God's Talking: Are you listening?

Often in the hectic paces of life, it may seem that God isn't talking to us. We read the Bible, but it doesn't have the same effect. We pray and find ourselves wondering if we were heard.  We try to stay faithful, but find doubts creeping in. We know that God speaks through His word and answers prayers. But how do we know God’s will? How do we know if it is not expressed specifically in black and white scripture what God is saying to us?

  "Hear this, O Job; stop and consider the wondrous works of God." 

Job 37:14     

We may have our issues, that Job’s friends weren't such good friends to comfort a suffering man. Yet, that doesn't make everything that they say erroneous. The statement above is a good case in point, as it offers some very good advice. When we’ve tried everything else and we still don’t think we can hear God, you often have to be quiet in order to hear God speak. This means sitting down – you and God – and you listening quietly. Turn off the cell phone! Turn off the TV!  

One of the reasons why God may never speak to you could be because you’re never quiet. Cultivating a quiet mind takes practice and has to become a habit. God may actually be revealing His will to you, lighting your path, enlightening your wisdom, you’re not hearing because He’s getting a busy signal from you. You've got to reserve time alone with God. So, here are some things to think about....

• Is getting God’s dream for your life, voice in your life, will in your life worth one day of your life? 
• Have you ever taken an entire day and done nothing but be alone with God? 
• Have you taken advantage of Sunday worship, to get yourself in tune with the Spirit of God? Let God talk to you through the Bible. Relax. Think. 
• Have you tried writing down the thoughts God puts in your mind? 
• Have you determined to set spiritual goals that you know that God wants you to achieve? 
• Look through your schedule for the week – is God there? We work, do things that we consider important – is God there in your priorities?

Recently, someone determined to spend one day saying nothing negative about anyone or anything. They found this to be a great challenge, yet in doing so they heard God’s voice telling them that they had let their lives become controlled by this type of thinking. We go here..go there – have you ever asked God, “God, where do you want me to go? What direction do you want me to go?”

God speaks to people who take the time to listen — not just for a day, but also on a regular

basis. This is called a quiet time. We exercise it best, when The Lord’s Day is the most important day for us and we wouldn't miss it for anything.  You think you don’t have time for this? We’re talking about figuring out why you’re here on Earth, so you've got to make the time.

• Do you want to hear God speak to you? What are you willing to do about it?
• How much time do you actually spend being quiet and waiting on God to speak to you?
• What distractions need to eliminated so that you can spend more time with God?

          "Hear this, O ; stop and consider the wondrous works of God." 

Jim

Experience Can Be A Harsh Teacher

Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith—just as Abraham "believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"? 

Gal 3:3-6  

We learn from many things and may senses. Sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, all of these are given to us that we might sense and learn in life. This is called gaining experience and experience can be both good and bad. To apply experience, you have to go back over it mentally and ask, “Was I successful and where was I not? What got me excited about this?” Is this experience worth in the grand scheme of things, pursuing again or is it something detrimental that I should never do again? Everything that you experience are lessons for your life; you just have to spend time examining them. When you do, you’ll see that in every failure are the seeds of success — if you learn from them.

I do not know why some people have to go through certain experiences to perceive truth, but, we are human and that is what humans do. Either we learn from experiences to make us better people, or we are destined to repeat the experience until we do, or we dive into the lies that come when I refuse to learn from what experience is teaching. This is what Paul is trying to get the Galatians to understand in Galatians 3, that I cannot start walking by the Spirit of God, and then claim to be enhancing that by augmenting it with drugs, ritual or repetition of allowing bad habits back into my life by claiming they remind me of what is good. 

Joseph in the book of Genesis (Gen.30-50) is a good example of this. A man who had one bad experience in life after another, yet strives to serve God through all of them. He always keeps his good character even through his bad experiences.  Yet, it is not until much later in life, that Joseph realizes that everything he experienced was for a particular moment. 

Esther is another, who after seeing he people become captive in a foreign land, being stigmatized because of her nationality is chosen to be queen of Persia, only to have that blessing become the greatest challenge in her life. Est.4:14  For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" These famous words show us that God takes us through things that we don’t understand at the time, but later realize that it shaped you into who you are. Maybe you’re in the middle of something like that right now. Trust that God will use your circumstances to show you what he shaped you to do and how you can use your life to serve him.

Have you learned from the experiences in your life?

Obey God's message! Don't fool yourselves by just listening to it.  If you hear the message and don't obey it, you are like people who stare at themselves in a mirror and forget what they look like as soon as they leave. But you must never stop looking at the perfect law that sets you free. God will bless you in everything you do, if you listen and obey, and don't just hear and forget.

 Jas 1:22-25

Jim  

Mary Magdalene - A Forgiven Woman

Mary Magdalene is a name that we hear often in the gospels. Among converts, she is one of Jesus’ first and closest, and is one of the few who stand at the foot of the cross. She is also among the first to see Jesus resurrected. Different explanations have been given of her over the years, some even villainous. Recent writings and docu-fiction have heavily suggested and implied that she was even Jesus’ wife. So, what do we know about her?

The most commonly known thing is that she came from the town of Magdala, hence her last

name given as Magdalene. Magdala, means "elegant", "great", or "great place it is the name of at least two places in ancient Israel mentioned in the Jewish Talmud and one place in the Gospels. The New Testament makes one disputable mention of a place called Magdala in the KJV, (Matt.15:39), however the most reliable Greek manuscripts give the name of the place as "Magadan", and more modern scholarly translations follow this.  The parallel passage in Mark's gospel call the place Dalmanutha. The Jewish Talmud distinguishes between two Magdalas, 1.) Magdala Gadar in the east, on the River Yarmouk near Gadara (in the Middle Ages "Jadar", now Umm Qais), thus acquiring the name  and 2.) Magdala Nunayya  near Tiberias, Meaning "Magdala of the fishes," which would locate it on the shore of the Sea of Galilee which is our most likely candidate for Mary’s hometown. . Al-Majdal, a Palestinian Arab village depopulated in the lead up to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war was identified as the site of this Magdala. The modern Israeli municipality of Migdal (Khirbet Medjdel), founded in 1910 and about 6 km NNW of Tiberias, has expanded into the area of the former village.

Mary appears before us for the first time in Lk.8:2, among the women who "ministered unto him of their substance." All of these women, appear to have occupied a position of comparative wealth and supporting His ministry out of gratitude for their deliverance from "evil spirits and infirmities." Of Mary in particular, it is said specially that "seven devils went out of her," in this passage.  This alone indicates a more than ordinary malignity, but does not suggest anything about her character other than Jesus saw her as a person who needed to be healed.  She is present during the agony on the cross. Jn.19:25, and remains until it was over and the body removed. She waited until the body is placed in sepulcher (Mt.27:61; Mk.15:47; Lk.23:55). She is with Salome and Mary, the mother of James when they "bought sweet spices that they might come and anoint" the body. Mk.16:1.  The next morning, accordingly, in the earliest dawn, Mt.28:1; Mk.16:2, they came with Mary, the mother of James, to the sepulcher. Mary Magdalene had been to the tomb and had found it empty, and had seen the "vision of angels." Mt.28:5; Mk16:6. It was to her first, that Jesus appeared after his resurrection. Jn.20:1-15.

From the scripture, this is all we know about Mary Magdalene. While she occupies a position of prominence from the scriptural record, it is interesting that people have sought to make her reputation disreputable. There is no authority for identifying her with the "sinner" who anointed the feet of Jesus in Lk.7:36-50. Neither is there any authority for the supposition that Mary Magdalene is the same as the sister of Lazarus.  It is the Roman Catholic Church that is guilty of fastening this slander upon Mary Magdalene when at Naples, in 1324, it established its first “Magdalen House” for the rescue and maintenance of fallen women or prostitutes, and hence the reputation that she was a prostitute began here. Of late, with the printing of Dan Brown’s fiction “The DaVinci Code” he seized upon another “legend” that she was the wife of Jesus, bearing him a son and continuing the bloodline of Jesus to the present day. While good fiction, there is no biblical evidence to support it, and the so called “evidence” has been found to be a forgery.

If Jesus thought enough of Mary to heal her, accept her company, appreciate her compassion and respect her as a woman, why shouldn't we do the same? If anything her example shows us what forgiveness can accomplish in the life of a person, the strength that it can give us, and the faith that can sustain us. The world can have its fiction, I will take Mary….a woman honored with being the first to see Jesus resurrected in glory. I look forward to that day!