OT DAY 269 - Not Wages but Family Working Together (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.:

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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

        
            Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;
             break forth into joyous song and sing praises!
5           Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre,
             with the lyre and the sound of melody!
6           With trumpets and the sound of the horn
             make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord!

                                  Psalm 98:4-6

Confession and Repentance

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 (Deuteronomy 15:12-23)

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy 15&version=ESV

12 “If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. 13 And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed. 14 You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress. As the Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him. 15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today. 16 But if he says to you, ‘I will not go out from you,’ because he loves you and your household, since he is well-off with you, 17 then you shall take an awl, and put it through his ear into the door, and he shall be your slave forever. And to your female slave you shall do the same. 18 It shall not seem hard to you when you let him go free from you, for at half the cost of a hired worker he has served you six years. So the Lord your God will bless you in all that you do.

                   Deuteronomy 15:12-18

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage of scripture 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

     This is an interesting passage to explain about why there is a "slave" system for the Israelites. President Lincoln led the United States through the Civil War to banish the slave system and we all know about it that slave system is an evil system downgrading human beings to not as human beings. What is good about that? Why God allows slave system to happen? 

Let's see how Professor John Goldingay tells us: 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldingay) :

    

     Suppose you get into a real mess on the farm and a mere loan is not enough. In these circumstances you can then let members of your family and yourself become the servants of another farmer, who may be able to make a go of your farm as you could not. You thus no longer carry responsibility, and the other farmer is supposed to look after you. Once again this arrangement holds for a maximum of seven years, though it may work so well that you never wish to go back to "freedom" even if your boss provides you with the means of making a good fresh start…
     Like the rest of the Torah, Deuteronomy thus does not take for granted that the basis for work is that some people pay other people for their labor, one of the foundations of our Western system. It assumes that selling your labor is a rather odd thing to do. The natural basis for work is a family working together at a project that is that basis for their common livelihood, and even someone who wants to stay a servant works within the context of that system. The system has the potential to work much better than the system of work and employment that we use in the West. 

John Goldingay. Numbers & Deuteronomy for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p.148.

      Having a family to work together is far more better than suffering with no food, no future and no care. That's how God allows the Israelites to make use of this seemingly inhuman system. In fact, even though we banish the slave system in most part of this world, there are more slaves than before living under the slavery of the Western system that they have no family, no future and no care with no body giving them work, sleeping in the streets or working with a salary that they do not live like human. 
       What I receive from Jesus today is that how we can treat those people God prepares for us as family members really as family members. If you are owner of a business, how can you treat your employees as your family members giving them what they deserve and not taking everything for granted. If you are employees, how can you help to make your company a family.
       Well, is that possible to happen? We have a responsibility to make it happen as God's people!

Dear Lord Jesus, 
Help us to build up true families with caring and love. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Reflect on these questions:
1. What is your personal catch on today's message? What has it to do with you?

2. Are you a builder of families or a destroyer of families? How can you be a builder of families from now on?

Praise and Thanksgiving

Let's give thanks for God with us. Let us praise Him:

10,000 Reasons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDGE_lRI0E

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Daily Devotion on Fire: http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/

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