Long ago Jewish prayers often started, “Blessed be he . . .” Prayer began with blessing God. The irony is that God, who deserves all the blessing, has blessed us (Ephesians 1:3-14). Surely we experience difficult days on this sin-stained planet. But often day after day after day we experience God’s special presence in blessed […]
The word closer sums up much of the Bible’s content. God is always wanting to get closer to people. Even in our text today God is pictured as walking in the garden (near Adam and Eve) in the cool of the day. The promise of God’s “withness” is scattered throughout the Bible (Exodus 3:12; Joshua […]
Faith in God is like a muscle in the body. It has to be stretched to be strong. Each of the Old Testament people we have studied this month had their faith stretched. Abel stretched his faith with his sacrifice. Enoch and Noah stretched their faith in their daily walk. Eleazar stretched his faith is […]
Prayer is hard to understand. It only works because a merciful God wills it to work. How can God be sovereign and yet open to our suggestions? But God invites (commands?) his people to pray. He is hurt by our distance and preoccupation with other things. He wants us to ask things of him. Few […]
One evidence that the Bible is divine is the record of fulfilled predictive prophecies. The Bible was written over a period of 1,500 years by at least 40 different human writers. The evidence of fulfilled prophecy is extremely faith building. For instance, reading Psalm 22 (written 1,000 years before Christ) and Isaiah 52:13—53:12 (written 700 […]
