Faith and a Raging River

Would you try to cross a river overrunning its banks?  Perhaps you have seen a flash flood.  The water suddenly comes roaring down from the hills in the wake of a thunderstorm.  The riverbed fills and overflows.  The water rushes quickly and violently. Boulders, uprooted trees, and other debris pose a danger to anything in the water.

In Joshua Chapter 3 in the Old Testament in the Bible, God told the priests and the people to do that very thing. The raging river Jordan was in flood stage and dangerously flowed over the banks. 

He told the priests to carry the Ark of the Covenant in front of the crowd of wandering Israelites. He told them to stand in the river. 

 It took a lot of courage to stand in a river when common sense told them they should wait for a better day when the water was calm and the wind barely moving, but they obeyed God's commandment.  As soon as their feet touched the water, an amazing thing happened.

The water coming downstream piled up in a heap.  The land dried instantly. The priests with the Ark and all of the Israelites passed through. The waters then started flowing again.

Everybody knows that you can't suddenly stop water from coming down stream.  It would take a long time for dry land to appear normally, but God did it instantly, and can do it again.

The priests and the people showed faith by willingly stepping into a raging river.  God took care of them.

God did the impossible when he parted the Red Sea, healed the blind and lame, and performed miracle after miracle.  He can do things in your life that no one else could achieve when you have faith and obey His voice. What raging river in your life do you need to cross?

Image of Jordan River Sign

Credit Jean Housen

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My Night at the Bar

My Night at the Bar

A few years ago, my friend from down the street invited me to a bar.  Her husband played the slide trombone in a band at that bar.  Another friend played the guitar and wrote songs.

We sat at the band table, sipped diet colas, and listened to the music. Soon couples began dancing. 

I first saw her as she stepped onto the dance area with a man about her age, maybe the mid twenties.

They danced very close.  She engaged him in conversation and kept constant eye contact.  I thought they were deeply in love.  The music stopped, the man wiped his forehead, let out a loud “whew,” and fled the scene.

Soon another man asked her to dance.  She acted much in love with him too. It happened the same way with many more that night. She and all the men got drunker by the hour.

The men she danced with also became older.  She finally walked out the door with an extremely inebriated man in his fifties. I don’t know if it was her place, or his.

My heart cried to see that woman put so little worth on herself and give herself away with no commitment and no kind of loving relationship. The man used her for his own gratification and did not value her as the precious child of God that she was.

I will always remember that night at the bar because of her and the man who took her home.   

In Matthew 10:31 it says: “Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”

Luke takes it even further.  12:7 “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. Luke 27 Peace I leave with you ... Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.”

Bible verses from www.BibleGateway.com in the public domain.

Image from Public-Domain-Images.com 

                           

Dirty Little Secrets

As a few of you know, I make some extra cash cleaning a church. I battle cobwebs, dust, sanitize the rest restrooms and kitchen, vacuum, mop, and remove the trash.  

The church looked clean. 

Saturday, the pastor and his wife brought over a new vacuum cleaner.  Anna is a nifty little cleaner with eyes, a wide smile, and really long nose, which is the hose. It has a HEPA filter as big as it is. Dust checks in but does not check out.

It is Time to Depend on God

Happy New Year!

A man holds hostages in his apartment in Colorado. He kills two men and a woman before the police shoot him.  A man breaks into a school and shoots innocent children and their caretakers.  Scenes like this become more common. The whole world appears crazier every passing day as incidents rise and the sanctity of life decreases. Mayhem rules.

Worldwide, the economy tanks more every day.  Riots break out around the globe. Food shortages become more common. The government of the US becomes more unpredictable and less responsible every day.

Seniors, and the disabled, scramble to find a way to live as their income drops and costs of everything else rise.

Our society becomes more godless than ever before. Religion becomes a joke and atheists ridicule God followers as naive, uneducated, and mentally deficient.

This same God that the intellectual thinkers decry as no longer relevant is the same God that we need to depend on in the coming days of chaos and disorder. The same yesterday, today, and forever, he meets every need if we put him first.  He comforts, consoles, and encourages.

We cannot trust our own feelings, our own inner resources, or the government now or in the future.  Trust in God always.

Ask and He will reveal Himself to you in some way.  Everyone finds Him in a different way: perhaps alone in a room, in a church, on a mountaintop, or while cleaning the restroom.  He is everywhere. 

Look for Him and when you find Him, trust in Him.  Read the Bible, His inspired word.  Praise Him for his goodness. Tell Him your problems.Listen for answers. 

When a tragedy or disaster rocks our world, the answer is only a prayer away. When the government fails us, God is still there. It is time to find our strength in Him.