Sunday, February 27, 2011

Sunday is a day of rest because Saturday wasn't.

I'm just going to throw it out there: I saw God divinely answer prayer yesterday.  Beat that.  I saw a girl meningitis cleared up and an abcess become much smaller.  Seriously; beat that.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Too Much of Anything Is Too Much.

"The LORD said to Gideon, 'You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands. In order that Israel may not boast against me...'"  -Judges 7:2, NIV

For those of you not familiar with this passage, God goes on to tell Gideon to cut down the number of his army, drastically!  Gideon ends up reducing the number of soldiers in his command from 32,000 to only 300.  The Bible does not give an exact number for the Midianites, but the author states that they were so numerous that their camp which covered a valley so thick that they appeared to be swarming as locusts.  Now this strategy of troop reduction before battle would probably baffle most modern-day military officers, but God Himself said that He: "chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise," and, "the weak things of the world to shame the strong" (1 Cor. 1:27).  To ruin the story if you haven't read it, Gideon and his 300 go on and massacre the entire Midian army; take that, Gerard Butler (a reference to the movie 300).

Often times I find myself getting jealous of others and wondering why no matter what I try, everything always seems to work out better for other people.  Why do they have the better vehicle, video game system, guitar/equipment, or better and more stable job?  I've been going through one of these phases the last couple days as both cars Sarah and I own need oil changes, lights replaced, and other maintenance and while I am in the process of searching for a new job.

When people get complacent and comfortable, they tend to forget God.  There's a cliche about how there are no atheists on an airplane that is going down.  But what about the people who continually acknowledge God and stick beside Him no matter what?  Gideon was like that and God said He needed to get rid of some of his men so that God could do awesome things.  Maybe God does this kind of stuff to people sometimes because we get used to His blessings and He needs to set the stage for us to be blessed even more.  Don't misunderstand me because the Bible never says anything about following Jesus equalling blessings.  What I'm saying is: how will we really know what is best if God doesn't help us get past being fixated on the better? 

Or at least that's my thoughts on the matter for now.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Soot and Silence. Part II.

"These are the nations that God left there, using them to test the Israelites who had no experience in the Canaanite wars. He did it to train the descendants of Israel, the ones who had no battle experience, in the art of war. "  -Judges 3:1-2, The Message

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to preach a sermon on Sunday morning entitled: "Soot and Silence."  Using Job as an example, the point of the sermon was that when it seems like God is silent is when He's actually the most active in our problems and situations.  And that many times when we get Him frustrated to the point of actually responding, His response won't quite make total sense because He's looking from a perspective of the complete picture while we only see the present moment.

I was reading my Bible this morning and these verses above really stuck out at me.  Nowhere does God actually address the Israelites and tell them that they are being put into these uncomfortable circumstances for the purpose of growth; the author had the hindsight to be able to state this.  I've been thinking about my own life lately and why certain things have been happening.  I need to be honest; a lot of times, I just don't get it.  There are many people in our church have been going through even rougher times of trial then me and I am pretty sure they're in the same boat as me though. 

Is there a lesson that God feels everyone of us needs to learn together?  Are they different lessons?  All I know for sure is that Genesis, Exodus, Judges, and Job all show pretty good examples of people who went through some pretty tough stuff and didn't understand why they were experiencing it, yet those life lessons came back to make sense either to them or later generations.  In the meantime, Galatians 6:2 says that we should: "share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ."  We're all in this together so let's do our best to be there for each other in their times of need.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

I Really Don't Know.

Let me start off by saying this: I don't really know what the "Hokey Pokey" is all about.  Come to think of it, most of the time I really could care less what it's about.  This blog isn't really about the "Hokey Pokey," it just seemed like a good enough title for one.  Oddly enough, http://hokeypokey.blogspot.com/ is already in use.  That was my first choice, buy I had to settle with http://gerrit-hokey-pokey.blogspot.com/ instead.  First blog posts are great because they're a chance to set the pace for what will ensue (which most of the time ends up being far different from what the author originally ever intended).  With that I am stopping here for the evening.