Josh1Eight

"...He has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we can confidently say, 'The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?'" (Hebrews 13:5-6 ESV) Never say never when it comes to this promise from God. While we don't always perceive it, it is nevertheless true. Scripture tells us that He sees the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10) and that His perspective on our lives is infinitely higher than ours (Isaiah 55:6-8), so when God says to you "I will never leave you or forsake you", He means it, because only He can see everything completely as things really are. The reason He promises to never leave us is because our perception of reality is less than perfect; in fact, it's far from it. Who hasn't ever wondered if God was still there during a difficult season of life? We often question this promise when circumstances of life are shouting that God is nowhere to be found. The thing about feelings though is this- ...

"As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside privately and told them what was going to happen to him. “Listen,” he said, “we’re going up to Jerusalem, where the Son of Man will be betrayed to the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. They will sentence him to die. Then they will hand him over to the Romans to be mocked, flogged with a whip, and crucified. But on the third day he will be raised from the dead.” (Matthew 20:17-19 NLT). Jesus often spoke in mysterious parables leaving a lot of people scratching their heads. But every once in a while He took His disciples aside and spoke as clear as day. Just a few weeks before His death, Jesus pulled His disciples aside and explained to them in explicit detail what was about to happen to Him and how His imminent murder was all part of God's will. I imagine the disciples with a glazed look over their faces nodding silently in agreement with absolutely no clue as to the significance abou...

“I looked for someone who might rebuild the wall of righteousness that guards the land. I searched for someone to stand in the gap in the wall so I wouldn’t have to destroy the land, but I found no one." (Ezekiel 22:30) It's no wonder why God would not sit by while His people sinned. It's not like they occasionally misbehaved; they were completely corrupt. In chapter 22 He gives a short list of how bad things really were: murder, disrespecting parents, oppressing poor orphans and widows, idol worship, violating the Sabbath, lying in court, rampant adultery and sexual immorality, extortion, and many other sins. Since God is no hypocrite, He couldn't just overlook Israel's blatant rebellion. But before He decreed their destruction, He first scoured the city for someone to intervene. Just like Moses averted God's judgment by His prayers (Psalm 106:23), all God needed now was someone to pray. If He could just secure one individual to pray for this "lost c...

"So I brought them out of Egypt and led them into the wilderness. 11 There I gave them my decrees and regulations so they could find life by keeping them. 12 And I gave them my Sabbath days of rest as a sign between them and me. It was to remind them that I am the Lord, who had set them apart to be holy. 13 “But the people of Israel rebelled against me, and they refused to obey my decrees there in the wilderness. They wouldn’t obey my regulations even though obedience would have given them life." Ezekiel 20:11-13 Throughout the Book of Ezekiel God again and again harps on Israel's rejection of His commands and how they had abandoned Him to worship idols. However, after years of ignoring God's messages, one day the leaders of Israel approached Ezekiel and requested a message from the Lord in hopes of getting some guidance. Of course God wasn't about to cooperate with their hardened hearts and He then reminded them of what landed them in exile in the first place....