Time with Abba, Singing Praising 親親爸父，唱詩歌頌 : OT DAY 301 - How Faithful God Is! How Horrible We Are! (Please click here for English podcast)

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

OT DAY 301 - How Faithful God Is! How Horrible We Are! (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

   He is the Lord our God;
    his judgments are in all the earth.
8   He remembers his covenant forever,
    the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations,

Psalm 105:7-8

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 31:30-32:47)

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy 32&version=ESV

For I will proclaim the name of the Lord;
ascribe greatness to our God!

4 “The Rock, his work is perfect,
    for all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
    just and upright is he.
5 They have dealt corruptly with him;
    they are no longer his children because they are blemished;
    they are a crooked and twisted generation.
6 Do you thus repay the Lord,
    you foolish and senseless people?
Is not he your father, who created you,
    who made you and established you?

13 He made him ride on the high places of the land,
    and he ate the produce of the field,
and he suckled him with honey out of the rock,
    and oil out of the flinty rock.
14 Curds from the herd, and milk from the flock,
    with fat[c] of lambs,
rams of Bashan and goats,
    with the very finest[d] of the wheat—
    and you drank foaming wine made from the blood of the grape.

15 “But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked;

    you grew fat, stout, and sleek;

then he forsook God who made him

    and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.

16 They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods;

    with abominations they provoked him to anger.



28 “For they are a nation void of counsel,
    and there is no understanding in them.
29 If they were wise, they would understand this;
    they would discern their latter end!
30 How could one have chased a thousand,
    and two have put ten thousand to flight,
unless their Rock had sold them,
    and the Lord had given them up?



39 “‘See now that I, even I, am he,
    and there is no god beside me;
I kill and I make alive;
    I wound and I heal;
    and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.



43 “Rejoice with him, O heavens;[i]
    bow down to him, all gods,[j]
for he avenges the blood of his children[k]
    and takes vengeance on his adversaries.
He repays those who hate him[l]
    and cleanses[m] his people's land.”[n]

Deuteronomy 32: 3-6,13-16,28-30,39,43

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

If you read the whole song of Moses, or even those key verses as I have here in this blog, how would you feel? If you were Moses, how would you feel? Thankful? Painful?

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

In the context of reminding Israel of its waywardness, Moses' song reminds Israel about the nature of its God, as a decisive, truthful, faithful, and upright Father, as someone with the reliability of a crag or cliff onto which you can climb and find certain safety. Our waywardness is the more horrible and astonishing in light of who God is, but the facts about God are also our encouragement when we come to own our waywardness. God continues to be that kind of God…
Deuteronomy…focuses on God's commitment to Israel, in order to encourage Israel itself. As the song goes on to note, how astonishing and horrible it is, then, that Israel starts serving these other so-called gods! Yet how reassuring that God does not go back on the determination to be Israel's God. It's really hard to get God to give up. How stubborn God is.

John Goldingay. Numbers & Deuteronomy for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p.193.

This is the first time I read someone's writing describing God is "stubborn"! Yes, God is stubborn to love us even we are unfaithful, horrible! Even we serve so many gods in our lives!

You may say, "No! Not me!" Really?

Count how many minutes each day you use to be with God and to serve Him?

Count how much money you use to offer to God instead of your own use?

Who can be those gods? Well, some Christians really go to see fortune tellers, go gambling etc.May be not you? How about computer, internet, game playing, TV, being workaholic …gods, serving those gods!

We are so stubborn and horrible to do our own things not loving God and His people!

God is so stubborn and faithful to stay on course to love us hoping that someday we will come into senses!

If you have a song to God today, how would it look like?

Dear God,

Help us not to be so stubborn to do our own things not worshipping you as the one God, one Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Reflect on these questions:
1. How does the word "stubborn" and "horrible" means to you today after reading today's blog?

2.What have you got from Jesus today?

Time with Abba daily reading

Psalm 93:1-5

Job 20:1 - 22:30

2 Cor. 1:1-11

Proverbs 22:2-4

Photos of my copying the Bible today using Time with Abba passages today