Okay. I'm going to set myself a little challenge.
My church has some really good talks, by that I mean they choose a passage and really dig into it, uncovering all the treasure beneath which are like little nuggets of gold to rejuvinate and enliven me. But being the lazy delinquent that I am, I often find it hard to concentrate that early in the morning, or I just forget...there in lies the problem.
So to solve this problem, to fight against myself, and to hopefully share something interesting and edifying, I'm going to post a weekly little snippet of the talk for you on here. Just one or two things that I found particularly helpful or inspiring. Excited?
Let's start with today. We had a guest service, so it was a break in our series on James and a little detour into Job, probably the oldest book in the bible.
Job
If you don't know the story of Job (which I didn't really) to give you a brief outline, it's about a guy who loves God, fears God, and God blesses him loads. But Satan torments Job. His children die, he loses his home, he loses his business, he becomes severly ill, is in loads of pain, his friends and wife discourage him...but throughout all of it he remains true to God. He refuses to sin by blaming God for what has happened.
WOW.
Seriously wow. Satan failed to make him turn against God, that is such an example of faith. Inspiring. So here are the things I took away:
- Throughout the book, Job longed for an advocate (someone to speak to God for him), a mediator (so he can talk to God himself), a redeemer (someone to pay for his sin/what's happening to him), a comforter (so he will never be alone)
- A wise woman once told me (my mum) that 'the new (testament) is in the old concealed, the old (testament) is in the new revealed.' It takes a while to get your head around, but it's so true! An in referance to Job, these things that he longed for (old test) are a reality for us today (new test)!
- JESUS is our advocate - he interceeds on our behalf
- JESUS is our mediator - we can have a relationship with God because of what he did
- JESUS is our redeemer - he paid for our sins by dying for us!
- JESUS is our comforter - the presence of God will always be within us because of what he did
There. I've done it, there's no going back now.
I want you to hold me accountable if I miss a Sunday or two :)
This is awesome Gins, I love that idea - so great! Sounds like your church has some fab teaching, Job is soo inspiring. There's a bit where it talks about God talking to people in their sleep when they don't even know about it.........i'll show it to you. It highlighted the beautiful importance of sleep for me :-). And YES, that is exactly what we're doing at my church at the moment - digging deep into OT passages and seeing them revealed by looking at how it portrays Jesus in the NT. ANOTHER similarity..... <3
ReplyDeleteYOU ARE SUCH AN INSPIRATION AND A BEAUTIFUL SOUL. I mean that. xxx