Time with Abba, Singing Praising 親親爸父，唱詩歌頌 : OT DAY 317 - Circumcise Your Heart, if You Are to See God Act (Please click here for English podcast)

Friday, September 11, 2015

OT DAY 317 - Circumcise Your Heart, if You Are to See God Act (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

15 I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples;
    I will sing praises to you among the nations.
4 For your steadfast love is great above the heavens;
    your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

Psalm 108:3-4

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 (Joshua 5:1-9)

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joshua 5&version=ESV

As soon as all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to the west, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan for the people of Israel until they had crossed over, their hearts , melted and there was no longer any spirit in them because of the people of Israel.

2 At that time the Lord said to Joshua, “Make flint knives and circumcise the sons of Israel a second time.” 3 So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the sons of Israel at Gibeath-haaraloth. 4 And this is the reason why Joshua circumcised them: all the males of the people who came out of Egypt, all the men of war, had died in the wilderness on the way after they had come out of Egypt. 5 Though all the people who came out had been circumcised, yet all the people who were born on the way in the wilderness after they had come out of Egypt had not been circumcised. 6 For the people of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, until all the nation, the men of war who came out of Egypt, perished, because they did not obey the voice of the Lord; the Lord swore to them that he would not let them see the land that the Lord had sworn to their fathers to give to us, a land flowing with milk and honey. 7 So it was their children, whom he raised up in their place, that Joshua circumcised. For they were uncircumcised, because they had not been circumcised on the way.

8 When the circumcising of the whole nation was finished, they remained in their places in the camp until they were healed. 9 And the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” And so the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day.

Joshua 5:1-9

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
The reality for the Israelites is that they cannot celebrate Passover if they are not circumcised, or even they cannot enter into the Promised Land if they are not circumcised. What is the significance? Today's message is very important to us if you want to become a true Christian, a real disciple of Jesus!

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

The Israelites are behaving as if their occupation of the land is accomplished when actually they have not yet faced any of the current inhabitants of the land.
Perhaps this further highlights the importance of the mass circumcision that precedes the celebration of Passover. You cannot celebrate Passover if you are not circumcised. It is the sign of God's commitment to the people in covenant and the sign of the people's responsive commitment in covenant. It is astonishing to discover that no one has been circumcised since the people left Egypt. None of them has received the sign of the covenant! The passage perhaps implies that the failure to circumcise their sons is another sign of the wilderness generation's waywardness. So now it is as if circumcision were instituted a second time and their now receiving the covenant sign means they are definitively reestablished as the covenant people to whom God is about the fulfill the second half of that specific commitment declared in Egypt. Stage one was bringing them out from the land where they served the Egyptian government; stage two is taking them into the land where they will serve God.

John Goldingay. Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p.24.

Well, what I received from Jesus today is to see a clear and simple picture of our faith journey. Stage one is how God leads us out of our Egypt, no more slavary, being baptized and start a new journey towards God's Promised Land. But, just like the Israelites, we are stiff-necked and rebellious, quite a number of us are still wandering in the wilderness, never see God act.
Only if we are willing to be circumcised just like what Ezekiel says in Ezekiel 11:19-20:

And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, 20 that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

And what Paul says in Romans 2:29:

For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical.But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

My challenge to you today is: Have your heart been circumcised?

Circumcise your heart, if you are to see God act!

Dear Lord Jesus,

Help us to be willing to circumcise our hearts and know how to do it. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Reflect on these questions:
1. Have your heart been circumcised? How do you know? Do you have the fruit of the Holy Spirit in you showing that your heart has really been circumcised?

2. Do you know what do you have to do in order to circumcise your heart?Actually, going through the No. 1 and No. 2 in the Confession and Repentance of my Subject Shifting Devotion Method is a good way to make the circumcision of our hearts a daily process, not a one time process, do you know that?

3. What have you got from Jesus today?

Today's Time with Abba daily reading that I recited loudly

Psalm 103:6-19

Isaiah 8:1 - 9:21

2 Cor. 12:1-10

Proverbs 23:4-5

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

Yesterday's Golden Verse