New Starts and Barren Hearts

Due to some personal issues last week, I will be writing about week 2 this week and will pick back up with week 3 next week.

'I've got your back.' I have said this many times to my friends when they were faced with a situation in which I thought if they couldn't handle it themselves I would step in and give them the extra support. This phrase kept popping in my head all week during this study. God seemed to be reminding me that He has my back no matter the situation and that He will always keep me safe. The Israelites seemed to have forgotten this small detail while out in the wilderness. Just as I forget sometimes all I have to do is call out and God will be there. Most times I don't even have to call out, He knows what I need at the exact moment.

There are times when I stand back in awe of God's timing and this past week was one of them. I watched the video that goes along with this study on Saturday morning. I sat stunned on my bed as I watched the video. It seemed to be designed just for me.

As many of you know I had a family death last week. There were moments in which I didn't know where I would draw my next breath. As soon as I heard the news, a story that Beth told on the video came to me. She told a story where one of her good friends lost their child. Beth said the mother had this unexplainable grace about her and how strong she was. At the funeral, Beth was a complete mess and couldn't get a hold of herself. The mother had to come over and tell her to get it together. She was amazed by her strength and told God she didn't see how she was such as mess and the mother was holding it together. God reminded her that He gives His grace out according to individual need. The mother was handling this tragedy with God's grace, not her own. He had her back.

I have had to pray a lot this past week for God's grace and for His strength. I knew I couldn't handle any of this alone and quite frankly, didn't want to. This was in His plan all along and even though I will never understand His timing, I have to accept it. Beth made a point in her video that God is expecting our unexpected. He knew I would fall back on Him this week and that He would have to carry me. He has always got me.

Broken Hearts, Broken Ties

I love bible stories! I never grew tired of hearing about Jonah and the whale, Noah's Ark, Adam and Eve, Moses' birth, etc. They are stories that we learned as soon as we hit Sunday School age and I was thrilled when right off the bat we were reading all the early stories this week. However, it didn't take me long to figure out that we weren't going to cover the happy parts of these stories. Well, we were but we had to first cover why these events even happened.

I was overwhelmed this week by God's wrath in the Old Testament. I know He is a mighty God and that he brings punishment and judgement to those that go against Him. But this week it really got to me and I was even more grateful that He sent Jesus here for us. See in each one of those wonderful stories something horrible happened either before or after those events. Eve ate the apple and all of mankind was punished; hard labor for women (I appreciate that one!) and a desire to control the uncontrollable, man. And for man, they will have to work and sweat over the land to provide for their families. God was so disgusted by the way that people were acting that he caused a great flood to wipe them out. He destroyed His creation because they were doing nothing but fulfilling their own desires and needs. It brings me to think, what does He see when He looks down at us now? Are we not doing the exact same thing?

I can almost guarantee God is not pleased with everything that he sees. I know there are many things that I have done in my life that has not been pleasing to Him. I knew they weren't pleasing at the time, but did them anyway because I felt I deserved to do what I wanted. Only now that my eyes have been opened, have realized what a huge promise God made to Noah all those thousands of years ago. He had already punished humans several times, until finally He just couldn't take it and felt the need for a do over. Then and there God decided that he would start over and promised to never again destroy the human race no matter how bad it got. And He knew how bad it would get, but He also knew He would then have to give the ultimate sacrifice; Jesus. Does that not just make you all unbelievably grateful? I mean we are probably doing the same horrible things those people were but because of Jesus we will never have to know God's wrath like that.

I hate to be all gloom because I also know even though our world is probably not as pleasing to God as He would like, I know He finds joy in us. I can only imagine His face when one of us becomes His child for the first time, or when we finally lay our agenda down and let Him have His way. I know He sits with a big smile on His face when we all come together and worship Him. If it wasn't for Jesus I'm not sure what He would think of us. I would have to think that He would look down and see the same thing he saw back then. But luckily we will never have to experience what they did as along as we follow Him.