Category: February

It’s a Party!

On By Judy GlasserIn February2 Comments

The Israelites had several different festivals – each celebrating different things. 

The Festival of the Booths sounds like quite an adventure.  They would all go live in tents for a week as a reminder of the time all of the Israelites wandered in the wilderness.

The Year of the Jubilee was especially interesting.  Every 50 years, they were supposed to take a whole year off – that sounds like a great idea.  The land was supposed to lie fallow as well so it got a year off.Feb 24 2014

The Year of Jubilee was about redemption.  Slave and servants were set free, property that had been sold was given back to the original owner, houses were given back and inheritances restored.

Every 50 years.

Does it surprise anyone that there is no historical evidence that the Year of Jubilee was ever observed?

I’m not surprised.  Not at all.  Most of us are just too self-centered and greedy for that.  Many of us have trouble giving away stuff  out in our garage that we haven’t used for 10 years.  Give back the stuff, the garage AND the house?

That’s not happening this side of heaven.

But maybe one step towards celebrating some sort of Jubilee is if we can soften our hold on ‘things’ and give more away.  Give it away so other people can actually use it.  Clean out our closets and make some room for our cars in our garages.

Let’s all call THIS the Year of Jubilee and start giving away the things that we’ve been piling up because we think we might need them ‘some day’.  Let’s celebrate as other people get to benefit from our generosity.

Dear Father, Please help us loosen our hold on our ‘stuff’ so that this can be a year of increased freedom for us – our Jubilee.

He is Faithful

On By Judy GlasserIn February2 Comments

I don’t know most of you.  I’ve never met you.

Yet, if you love God and have accepted Jesus as your personal Savior, I know something very important about your life.  I know that God always has been faithful to you.  He always has been and he always will be.  That’s who he is, he can’t be any other way.Feb 15 2014

It’s a challenge for all of us to trust God when we’re in the middle of a storm in our life.  But then we remember the last time – when God was faithful.  And the time before that – when God was faithful.  And all of the times – God was faithful.  Sometimes he calms the storm and sometimes he just calms his child as the storm rages on but he is always faithful.

Moses reminds the Israelites about God’s faithfulness in Deuteronomy 1 as he prepares to hand over leadership to Joshua.  Moses is getting ready to head home to heaven.

He recounts the time when God commanded them to go into the Promised Land.  God had prepared this special place for them – it was very beautiful and extremely fruitful.  God had told them not to be afraid – he was going to go with them.

Instead of obeying, they sent spies to check out the land and then listened as 10 of the cowardly spies discouraged everyone by their negative report.  The Israelites ended up ‘grumbling in their tents.’  I like that phrase.  How often does our disobedience and lack of courage cause us to grumble in our tents?

Moses reminds the Israelites that they refused to trust in God who had rescued them from Egypt and who had guided them day and night through the desert.  They had seen how ‘the Lord God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.”

And they still didn’t trust him.

Dear Father, Please help us trust in your faithfulness every minute of every day.

A Star

On By Judy GlasserIn FebruaryLeave a comment

God had a plan for our redemption right from the beginning.

The Israelites had not reached the Promised Land when Balaam shared a prophecy about a coming Messiah….

A star from Jacob

who will conquer all of their enemies.Feb 11 2014

Balaam also said, ” I see him, but not now.

I behold him, but not near.”

How blessed we are to live in a time where we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us!  We can witness the power of the Holy Spirit living in us – we feel his presence. 

We ‘behold’ him and he is very near in our hearts and in our minds.

The Messiah has come!  He lives inside of us today!

Thank you, dear God!

The Explanation

On By Judy GlasserIn FebruaryLeave a comment

They did what they wanted, not what God told them to do, and they paid the consequences.

The Israelites rebelled and refused to go into the Promised Land because of the negative report from 10 of the spies who had scouted it out.  They rejected the fact that God said he would give them success in the battle so they could live in this very fertile and beautiful land.  God wanted them to have it.

But they refused.  They were scared.  They disobeyed.

As a result, God tells them that they will wander in the wilderness for 40 years until the last person from this wicked generation has passed away.  The 10 spies who discouraged all of the people were struck with a plague as a result of their disobedience.

So, what do the Israelites do?  NOW they decided they were ready to go into the land.  NOW they disobey again by not listening to God when he says it will be 40 more years.  They think (dangerous words) that they have paid the price for their earlier disobedience and they want to go live in the Promised land.  They totally disregard God’s latest instruction and go fight the Amalekites.  Moses tells them not to go – “The Lord is not with you.”

But they go anyway…and they are defeated.  No surprise there.

Doesn’t this explain a lot of the pain and defeat we see in the world around us?  People doing what they want, ignoring God.  Rejecting God’s direction and going our own ways only to be defeated over and over again.

God has so much more planned for us!  He has a purpose for us.  He wants us to experience a life full of joy.  And he wants to be the leader of our life so he can make all of this happen.

We are more than conquerors with Christ!

Thank you, dear God!

Sound the Trumpet!

On By Judy GlasserIn February1 Comment

‘When you go into battle, sound the trumpets.  Then the Lord will rescue you from your enemies.’
Feb 7 2014

The Israelite’s journey was just beginning.  They had their laws, they were numbered and their duties were assigned.  The Tabernacle was assembled and was ready to be taken down and reassembled whenever God directed.

The Promised Land was ahead of them but it was already occupied.  There were many battles to be fought.

We are also on a journey.  Our destination is not in sight – but we know where we’re going.

Between here and there, we will fight many battles.  And God reminds us in Numbers 10 to sound our trumpets so he will come fight our enemy with us.  The big difference for us is that we have the Spirit of God living inside of us so our cry for help doesn’t need to be a loud trumpet blast.  It can be a quietly whispered prayer – our Father God hears them all.

AND he comes to help us fight.  He comes to our rescue.

Thank you, dear God.

Am I on the Right Path?

On By Judy GlasserIn FebruaryLeave a comment

How fun!  My niece, Ali, is reading through the Bible with us this year and I asked her if she wanted to be a guest blogger.  We live a couple of thousand miles away from each other but we’ve been able to share this journey through the Bible last year and this year.  At a time that I was pretty discouraged about my whole blogging experience, God used Ali to encourage me.  (He does that just when I need it.)

 It has been awesome to see the incredible ‘magic’ God has been able to do in Ali’s life as she has been seriously opening her mind and heart to His word.

Today we read about Balaam’s donkey and here are Ali’s thoughts on this part of God’s word to us:

“Today, as I read about Balaam’s Donkey, I see that when we seem to be going in the right direction, there just might be a path to which we SHOULD REALLY be going. There are things that keep us from seeing this path, such as fear, in this case – being made a fool, or that ever so daunting thought of FAILURE!  But as stubborn as we may be to see the path that God really wants us to go, he is as adamant about getting us back on track with patience.”

And I say Amen to that! If we are sensitive to God’s leading, he will definitely tell us when we are on the wrong path.   I had the experience one time of God saying just those exact words to me, “You are on the wrong path.”  After a lot of praying and meditating on his word, I realized my priorities were all messed up and they needed to change.  Not an easy thing to do but very worth it.

It’s also funny that we all fear failure yet we all do it!  We have all failed and we will do it again.  So why be afraid?  It’s going to happen.  We just need to get good at failing.  I have learned that, if I learn something from my failure, I get to call it a ‘life experience’.  It’s no longer a failure.

So let’s rename our failures and listen closely for God’s direction to make sure we’re on the right path.

Thank you, dear Father!

Separated

On By Judy GlasserIn FebruaryLeave a comment

Feb 3 2014When Moses erected the Tabernacle, he put up the veil that separated the ark of the covenant from the rest of the space where regular people could go.  That veil symbolized how our sins have separated us from God.  We read of this separation often during the Old Testament.  Only the priests could enter the Holy of Holies at special times.  They wore bells on their robes so that people on the other side of the veil could hear them moving around.  They also had a rope tied to one foot.  If God was unhappy with them or the sacrifices they were offering, he struck them dead, the bells would stop ringing and they could be pulled out of the Holy of Holies by the rope.

The priests considered it an honor to be picked to go into the Holy of Holies because it took them into the very presence of God.

The Good News is that Jesus came and, through his death on the cross and resurrection, he provided a bridge for us to God.  We are no longer separated from God by our sins.  We are always right there, with God.

At the moment Christ died on the cross, the Bible tells us that the curtain in the temple tore in two – from top to bottom.  The separation was over.

When we accept God’s gift of grace, we can now have a personal relationship with him.  We can come before his throne with confidence that we are adopted sons and daughters of the King of the Universe.

And we know the end of the story.  When we accept Jesus as our Savior, our eternal life with God begins and it will continue on into eternity.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Amen!  Hallelujah!

Just Emotions

On By Judy GlasserIn FebruaryLeave a comment

The people of Israel have just made a covenant with God to love him and serve him for the rest of their lives and for the rest of the lives of generations to come.Jan 31 2014

A very short time later, when Moses had only been up at the top of the mountain with God for a month, the Israelites persuaded Aaron to make them an idol to worship because they ‘needed a god they could see.”  As soon as Aaron was done making them a golden calf, they began worshipping this idol and praising it for bringing them out of Egypt.

Crazy!

That’s what emotions will do to us if we let them determine our actions and committment level. 

We’ll be up!

We’ll be down.

We’ll be up!

We’ll be down.

We’ll be worshipping God one day….

and then worshipping money the next.

We’ll be worshipping relationships the next day….

and then our new big-screen TV the next.

Emotions can’t define our reality.  The Israelites had seen God divide the Red Sea for them.  God had literally provided their daily bread but they ‘felt’ that they needed a god they could see.  Those feelings led them on a roller coaster of disobedience and they paid harsh consequences for their choices.

Dear Father, we thank you for your Word to us.  We ask that you help us put our emotions and feelings under your control so that we can become rock solid in our love and committment to you.  We don’t want to go up and down, sway right and left depending on how we ‘feel’ each day.  May your truth be a compass for every minute of our lives.  We don’t want any gods that we can see….because they aren’t you.  We love and serve the One True God.  In the redeeming name of Jesus we pray, Amen.

It’s a Festival!

On By Judy GlasserIn FebruaryLeave a comment

Everyone goes to a designated place to celebrate, give their offerings and to remember what God has done for them.

What does that sound like?

I know what you’re thinking….but I just described the three major festivals the Israelites celebrated each year. 

Each year, all male Israelites were required to travel to a designated place for the Passover and Festival of Unleaven Bread, the Festival of the Harvest and the Festival of the Tabernacles. 

Celebrating Passover was a reminder of how God freed them from their slavery when the Angel of Death passed over their homes.  Then they celebrated the  Festival of Unleaven Bread the rest of the week to commemorate exodus and all God did for them during that time.

The Festival of the Harvest was a celebration where they gave freewill offering in proportion to the blessing the Lord had given them.

During the Festival of the Tabernacles they lived in tents as a reminder of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness.  They were told to celebrate and be joyful because God has blessed all the works of their hands.

Sounds like what we do every Sunday, doesn’t it?I was thinking about this last Sunday as we approached the location of our church and we saw all of the cars turning into the parking lot.

What a great blessing it is to be able to gather EVERY week to praise God, give him our offerings and remember what he has done for us!

And we don’t have stay in tents, either! 🙂

Thank you, dear Father, for giving us a place we can  go every week where we can celebrate you with other believers.

Protected

On By Judy GlasserIn FebruaryLeave a comment

How often do we think about the hedge of protection God has placed around us?

God has promised that he is with us and we know he sends his angels to help take care of us.

Every once in awhile we get a glimpse of something that ‘could have’ happened to us but didn’t.  We see an accident or we read about something happening in a place we should have been but weren’t.

Most of the time we’re clueless.  God protects us, something bad doesn’t happen and we go on our merry way – not knowing that our Father God has just supernaturally intervened in our life to take care of us.

In Numbers 14: 4-10, Joshua and Caleb plead with the Israelites  go into the promised land despite the obstacles the spies had told them about.  Joshua tells the Israelites they will devour the people who are presently living in the promised land because their protection is gone and the Lord is with the Israelites.

But the Israelites rebel, don’t go and begin 40 years of wandering.

They just refused to trust.   They knew they had God’s protection, they knew all about his promises regarding the land of milk and honey that he was taking them to.  But they didn’t trust him. 

They trusted themselves – a very foolish thing to do, wasn’t it?

Thank you, dear Father, for your protection of us.  Please help us to trust you more.

 wasn’t it?