse than our forebears that I would like to give some attention to this morning: We don’t like to wait for things. Humans have never been well-known for patience, but in our instant society, we’re particularly bad and getting worse. This creates problems when we serve a God who literally has all the time in the world. We get a glimpse of this as we move into the next part of Moses’ story. Let’s talk about it today.

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Morning Musing: Amos 7:14-15

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“So Amos answered Amaziah, ‘I was not a prophet or the son of a prophet; rather, I was a herdsman, and I took care of sycamore figs. But the Lord took me from following the flock and said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”‘” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When we imagine the prophets of the Old Testament, we often picture wild-looking, old men who spent all their time walking around and shouting about God’s judgment and impending doom. We imagine men like Jeremiah who evidently spent their entire lives doing God’s work. Yet while there certainly were some like Jeremiah or Isaiah or Ezekiel, not all of them were. We discover this about Amos in a tense conversation he had with a false prophet in Israel. Let’s talk about his response and what it just might have to do with us.

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Morning Musing: Amos 7:12-15

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“Then Amaziah said to Amos, ‘Go away, you seer! Flee to the land of Judah. Earn your living and give your prophecies there, but don’t ever prophesy at Bethel again, for it is the king’s sanctuary and a royal temple.’ So Amos answered Amaziah, ‘I was a not a prophet or the son of a prophet; rather, I was a herdsman, and I took care of sycamore figs. But the Lord took me from following the flock and said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”‘” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We so often give attention to the messages of judgment the prophets brought to the people of Israel that we forget about the fact that they were real people living real lives and delivering messages to powerful people that they didn’t necessarily want to hear. Speaking truth to power is something we celebrate nowadays, but we like to tell the stories when doing it has a happy ending. It doesn’t always. Let’s take a look today at some of the pushback Amos received and how he responded.

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Risks of Faith

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This week we continued our journey through the story of Ruth by hearing from yet another character in it. Hear this week from Boaz as he marvels at the incredible risk of faith Ruth took and the gift of life brought about because of it. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Risks of Faith

For two weeks now we have been working our way through the story of Ruth in a teaching series I am simply calling, “A Love Story.” This hasn’t been quite our normal journey, though. Rather than merely telling you about the story as I normally would, we have been looking at the events described in the pages of Scripture through the eyes of the people who experienced them. Naomi took us through the awful events of the first part of the story. Then, last week, we heard from Ruth as she unpacked her incredible first day gleaning to provide food for Naomi and her, and how she stumbled upon the field of a distant relative named Boaz. This morning, we are going to jump forward a few weeks to the end of the barley season to hear some more of the story…

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Morning Musing: Luke 1:35-38

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“The angel replied to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. And consider your relative Elizabeth – even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called childless. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ ‘See, I am the Lord’s servant.’ said Mary. ‘May it happen to me as you have said.’ Then the angel left her.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

A huge part of preparing for Jesus’ arrival means preparing ourselves for Him to do things that only God can do. In saying that, I don’t just mean we must prepare ourselves intellectually for His acting in unexpected or unbelievable ways. We need to prepare ourselves to join Him in those actions. We must prepare ourselves for a life of total obedience rooted in faith. Without that, we aren’t going to experience much of anything He wants to do. This kind of willingness is what started Jesus’ whole journey on earth. Let’s talk about it this morning.

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