Ten Lepers - Begins

Luke 17:11-13 Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us!"

Have you ever had a long day and it seems like it's gotten even longer with everything you've had to deal with and your kids come running up to you with a problem? It doesn't matter whether it's big or small - it's something that child feels only you can handle - They can't wait another second and will keep bugging you until you answer them. On most days, it's an honor to be able to take care of their needs - but sometimes. . . . it's oh so tiring.

I wonder how Jesus felt. The distance from Samaria to Jerusalem was roughly 70 miles. He'd been walking this whole time and knew He had this much farther to go and then He hears the voice of men calling out to Him. I am so glad that Jesus is not like me. I am so glad He doesn't sigh when we come to him with our problems. I am so glad that He just longs to hear from us no matter what is going on anywhere else.

I've never had a serious health issue. I've been blessed with a healthy body and the determination to take care of it. However, a little over a year ago - my back went out. I don't know whether it was a pinched nerve or what - but the pain was intense. I was incapacitated. It lasted for almost a week and even after that I was afraid to do anything that might cause extra strain on my back for fear of the pain returning.

I truly can't imagine what these men who were crying out to Jesus were going through. Jesus was a glimpse of hope for these men who were suffering. They cried out to Him because they had heard of His healing power. They called Him, 'Master'. But He doesn't just heal the leper and the deaf and the blind and the dead - He heals us all. Not just physical suffering either. He heals our mental pain over working too hard and our emotional pain from betrayal and mistrust. All we have to do is cry out to the Master - there is power in the Name of the Lord.

The Demon-Possessed Man - Knock, Knock

Luke 8:36-37 Those who had seen it reported to them how the man who was demon-possessed had been made well. And all the people of the country of the Gerasenes and the surrounding district asked Him to leave them, for they were gripped with great fear; and He got into a boat and returned.

When my oldest daughter was in 8th grade, our church youth group took a missions trip to Atlanta, Georgia. I volunteered to be a chaperone - and we spent a week in the middle of summer helping one of our sister churches plant a new church in Atlantic Station. As you might imagine, planting a new church is hard work, but the preacher that started it had a burden for this city. There's a lot of labor involved, a lot of money and a lot of people needed. We were mopping floors, handing out tracts, throwing "come see our church" block parties. One of our tasks while we were in Atlanta was to be in one of the new apartment complexes near where the church was going to be and hand out chick-fil-a breakfast sandwiches at 7 AM to people going to work. We sat right outside of the parking garage attached to the apartments and stopped people on their way and gave them this free sandwich. Who wouldn't want a nice hot FREE chick-fil-a sandwich on their way to work, with a flyer announcing the new church. Believe it or not, some people actually would not accept the sandwich. They said, 'no', and kept on driving. Go figure.

The people of Gerasene were much like the Atlanta Ney sayers. They had heard that Jesus had healed the demon-possessed man and when they came to see - they found it was true. The man was there - in his right mind - standing with Jesus. Instead of trying to find out what it was that Jesus had done, why the demons had left the man, they asked Him to leave.

When the people of Atlanta said "no", we didn't chase them into the streets and throw the sandwiches and flyers into their open windows, pelting them with chicken and buns - we just wished them a good day and they went on their way.

Jesus didn't argue with the Gerasene people, He didn't beg them to let Him stay, didn't threaten to put the demons back - He simply left. One of the gifts that God gives us is free will. We have the option to choose whether or not we will believe who Jesus is and accept it to be true. We can have faith in His promise and stand firm in the fact that if we choose to follow Him, we will, one day, meet Him face to face and it will be more glorious than we can imagine. We can also choose to not believe in Jesus. When faced with the marvel of His creation, the majesty of the earth He made, the peace that passes all understanding, we can simply choose to ignore Him and, in essence, asking Him to leave. But He will be waiting, always waiting, for you to ask Him to come in.

Job - Jesus loves me.

Job 1:8 Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil."

I really debated putting more than one verse, but I just didn't want to. I thought there was so much to see in just this one verse that it deserved a whole post all by its little self.

Satan has been bragging, again, about how he has had such an impact on everyone on earth. The pride that satan has developed over how he can persuade and manipulate people to do what he wants them to do - which is, quite simply, anything contrary to what God wants. The idea of this is infuriating - not just because satan is so evil - but that what he claims is pretty accurate. We, as a people, are easily swayed.

Then God speaks.

Have you ever watched a romance movie where the man, who you thought - kind of - maybe - liked the girl in the lead role, lays his whole heart on the line and confesses how much he truly loves her in the end. Think Pride and Prejudice. She spends the whole movie somewhat giving and taking, never wanting to wholly open up to Mr. Darcy - but then finds out in the end how much he deeply loves her.

Not that God is anywhere close to Mr. Darcy, but some of us play the role of Elizabeth Bennett. Only giving what they think they're getting. Why oh why do we play these games.

When God speaks here, we can see the amazing amount of love He has for Job and all of us. He praises Job for his commitment and love of God. If we could hear God in heaven speaking about us, would we not hear the same praise? Job was not perfect, this book never says he was - he was a man trying to live a life blameless before God. As we all are. Struggle after struggle. Know that God cares for you, loves you, and praises your efforts when you strive to be like Christ.

Rachel - Kissing AND Telling.

Genesis 29:10-11 When Jacob saw Rachel daughter of Laban, his mother's brother, and Laban's sheep, he went over and rolled the stone away from the mouth of the well and watered his uncle's sheep. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and began to weep aloud.

Tuesday night is visitation night at our church. It's where Sunday School leaders and any members of the church who like to volunteer go out and visit with people who have visited the church to welcome them and see if they have any questions and so on. It's also done every year in the children's ministry. All the Sunday School teachers will get their newly promoted roster list and start visiting the students on their roll shortly after school begins. What does this mean for me? Well, I have four children - so that means every new school year, during the months of August, September and October, I have four new Sunday School teachers show up at my house on any given Tuesday evening with no warning. And inevitably, I forget that this is the time of year it happens. Most recently, two weeks ago, on a Tuesday evening no less (should've known better), the breeze had begun to blow, so I thought it would be a great time to mow the lawn. I put on some dirty shorts and an old T-shirt, threw the hair up in a ponytail and got to work. I had already weed-whacked the bushes and mowed the lawn, I was just in the process of edging the sidewalk and blowing it off when my youngest daughter's Sunday School teacher showed up. While she was very sweet and didn't mention the sweat dripping off my eyebrows, I sure was wishing for a shower at that time.

It wasn't Tuesday night for Rachel, otherwise she may have been wiser than I. Here she comes hauling her flock up to the well - Smelly, sweaty, not quite what one would call "marriage material" at this point. And there, standing next to the well, was this man she had never seen before. A man who, upon seeing her, lifts the solid rock that is over the well, and waters her sheep for her. Two things from this - 1. What chivalry, to take that huge rock and move it with no help! 2. Now it's less work that Rachel has to do.

Jacob then went up to Rachel and kissed her - dirty, stinky face and all - and began to weep with joy. I bet Rachel's heart had to be just a pitter-pattering. This man whom she had never met, showed her affection for seemingly no reason.

What a picture of Christ! We, as sinners, were dirty and stinky. We had been torn and battered by sin and it had left it's stain on us. We felt untouchable and unapproachable. Yet Jesus gave His life for us - because He saw passed what our sin had caused us to look like. And when we decided to come to Him, He kissed our dirty faces and wept with joy because we'd finally realized we were part of His family.

Noah - Pot of Gold

Genesis 8:20-22 & 9:12-17 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." Chapter 9:12-17 And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth." So God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth."

Sometimes we forget all the promises that were given when Noah got off of the ark. God says that as long as the earth endures (still spinning on its axis) "seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease". I don't know about you, but there has never been a time that I've heard of that the sun didn't rise in the morning and set in the evening. Never been a Christmas gone by and the weather hasn't been colder in that month than it was in June. And people try to say that this all "just happened". I am confident, without a shadow of a doubt - even if God calls me home today - that the sun will still rise in the morning and set in the evening.

God gives Noah and his sons their next assignment: Have kids. Rule the animals. The first one sounds like fun, the second one: not so much. God is completely aware of the trauma that this family has gone through. It is so indicative of what goes on today. Just because we're Christians does not mean there is no strife. There IS strife and God is well aware of it. Noah was HONORED because of his relationship with God - he also suffered for it. God knew this and gave, not just Noah, but all of us, a wonderful gift. The Rainbow. It is His promise to us that he will not destroy the earth again with water. It should also be a reminder to those of us who remain faithful - to hang in there - there truly is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow - His name is Jesus.

Thank you for joining me as I walked through the story of Noah - I'm excited to see who I'll get to study next!

Bathsheba - Fashion Faux Pas

2 Samuel 11: 2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful.

The question we could ask is this: Did Bathsheba know David was up on the roof? From the housing in Israel, it doesn't look like it'd take great eyesight to see to the next roof over. David was pacing on his roof, unsettled - probably because he was out of the will of God. But Bathsheba knew the lusts of men. Even if men aren't thinking along those lines - a well laid bath tub and nothing but a bar of soap tends to change those thoughts.

What might have been going through Bathsheba's mind - was she lonely because her husband was gone to war? Was she being tempted and those lusts were overcoming her? Was she simply dirty and trying to get in a bath before bedtime? Either way - some bad choices were made on her part.

Even if she was just trying to get clean (the most innocent of all the options) you know the likelihood of being seen on your rooftop - where anyone can see you. Bathsheba should have used her better judgment and either waited to bathe until it was too dark for anyone to see or gone inside and just rinsed off.

See, we as women have a responsibility. We need to be aware of what we are doing to other people by our actions. When you get up and get dressed in the morning, do you look at the outfit you're wearing and say - hey, this outfit might cause Mike the mailman to stumble - I better not wear it - or do you purposely wear something that might cause Boss-man Smith to take notice of you when you ask for that raise. What if you knew you were meeting Jesus that day - how would you dress then???