My Journey Journal

God is loving and patient.  He sets times according to His purpose and we don’t know the specifics of when they are.

It appears that when God ordained Obadiah to pronounce His judgement against Edom He had endured all of Edom’s choices and His judgement against Edom would be complete with no mercy given them.

God starts the prophecy of Obadiah by telling us that a human coalition was formed to destroy Edom.  From there, the rest of the prophecy is focused on God and His promises to actively destroy Edom until there is nothing left of the nation.  He promises to destroy them five times, He tells them why and He finishes by promising that He will restore His people.  Read more... (1583 words, 5 images, estimated 6:20 mins reading time)

The Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded,
and he went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin:
The LORD is with you while you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.
For a long time Israel was without the true God, and without a teaching priest and without law,
but when in their distress they turned to the LORD, the God of Israel, and sought him, he was found by them.
2 Chronicles 15:1-4 ESV  Read more... (431 words, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

Reading through 2 Timothy this morning I ran across this which sounded so familiar.

“… God, 9 who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace ….”
2 Timothy 1:8-9 ESV

Also stated by Paul famously in

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Ephesians 2:8-9 ESV  Read more... (121 words, 1 image, estimated 29 secs reading time)

I believe in a personal, engaged, all-powerful, God who is alive, aware and refers to Himself within His creation.  I believe the garden of Eden was His first example and  Judaism was another.  I believe He is and has been demonstrating that we, humans, as His creation will chose sinfulness rather than Him that no matter what options He gives us; we will choose to turn our backs on Him and reject Him.

I believe that He gave Israel (the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Israel) repeated grace; leading them Himself, through judges, prophets, priests and kings and they still rejected Him until He chastised them with slavery in other nations for almost 3,000 years.  Read more... (815 words, 2 images, estimated 3:16 mins reading time)

   Read more... (532 words, 1 image, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)