Time with Abba, Singing Praising 親親爸父，唱詩歌頌 : OT DAY 337 - Yes, Caleb Can! Yes, I Can! (Please click here for English podcast)

Monday, October 5, 2015

OT DAY 337 - Yes, Caleb Can! Yes, I Can! (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

I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord,
I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people.
Psalm 116:13-14

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 13:1-14:15)

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joshua+14&version=ESV

6 Then the people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal. And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God in Kadesh-barnea concerning you and me. 7 I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land, and I brought him word again as it was in my heart. 8 But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt; yet I wholly followed the Lord my God. 9 And Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.’ 10 And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, just as he said, these forty-five years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. 11 I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming. 12 So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the Lord said.”

13 Then Joshua blessed him, and he gave Hebron to Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance. 14 Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite to this day, because he wholly followed the Lord, the God of Israel. 15 Now the name of Hebron formerly was Kiriath-arba. (Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim.) And the land had rest from war.

Joshua 14:6-15

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
How brave are you? Do you usually look at things negatively? Or, positively? Do you usually give people discouragement? Or, encouragement?This is the passage to turn us over from negative to positive, from discouragement to encouragement, from "No, I can't" to "Yes, I can".

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

Caleb and Joshua were among the young men commissioned to discover what the promised land was like. The other ten were gloomy who saw only the problems. Conquering this country was going to be impossible; the Canaanites were big fellers. Caleb and Joshua believed in the motto "Yes, we can!"

"I wholly followed Yahweh my God," Caleb says. It is an odd expression in Hebrew: more literally "I filled up after Yahweh my God."…Caleb combines confidence and diffidence. Here, too, he says "perhaps." He doesn't want to be presumptuous. But he knows God can make it possible.
God promised that Caleb and Joshua would not fail to enter the promised land, unlike the people who didn't believe it was possible, and now he wants to cash his check. When the scouts had reconnoitred the country a generation ago, they had entered it from the south and thus via Hebron, and it was there that they saw the big guys who frightened the pants off most of them. Caleb knows Israel will face the same challenge in the same area, and he is itching to have a go at those guys. He wants to be given the biggest challenge there is. He has not run out of vocation or energy.

John Goldingay. Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p.66-67.

When Caleb was 45 years of age, he had his vocation and energy to accept the biggest challenge of his life. When Caleb was 85 years of age, he had the same vocation and energy to accept the biggest challenge of his life.
Jesus gives me a vivid picture today of how Caleb said to Joshua, "Yes, I can! God is with me and He promised me that I can. Give this tough job to me and I can do it."

How much can you learn from Caleb's example to be sure that if God is with you, no matter how old you are, God can do impossible things through you. The vocation and energy comes from his "wholly followed the Lord."

Do you believe that? Do you have the faith to say from now on:

Yes, Caleb can! Yes, I can!

Dear Lord Jesus,

Help us to follow you just as how Caleb followed you so that we can do impossible things for you. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Reflect on these questions:
1. Do you have some kind of tough job that you think you may not be able to do, or you think that you are too old to do anything for God? How can today's message give you encouragement?

2. Do you know the secret of Caleb to have that kind of vocation and energy?

3. What have you got from Jesus today?

Today's Time with Abba daily reading that I recited loudly and copy the Bible is:

Psalm 109:1-15

Jeremiah 4:19 - 6:14

Colossians 1:21 - 2:7

Proverbs 24:23-25

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

Yesterday's Golden Verse

Other passages

Today we visited the new Vintage Garden Toronto and Toronto Emmanuel Church, a 150 million dollars project, 1st Phase completed (185 units one to two bed rooms senior condo and Toronto Emmanuel Church)