Leviticus 25-27 Trust and Rest

Ok…you can’t see this, but I am totally doing a happy dance right now!

Why am I dancing?

I have finished the book of Leviticus! WOOT WOOT!

Leviticus is, in my opinion, the hardest book to get through…and I am so there!

YES!

Anyway…as passionate as I am about that, there is something else that I truly want to share with you tonight.

The concept of Sabbath…

Thus far, I have seen God command Israel to take a real Sabbath before him over and over. Leviticus 25 emphasizes this command for something like the fortieth time.

I tend to find that the Bible repeats itself a lot when it is trying to make an idea stick…the idea of Sabbath was clearly very important to God. He wanted to take one day of the week and call it holy.

I love (SO MUCH) what God commanded his people to do with their holy day.

He did not ask them to spend the entire day doing something big and dramatic…

No fasting and praying…

Community service…

Workout routines….

Strange rituals…

Underwater basket weaving!

Nope, none of that. He called his people to REST. He wanted them to honor him be taking a break. That amazes me! People often say that the Bible is filled with meaningless rules….but I am so convinced that this command shows God intimate compassion and understanding of human need.

I don’t know about you, but I find it nearly impossible to simply sit still and feel useless. I lay down at night and am overwhelmed by my to-do list. I wake up and feel pressured by the many things on the agenda. It is so hard to keep up with things.

A few years ago, my pastor challenged me to practice taking a Sabbath every week. I thought that he was crazy…but I tried it anyway.

It truly changed my life.

It actually lowered my insane stress level.

Why?

Because it forced me to be useless for a while every week. It gave me the right to stop worrying for a minute, and it forced me to trust God. I had to place all of my duties in his hands every week. I had to trust that he would give me the strength that I needed to accomplish everything.

I have seen the faithfulness of God in this over and over again. In three years, I have not missed an assignment because of it…there have been a few close calls, but it has worked out every time.

My Sabbath is now the best part of my week.

I love the reminder that God’s commands are not burdensome. Sometimes I feel like God has called me to so many difficult things…but this one is so easy. God commanded this people to chill out!

He reminds us that our schedules are in his hands.

He reminds us to take care of ourselves.

He proves himself faithful over and over again.

Leviticus 21-24 First Fruits

Tonight was wonderful!

I most of the ingredients required for a cake on my head at some point tonight…who knew that putting eggs in your hair is the best way to re-hydrate it? It is pretty gloss, but it works.

Anyway…that is your completely useless fact of tonight.

Here is your more meaningful one….

According to Leviticus 23:9-14, Israelites were required to bring the first fruits of all of their crops back to God after the harvest. It was a ritual where a man would bring a sacrifice before God in order to thank him for the harvest.

The man was not allowed to use any of his crops until he made his sacrifice to God.

What must have been really neat about this is the fact that no Israelite man would easily be able to take all of the credit for his work. He would be forced to acknowledge that fact that, apart from God’s help, he could do nothing at all.

He could not make the crops grow…he had no control over the whether.

Apart from God’s help, the man’s family would starve.

The ritual of first fruits kept the Israelites knowledge of their dependency on God fresh.

In modern day America, we tend to take a lot of credit for our work. We like to be told that we did well, and we want our names to stick out because of our talent and hard work. We use our accomplishments to feel good about ourselves.

I am not convinced that God is too excited about our attitude.

I feel challenged to remember to offer first fruits in my life. I feel called to thank God before starting a task.

I believe that God wants us to acknowledge him and to remember that we can do nothing good apart from him.

He created the ritual of first fruits so that the Israelites would not forget.

In a world with few rituals…we are still burdened to remember and to acknowledge.

We have to have thankfulness for our successes rather than pride.

Romans 12:3
For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

Leviticus 17-20 Glorious Mess

Sometimes, I really feel like an idiot.

Today was the first day of a new semester and I managed to spill a cup of coffee all over the front of my shirt. Of course, it was also a busy day and was forced to go to all of my classes with coffee down my entire front.

To make matters worse…I also had an allergic reaction to my own knitting project…resulting in red, puffy eyes.

My shower turned cold in the middle, and I was forced to switch showers when my hair was full of conditioner (also in my eyes.)

It was a running late, running around…crazy kind of day.

Not that it was a completely abnormal day for me (pretty normal actually), but days like this always make me wonder “God, what in the world do you want from me…because I don’t think that I’ve got it”

It is also on days like this that I read verses saying…

“You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.” (Leviticus 20:26)

And I am reminded of the fact that God didn’t call me to perfection….he called me to be Holy and to be His.

Over the past few days I have gone over hundreds of commands and regulations in the book of Leviticus. All of these commands have had a common theme and idea….

Be HOLY because you belong to a holy God

Through all of those details God was simply trying to communicate to the Israelites that they needed to be holy. To be holy means to be set apart…for the isrealites this meant making every part of their lives look different from their neighbors. Everything from how they pooped to how they worshiped was to be special.

For the modern believer…the command to be holy shouldn’t look all that different. We must be intentional in every action, always remembering that we were set apart by God. He called us to be His. We need to live like it.

Fortunately…no part of the bible says that you can’t spill coffee all over yourself.

The Leviticus never says that God is less proud of you when you feel ridiculous.

So here I am…I am a HOLY mess. I am set apart by God, despite my inadequacies and stained t-shirt.

Leviticus 13-16

Well…Tonight was interesting.

First, I covered the topic of skin diseases…yuck!

Then…mildew…really interesting

Then the rituals concerning male discharge…TMI!

Regulations concerning periods…no comment

And rituals concerning sex…fact: Israelites were unclean for an entire day after sex…think about that!

In the midst of all of this information, I was not all that sure of what to write about tonight. I am not sure that you would really want to hear about the meanings of different colors of hair in the middle of a rash…I am not sure that I really wanted to know that.

In the end, the idea that really stuck with me tonight is the truth that our lives will involve a lot of “unclean” moments. Even against our will sometimes, we will encounter situations that will make us dirty.

Being unclean from time- to-time is a part of being human.

There is no real escape from that fact.

But…the whole theme of Leviticus, and the ENTIRE BIBLE, is the fact that it is possible to be clean again.

Leviticus tells us to kill an animal, wait for a period of time, and take a bath in order to be clean again.

Then, thousands of years later, Jesus comes and tells us that we can be clean by washing ourselves in his blood.

The thesis of the Bible is the fact that…”Life will make us dirty, but God can make us clean”

The challenge for us (made by both Jesus and Leviticus) is not to sit in our filth.

God has given us the ability to be clean, we need to respond.

We need to admit that we are unclean and we need to be washed.

The Bible was created so that we could do this.

Leviticus 9-12 Pay Attention

Tonight I learned that the Israelites were not allowed to eat Geckos. Its true…geckos were unclean and therefore inappropriate snacking material. This must have been good news for the Geckos, and I am convinced that it was good news to the Israelites as well. My family has two geckos and I have never been tempted to munch on either of them.

That was your pretty much meaningless fact of the night….lucky you!

(Your pretty much meaningless fact came from Leviticus 11)

Your more useful (I hope) fact came from Leviticus 10.

This is the story of God ending the lives of Aaron’s sons because they did not follow his instructions when offering incense before him.

I have to admit…this story made me angry the first zillion times that I read it. This did not sound like the merciful God that I had learned about in Sunday School.

What was this?

As an adult, looking at this passage, I have to admit that it still doesn’t really jive with me…

Where is the G rated God?

The truth is that God has never been G-rated. Since the beginning, he has demanded that his people acknowledge him as God and that they truly honor him.

He gave Aaron’s sons very specific instructions which they chose to ignore.

As a holy God, he could not allow himself to be dishonored…so he had to bring the fire. He had to make his power clear…and two men died

God gave them everything that they needed in order to remain alive, he didn’t set them up to fail. He gave them everything that they needed, but they did not choose to take him seriously…

We serve a holy God who cannot be taken lightly.

Later in the passage God tells Aaron and his remaining sons: “ You must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean”

I believe that God was saying that the Aaron’s sons had treated him as if he were common…when he is not.

In our lives we are very good at forgetting the same thing that Aaron’s son forgot. We forget that we serve a holy God that cannot be taken lightly. We need to PAY ATTENTION to his instructions and not to take him lightly.

We are also very good at treating the common as if it were holy. We turn our own rituals…favorite foods…relationships…leisure…into the holy.

We treat the details of our lives as if they were more important than our walks with God. We act as if our common television shows were more holy than our devotional time with God…

We are wrong.

Fortunately, God has given us a way out, he doesn’t often choose to let fire from heaven loose upon us.

But he does want us to remember that he is Holy…and that he must be treated as a holy God.

That’s all for tonight…thanks for reading my blog. I really appreciate it.

Leviticus 5-8 He Gets It

I am not completely certain of this, but I expect that I am not the only person in this world who struggles with comparing myself to others.

In psychology, the “Looking Glass Theory” describes the fact that most people measure their self esteem by examining their own lives in comparison with the lives and opinions of others.

We do it….we do look at other people and ask ourselves the question “Am I doing as well as them?” We use their success, failures and actions both to pat ourselves on the back and to put ourselves down because of the fact that we will never be able to accomplish what our neighbors do.

I am not at all convinced that God is a fan of the “Looking Glass Theory.” I am not convinced that he has given us the right to judge ourselves by the standards that we see in the lives of others.

Here’s why…

All of us have different lives. We have different abilities. We have different possessions.

In Leviticus five (right after another description of sheep chopping instructions), is a list of gifts that can be sacrificed in order to be forgiven from a sin. What is so important to see about this passage is the fact that God gives different options for people based on what they could afford.

He did not demand the exact same sacrifice from everyone (or even a bigger sacrifice for bigger sins,) he asked his people to bring what they had….AND he accepted what they had. He did not ask his people to do what was impossible for them, he asked them to do what they actually could!

So remember tonight, as you look at the people around you, that God might not have asked for the same sacrifice from them as he asked from you.

Do not feel better because your gift looks nicer…

Do not feel broken because theirs puts yours to shame…

Remember that God knows YOU and that he knows exactly what you are able to bring.

He will be satisfied with YOUR actual best.

Leviticus 1-4 Leftovers

FACT: Leviticus is the hardest book in the world for me to get through…I have never had enough appreciation for it and it has been the death of my attempts to get through the entire Bible in a year several times in a row.

It makes me a bit crazy and I am not sure that I will ever really get it, BUT my commitment is to somehow get something meaningful from it everyday…we shall see!

FACT Again: Who knew that reading the Bible could make you hunger? (literally, not just spiritually?) Seriously, I am starving tonight (probably because it is nearly two in the morning) and reading about all of the grain offerings and of the breads and crackers given to God actually made me hungrier…strange and totally irrelevant information…my gift to you!

Anyway…the only way to truly find meaning in the book of Leviticus is to spend some time actually studying the meaning behind the laws and practices. They tend to make more sense that way.

Leviticus 1 goes into a lot of gory detail about how exactly one is supposed to perform a burnt offering. It discusses what to do with the blood and how to wash the animal’s insides. It is very clear on what a priest was to do in order to transform a living animal into a pleasing aroma to God. Rather than simply being grossed out by this, I researched it a bit, and it is actually really cool.

The idea behind an actual “burnt offering” was that it was a gift given to God simply for the purpose of giving him a gift. It was not given in order to pay for a sin or to redeem someone or something. It was given simply for the purpose of pleasing God.

This is actually an amazing concept that we very often loose track of as Christians. We get lost in the midst of trying to do the things that God has commanded and asked us to do, that we do not often take the time to simply please God. We do not often say to ourselves “I just want to make God happy right now” instead we often act out of fear of falling short or of making God angry. The burnt offering reminds us that there is a time and place to simply surrender to God in order to please him. There is a time to simply make God happy for the sake of making God happy.

Something else about a burnt offering: The animal offered had to be without defect. God didn’t want Israel’s cast of animals as gifts, he wanted the best…he deserved the very best. It is remarkable that God wanted the best of Israel’s gifts as burnt offerings when burnt offerings were the “extras.” God called the Israelites to worship him with their best, not with their cast offs.

Application: All of us (me too) are very good at giving God our cast offs. We give him the leftover time, money and life that we do not have a better use for.

It is incredibly rare that we give him our very best as a gift simply for the sake of pleasing him.

The challenge is to give the absolute best parts of our lives to God…simply for the sake of making him happy.

Exodus 38-40 Melt Your Mirror

Just to let you know, I am so excited about the thought that I am bringing to you tonight. I have read through Exodus more times than I can remember and I have never seen this before. (Probably because it is stuck in the middle of the description of the Israelites building the tabernacle…which looks identical to God’s directions…anyway the passage tends to loose my attention…zzzzzzz)

Anyway, tonight one sentence changed my world…

To give a bit of explanation---the Israelites are in the midst of building a house for God. They are basically building a traveling temple which will literally hold the presence of the living God. God gave specific directions for building this house, and the Isrealites must collect all of the materials and build it as God has commanded.

Pretty Straight forward.

In the midst of all of the details, this sentence is written…

They made the bronze basin and its bronze stand from the mirrors of the women who served at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.

Exodus 38:8

This is so COOL! Basically, a group of women chose to literally melt their mirrors and donate the metal to the creation of a house for God. Even more than that…their mirrors are used to make a washing basin for the tabernacle.

What is so incredible about this fact is that no other details are given as to where ingredients for the tabernacle had come from…So it was very important to God that we see this specific detail.

These women who gave up their mirrors in exchange for a basin in the house of God set up an incredible example for us. They show us that cleanliness in the presence of God is SO SO SO much more important than vanity and physical appearance. They made the choice to put God’s presence in front of their own beauty and the affirmation of that beauty. They knew that God was more concerned with creating a house for the presence of God than with the knowledge of their own appearance.

This amazes me…these women couldn’t just drive to Wal-Mart and buy new mirrors. They may have traded away their only chance to see themselves again. WOW!

I want to be like these women. I want the presence of God to be my priority. I want to know that his presence in my life is far more important than what I look like.

My challenge to you (and to myself) is that you melt your mirror before God. Commit to making his presence your priority, and to let go of the idea that the mirror carries any meaning at all.

Exodus 34-37 Lightning Bug

Today was incredible! The presence of God was reveled in my life for the billionth time. Today I saw the faithfulness of God through one of his greatest gifts to me…my friends. Honestly, I am so blessed to live in the presence of God’s people.

Today, God confirmed his love for me through the presence of my wonderful friends.

In my reading tonight, I witnessed a bit of what it was like for Moses to literally talk to God and to sit in his presence. After he spent time with God, he literally glowed. His face shown so much that he frightened people. He actually had to cover his face, because the evidence of his relationship with God was so overwhelming to people…

That is the kind of God that I get to serve…The kind that you can’t walk away from without a suntan. We serve the kind of God who changes you on every single level.

The world can literally see his presence in our lives.

Ok…so here I am. As of now, I have not personally gotten a Moses moment…I haven’t been able to see him and to glow in response. I am still praying for the day when that will happen.

For now, I will be content with feeling a little bit of the glow that Moses felt. I feel it from time to time when I catch onto a new concept, or see a magnificent piece of creation, and I absolutely caught a glimpse of that glow tonight.

As a spent time with amazing people of God...

Laughing with eight people in the creeper van, circle after circle on the skating rink, holding hands with a friend so that she will not fall down, eating ice cream and laughing at one another…

Good conversations….

Wonderful people…

A glorious savior.

No, I have not seen the literal, glowing face of God, but I have seen small parts of it over and over again today.

Thank you to all of you who have shown me the face of my savior…thank you for bringing more of his presence into my life by bringing your presence into my life.

Thank you for being my lightning bugs.

Exodus 30-33 More than Mediocre

OK…so this is s annoying! I, being the rather impressive klutz that I am, managed to spill an entire bowl of popcorn on my keyboard tonight…and there are kernels under half of my keys…awesome, I know right

Thus far, my “O” and my backspace are not really working at all…sweet!

Aside from my popcorned computer, this has been the kind of day that I can’t really describe, all that I can say is that the presence of God makes all the difference. God’s presence makes the good moments so much better than they would be otherwise, and it makes the scary moments livable.

The presence of God is what makes my life what it is…

Tonight I read about some of the hardest pages of the Bible.

This what the night where Isreal really blew it! This was the night with the whole golden calf thing. After God’s extreme presence in the their lives, many Isrealites chose to walk away from God. They chose something “better” than God’s plan…

This broke the heart of God.

After cleaning up the mess, God no longer wanted to be present with the Israelites. He would fulfill all of his promises, but he would no longer be present with them…he told that to Moses.

Moses wasn’t so sure about that idea…

Look at this:

"If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?" Exodus 33:15-16.

Moses knew for certain that God’s presence was the one thing that would make Isreal’s life good. It would be the difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Apart from God, Israel would be exactly like all of the mediocre nations that surrounded them.

That was not good enough…and God agreed!

"I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name."

So the thoughts for the night…

#1 popcorn and computers do not mix

#2 Seek the presence of God with everything that you have. Being close to God is the only thing that will make your life more than mediocre. Apart from the presence of God, you can fade into the masses…the presence of the living God is what makes you stand out .

Exodus 26-29 “Holy to the Lord”

OH NO!

I have officially entered into the parts of the Bible that I don’t really know how to blog about. Seriously, it is so much easier to write something meaningful about the creation of the world or about God’s covenant with Abram than it is to write about the specific directions for the building of the tabernacle!

Unfortunately… the book of Numbers is still coming, and you can guess what that is filled with, right?

(If you guessed numbers, you’ve got it)

Fortunately, this is the very World of God. Even in the pages that are filled with what feels like meaningless details, we can still find truth with the power to shake the very foundations of the world.

Tonight’s reading included all of the details that God gave to the Israelites for setting up the tabernacle and for creating rituals and standards that would constantly remind the Israelites of God’s presence.

In the midst of a lot of commands and details that I was trying to sort through, I bumped into the description of a priest’s uniform. Somewhere between a description of a breastplate and a linen tunic was one detail that truly caught my attention.

Priests wore a metal plate on their forehead…that piece of metal had the phrase “Holy to the Lord” written across it.

That piece of metal made it clear to everyone who saw that priest that he was set apart for a special purpose.

Every single morning that priest would have to consciously strap those words to his forehead and to acknowledge that fact that his life completely belonged to God.

A priest would not ever be able to see his life as insignificant, because of the constant reminder that he was set apart to be holy to the Lord.

Ok, so I am a twenty year old girl sitting on a squeaky old couch that looks like it escaped from a bad nineties film, how does this apply to me?

Here’s the kicker…in countless other places in the Bible, God makes it very clear that his people were all to be set apart as a “Kingdom of Priests” (Exodus 19:6..Etc)

What this means is that God calls each of us as his kingdom of priests to follow in the footsteps of those priests in the past.

We have to get up every morning and mentally strap the phrase “Holy to the Lord” across our foreheads.

We do not have the luxury of thinking that our lives and times are not meaningful, because we have been set apart.

We are holy.

Our lives are holy.

As you seek to serve God in this crazy mixed up world, never forget that you were set apart as Holy…your life matters.

Genesis 22-25…Letting Go

God speaks in so many ways…

· Through friends

· songs on the radio

· A quiet voice in the back of our head

· Through the Bible (Which is kind of the point here)

· Nature (I am convinced that squirrels and pigeons are very good at this)

· Through situations

· Through leaders and mentors

God speaks in so many ways…I am convinced that he is always speaking; that he is always present and involved with our lives.

All that he asks from us is that we pay attention; that we listen to him.

Through many of these methods, I believe that God has been challenging me to stop taking responsibility for so many things that are not mine. I need to trust that the fields that I am planting belong to God and that he is, ultimately, responsible for making things grow. This is frightening concept that I haven’t really taken to heart yet…but I am learning.

From my Bible reading tonight, I got the picture that Moses eventually learned to handle the same concept that I am barely able to grasp.

So…last night I looked at the fact that Moses had to learn from Jethro that he needed help…that he needed to change the way that he was doing things.

Moses was challenged to find people who would help him out in the future so that he was not attempting to take on all of Isreal’s problems himself.

Tonight, I saw the fruits of Moses’s taking that advice.

In the process of making a covenant with Israel, God calls Moses to come up to the mountain and to literally spend time with him. (Exodus 24)

What God means by this is that he wants Moses to spend 40 days on the mountain with him. Moses gets to literally see God for 40 entire days! That would truly be incredible!

What I never saw about this passage when I read it in the past is the fact that Moses had to leave the Israelites with his judges for that time…he needed to leave Israel with a babysitter.

In order for Moses to see GOD to do what most of us merely dream of, he had to let go of his responsibility for a while and to trust that God would take care of things in his absence.

What do I mean here?

I feel challenged to remember that God is in charge of all of the things that I feel responsible for. In order to really experience what he has for me, I need to be willing to let go of all of it and to trust that he has it covered.

Genesis 18-21 tell Me that I am Crazy

I am terrible at asking for help! Seriously, it’s bad!

I am also a terrible klutz.

So my life can look a lot like this….

“Becky, can I help you with that, it looks heavy?”

-Nope, I think I’ve got it.

-Are you sure.

-Seriously, don’t worry about it.

-

-

Crash…boom…ouch!

Oh crap!

I wish that this was a rare conversation, but it is not. A moment like this comes into my life nearly every week. For some reason, I just have a difficulty in admitting that I can’t handle everything on my own. I feel like I should be able to take care of everything…but I can’t. That is a lesson that God is still teaching me, and he will probably have to continue for a very long time (apologies Jesus, I am trying)

At least I am not alone…Moses had to learn the same lesson!

Here’s the Story…(genesis 18 and company)

1. Moses is born (cute baby in basket…yay!)

2. grown up Moses kills random Egyptian…has to run away

3. Runs away...meets girl

4. Marries girl and makes friends with her dad…Jethro enters the scene!

5. Burning bush

6. The whole getting Israel out of Egypt thing

NOW! Moses is in charge of getting over 10,000 people across the desert. He has to judge all of their fights…and is probably getting very tired!

Fortunately, Moses’s father-in-law, Jethro, decides to visit him at just the right time. The first thing that Jethro does is he compliments Moses. He gets excited about what God has done through Moses and he tells him so.

He then tells Moses that he is crazy because he is trying to handle so much by himself. He then helps Moses to set up a system that will help him to spread out his workload amongst a larger group.

Then Jethro goes home.

I love this story so much, because it shows that even Moses needed a mentor. Even Moses needed him to affirm his work and then to help correct him.

There is something incredibly valuable about having someone to look over your work and to tell you that you are crazy sometimes.

All of us need to have leaders, and I am convinced that it is impossible to lead others if you are not being lead by someone yourself.

SO…to all of my mentors and leaders…thank you for pouring into my life!

Thank you for keeping me sane!

I couldn’t do it without you!

Genesis 14-17 Be Still

The bible tells of that there will be times when God calls us to act. He gives us a command, and we are to follow it. He told Noah to build an Ark, he called Abram to leave his home and to travel to the promised land…we have many examples of God’s followers acting based on a specific command given by God.

There are also moments when God tells us to simply be still…

So picture this: All of the Israelites are literally sandwiched between a massive body of water and a huge army that fully intends to wipe them from the face of earth...Also remember that this group of Israelites contains everyone and everything. This has every family, every child, and every single possession.

The Israelites stand there, and they (understandably) freak out! They think to themselves “We are about to die! Why in the world would God do this to us?”

I love the answer so much!

Moses answered the people, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still."

Exodus 14:13-14

The Israelites were terrified for no reason…God was fighting for them. He was keeping vigil over them again, and he was not asking them to do anything. They simply had to sit back and watch him fight for them.

Other cool point: The Egyptian solders could see that God was fighting for the Israelites. Later in the chapter they actually say:

"Let's get away from the Israelites! The LORD is fighting for them against Egypt."

The Egyptians could see that they were up against a God that they didn’t want to mess with.

The application for tonight is simply this: remember that God (your father) is actively fighting for you right now. All of creation can see that he is fighting for you!

He may be calling you to do something; to play some part in his plan, or he may be saying “you need only be still, because I am fighting for you.”

I guess that’s all for tonight, see you on the flip side!

Exodus 10-13 Vigil

True Story: These four chapters were loaded. Without doing any intense research, or even thinking about it too deeply, one could write hundreds of pages based on this small section of the Bible.

Tonight covered the last few plagues in Egypt, the Passover, and the flight of the Israelites.

There was so much!

The first item that I want to touch on tonight is the fact that God foreshadowed the death of Christ 1,200 years(ish) before it happened. We serve an incredible God who chose to give us hints about his redemption of all man through the story of Israel’s redemption.

He first uses the blood of a lamb to save the firstborn of the Israelites.

Later, he uses the blood of his son to save all of humanity.

He knew that he would eventually use the blood of his firstborn to save the lives of his children, and he began telling that story a millennium before it happened…that truly amazes me. It validates the meaning and truth behind the Bible and it shows God’s obsessive love of his people. He truly is amazing.

Secondly, there was a verse that caught my attention tonight…

Exodus 12:41-42

At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the LORD's divisions left Egypt. Because the LORD kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt.

I really feel that this verse summarizes the entire story of God rescuing his people. They were rescued because God kept vigil over them….

The God of the universe who created everything actually kept watch over human beings…he sees people.

Just hold onto that!

Exodus 6-9 Self Image

In psychology class it is taught that a person’s understanding of themselves and of their own abilities is necessary for a functional life. They call it self actualization.

All of us strive to “know ourselves” and somehow to make our choices based on that knowledge. This is great, until the moment when our image of our “self” is shattered by the demand that is placed upon us by an outside source.

For Moses, a moment like this came when God stepped into his life and asked him to do things far outside of his comfort zone. God took Moses’s self image and he broke it in exchange for a new identity…for a new picture of what his life would look like.

Moses knew himself to be “a man of faltering lips” meaning that he did not have the ability to present himself in front of others. He saw his life as staying outside of that world….he was sure of it.

When God comes into the picture and shows his power to Moses, he calls Moses to speak and to stand up in public. God tells Moses that he will be given everything that he needs for this task…but Moses cannot bring himself to believe God on that one.

It truly amazes me that Moses could see God do incredible miracles, and that he could know God’s power without actually believing that God could use HIM to work his plan. I think that Moses could believe that God could do all of the things that he said…except for the part where it involved using his life and his skills.

I don’t think that this kind of an attitude is really a stretch for any of us. We have this bad habit of separating ourselves and our abilities from the hand of God. We see God’s power as something separate from the things that go on inside of us. We allow our own pictures of ourselves to overpower the pictures that God has of us.

Fortunately, God didn’t let Moses off the hook. He dealt with Moses’s doubt until the day that Moses was standing before all of Israel and literally speaking for an entire day. Moses never saw that coming!

The challenge of tonight is not the person that you think that you are to overshadow the person that God is turning you into. He knows you better than you do!

Exodus 2-5 The Egyptian in the Sand

Fact: anyone who really knows me can tell you one thing for certain….I am an obsessive person. (Ok that isn’t the only thing they could say…they might mention klutzy of goofy or something like that too)

But anyway…my latest passionate obsession in the television show “Bones.” Seriously, I love it…it’s like taco bell at two in the morning…SO Good. Just a little spicy and it so hits the spot. (Passing over the fact that neither are all that good for you.) My bible reading tonight made me think of “Bones” for two reasons.

Reason #1

Bones and Exodus two express one of the same basic idea…it is impossible to hide sin. The truth eventually does come out, even when we try incredibly hard to hide it! In Exodus Two, Moses kills an Egyptian. He did it for what probably seemed like a very good reason, but he does try to hide his crime. The truth did come out, and Moses had to run for his life. Many times in the book of Genesis, God reminds us that there must be an accounting for all human lives….the idea that the death of the Egyptian could not be hidden is a reminder.

Reason #2 (The one that I am actually pretty excited about)

My favorite favorite favorite Bones moments are the rescue scenes. There are several moments in the show when the protagonist is in a position where she is about to be hurt or killed, and at just the right moment her friend come in and saves her. He shows up, and he pulls her out of the wreckage or he shoots the bad guy. He gives her a hug and her tells her that the bad it over…that it is going to be ok. He then takes her away from the scary place. She never has to go back. I love those scenes so much because they truly remind me of my Savior. He swoops into my life over and over again, and he saves me. He steps in front of my bullet and he makes the bad into good.

Here is what I read tonight…

Exodus 3:7-10

The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

I was reminded that my savior was not okay with leaving his children in a place where they were being hurt. He was using Moses to step into their lives and to RESCUE them from the Egyptians. He took them far away from the bad place and he affirmed them that is was all over. He took them away from the bad and into the good.

Genesis 29-Exodus 1. Blessings

Confession: Tonight I kidnapped my roommate, shoved her into my big, creepy, white van, and (after getting stuck in the ice on the parking lot) took to her Taco Bell in the middle of the night. It was awesome! She yelled and complained the entire time! It was hysterical!

Truth: my number one goal in life is to make sure that all of my friends know that I love them based on the extreme amount of teasing that I give them! I think that I have had some major success in this goal over the past week.

Tonight, I read about Jacob’s last blessings to his sons. He takes the time to evaluate each one, and asks God about their futures. He knows his sons, and he blesses them accordingly.

In light of Jacob’s blessings, I thought that tonight would be a good opportunity to start something new. I want to start “blessing” my friends in a manner similar to what Jacob did. So…every once in a while, I will post a blessing or a thought about someone in my life.

As a person who is surrounded by magnificent people, I think that this will be a way for me to give them a place here, as Jacob’s blessing gave his family place in the Bible.

Teasing is not the only way to show love.

So to start off…

Katrina…

Katrina has magnificent eyes. She has been given the ability to see beauty that has been lost on others. She can stand in awe before things that all others pass by.

She knows the creative heart of her savior…and she is in love with it. She constantly seeks so catch another glimpse of him, and quite literally dances for joy when she does.

Her laugh captivates the heart of her father…she has understands the beauty of letting go, and of laughing without shame.

Sometimes she worries and sometimes she is unsure…but she is magnificent. She is eternally loved by her father and she truly has nothing to worry about.

Genesis 45-48 I just can't wait!

Today has been one of those days where God has caught me by surprise over and over again. It has been the kind of day where God has shown me his love though a huge number of circumstances and people….I love this kind of day. I am pretty sure that God does too!

I was able to read through some of the happiest chapters in the Bible tonight. I got to re-live the moment when Joseph’s brothers learn that he is alive and well, I saw as they received forgiveness for a mistake that had haunted them for decades. I saw as Jacob got his son back., and as an entire nation was saved from a famine and brought to safety.

It was a good night!

As awesome as these passages were for me to read, I can’t imagine how much fun as it was for God to write them in the first place…

I can only imagine God watching as all of these people suffered, and waited for God to move. I bet that he was so excited! I can only imagine him standing over the whole scene saying “if only they knew” “If only my people had a clue of what I have in store for them, it would blow their minds.” I can’t imagine the joy that he felt as he finally saw all of his pieces come together!

What continues to amaze me about this happy passage is the fact that our lives will eventually look a lot like it. A moment will come when all of the bad will suddenly be blown away by joy.

We will finally be surrounded by peace!

We will find forgiveness and the ability to forgive!

We will be reunited with those that we had thought to be dead.

Our fear will melt away…

Our reaction will look a lot like Joseph’s…we will hold onto our family and weep for joy.

I know that God is still looking into our lives (especially on the hard days) and saying to himself “If they only knew”

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see it all!

Genesis 40-44 Hold On

Last night, my blog focused on the fact that God understands the fact that things are going to be hard sometimes. I reminded myself about happy endings, and about the fact that all of the struggles will eventually lead to Christ. Struggle will eventually lead to peace…if you read last night, tonight may sound like a broken record.

I got to know Joseph a little better tonight.

(The one with the flashy coat, not Jesus’s stepdad)

What amazed me tonight was simply the fact that some moments of his life had to be so hard.

There had to be moments when Joseph thought that his life was over…he had to face real discouragement. He probably knew what fear looked like too.

Just a snapshot of his life…

1. His own brothers were perfectly willing to kill him, but decided to score some cash instead.
2. As soon as his life turns around, someone lies about him, and he is put into prison for nothing.
3. He spends a decade in prison,

What amazes me is the fact that Joseph probably would never have believed that his life would work out as it did. In those horrible moments of sitting in prison and feeling abandoned and betrayed, he probably would have laughed at the idea that he would eventually gain huge success and save his family.

My reminder tonight is this: Do not end the story before God does.

In the scary moments when you are surrounded by prison walls, remember that God sees the other side of things. He knows what the rest will look like…and he is excited about it.

Never place a period where God places a comma.

Good night…I need sleep now.

Genesis 37-40 Please Fix This

Today someone mentioned to me, that most of the people that she meets spend a lot of their time feeling miserable. Unfortunately, I think that she is right...

As I look at the world around me, I see so much that says “Oh my Gosh, how did I get here.” We are constantly question are lives, and very few of us can come close to claiming happiness as our own.

We can even see this mirrored in the pop culture that we purchase...pop songs are often sad, and I am yet to find a popular television character that isn’t emotionally screwed up in some way (Heck…ABC has made millions exploiting emotional drama on Thursday nights alone!) … the truth is that most people are sad, most people are broken.

Life hurts sometimes; we all know this.

Where am I going with this? (Hold on, it will make sense)

Tonight, I read Tamar’s story. Tamar was someone who understood disappointment and mistakes…

She had lost two husbands without having any children.

She was cheated.

Promises were broken

She was alone.

So, Tamar made a rash attempt to fix her life. She wanted to get away from feeling miserable, so she sinned. That sin resulted in children.

Tamar, a woman who knew brokenness, sin and disappointment inside and out had twins. Those twins were the result of bad choices and desperation.

This story seems fairly normal…we hear of this kind of thing everyday.

The difference in this story is the fact that one of Tamar’s sons was on one of Jesus’ direct ancestors. The list of people that had a part in the genetics of the Son of God includes Tamar.

What does this mean?

Honestly, I am not entirely sure, but I believe that it is saying that God understands. He chose to bring his son into the world though a path of pain and brokenness. He accepted that disappointment was a part of reality in this world.

It also reminds us that Jesus was sent here in response to the pain. He was sent here in response to the fact that people are so miserable. He came to redeem it…and to make it good.

If you really think about it Tamar’s broken story eventually ends with the story of Jesus. Her painful novel has a happy ending. It comes around in the end.

So just remember…yes, this is a disappointing and incredibly painful life here on planet earth, BUT Christ came in response to the pain. He made it better.

Don’t ever forget that your story will end well…even if this part of it is not what you were expecting.

Genesis 33-36 Footnote

Tonight, I am very tired. It has been a full day, and focusing on devotions tonight was not easy for me. I need to do a better job of making this a focus before my day gets all filled up. I love my life…but it does become very busy very easily!

Anyway…my thought for today is very simple and not too deep. Really it is more of an observation that I had never noticed before.

I read through a lot of big events tonight. I saw Jacob and Esau reunite, I saw the birth of Benjamin, the death of Rachel, the worship and alters of Jacob, and the killing of an entire city. All of this was important and all of it seemed to logically fit into the Bible, but what really caught my attention was one verse that seemed a bit out of place…

“ Now Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died and was buried under the oak below Bethel. So it was named Allon Bacuth” Genesis 35:8

This verse seemed very funny to me because it is so “Out of Nowhere” this Deborah isn’t mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, but her death is of enough importance to receive a place in the word of God.

We know nothing about her…but she is still mentioned.

Deborah was so much of a background character in the story that she is basically a footnote, but she is still mentioned. This means that she still played a role in the big story. Her life was a support to the lives of the big characters in the Bible.

Deborah is a reminder that our lives are still worth mention even if they are not extreme. She was not a main character, but her life helped the lives of others to be what they were.

She reminds us that service can be important…that helping to make other’s lives better, we can find meaning.

Even though Deborah the handmaid was only a footnote in the word of God, she was still honored in a manner that was reserved for few.

Genesis 29-32 Good Hurt

Tonight there was so much that caught my attention in the stories that I read through. The thing that drives me nuts about the Bible is the fact that it tells so many stories without telling me everything. I want to know what Rachel and Leah were really like. I want to see what all of these people looked like-I want to know what these things actually felt like when they happened. Someday, when I finally get to heaven, I fully intend to ask all of these people to actually tell their stories. I want to know the details! Until then, I will continue to wonder and to guess.

Anyway…apart from my ranting, the point that I am going to hit on tonight comes from the end of Genesis chapter 32. In this chapter, I find the story of Jacob literally wrestling with God. We do not know exactly why this happened or specifically what God was trying to teach Jacob…there are many things that I could have been, but that is not the issue that I am hitting on tonight.

What really captured my attention tonight was the fact that Jacob was literally never the same after his encounter with God. This sounds like a really positive thing, but in some ways it doesn’t seem like it…after Jacob wrestled with God, he had a limp for the rest of his life. He was physically never “whole” again after he saw God. He had a permanent reminder of God’s complete power over his life. This reminder probably even hurt, but he would never again forget about God’s power.

I think that all of us carry scars from our encounters with God. It is a terrifying prospect, but God’s presence in our lives, means that parts of us will have to die. We cannot wrestle with God, and leave without a mark…

If we are really letting him work in our lives, we will feel him break us…

Our

Pride

Self-confidence

Apathy

Selfishness

Parts of us die, and it hurts…it can hurt so much, but it is a good hurt.

As God wins the wrestling match of our lives, we find that we no longer want to win the fight, we want him to break us. We accept the pain with the understanding, that everything we loose will be replaced with something better.

In our brokenness, we encounter freedom.

Even Jacob learned this…after God hurt him, he gave him a new name and called him his chosen son.

25-28 Birthright

Hello! Right now I am in the midst of my class-free J-term. It is very exciting, I have very little that truly have to do during the day. I feel like I have a lot of freedom. It is different for me, but I am enjoying it.

Tonight, I spent some time thinking about Esau…

Esau was a person who had been given a huge honor and place of privilege. Esau was the first born of a Isaac and was given a birthright and promise of blessing, inheritance and place of high honor. God had not chosen him as a part of Christ’s line, and he had not selected him to be the ruler of his family…but I am not sure that God choose to have Esau to completely loose his position in the manner that he did.

The number of steps and circumstances involved in Esau’s life is too long to fully go into detail here, but I believe that the path to his loss if place and identity began in one simple choice. Esau chose to put his comfort over his identity.

Esau literally traded his identity for a meal. Jacob offered him a bowl of food in exchange for his birthright (meaning his place as the firstborn in the family,) and Esau took him up on the offer. He traded something huge for something temporary.

After making that choice, Esau continued to loose pieces of his identity as he married that wrong women and pursued a lifestyle that God had not laid out for him. It all began with his choice.

Esau is very easy for us to judge until we look at our own lives. As children of God, we have been given a birthright that is so much bigger than Esau’s. We have literally been adopted into the personal family of God. We have been redeemed by the real blood of God, and have been filled with the Holy Sprit. Unfortunately, we “Sell” our birthrights everyday. We sell out our positions as Children of God when we use our lives for nothing but our own pleasure. We give in to sin, and sell our hearts to Satan. We waste our time…everyday. We choose to spend the minute that we are given for our own entertainment.

We were given a birthright that has so much more value than we can possibly asses.

Eternity rides on our ability to value our birthrights.

Genesis 21-24 “Yes, Jesus I trust you”

Trusting in God is absolutely terrified. It is like walking into pitch darkness with the assumption that you will eventually arrive at a good destination without finding yourself trapped at the bottom of some invisible pit.

It feels so scary and it breaks all of the rules and laws that we set up for ourselves. It feels ridiculous…but somehow, walking blindly into the darkness is the only way to find life. We are called to the ridiculous in order to survive.

Tonight I read one of my very favorite bible stories and one of the ones that still doesn’t make sense to me. Both come to the same idea: God is in control. Trusting in him is our only option.

The story that I still do not fully understand comes from Genesis 22. This is the account of God commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering. It must have made no sense to Abraham when God commanded him to kill his son and burn his body on a pile of rocks. Somehow, Abraham decided to follow God’s ridiculous command. Shockingly, it all worked out. God stepped in and showed his love for Abraham by brining in a substitute for Isaac. Isaac didn’t have to die. Because Abraham followed God’s commands, he was proved faithful.

One of my very favorite stories is the story of Rebekah meeting Isaac. Rebekah woke up one morning and simply went through her normal routine of getting water for her family when she was presented with the opportunity to serve a complete stranger. What she did not know was the fact that that stranger was Abraham’s servant who was looking for a wife for Isaac. The servant had made a deal with God, whichever girl came out and offered to give his camels water was the girl for Isaac. In a moment, God’s plan for Rebekah’s life became clear. No amount of worry or stress would have changed God’s plan for her. She simply needed to follow him, and he wrote her future for her.

It is so wonderful to know that we serve a God who wrote our stories for us. He already knows each day and each step.

All that he asks us to do is follow him into the darkness, and allow ourselves to be surprised as he shines light on the next pages of our lives.

Genesis 17-20 Laugh out Loud

Genesis 17-20

Tonight I cannot help but be amazed by the laughter and joy of God. Today is one of my favorites as a college student. It is the day after Christmas beak, and all of the student return to their dorms and their friends. I love watching them find their friends. I love seeing them become so thrilled to find themselves back at school...I love the way that this building echoes with excited greetings and reunion.

God has a wonderful personality that I truly love catching glimpses of. Tonight, I read about both Abraham and Sarah’s reactions to God’s announcement that Sarah was going to become a mother in her nineties. Both of them laughed and essentially said. “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen!” Even through God had performed huge miracles in their lives, both Abraham and Sarah still laughed at the ridiculous idea that God had announced as fact.

What really just makes me laugh about this story is the fact that God also chose the name of Abraham and Sarah’s baby. He told them to name this kid, “He laughs.” We really do serve a God of irony. He chose to name the baby “Laughter” almost as if to say “Yes, this is ridiculous…this didn’t just happen. You laughed at this idea, but I made it happen.

I could be completely wrong about the interpretation of this passage…no question, I do not always get these things right. I do know that God does like to remind us of his incredible power…and I do know that he has an awesome sense of humor.

Genesis 13-16 Nobody

I am very excited, because I came across one of my very favorite Bible verses tonight!

I love the fact that God manages to stick powerful verses like jack in the boxes scattered through scripture, just waiting to jump out and captivate our attention at just the right moment.

So here is today’s Jack-in-the box

She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen the One who sees me."

Genesis 16:13

This verse first caught my attention last year when a wonderful friend brought it to my attention. It has rocked my world ever since.

This verse comes in the midst of Hagar’s story. Hagar was Sarai’s handmaid who was asked to fill a role that she had never been intended to fill. She found herself right in the midst of God’s plan; unfortunately she was a part of the back story that hadn’t really been intended for the script of Abraham’s life.

God had promised to give Abram children through his wife Sarai. He had intended a “Child of Promise” through a miracle that would take place in the lives of Abram and his wife. But, just as God had asked Noah to spend an incredibly long time waiting for God to move, he asked Abram to be paitiant.

Abram and Sarai choose to hurry God’s plan along. They chose to do though biology what God had planned to do through miracle. That’s where Hagar comes in… Sarai asked her to take her place in the story. Hagar was forced to stand in the path of God’s a-list plan.

When Abram and Sarai’s plan succeeds Hagar offends Sarai and is sent away.

Hagar is sitting along in the desert, probably freaking out, when she meets the living God. He actually speaks to her (which has only happened to a limited number of people ever) he promises to work in her life. He guarantees her a future.

I love the fact that we can serve a God who sees a pregnant slave girl sitting in the wilderness. He loved Hagar even though she was not a part of the a-list story. He took a nobody and he allowed her to be a part of his story…

“I have now seen the One who sees me”