Marching Forth!

One aspect of God I love is that nothing is hard for Him.  In fact, He intentionally stacks all the odds against Himself so there is no doubt He is the only One who could be responsible for miraculously doing the impossible.  For instance when it came time for Elijah to offer a sacrifice to God on Mt. Carmel, before he prayed for God to send fire from heaven he commanded the wood and sacrifice be drenched with water and to fill a trench around it.  When the fire of God fell in response to Elijah's prayer, it consumed the offering and even licked up the water that was in the trench.  Everyone who witnessed the event shouted, " The LORD, He is God !" and fell on their faces in worship.  The God who created the natural laws we perceive and understand, and what we know in part helps us define what is truly miraculous.  Hezekiah saw it as a little thing for the shadow of the sundial to go down 10 degrees, so he requested God made the sundial return backward 10 d...

I'm always drawn to Nehemiah's description of Baruch when the walls and gates of Jerusalem were being repaired in the KJV rendering of  Nehemiah 3:20 :  " After him Baruch the son of Zabbai earnestly repaired the other piece, from the turning of the wall unto the door of the house of Eliashib the high priest ."  The NKJV uses "carefully" instead of "earnestly," and "earnestly" seems to better convey the zeal Baruch demonstrated in his efforts.  Of all the workers, Baruch is the only one where an adverb was used to describe how he worked and thus clearly stood out.  The Hebrew word "hara" is only translated "earnestly" on this one occasion, and the Strong's Concordance noted other uses in English as, " kindled (44 times), wroth (13), hot (10), angry (9), displease (4), fret (4), incensed (2) and burn (1).  Baruch was a man on fire, one who attacked the task with fervency and unrivaled earnestness. S...

In a world full of people that change over time, God remains the same.  It is profoundly comforting to consider the righteous, merciful and gracious character of God who has spoken forth His word that contains promises He will be faithful to bring to fruition.  The God who has made Himself known to Israel and all the world also has revealed His will that remains constant. One thing we must keep in mind is from man's vantage point God's will is not always done.   2 Peter 3:9 says, " The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance ."  God is absolutely righteous and holy, and death entered into the world by Adam's sinful choice to rebel against Him.  Man doing his own will led to destruction that was never God's will.  Though God is not willing any should perish, mankind was cursed by sin which is evidenced by sickness, pain...

" The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law ." Deuteronomy 29:29 Regardless how much a person might know, there is abundantly more that they do not know.  When it comes to the secret things of God, there is much we cannot know or understand.  The complexity of life and glory of God revealed in nature and His word are merely the edges of His ways.  The more we learn of God and the things He has made, we realise there is much more we have yet to understand. Moses wrote of secret things that belong to the LORD our God:  some mysteries He chooses to reveal in His time, and other things He chooses to keep secret.  The thrust of the passage, however, is not to focus on what God knows that we cannot know.  The truth is God has revealed Himself and His wisdom to us and has given us things to take to heart and put into practice.  The boo...