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dfroza · 3 years

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True patience.

this is illuminated in Today’s reading with the beginning of the Letter of James:

James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, to the twelve tribes of Israel who are spread across the earth: I send you my warmest welcome!

Don’t run from tests and hardships, brothers and sisters. As difficult as they are, you will ultimately find joy in them; if you embrace them, your faith will blossom under pressure and teach you true patience as you endure. And true patience brought on by endurance will equip you to complete the long journey and cross the finish line—mature, complete, and wanting nothing. If you don’t have all the wisdom needed for this journey, then all you have to do is ask God for it; and God will grant all that you need. He gives lavishly and never scolds you for asking.

The key is that your request be anchored by your single-minded commitment to God. Those who depend only on their own judgment are like those lost on the seas, carried away by any wave or picked up by any wind. Those adrift on their own wisdom shouldn’t assume the Lord will rescue them or bring them anything. The splinter of divided loyalty shatters your compass and leaves you dizzy and confused.

If you are a brother of humble means, celebrate the fact that God has raised you up. If you are rich and seemingly invincible, savor the humble reality that you are a mere mortal who will vanish like a flower that withers in the field. The sun rises with a blazing heat that dries the earth and causes the flower to wither and fall to the ground and its beauty to fade and die. In the same way, the rich will fall and die in the midst of their busy lives.

Happy is the person who can hold up under the trials of life. At the right time, he’ll know God’s sweet approval and will be crowned with life. As God has promised, the crown awaits all who love Him.

No one who is tempted should ever be confused and say that God is testing him. The One who created us is free from evil and can’t be tempted, so He doesn’t tempt anyone. When a person is carried away with desire, lured by lust, and when desire becomes the focus and takes control, it gives birth to sin. When sin becomes fully grown, it produces death.

My dearly loved brothers and sisters, don’t be misled. Every good gift bestowed, every perfect gift received comes to us from above, courtesy of the Father of lights. He is consistent. He won’t change His mind or play tricks in the shadows. We have a special role in His plan. He calls us to life by His message of truth so that we will show the rest of His creatures His goodness and love.

Listen, open your ears, harness your desire to speak, and don’t get worked up into a rage so easily, my brothers and sisters. Human anger is a futile exercise that will never produce God’s kind of justice in this world. So walk out on your corrupt liaison with smut and depraved living, and humbly welcome the word of truth that will blossom like the seed of salvation planted in your souls.

Put the word into action. If you think hearing is what matters most, you are going to find you have been deceived.

If some fail to do what God requires, it’s as if they forget the word as soon as they hear it. One minute they look in the mirror, and the next they forget who they are and what they look like. However, it is possible to open your eyes and take in the beautiful, perfect truth found in God’s law of liberty and live by it. If you pursue that path and actually do what God has commanded, then you will avoid the many distractions that lead to an amnesia of all true things and you will be blessed.

If you put yourself on a pedestal, thinking you have become a role model in all things religious, but you can’t control your mouth, then think again. Your mouth exposes your heart, and your religion is useless. Real, true religion from God the Father’s perspective is about caring for the orphans and widows who suffer needlessly and resisting the evil influence of the world.

The Letter of James, Chapter 1 (The Voice)

do we think that God is not absolutely pure True nature?

and we are all made in the image of our Creator, but we’re not all children of God our heavenly Father

we have to choose to be.

and the Scriptures are a wake-up call to the heart to awaken to the eternal, to be open to welcome the entrance of the Spirit as a guarantee of sacred promises to come as seen in the True illumination of the Son

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 20th chapter of First Chronicles that documents ancient wartime in Israel:

That spring, the time when kings usually go off to war, Joab led the army out and ravaged the Ammonites. He then set siege to Rabbah. David meanwhile was back in Jerusalem. Joab hit Rabbah hard and left it in ruins. David took the crown off the head of their king. Its weight was found to be a talent of gold and set with a precious stone. It was placed on David’s head. He hauled great quantities of loot from the city and put the people to hard labor with saws and picks and axes. This is what he did to all the Ammonites. Then David and his army returned to Jerusalem.

Later war broke out with the Philistines at Gezer. That was the time Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Sippai of the clan of giants. The Philistines had to eat crow. In another war with the Philistines, Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi, the brother of Goliath the Gittite whose spear was like a ship’s boom. And then there was the war at Gath that featured a hulking giant who had twenty-four fingers and toes, six on each hand and foot—yet another from the clan of giants. When he mocked Israel, Jonathan son of Shimea, David’s brother, killed him. These came from the clan of giants and were killed by David and his men.

The Book of 1st Chronicles, Chapter 20 (The Message)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for Tuesday, january 19 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible, along with Today’s Psalms and Proverbs

A post by John Parsons about knowing:

You may feel anxious about knowing God, about how to relate to him or how to understand or interpret the Scriptures, though the heart can only know the essential meaning of God in the state of its need, as its ultimate concern, and therefore unless you cry out “from the depths” of your being, you are merely intellectualizing or playing games... After all, the inner heart asks "How can I find God?" "How can I relate to God?" "How can I find hope and life?" but the answers to such questions are found by personal encounter with the reality of the Spirit of God, not by theological rationalizations.

It is one thing to say "Lord" or "Master" but quite another to say "my Lord," or "my Master..." The Torah teaches that name of God refers to that which God alone is, namely, the "I am that I am"(אהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה) which is unknowable apart from the miracle of disclosure within the heart. That is why we find so many different names and titles for God in Scripture, for these are disclosures to the heart in a time of its need. For instance, to know God's name as "Savior" (מוֹשִׁיעַ) means experiencing deliverance from your struggles, pains, and fears by the agency of God’s victory, comfort, and consolation as given in Yeshua. However, unlike the experience of worldly education that might enable you accomplish certain tasks, spiritual education leads to a “dark clouds of unknowing” where you must regularly confess your weakness and your need for divine connection. God's name is therefore bound up with the basic quest within the heart for meaning, healing, and the desire of unconditional love. Knowing the name of God is an ongoing process as you struggle to accept and trust your life to be a blessing, and as you are enabled by the Holy Spirit to say "yes" and "amen" to life despite your failures, pains, fears, sorrows, and even your unanswered questions... It means opening your heart to life and believing that you are loved, that you are accepted, that you will be okay, and that God is holding you in his everlasting arms. [Hebrew for Christians]

https://hebrew4christians.com/

1.18.21 • Facebook

Today’s message from the Institute for Creation Research

January 19, 2021

The Blindness of Israel

“What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded.” (Romans 11:7)

One of the saddest aspects of our world is the blindness of Israel. Even the Orthodox Jews, who strongly affirm their belief in the Old Testament Scriptures, seem unable to see what the Scriptures clearly show, that their Messiah has come and gone. In the first book of the Torah, we read: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be” (Genesis 49:10). Ancient Jewish commentators agreed that Shiloh was another name for Messiah, but this very fact should prove to modern Jewish expositors that Messiah has already come, for the scepter (the symbol of national leadership) did depart from Judah, very soon after Jesus was crucified.

King David was the first descendant of Judah to attain the scepter of leadership among the tribes of Israel, and the divine promises were clear that Messiah would be in David’s lineage. That Jesus’ legal father, Joseph, and human mother, Mary, were both in that lineage was shown in the genealogies of Matthew 1:1-17 and Luke 3:23-38, respectively, both of which were written when the genealogical records in the Temple were still intact. No one at that time ever questioned their validity, in spite of intense opposition by the Jews to the claims of Jesus and His disciples that He was the Messiah. In 70 AD, the records and the Temple were destroyed so that no later claimant to the title could ever prove his right to the throne. Messiah had come, and was slain, so the scepter departed from Judah until He comes again. It is certain that Jesus was, indeed, the Jews’ promised Messiah, and we should pray that God will soon open their eyes to see and believe. HMM

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