Time with Abba, Singing Praising 親親爸父，唱詩歌頌 : OT DAY 391 - Why God's People Killing Each Others? (Please click here for English podcast)

Thursday, December 3, 2015

OT DAY 391 - Why God's People Killing Each Others? (Please click here for English podcast)

Please click the link below to my new 40 days Break.Build site any time you like to having a 40 days "Break.Build" daily devotion with one to two people as a discipler to help those Jesus prepares for you to disciple. You need to know that the call and purpose of my Break.Build and this Discipler123 blog/podcast is for you to become a discipler to help more people to have a daily intimate relationship with Jesus and then they can become disciplers too:
http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/

Please click these links to the app. Andy Ng wrote if you have an Android cel.:

Discipler123: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ideal.rec.app

Break.Build: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ideal.bb.app

Silence

1. Put on your “brakes” and stop for a moment of silence

2. Wait for God. Breathe deep for God's peace and feel His presence. Exhale your worries.

Praise and Thanksgiving

1. Think through your day, all the times that made you smile

2. Thank God for all those moments, and for all those people

3. Open your heart to praise the Lord

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me;
your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.

Do not forsake the work of your hands.

Psalm 138 :8

Confession and Repentance (Subjective Shifting Devotion Method http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/2009/08/count-down-5-subject-shifting-devotion.html)

1. Pray for the Holy Spirit to work in you:

“Dear Holy Spirit, shine your light into the places of darkness in my life. Show me my sins, everything that blocks me from encountering God. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.”

2. Through the Holy Spirit, examine yourself for a short silence and then pray:

"Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for our sins and being victorious over death and sin. I confess my sin to you(pause, to tell Jesus what the Holy Spirit has shown you). Forgive my sins by your blood and help me follow you. Holy Spirit, fill me that I may be able to receive your gift to love God and His people. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen."

The Word (Judges 20:1-48)

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges 20&version=ESV

   12 And the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, “What evil is this that has taken place among you? 13 Now therefore give up the men, the worthless fellows in Gibeah, that we may put them to death and purge evil from Israel.” But the Benjaminites would not listen to the voice of their brothers, the people of Israel. 14 Then the people of Benjamin came together out of the cities to Gibeah to go out to battle against the people of Israel. 15 And the people of Benjamin mustered out of their cities on that day 26,000 men who drew the sword, besides the inhabitants of Gibeah, who mustered 700 chosen men. 16 Among all these were 700 chosen men who were left-handed; every one could sling a stone at a hair and not miss. 17 And the men of Israel, apart from Benjamin, mustered 400,000 men who drew the sword; all these were men of war.

  46 So all who fell that day of Benjamin were 25,000 men who drew the sword, all of them men of valor. 47 But 600 men turned and fled toward the wilderness to the rock of Rimmon and remained at the rock of Rimmon four months. 48 And the men of Israel turned back against the people of Benjamin and struck them with the edge of the sword, the city, men and beasts and all that they found. And all the towns that they found they set on fire.
    Judges 20:12-17, 46-48

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmax47l2hLU

My Listening

How could that happen? God's people killing God's people! Brothers killing brothers! It seems that the Israelites went up to Bethel to ask God and God gave them the green light to kill their brothers, the Benjamites. And then when they lost the first battle the Israelites asked God again and God gave them another green light to fight. They lost again and the Israelites went to Bethel again to ask God. God gave them green light the third time! Then the Israelites killed almost every single Benjamites! How could that happen? Why?

Let's see how Professor John Goldingay tells us:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldingay) :

Surely our oneness in the body of Christ makes it impossible that we should kill one another.
It also seems impossible to conceive of the Israelite clans making war on one another, yet that is what they are reduced to doing. If the story of the Levite and his wife is exceedingly troublesome in some ways, the story of what happens next is troublesome in other ways. The mantra about the consequences of having no king continues to hang over the chapter.

John Goldingay. Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p.157-158.

I have seen too many discord, disunity and killing among Christians. It is so sad! Jesus knows so well that unity is the top priority thing Satan is going to destroy, so He prayed for unity as a conclusion of his last and longest sermon recorded in John 17.

Don't step into the mine fields set by Satan to stir up discord, disunity and killing among brothers and sisters in your church and beyond! It is meaningless!

Let's hear what Jesus says:

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. John 17: 20-23

Dear Lord Jesus,

Help us to stay in unity whatever sacrifice we have to make so that your name will be glorified. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Reflect on these questions:
1. Does your home church has discord, disunity and killing? Are you part of those people stir up disunity? What have you learned today?

2. How can you help your church to attain unity in Christ?

3. What have you got from Jesus today?

Today's Time with Abba daily reading:

Psalm 135:1-7

Daniel 11:2-35

1 John 3:7-24

Proverbs 29:1

Photos of my copying the Bible this Tuesday using Time with Abba passages