Word Surprises

After reading about Abram's journey through Canaan in Genesis 12-15 and the altars he built whenever God spoke to him, I've been thinking about how we mark "God encounters" like he did.  Over the years I've collected a bundle of "encounter" memorabilia; things like key verses, magazine or book articles that have spoken to me just at the right time, or tokens of encouragement from people. At the moment they are scattered in various places and I'm now forced to concede that I need to put something more organised in place to remind me of those moments or they will be devalued by forgetfulness. A simple way to build a "spiritual alter" would be to: 1. Write it down or store it immediately in a special place like an journal or folder that you can keep all through your life. My experience is that the enemy encourages us to forget these wonderful times.  2. Tell someone who you trust about it but only after you've written it down or ...

Seeing it is Easter , I thought I'd post a couple of thoughts I had while reading    Genesis 3:14-15.    When Adam and Eve were deceived by the serpent, God immediately cursed him and said "on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life." It crossed my mind that Satan ( Rev.12:9 ) is always found slithering across the floor of life and the dust that he seeks to "eat" is us! God made humankind from the dust and in His image ( Gen 2:7 ) but the devil wants to bring us down to his level and destroy that image. However God's words indicate that Satan's dust-eating days would be finite and he would have an end! Verse 15 further shows that right from the start God had a plan to redeem mankind and destroy Satan's power. There would be enmity between Satan and the woman's seed (Jesus) and He would crush the serpent's head and destroy him while Satan would strike at His heel. This was at the Cross. When Jes...

In Genesis 9:8-17 we read the narrative about the covenant God made with mankind and the sign of the rainbow. Notice what God says in verses 13-17: v.13 " I set My rainbow in the cloud ... for a sign .. between Me and the earth." v.14 "when I bring a cloud over the earth ..." v.15 " I will remember My covenant ..." v.16 " I will look onto it and remember ..."   What struck me as that the narrative doesn't neutrally say "when a rainbow appears in the sky" or "when you see a rainbow remember the covenant" instead we see God's very personal involvement in this covenant and how He constantly reminds Himself and the earth about it.  Apart from Genesis there are only three other verses in the Bible that refer to rainbows and they are  Ezekiel 1:28, Revelation 4:3 and 10:1.  The first two refer to the Lord seated on His throne and the last refers to the great Angel of the Lord declaring the fulfillment...

A Surprise: After many years of reading the Bible I recently stumbled onto God's command to Israel to read the Law every seven years. Even though I would have read Deuteronomy 31:10-13 a number of times through the years, it was a surprise to see that I had missed these verses on previous occasions mainly because I was in too much of a hurry.  The Seven Year Plan: As I thought about this command I decided that I would restart my Bible reading at the beginning and take seven years to slowly read through the whole Bible. I would take time to "smell the spiritual roses on the way".  I calculated that I needed to read about 15 verses a day to complete it in the required seven years. I accepted that I would miss some days and and I didn't want to get too worried about "catching up".  Reading two Old Testament books to every one New Testament book would also mean so that I wouldn't go for four years before reading anything in the New Testament! The Jour...