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WEEKLY CHRISTIAN BIBLE STUDY AND DEVOTIONAL FROM GOD’S WORD, FOR THE NEWLY SAVED AND MORE SEASONED BELIEVER, AND FOR OTHERS SEEKING TRUTH. OUR PRAYER IS TO ENCOURAGE YOU AND STRENGTHEN YOUR FAITH IN GOD’S INFINITE MERCY, LOVE AND GRACE, AND IN THE GOSPEL OF THE DEATH, BURIAL AND RESURRECTION OF HIS SON JESUS CHRIST, THAT ALL WHO SEEK HIM HAVE ETERNAL, ABUNDANT LIFE.
NOAA Photo of Turbulent Skies 2019 |
I had a dream in which I was home at night, working in my
study while my husband Richard was in the family room. Suddenly I heard him cry
out, “There’s a strange man in the house – run!”
I quickly tried to get up but snapped back into my seat. I
was strapped into my office chair by a seat belt-like contraption going across
the right side of my neck and shoulder all the way to my left hip. Frantically
I struggled with the buckle until it released me and then I ran out the front
door, leaving it wide open.
Although it was dark, I immediately realized that I was not
on the street where we currently live, but on the street where I grew up. While
running as fast as I could, I berated myself for not having dialed 911 before I
left. Then I realized that I was running the wrong direction – not toward a
busier intersection where I would be more likely to flag down help, but toward
another quiet, dark, residential neighborhood.
I decided to change course, but as I turned around, I
spotted a dark figure lurking in the shadows. Should I call out for his help?
Or was this more likely to be the intruder who had broken into our home and was
now pursuing me?
So I kept running, as fast as I could, away from the
stranger. When I awoke, my heart was pounding and my breathing was so fast and
shallow that I thought I might pass out.
I finally calmed myself enough to lapse back into a fitful
sleep, interrupted by another dream. In this dream, one of the ladies in the
Bible study that I teach and I were working at an emergency medical facility.
She raced into my office to tell me that one of the patients had fainted and
to ask what we should do next.
As we rushed down the hall to see the patient, I asked my
student many questions about the patient’s medical history, medications, recent
labs, other recent symptoms, and what she was doing before she passed out. Finally
I asked her, “Did you call 911?”
When I awoke and considered the significance of the dreams,
I realized that the prominent theme was running – away from danger in the first
dream and toward assistance in the second dream.
In the first dream, my husband yelled for me to run away.
Thankfully, our marriage is strong, centered in our faith in Jesus Christ and in
His death, burial and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) as the
only way to Heaven (John 14:6). But the dream may represent a
general warning that some relationships, particularly with unsaved people (2
Corinthians 6:14), can hinder exclusive reliance on our Savior. We must
run from such relationships as we would from any idols (1 John 5:21), defined as anything
that gets in the way of our devotion to Christ and usurps His pre-eminence in
our lives (Colossians 1:18).
Although I immediately wanted to obey my husband’s command to
run away, I was delayed by being strapped into my office chair. This may represent
the hold that work, as a means to power, prestige or excessive wealth, may have
on some people. As Scripture confirms, all who are able need to work to meet
our physical needs and those of our family (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
But when excessive time at work becomes more important than God or family,
workaholics are serving their job or career as an idol and should run from it.
The main reason I was running away in the dream was because
there was an intruder in our house. Danger, defined as anything that separates us
from God and His perfect plan for us, is seldom as obvious as a terrifying
devil with horns, tail and a pitchfork; or a roaring lion seeking to devour us;
or even an armed home invader.
As responsible stewards of the time, talents, treasure, ministries
and relationships God has entrusted to us, we should hide ourselves from evil (Proverbs
22:3; 27:12) by screening who and what we allow into our home.
We may have alarms, security systems and doorbell cameras to keep out criminals,
but the dangerous home intruders we face may be more subtle.
Beginning in the 1950s, the ubiquitous television has
diverted time and attention away from worship, prayer and family time to
meaningless or even harmful “entertainment” promoting filthy language, sexual
immorality, violence and substance abuse. Around-the-clock news channels may
rob us of our peace and joy.
The Internet can be a valuable source of information on
virtually any topic, but it can also promulgate misinformation and false doctrine. Social media can foster virtual friendships among like-minded
individuals and can be a means to share the Gospel. But these can also expose
even children to dangers including bullying, body shaming, lowering
self-esteem, triggering depression or anxiety, and even fostering hookups with cultists,
drug pushers or sexual predators.
Sadly, “how-to” sites can teach depressed individuals how to end
their own life and can provide criminals with instruction manuals for violence,
breaking and entering, procuring weapons, building bombs, murder, and even terrorism.
We must therefore guard our homes and our lives from these dangerous intruders.
In the dream, once I ran away from the threat within my
home, I began fleeing my past, symbolized by suddenly finding myself on the
street where I grew up, running away from my childhood home. There I needed to
change direction, which brought me nearly face-to-face with a shadowy figure.
Was this a potential source of help, or the home invader I sought to escape?
God endowed each of us with a unique history specifically
suited to the mission He has planned for us. Our past experiences, even if there
were trials we had to endure, equip us with compassion and wisdom to help those
going through similar trials (2 Corinthians 1:4-6). But when Satan
mocks and belittles us with past mistakes, inadequacies, or sins, we must flee from the danger of believing his lies (John 8:44) and becoming trapped in our
history rather than moving on to our future. We can’t outrun the devil, but if
we resist Him by submitting to God, he will flee from us (James 4:7).
To avoid confronting Satan in the first place, we must flee temptation (2
Timothy 2:22).
Once we elude intruders into our God-given peace and joy
and resist the devil and his lies (which are ongoing struggles in the Christian
life overcome only by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit), we may more fruitfully
pursue God’s work. In the second dream, my supervision of a friend in Christ,
in the role of a medical coworker, may represent the mentorship opportunity I
have in teaching a ladies’ Bible study. Just as a medical facility is the best
place to obtain physical healing, a local church and its fellowship and study
groups is often the ideal setting for spiritual healing and ongoing growth in
our Christian walk.
In the dream, the woman from my class ran into my office
for help with another’s healing, and then we both ran to the aid of the one in
distress. Strangely, I asked her whether she had called 9-1-1, which is odd,
because we were in a facility delivering emergency care.
In my first Bible after being saved, I kept a list of “9-1-1”
verses I had printed up from the Internet – verses to consult in times of need,
whether physical danger, temptation, sadness, grief, sin, failure, or loss of
fellowship with God. I believe the second dream was a reminder that without Christ
we can do nothing (John 15:5), and that attempting to do His work
without the direction of His Spirit and His Word is doomed to end in failure.
May we have Spirit-empowered strength to run away from
physical and spiritual dangers, and to run with patience the race He has set
before us (Hebrews 12:1), running toward the mark for the prize (Philippians
3:14) of victory in Christ!
© 2024 Laurie Collett
When we consider the story of how God commanded Abraham to
sacrifice his son Isaac to God on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22:1-19), we typically
view it as an example of Abraham’s great faith. Yet this test proved Isaac’s
faith to be just as strong.
Isaac was the child of promise, whom God had promised to Abram and Sarah when they were very old and had no children. Even more amazing, this would be the child through whom Abraham (his new name) would be the father of a great nation, in whom all would be blessed (Genesis 12:2-3), with descendants as innumerable as grains of sand on the seashore or stars in the sky (Genesis 22:17).
Sarah laughed when she heard that they would have a child, for she was aged and barren (Genesis 18:10-15). She had grown weary of waiting for God to allow her to conceive and took matters into her own hands by persuading Abraham to have relations with her handmaid Hagar (Genesis 16:1-8).
Sadly, Abraham acquiesced, and Ishmael was born from that illicit union. This lapse in faith proved not only that Abraham was human, subject to the same weaknesses as all of us (Romans 3:23), but also that God can and will use those who love and trust him, even when they have gone astray as Abram had done several times before (Genesis 12:10-20).
But every choice has its consequences. The birth of Ishmael caused strife not only in Abram’s own household, particularly after Isaac was born to Sarah as God had promised, but also engendered constant warring between the great nations born of Abraham’s offspring – Israel and the Muslim nations (Genesis 16:8-12).
Nonetheless, Abraham was a man of great faith in the One True God, which I believe is the greatest legacy a father can pass on to his children (Ephesians 6:4). His faith began when God first spoke to him, asking him to leave behind his home, pagan beliefs, and seat of power to journey through the wilderness (Genesis 12:1-3). God spoke of the Promised Land and said he would lead Abram there and make of him a great nation (Genesis 12:1-7).
What amazing faith it took to trust God to do this when Abram had no idea where he was going or how long it would take to get there! But even that faith pales in comparison with what happened later. God tested Abraham’s faith by asking him to take his only son Isaac, whom he loved, and to offer him as a burnt offering on a mountain of Moriah that God would later specify (Genesis 22:1-19).
What must have raced through Abraham’s mind, and how must his heart have ached as he heard this! There was no mistaking God’s command. He specified “his only son” Isaac, making it clear that he referred to the child of His promise, and not the illegitimate son born through the weakness of Abraham’s flesh.
God clearly knew how much Abraham loved Isaac, making His command all the more repugnant and incomprehensible. Any loving parent would rebel at sacrificing their child, and most would even be willing to sacrifice their own life to spare that of their child, if they had the opportunity. Yet God was asking Abraham to lay Isaac on the altar, slay him with a knife, and then set his body on fire!
God’s command seemed to fly in the face of His very nature, which cannot change (Hebrews 13:8), as He later would forbid child sacrifice (Leviticus 18:21; 20:2-5). His own Son loved little children and held them up as an example of the type of faith needed to enter His kingdom (Matthew 19:14; 18:3). Abraham did not have the benefit of knowing this, yet he believed that God would keep His promise to make him the father of a great nation, which could only happen through Isaac.
Abraham’s faith is clear in his detailed obedience by getting up early for the journey, saddling and loading his ass, taking two companions for the trip, and bringing the wood for the burnt offering. He traveled for three days and must have had to silence whatever doubts and fears gnawed at his soul as he resolutely headed for the mountain (Genesis 22:1-4).
At the base of the mountain, Abraham told his companions to stay there with the ass and reassured them that he – and Isaac – would return after they had worshipped God (v. 5). What faith he showed to trust that God would somehow spare Isaac’s life!
Then it was only Abraham and Isaac ascending the mountain. The father carried the fire and knife, and the son bore the heavy burden of the wood to be used for his own funeral pyre. It foreshadowed Jesus struggling under the weight of the cross that would be the cruel instrument of His death (John 19:17).
Finally Isaac voiced the question that must have been troubling him, and to which he already knew the answer – where is the lamb for the burnt offering? (v. 6-7).
At this point Isaac was a strong young man, and his feeble father more than a centenarian. Isaac’s faith must have been just as great as Abraham’s faith, to obey God to the point of death, just as God’s only begotten Son Jesus would millennia later (Philippians 2:8). That type of faith is not born in a vacuum (2 Timothy 1:5), but from the living faith Isaac saw daily in his father Abraham.
Almost as if trying to convince himself, Abraham told Isaac that God Himself would provide the burnt offering. A man of lesser faith than Isaac would no doubt be tempted to escape as Abraham prepared the altar and wood, or to wrestle free as his father laid him on the altar and then raised the knife to slay Him (Genesis 22:8-10).
Yet Isaac held fast without complaint or struggle, submitting himself to God’s mercy, just as Jesus did when He was led as a sheep to the slaughter to pay the debt for our sin (Isaiah 53:5-7).
God rewarded the faith of father and son by sparing Isaac’s life, sending the angel of the Lord to keep Abraham from harming Isaac (Genesis 22:11-19). This test proved through their obedience and submission to God’s will that not only Abraham, but also Isaac, feared and trusted God. This came as no surprise to God, Who knows all things (Psalm 139:1-6), but it must have been an amazing confirmation to both men of God’s faithfulness and of their own faith.
God rewarded them further by providing a ram for the offering and by expanding upon His promise:
“That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.” (Genesis 22:17-18).
All nations would be blessed through Jesus Christ, Who would be born to the house of Abraham (Matthew 1:1-17) and be the Savior of all who trust in His death, burial and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) as the only Way Heaven (John 14:6).
But Abraham’s legacy of faith did not stop with Isaac. His firstborn son Jacob, later renamed Israel because his faith was so great that he spent all night wrestling with God until He promised to bless him (Genesis 32:24-30), gave rise to the great nation of the same name, God’s chosen people. When Isaac was on his deathbed, Jacob acknowledged that his God was the God of his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham (Genesis 32:9).
Similarly, when Israel was on his deathbed, he blessed each of his twelve sons, progenitors of each of the twelve tribes of Israel. These included Joseph, himself a great example of faith in God working all things together for good (Genesis 50:20; Romans 8:28). Israel described Joseph as blessed “by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above” (Genesis 49:25).
As God had promised, the lineage of the Messiah would stem from Abraham’s seed, namely through Israel’s son Judah, direct ancestor of Jesus, Lion of the tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5), from whom the scepter of kingship and the lawgiverlawgiver would not depart (Genesis 49:10).
On Father’s Day, we honor our earthly fathers and thank our Heavenly Father for their Godly influence and other blessings on our life. May our earthly fathers bless their children with the greatest legacy – the gift of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ!
© 2021 Laurie Collett
Jesus Raises Jairus' Daughter from the Dead |
As we are made in the image of the Triune God (Genesis
1:26-27), it is not surprising that our physical and spiritual being,
our relationships, and our life path reflect His three-part
nature. Our lives unfold and transform according to His perfect plan, with
triplets of change marking our transitions along that path (Jeremiah 29:11).
Solomon speaks of God making everything beautiful in His
time. He speaks of the times and seasons of life, beginning with a time to
be born and a time to die (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2,11). Yet
sandwiched between these two events is the span of our time here on earth.
In 1966, Linda Elllis wrote a poem called “The Dash,” referring to that tiny
line on the gravestone between the birth year and the year of death – that tiny
line that represents all we do with our allotted time in this life (Psalm
90:10). In the scheme of eternity, that time is like a vapor,
disappearing like the puff of air we exhale on a frosty day (James 4:14).
So life on earth is the transition from birth to death, and
even before that is gestation, during which the baby lives in its
mother’s womb during the transition from conception to birth. When we
are born, we as children depend on others to provide for our physical
needs; then we are self-sufficient as mature adults; but then as elderly
we begin to deteriorate physically, once again requiring support from
others. God therefore commands us to honor our parents, not only when we are
children and their care prolongs our life (Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy
5:16), but also as adults when the tables are turned and we provide for
them (Mark 7:10-12).
Since Adam and Eve fell and sin and death entered this
world (Genesis 2:17; 3), our bodies have been doomed to age. The
process of physical maturation and decay is marked by transitions in posture
and stance – horizontal in infancy as the baby spends most of its time
sleeping and then crawling; upright in childhood, adolescence and
adulthood; then stooped and ultimately bedridden due to the ravages of
old age.
Yet physical aging need not mean the end of our usefulness
to others and service to God, as was the case with Caleb (Joshua
14:9-14), Moses (Deuteronomy 34:7), Naomi (Ruth
4:14-17) and others. Our church is blessed by our elderly pastor and
his wife, in leadership at our church for over half a century, as well as
by faithful teachers and missionaries who have continued to serve
God throughout their long lives.
Before puberty we
cannot have children; then we become sexually mature and capable of parenting; but as we age, we become infertile and lose our reproductive
potential. Of course, nothing is impossiblenothing is impossible with God, and He blessed Sarah (Genesis
17:15-19) and Elizabeth (Luke 1:13-18) with children at a
very old age even though they had been barren).
Even more important than the physical transitions every
person must undergo are the spiritual transitions God freely offers to
whosoever desires them (Revelation 22:17). When we seek God,
and search for Him with all our heart, we shall find Him. Then we
can call upon Him, and pray to Him, and He will listen to our prayers (Jeremiah 29:12-13). Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, later
paraphrased this by saying, “Call unto me, and I will answer
thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not (Jeremiah
33:3).
Jesus Himself promised us the greatest possible life
changes if we are willing to undergo three transitions or steps of obedience: “Ask,
and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it
shall be opened unto you.” (Matthew 7:7).
Sadly, many reject Christ’s offer of eternal life. These unsaved people must transition from life to three kinds of death: not only physical death (Hebrews 9:27) that all of us face unless we are still alive at the Rapture (1 Corinthians 15:50-54) but also spiritual death, or separation from God during their earthly life (Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13), and eternal death with everlasting punishment in Hell (Mark 3:29; John 5:29).
By calling on the Name of Jesus, we can go from death in sin to being born again (John 3:3-8), followed by spiritual growth as we are progressively conformed to His image (Philippians 3:10-14). When we are born again, we are transformed from a natural man (unsaved), ideally to a spiritual Christian yielded to the Spirit, but sometimes we act as a carnal Christian when the old sin nature wins the daily battle against the Holy Spirit (Romans 7:13-23; 8:6; 1 Corinthians 2:14-16).
At the moment of salvation, we are justified (just
as if we’d never sinned), meaning that God no longer sees our sins, but only
the perfect righteousness of Christ that now clothes us by His grace through our
faith (Romans 3:24-28). Throughout our Christian walk, we are
gradually sanctified, or made more like Christ, until He takes us home (1
Corinthians 1:30; 6:11). Then, at the Rapture, we are instantly glorified,
becoming as He is (Romans 8:17-30).
One of the most important transitions of our life involves
how we deal with sin, for all of us are sinners in need of a Savior (Romans
3:23). First we must ask His forgiveness of our sins (1 John
1:8-10), then we must repent or turn away from willful sin (1 John
2:1-6), and then we must forgive others who have sinned against
us (Matthew 6:14-15; Luke 17:4). All of our sins nailed
Jesus to the tree, yet He forgave us (Colossians 2:13), so how
much more should we be willing to forgive others? (Matthew 18:21-35)
To whom much is given, much is required (Luke 12:48).
Praise God that He allows whosoever will to transition from
death to abundant life (John 10:10) here and now
and to eternal life in His presence! May we place our faith in His death,
burial and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) as
the only Way to Heaven and spend our short time here on earth by praising,
worshipping and following Him!
Edited, expanded and reposted from the archives