A Generation That Did Not Know God

And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. (Judges 2:7-10)

I came across this passage in my Bible reading yesterday. (See this post I wrote about the plan I'm using this year.) As a mom, I think this has got to be one of the most sobering and saddening passages in the Bible. Think about it. The people of Israel were slaves in Egypt. Then God, by his own mighty hand and through incredible feats of power, delivered them. God's fame spread through all the known world. Then God led them through the desert. He provided them with food and water. And he gave them his law, so that they would know how to live. (They didn't have to use guesswork or trial and error to please him like the idol worshipers did with their gods.) He subdued nations before them. He even appeared to them in smoke and fire on Mount Sinai. And all through this time, he kept telling them to remember and pass down the stories of what he had done.

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

Eat This Book!

I was six when my mom started teaching me the importance of reading the Bible for myself every day. At first she gave me specific passages to read along with content and application questions to answer. Then she taught me to read through whole books and keep a notebook handy to write down what I learned. By age eight, I was using a Bible reading plan to read through the whole Bible, although I skipped over large sections of the prophets!

In high school I read the Bible through several more times, but somewhere along the line my reason for reading the Bible became simply to give myself a daily check mark on a mental list called "Things I Do to Please God" that made me a better Christian than others around me.

Thanksgiving Challenge, Day 15

Day #15: I'm thankful that God speaks through his word.

"Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law" (Psalm 119:18).

It's so amazing that we have God's Word to light our way and show us where to go (Psalm 119:11), and that all of God's Word is profitable for our lives (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Sure, certain sections of the Bible are hard to understand. That's why it's great to have tools such as commentaries and study Bibles to help in figuring out meaning; and we can't forget that God has promised to illuminate our minds so we can understand. (Of course, if we're coming up with new doctrine that no one has discovered in 200 years of church history, we should probably double-check that we heard God right!) The more I learn about God's Word, the more I realize that it is God's story, not mine. He didn't really give it to me to help me make my life work. He wants me to step into his story and be a part of what he's doing in my life and the lives of those around me. When I begin to grasp this, I do begin to see wonderful things in God's Word. Let's read expecting God to speak!

Thanksgiving Challenge, Day 2

Day #2: I'm thankful that God's gifts are good.

I love the illustration that Jesus gives in Matthew 7:7-11. He asks the parents in his audience to imagine that their children ask them for bread and fish. Would they give their children stones and snakes instead? Of course not! Jesus says, "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" 

We have a loving Father who delights to hear and answer our prayers with good things. He is not a harsh, uncaring parent who gives us things that won't satisfy! He knows our needs and desires to meet them. He is good! 

I don't think though, that this is a promise that we will always get everything we want from God. In the last few months, I've heard of two different families that had their infants go through emergency surgery and not survive. I'm sure those families asked God to spare their children, but God saw fit to take them. And in that he was still good. Of course, hearing their stories takes me back to when my husband and I were sitting in the hospital waiting room, so emotionally distraught, begging God to protect our two-day-old son during his emergency surgery. God was gracious and he lovingly answered our prayers with "good things." Our son's surgery went perfectly, he recovered easily, and today he is a strong healthy boy. But I wonder, if God had seen fit to take our son, would I have still been able to see that God's gifts are good? Because there are times that his gifts may not seem good at the moment. And he doesn't promise to always show us why the things that don't seem good, are good. But he does promise that his gifts are good.

So as we ask, seek, and knock (verse 7), we need childlike trust in a Father who loves us and will always give us the "good things" we need.

Lessons from a Fish Story

Our pastors have been preaching through the book of Jonah for the last 8 weeks. (They've been excellent messages, and are well worth the listen!) I've learned many things, but the biggest has been a new understanding of Jonah's attitude. I always thought that his attitude went like this: Chapter 1--Jonah didn't want to obey God (because the people of Ninevah were scary!); Chapter 2--Jonah repents of his sin (inside the belly of the fish); Chapter 3--Jonah obeys God (and goes to Ninevah); Chapter 4--Jonah relapses? Chapter 4 always confused me. It seems like Jonah goes from obeying God to being unhappy with God. Didn't he learn anything from the storm and the fish? Now, admittedly, I tend to yo-yo in my obedience as well (sometimes suffering victory and defeat all in the same day!), but the book still always seemed very disjointed to me. Through the last few weeks I've come to a better understanding of the book, and it makes a lot more sense now! Here are two things in particular that I've learned.

Gray Hair is . . . .

The Bible study I'm attending this fall is going through the book/video series Read the Bible for Life by George H Guthrie. Basically it's all about how to study the various parts of the Bible. So few Christians, myself included, actually spend regular time in the Bible. This study has helped me realize that my attitude toward Scripture should be one of delight (Psalm 119:14, 18, 40 and many others!), not duty or desire to "get something out of it." God gave me his Word to know him. And I should delight to learn more!

All that brings me to my more specific point.