Shalom,
I was out of town today and have a very important service at The Spoken Word Church tonight, so I am only posting briefly and will post more later.
Psalm 50:1-3:
1THE MIGHTY One, God, the Lord, speaks and calls the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.2Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.
3Our God comes and does not keep silence; a fire devours before Him, and round about Him a mighty tempest rages.
THAT is our God! Mighty always and in all ways! He always speaks and you KNOW when He's around! Hallelujah! I love that it is the "mighty God" - "Elohiym" : the Godhead, the "LORD" - Yahweh or Yehovah: the eternal self-existing ONE Who is speaking! I want to hear what He has to say, don't you? One of the powerful things He says is this in verses 10-12:
10For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills or upon the mountains where thousands are.
11I know and am acquainted with all the birds of the mountains, and the wild animals of the field are Mine and are with Me, in My mind.
12If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are Mine.
EVERYTHING belongs to HIM! What can we possibly give to Him? This in verses 14-15:
14Offer to God the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High,
15And call on Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall honor and glorify Me.
and verse 23:
23He who brings an offering of praise and thanksgiving honors and glorifies Me; and he who orders his way aright [who prepares the way that I may show him], to him I will demonstrate the salvation of God.
He wants our whole heart and when we give that to Him what does He give back? EVERYTHING we will ever need and even the desires of our hearts! What a marvelously GOOD God we have! Glory to His Name! AMEN!
In Acts 22 we get to hear Paul give the testimony of his experience on the road to Damascus where he was born again! My favorite verses here are 14-15:
14And he said, The God of our forefathers has destined and appointed you to come progressively to know His will [to perceive, to recognize more strongly and clearly, and to become better and more intimately acquainted with His will], and to see the Righteous One (Jesus Christ, the Messiah), and to hear a voice from His [own] mouth and a message from His [own] lips;
15For you will be His witness unto all men of everything that you have seen and heard.
We know that Paul received this Word and took it very seriously because we have this witness of it in Philippians 3:10-11:
10[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection [which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness even] to His death, [in the hope]
11That if possible I may attain to the [spiritual and moral] resurrection [that lifts me] out from among the dead [even while in the body].
I LOVE that prayer and make it MY own! I hope you do, too! We then see Paul bound and about to be scourged when he lets it be known that he is a Roman citizen. That saves his life and his body! Remember to be at least as wise as the world! It may save YOU sometime!
In Exodus we have seen where Pharaoh continued to harden his heart toward the One, True, Most High, Living, Almighty God of the Bible. Once he had totally hardened his heart, then God Himself continued to harden Pharaoh's heart even more, so that he could use Pharaoh to show forth to ALL of the people, Hebrew and Egyptian alike, His might and His power! We'll continue to see even more miraculous things as we continue on with our daily reading!
Shalom in Him!
