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What a great weekend! We woke up early Saturday and went to Kidsfest for a few hours. My son saw Larry Boy from VeggieTales, Ronald McDonald, and Clifford the Big Red Dog! We had free chocolate milk, cheetos, and ice cream...all we could eat!
My son also tried a ten-minute TaeKwonDo class and loved it! My wife and I are going to see what he thinks about classes this Tuesday when he goes into the class for real for the first of two introductory lessons. He sure is excited!
Going backwards a bit, I took my wife out on a Friday night date to Ohana Steakhouse for some scallops prepared Teppan-Yaki style. We were stuffed! Just before the date, I spent about an hour at the mall with her and didn't even mind the fact that I was in the mall! Just please don't tell her that I didn't mind or she'll be dragging me there every weekend! Aargh!
Where am I going with this? I was spending quality time with my family, who I love, and the joy in me has poured out like rain. And you thought I'd forgotten all about the fruits of the spirit, didn't you? None of the things I've described are things I would do for my own amusement, but the love for my family led me to show them all a good time and I loved every second!
Links to an online Bible for these passages are here, here and here.
The forty years of wanderings was coming to a close, and with it the life of Moses was fading. He reminded the Israelites of what all had transpired in their wanderings and why they had to wander all of these years. To us, this may seem like nothing more than a recap, but some of these Israelite men and women hadn't heard the whole story. Remember, no Israelite over the age of twenty at their first approach, with a few exceptions, would ever enter the Promised Land. Moses was setting the record straight.
And my! He did set the record straight! He must have spoken the history of the Israelite people for hours! I realize that he had forty years of history to speak about and these Israelites had a tendency to forget the details of their Covenant with God, but this guy had some things to say. For a man with a speech impediment to speak out at this length, surely God was helping him tremendously!
Links to an online Bible for these passages are here, here and here.
That lesson was to be passed down the generations, ensuring the future and prosperity of Israel as a people. But how many generations does it take for hard-learned lessons to be forgot?
Links to an online Bible for these passages are here, here and here.
The beginning of this day's reading is pretty straightforward. I don't think anyone could ask for these instructions to be clarified in the least. 1. Destroy the current inhabitants of the lands totally. 2. Make no treaty with them. (shouldn't they be destroyed?) 3. Do not intermarry with them. (see comments from #2) 4. Destroy all of their alters, idols, etc.
Like I said, pretty straightforward. How would this be to their benefit? Excellent crops, NO disease in their lands, their enemies hiding in fear and yet they would be hunted by God until they had all perished, and all of the other points of the Covenant. All they had to do is obey the commands of the Lord and remember that it was He that brought all of this to be, not their own works.
Links to an online Bible for these passages are here, here and here.
Moses reminded the people of the tablets that held the Ten Commandments and told them to fear the Lord, which means to obey what he decrees with love and faithfulness. For if they would fear the Lord, He would conquer their foes, much like the way He conquered the Egyptians. So what Moses was telling them was that all of this would be theirs, a virtual paradise, if they would obey God's commands, but if they disobeyed, they would be tormented forever. That's not something to take lightly!
Links to an online Bible for these passages are here, here, here and here.
This reading starts off interesting. God (through Moses) decrees that anyone who prophecies or foretells by dreams is doomed to die. They are not to be followed. Some would say that these people are in the past, but they are all around us. I detest the use of Tarot cards and Ouija boards. I believe that all of these "seers" who are applauded as inspirational on daytime talk shows are evil. There are even people in today's churches that claim to have these powers from God, and this is not so. This is not for my own reasons. If you wonder where this opinion begins, read the first verse of the passage again. About the matter of so-called Christian churches performing detestable acts like this, I'll get into that later in the year.
Links to an online Bible for these passages are here, here, here and here.
Links to an online Bible for these passages are here, here, here, here and here.
This was a very interesting read. It also was not as long as I thought it would be. Five chapters in one sitting seems like a lot, but the chapters are short and the reading kept me going the entire time. These rules all had the best interests of the Israelites in mind. It was about looking out for each other's interests, keeping themselves holy in the eyes of the Lord and caring for those who were less fortunate then they were.
Weekly LinkIs there something that you used to believe when you were young, but no longer believe, thinking that idea to be childish? I used to believe that dogs were all male and cats were all female. My sister in law used to believe that she would get older and her mother would get younger as the years went by. I once thought you could survive a terrible crash by jumping out of the car at the last moment. This site has an abundance of examples of things other people used to believe in their childish innocence. You can spend days reading them, and never get tired of them. This site is highly recomended! |
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Thanks for sharing my goal of reading the Bible in its entirety this year!