Be Still and Know...Then and Now

We are rapidly approaching the end of this study. In the very beginning 34 weeks seemed like forever but now as we approach the final closing it seem like it was just a few weeks ago. The amazing thing about spending such a long time devoted to a comprehensive look at the whole bible, aside from just the awesomeness of God’s word, is the sense you get of how intentional God is in laying all things out for us to find. The only thing we have to do is have a diligent obedient spirit to make all the connections. It’s all right there! I was telling my fellow classmates that there are times when I get this amazing sense of just how awesome God really is. How intricately woven his plan is for me and for all of us. It reminds me of a very delicate yet very compelling conspiracy theory. Did you ever see the movie Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts. It’s an interesting movie about this slightly off kilter taxi driver who spends most of his off hours trying to prove this intri...

We were reading in Daniel and Isaiah this week as well as a few verses from Zachariah, Malachi and Micah. Our theme word for the week was HOPE. Some people have a difficult time with the Apocalyptic literature and the visions of the end times. Grant it it makes for some very interesting discussion. Over the years of my journey with Disciple and the other bible studies I have taken I have learned that sometime I just have to set aside my need for clarity and understanding in favor of letting the greatness of God’s mysterious and wonderful ways take over. My approach to this go around with Disciple I is to look for the broader picture. My need to fully understand verses like “It will be for a time, times and half a time.” is still there. After many different studies I have done on the book of Daniel I have a clearer understand of end time symbolism, but that is not what spoke to me the most over this past week as we read our assigned scriptures. What I saw very clearly was the pictur...

Sometimes moments of clarity happen when you least expect it. I don’t know about you but sometime the writers of the bible don’t seem like real people to me. It is hard for me to see them as flesh and bone individuals that walked around in the real world. The world we live in today seems so very different from the world that the Patriarchs lived in. Thousand of yeas have passed yet God’s word is eternal. When I think about Abraham or Moses I think in terms of Prophets and great leaders. For me it is sometimes hard to see past the great acts of God that surrounded the Patriarchs and look at the real flesh and bone humans that they were. Isn’t that just human nature, we allow our vision to be clouded by what are perceptions are or from what we can see on the outside. Things of the past seem so far removed from what our life is like today. The imagery of Moses using a cell phone or Abraham consulting his GPS is just an hard to picture as it is for me to place myself in a caravan of wan...

Last week we were delving into Jeramiah and Ezekile. I love the imagry of the Valley of Dry bones. This week we are reading the Psalms. I noticed somethng today as I was finished up this weeks study. Psalm 90 was written my Moses, one of the oldest of the psalms. Moses shares his thoughts on God’s eternal nature and man’s limited time on earth by reminding us all that we are like the grass that springs up in the morning but by evening is dried up and withered away. God is everlasting and we are not. As I read through this psalm this morning I noticed what, in my opinion, is a perfect example of a rhetorical question. PS 90: 11 “Who knows the power of your anger?” Do you think that Moses was looking for an answer? After witnessing the power God firsthand, he watched the plagues descend upon Egypt. He stood by and watched the firstborn fall into death. He witnessed the power of God’s presence as it passed over all the faithful during that first night of Passover. He saw the wat...

This week in my Bible Study I have been reading in the Book of Joshua and Judges. As I read these two books I had many moments of “WOW! I didn’t remember that little tid bit!” or thoughts like “That’s a bit harsh don’t ya think?” and then my favorite “Why do ya supposed God included that?” Many times, especially when I am deep within the pages of the Old Testament, I have moments when I wonder why things happen the way they did. Things were so very different back then, but then in reality human nature today is not very different even after several thousand years. Every time I come across a difficult bible passage I have to ask myself to look past my confusion and ask a different question. I have to look for myself in the passage. Do I have any similarities with the characters in the passage? Does my behavior resemble that of the characters? What modern day analogies can I see in the examples I have just read about? How many times did the Israelites wander away from God and bowed th...

For those of us who participated in last weeks Random Dozen hosted by Lid at 2nd Cup of Coffee, well a funny thing happen this morning during my bible sty time. Not funny cry till you wet yourself funny but funny in an under God’s magnifying glass kind of way. Question #12 was this… October is traditionally "open house" time in public schools. If you had a literal open house in your home (like a reception) what light snacks would you serve visitors and what would you show them (as in art projects, graded papers) that would uniquely represent you? Well as I have mentioned before I’m participating in a Disciple Bible Study this year. It is Disciple III. It mainly focuses on the Prophets and the Letters of Paul. This week we are in Ezekiel. Y’all Ezekiel is the prophet who had the most incredible prophetic visions. Some scientific types have tried to elude to the notion that Ezekiel had an alien encounter rather that an encounter with the Living God. If you have see...

  Being the undisciplined person that I am I have faced the reality that unless I am in some from of in-depth bible study my time spent delving into Gods word is sorely neglected. I may be randomly diligent (being honest here, this middle school getting on the bus at 8:40 am is killing me) in my morning quiet/prayer time. I may read the daily scriptures from my ever faithful and much loved “Streams in the Desert”, but this does not fulfill the instructions that God gives me when he tells me to: DT 11:18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the...