Weekly Scripture

Jeremiah 29:11-14, 44:5-6.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile." But they did not listen or pay attention; they did not turn from their wickedness or stop burning incense to other gods. Therefore, my fierce anger was poured out; it raged against the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem and made them the desolate ruins they are today."

God gives us the option for a life blessed under his plan, we have to choose to accept that by seeking him wholeheartedly like He told us to.
Seek
-matt

I Don't Get It: An Essay on the Unexpected

Here's a bit for when God just doesn't make sense. I know I can relate to that. Things don't ever seem to really go according to plan, but I've come to realize that's the way I like it.

Exodus 15:24-25 - "Then the people complained and turned against Moses. 'What are we going to drink?' they demanded. So Moses cried out to the LORD for help, and the LORD showed him a piece of wood. Moses threw it into water, and this made the water good to drink."

If that isn't the one of the weirdest solutions to a problem you've ever heard of, then what is stranger? This is the same God who split a rock and let fresh water flow from it. This God turned water into wine. This God could have changed the water with the flick of his wrist, or just made usable water appear from anywhere He pleased. But instead, He chose to work in the most unconventional of ways.

If you haven't really though about it, the unexpected is the realm in which God truly thrives.

• No one expected the Red Sea to part for just long enough for an entire nation to walk through, but then collapse onto their enemies.
• No one expected a "runt" like David to defeat Goliath and become the mighty king of Israel
• No one expected God to enter this world in a manger, and leave it having beaten death forever.

Are you tracking with me? God likes to keep the world guessing. Nobody one-ups God. That's the way it should be. Ephesians 3:20 is a verse I hold with me all the time specifically for this reason. It says that Our God is a God who is able to do incredibly more than we could ever ask for or imagine. That's comforting to me.

Why should I worry about planning things out to the minute when God already has better things for me? Sometimes, like the wood for Moses, the solution is right in front of me and God wants to use the ordinary to work extraordinary feats. And then often times, the answer is not anywhere in sight, and I am called to trust.

Mankind places its trust in so many things. We trust our close friends, our looks, our money, but seldom is it shown clearly that we place our trust in God. That's hard. It's scary. But our God doesn't fit into a logical formula. You can't put God inside a box, He made the box.

My challenge to myself and to those reading along is this, live like you serve a God of the unexpected. What the world calls impossible should be different when compared to Christ's words in Luke 18:27, "... What is impossible with men is possible with God."

Live like you believe it.
-matt

Unbreaking Love

So I've spent the majority of my time this week reading my Bible, which is why I haven't really posted much of late. So this will just be a blurb about what God has shown me through a couple of key verses here and there.

Genesis 13:4 - "This was the same place where Abram had built the altar, and there he worshiped the LORD again."

Now you've gotta take that last verse in context to see where the beauty of it comes in. Where is this "same place" that is being referred to? Before this time, Abram (later Abraham) had built an altar and worshiped the Lord there. When times got hard and there was a famine, he fled this sacred place and went to Egypt. While in Egypt, he told everyone that , his wife, Sarai (later Sarah), was actually his sister. This got him into quite a bit of trouble when the Pharaoh took Sarai to be one of his wives. When Pharaoh figured this out, he was furious and threw them both out of Egypt.

And after that big mess, after Abram's screw-up, he returned to God. Abram went right back to where he and God had left off. He picked up from there and kept going. There is the beautiful part of this. Whenever we sin and make a mess of things, we don't have to do anything before we are able to return to where we were with God. We can just start over where we were. This shows that none of us are ever unreachable. God doesn't ask us to clean up our sin before we come back to him. Abram sure didn't he came back to that place with a mess on his hands. And God loved him enough to restore their relationship.

-matt