Neither

Remember when Joshua and the Israelites were FINALLY getting to go into the promised land? They'd crossed through the Jordan river on dry land, eaten some of the fruit of the land, and are getting pretty excited. But the bad guys that they were scared of in the first place are still out there. They need to be defeated. So on this particular day, Joshua was standing near Jericho. It was the first place to go. I'm sure he was kinda counting fighting men in his mind, thinking up tentative schemes on how to get over those walls and defeat those people. But then he looks up and sees a man with a drawn sword in front of him. Had to be a wee bit disturbing. He asked the man, "Are you for us or for our enemies?"

Listen to what the answer was! "Neither, but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come."

Now we all know that the man proceeded to give directions about how to march around Jericho and the walls would fall down, etc. But what really grabbed me this time was that the man said, "Neither". He said he wasn't on the side of Joshua, or of Jericho! It seems he would say, "your side", especially when he was there just to give specific directions on how to defeat Jericho. Anybody agree?

And now here is my thinking. My simple guess is that Joshua NEVER thought, "Hey, hows about we march around these walls blowing trumpets for seven days these certain number of times, and the walls will fall down and we win!" My guess is that he was shopping around for grappling hooks or big ladders or bombs or whatever would come in handy. He was making his own plan. But whatever he was thinking, it is safe to assume that his plan was NOT what God's plan was. So God was basically saying, "I'm not for your plan, or their plan--check out MY plan for YOU!"

These are just my thoughts of the last 20 hours or so. Don't know if I communicated them to make any sense or not.

But God's plan always prevails. Bring it LORD! Not my plan, but yours be done!

A Very Nice Chap

I am reading Jesus Freaks by DC Talk, and I recommend it to every Christian in America! This story really stuck in my head. A pastor of an underground church in Russia in the 1940s writes this:

"When I was still living behind the Iron Curtain, I had met a Russian captain. He loved God, he longed after God, but he had never seen a Bible. He had never attended religious services. He had no religious education, but he loved God without the slightest knowledge of Him.

"I read to him the Sermon on the Mount and the parables of Jesus. After hearing them, he danced around the room in rapturous joy, proclaiming, 'What a wonderful beauty! How could I live without knowing this Christ?" It was the first time that I saw someone jubilating in Christ.

"Then I made a mistake. I read to him the passion of crucifixion of Christ, without having prepared him for this. He had not expected it. When he heard how Christ was beaten, how He was crucified, and that in the end He died, he fell in an armchair and began to weep bitterly. He had believed in a Savior and now his Savior was dead!

"I looked at him and was ashamed that I had called myself a Christian and a pastor, a teacher of others. I had never shared the sufferings of Christ as this Russian officer now shared them. Looking at him was, for me, like seeing Mary Magdalene weeping at the foot of the cross or at the empty tomb.

Then I read to him the story of the resurrection. When he heard this wonderful news, that the Savior arose from the tomb, he slapped his knees and shouted for joy: 'He is alive! He is alive!' Again he danced around the room, overwhelmed with happiness!

"I said to him, 'Let us pray!'

He fell on his knees together with me. He did not know our holy phrases. His words of prayer were, 'O God, what a fine chap you are! If I were You and You were me, I would never have forgiven You Your sins. But You are really a very nice chap! I love You with all my heart!'

"I think that all the angels in heaven stopped what they were doing to listen to this sublime prayer from this Russian officer. When this man received Christ, he knew he would immediately lose his position as an officer, that prison and perhaps death in jail would almost surely follow. He gladly paid the price. He was ready to lose everything."

"Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls." ~ 1 Peter 1:8-9

Exile

Today I read in II Kings. I had been noticing that just about every king of Israel was evil, and I was waiting for another good one who didn't offer sacrifices to Baal and all that. But the little title over chapter 17 read, "Hoshea Last King of Israel". And guess what? He was bad too. So since the Israelites had rejected him for years and continued doing all these detestable things, God sent the Assyrians to attack Israel and they took Samaria captive. There is a long explanation if you will about why these things took place. Read 2 Kings 17:7-23. You can sense God's sorrow that his people didn't listen to him. You can tell he didn't want to remove them from his presence. Even after the exile, the Samaritans did the same things as before, so God sent lions among them. It was reported to the king of Assyria, "The people you deported and resettled in the towns of Samaria do not know what the God of that country requires. He has sent lions among them, which are killing them off, because the people do not know what he requires." They had been away from God for so long they forgot all about his commandments! One of the priests of the LORD came to them and taught them how to serve God again, but it says, "Nevertheless, each national group made its own gods in the several towns where they settled, and set them up in the shrines the people of Samaria had made at the high places... They worshiped the LORD, but they also appointed all sorts of their own people to officiate for them as priests in the shrines at the high places. They worshiped the LORD, but they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they had been brought." They served two masters. They worshipped the LORD, and whatever else they wanted. God says later that this is a bad thing! And how often do we do it today? We serve God, but whatever else we want can also be our god.

But wait! Judah is still out there and they have a new, good king! Hezekiah removed the high places and smashed the idols and all that! Hooray!

But Assyria is coming to take them too. Sennacherib came and shouted threats and said that God told him to come and take Judah into captivity. But that made God angry, and he put many of Sennacherib's soldiers to death. Not an arrow was shot into Jerusalem. Because Judah came back to God, he saved them. God's not mean for punishing those who disobey him - he is quick to forgive and see the best in us!

Everybody should read 2 Kings 17-19 today. It is a great example of God's willingness to forgive us and see our hearts.

I <3 little kidz

I love kids! When I see a kid, my first impulse is to like that kid. There are extremely few kids I don't like. I even like bratty kids! For some reason I can forgive a baby for peeing on the floor, but not a dog, who is not even as smart as a baby (or at least MY babies) *shrug* Kids say funny things, and get into messes, and have the most interesting logic ever. For instance, just now Jess looked up from his Bible copy work and said, "What does 'gloom' mean?" I said, "Um, it means dark, and sad, and bad, and mad." He said, "Like 'doom'?" I said, "Yeah kinda!" He started to read the rest out loud then asked, "what's 'distress'?" I said, "It means freaked out, and sad and mad." He said, "Oh. Like gloom. The same thing." "Yup."

Mayf is looking at his picture Bible and said, "You know what I'm gonna do if I ever catch a green fish? I'm gonna check if there's a money in his mouth!" Yup! Sometimes kids are so much more fun to talk to than adults!

I think any sane person that sees a baby or a little kid thinks "oh how cute". These guys are the future!

So why do people kill them and that's ok? So why do people just stick them in any old school, not caring about what they're doing? It's a little "gloomy" and "distressing" don't you think?

Why the Wait?

I've recently been thinking/praying about a certain something that just doesn't seem to be clear. There's no doubt it is from God, I just have no idea what he wants out of me about it! Rather strange... usually when I feel called to do something I know when I AM called to it and what to do to some extent. But this is just confusing! Today I read where all these army officers went up to Jeremiah and asked him to pray to God for them. They believed what he so blatantly proclaimed about being captives in Babylon, and asked, "Pray that the LORD your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do." My thoughts exactly. Then it said, "Ten days later" the word from God came to Jeremiah on the subject. Ten days? Now, not that ten days is that much of a long time for us, but it seems like here, when Babylon is getting closer and closer and God spoke to people just in conversation, ten days is a wait!

Why the wait? To me, it seems like the sooner we have direction, the better we can carry things out! But I suppose God knows what he's doing, no matter how much it annoys us. But as it turned out, these guys that needed direction didn't obey the direction God gave them after this wait. It didn't fit in with their original plan, and they didn't trust that this was the best road to take, mostly because of their fear. Whatever God ends up asking of me, I want to do it! I don't want to back out just because it's out of my comfort zone, or unusual, or I feel like others won't support the idea, or because it's impossible. I want to do it! I want to get it done!

If you have a spare minute, please pray that I WON'T back out on... whatever it is, whatever happens. And maybe that God will hurry up and put me out of confusion!:P

Which do we choose?

God has been stressing about choosing him over the past little while. It's the, "well, I know I didn't finish my Bible time yet, but I'll just look at my library books for just a minute first..." kinda stuff.

Today I read about Jesus being handed over to Pilate (that time when Judas chose money over his master). Pilate didn't want to kill Jesus, because he hadn't done anything wrong. So he went to the crowd and asked them who he should release - Jesus, or some dangerous murderer guy named Barabbas. They shouted "Barabbas!!!!!!!"

"Wha...?" said Pilate. He was shocked! The murderer? These people CHOSE the bad guy who had, and would probably hurt them again instead of Jesus, the one who'd been healing their sick and feeding them all out of a lunchbox.

We look at that in the Bible and roll our eyes. "How ridiculous!" But we do that every single day!!!!!!! It needs to stop.

That's what I'm going to be working on. Care to join me anyone?