Holy to the LORD

Before we get started with going over what we read this past week, I want to share with you another project I am working on.

On day 16 in “Faithful Promises of God”, I made the statement, “if you look closely, you will see that our forefathers fashioned the laws of our land directly from the Bible.”

Probably over a year ago, my daughter suggested to me to start taking the laws and regulations of the Bible and show how they were “fashioned” by our forefathers. That’s a big project but I finally saw a starting point on day 16. Not until I got started did I realize what a big task I might be taking on. Probably what I will do is add an insight to how a law applies today (according to our Constitution). Please help me to hold to this! If I start skipping it a week or two, send me an email and remind me to get back on task.

OK, here we go. This is to encourage you to keep reading each day, whether you are using “Faithful Promises of God” or not.

Exodus 24:3b reads, “We will do everything the Lord has commanded.” (NLV) MacArthur writes “Civil, social, and religious laws were received by Moses on Mt. Sinai, orally presented (v3), then written down (v4), and read to the people.”

My observations as I read this section this time around is that there was a lot of emotional motivated behavior at this time. The people were motivated to respond, “All the words which the Lord has said we will do.” (NKJV) But, just like today, people find themselves all hyped up from a song service, or a motivational speaker and are willing to promise anything. At that moment, they really did mean it. And the people telling Moses that they would do whatever the Lord commanded was probably this same emotional high that we see in so many churches/camps/conferences today.

At the end of the day, when things have quieted down, and regular life kicks in, our promise isn’t so much in our thoughts and we sort of forget about what we promised. The Israelites moved on. Although their words were sincere at the time, they were not so obedient. Why does God include this information? Because we are the same today. We promised we will obey, then we do what we think is best even though God is directing us in another direction.

Even though their response was sincere, they didn’t obey God’s direction. We will see this over and over throughout the Old Testament. This doesn’t give us an excuse because we are doing the same thing but it does remind us that this happens and we should be ready to humble ourselves and ask God’s forgiveness and that He would help us to keep our eyes on Him.

We only have to read a few chapters more before we see that the Israelites took their eyes off of God. Instead, they were looking to Moses as their “savior” and demanded that Aaron make them a “god”.

The Lord said to Moses, “They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them” (Exodus 32:8) I wrote in my journal, “Fae, be careful to always follow His ways.”

And with that, I will let you ponder this encouragement to keep your eyes on Him and follow His ways. One of the best ways to do just that is to daily read your Bible, to pray continually and to obey His Word. It’s another week, you can do this! He is faithful!

Necessities of Life

The best thing about winter is we get to enjoy being inside a little more. That is unless you have to scoop each time it snows, take the dogs out for exercise and necessities and do all the little chores that are needed each day. But, none the less, I find that in the dead cold of winter, I have more time to spend with my Lord.

But wait, let me explain. At the beginning of 2023, as I listened to Curtis Bowers’ Agenda Weekly, I accepted his challenge to pray more, focus on serving Christ more, read more, and less social media and T.V. With that said, I love reading the Bible so have started in Genesis again this year and will continue to the last book by the end of 2023, Lord willing.

Which is why I am here. I want to encourage you! If you are using “Faithful Promises of God” to read through the Word, and you are finding that you can’t read the recommended reading each day, may I suggest that you use two days to do the reading before moving on to the next day. Sure, it will take a little longer but that OK. Keep pressing on! You can do it!

In your daily readings, what jumped out at you this past week? For myself, early in the week, when I read Exodus 1:8, it talked about the new Egyptian king that “knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done.” So as a result, the king feared the Israelites, their numbers were enormous. This king thought it would be a good idea to make the Israelites do slave labor, making bricks.

What struck me is that this king didn’t know the past history of his own country or why (and how) the Israelites were there in Egypt…he didn’t know what Joseph had done for Egypt.

Ignorance will get you nowhere and possibly can get you killed!

Remember this when you see what is happening in our world around us. Many people don’t know American history much less world history and as a result, are leaning towards repeating the mistakes of the past. Much of what our country is pushing towards is the exact same mistakes that other countries have made. Why? Because we are no longer students of history. We think we know of a better way but nothing is new under the sun—nothing!

Will we be like the king in Egypt who was so hard hearted that it brings our destruction?

As in Exodus 6, are we suffering because we have chosen not to obey Him. How much more pain do we have to experience before we (individually or as a nation) surrender our lives to the Lord?

As we journey through Exodus, we see over and over God’s protection and provisions for the Israelites. Every so often He tested the people of “their faithfulness to Him.” What do you think, does He test us to see if we are faithful to Him?

Do we only look to the Lord when things are not going so well and we come to Him as spoiled, whining children? Or are we steadily looking to Him and choosing to obey all the time?

Remember, He fights the battle as we surrender with uplifted hands (as a child reaches out to his father). Our enemies will be remembered no more.

He made a conditional covenant with Israel, “If you will…I will…”. Today we serve Him because of our love for Him, not what He can do for us. For He’s already given us the best gift of all.

Should we not tremble before the Lord as the Israelites did in Exodus 20? Do we show Him respect and reverence or are we walking our own path in arrogance, thinking we don’t need Him? That is, unless things don’t go well, then we are back begging Him to make things better.

And so we continue reading, following the greatest story ever told. I would love hearing from you. Share how He is guiding you on our walk together. Until next week, may God watch over you and keep you focused on Him.

2023 A Year to Be Intentional

2 Thessalonians 3:6-10 “And now, dear brothers and sisters, we give you this command in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: Stay away from those who live idle lives and don’t follow the tradition they received from us. For you know that you ought to imitate us. We were not idle when we were with you. We never accepted food from anyone without paying for it. We worked hard day and night so we would not be a burden to any of you. We certainly had the right to ask you to feed us, but we wanted to give you an example to follow. Even while we were with you, we gave you this command: “Those unwilling to work will not get to eat.”

How are you doing with reading through the Bible. We started 8 days ago. The Book of Genesis is exciting! It lays the groundwork for the rest of the Bible. What has caught my eye this year and has me pondering? What has caught your eye and has you pondering? I long to have a discussion with each of you so that we may grow in our walk with Jesus.

“Their seeds produced plants and trees of the same kind. And God saw it was good.” Gen 1:12b

God created vegetation, seed-bearing plants, trees and fruit. I am wondering why this hasn’t been good enough for those experimenting with hybrid seeds and plants, or more recently GMO seeds and plants? It seems to me that all this modernization of what God created is trying to improve on something already “good”.

But of course, there is a whole lot going on in the name of science today that is doing just that, they want to make something already “good” into something better. Truly, they want to become like God.

Again, we can look no further than Genesis 3 to see that evil entered and wanted to convince Adam and Eve that they could be just like God. And because Adam and Eve fell into sin, they cursed all generations. Not only that, but they were quick to blame each other for this sin and even pointed the finger at God…He caused them to sin. In my opinion, that is probably the height of stupidity but it didn’t stop there. We see people everyday who blame someone else for the sin they commit rather than take responsibility for their actions.

That, my friend, is why we need Jesus so much in our lives. That is also why we need to read the Bible daily, to take what we have read and apply it to our lives.

When we sin, we should automatically feel shame. Shame in this instance is not a bad thing but a good emotion to draw us back to our Heavenly Father in repentance. Instead, we continue on with Adam and Eve’s blame game and have an excuse. Is our conscience so seared that we cannot name our sin and ask God to forgive us? To ask Him to help us to never do that particular sin again? Or do we see this shame as a challenge to be covered with more sin and the cycle continues?

Next, I want to touch a bit upon the Tower of Babel. When a group of people, who spoke one language, set a goal to build a tower to become like God. One language does make a group of people strong; they can unite on all fronts and at some point, pride rears its ugly head. They think they can outsmart God, become like God, be gods. Thus, the more languages the less creative, the less productive and so on. They destroy themselves. It’s happened in the past (in just the first few chapters of Genesis) and it continues to this day and will happen in the future.

We also learn in these early chapters of Genesis that God protects His own. Abram seemed to take things into his own hands often, as did Isaac and Jacob, but God protected them, punishing those who laid a hand on them. What is the secret of God protecting? Recognizing our sin, asking God to forgive and be intentional in not repeating that sin again.

So we can see that nothing is too hard for our Lord! Nothing!!

The last thing I wrote down for these first 8 days of reading is Genesis 31: 19, 30-32. We must be so careful not to favor one person over another. When we do (and we do), the favored one can sin right in front of us and we won’t see it. Or we make excuses for their sin. Be careful! Whether it’s your children, your friends, or any other relationship, be aware that you can be blinded and ask God to give you insight and that you will accept this insight.

No matter where you are in reading the Bible, keep going! Ask God each and every time you sit down to read to give you insight of what He wants you to learn that day. After you are finished with your reading, pray that He will help you to live a changed life.

And before we go, I want to challenge you to be intentional in your daily living. We all waste too much time on social media, the computer and TV so take that first step of turning away from whatever it is that is robbing your time. Is there a book that you’ve been wanting to read but never got around to it? 2023 is the year to read it along with many more. Is there a hobby that you have wanted to start? 2023 is the year!

For myself, I have found a blog that I wrote when I was in Russia and am taking some of those stories and adding them to my third book. It is going to be published this year. I am not sure how or where but it is!

And my newest undertaking is starting to develop. I have been doing some watercolor painting for the last five years, usually in the form of note cards and then just giving them away. Well, I am stretching my abilities and am going to start reproducing the newest cards that I’ve been painting. That means I hope that you might be interested in buying some of my cards as they are available. Everyone likes to get real snail mail and sending a card with a short note from you is a perfect way to get started.

Meanwhile, I look forward to hearing from you. You can always let me know how I can encourage you on face book (A Fae Original page) or you can send me an email (manager@afaeoriginal.com). Have a blessed week!