Time with Abba, Singing Praising 親親爸父，唱詩歌頌 : OT DAY 354 - God Always Work against Human Expectations And Categories (Please click here for English podcast)

Friday, October 23, 2015

OT DAY 354 - God Always Work against Human Expectations And Categories (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 will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, he who keeps Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

Psalm 121:3-4

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 (Judges 4:4-16)

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges 4&version=ESV

4 Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time. 5 She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment. 6 She sent and summoned Barak the son of Abinoam from Kedesh-naphtali and said to him, “Has not the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you, ‘Go, gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking 10,000 from the people of Naphtali and the people of Zebulun. 7 And I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand’?” 8 Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” 9 And she said, “I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” Then Deborah arose and went with Barak to Kedesh. 10 And Barak called out Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh. And 10,000 men went up at his heels, and Deborah went up with him.

Judges 4:4-10

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
Today we read the fourth unlikely saviour for Israelites since we started Judges a few days ago. First Othniel, second Ehud, third Shamgar, then today fourth Deborah.
A woman to be the top leader at that time in like fairy tales.

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

In Hebrew, her name is Deborah, but that is the Hebrew word for a bee, and there was a sting in Bee's words. The irony lies in the description of her as "the wife of Torches." Translations also traditionally treat this word, Lappidoth, as her husband's name, but it is an odd name, because it looks like a feminine word, so it may hint that Bee was "a fiery woman," which she was, rather than that her husband was; certainly he has no other place in the story….She is the first prophet(ess) since the time of Miriam and Moses.
Whereas institutional ministry in the Old Testament belongs to men, when God wants to break into the regular institutional arrangement, prophecy is one way God does so, and women are sometimes the people God then speaks through. Thus Bee can be a fourth example of an unlikely saviour (following on the three in chapter 3), of God working against human expectations and categories.

John Goldingay. Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p.101.

Lots of time we get discouraged because things go out of our expectations. Other times we categorized people thinking that this one can do God's work, but that one can't. Be careful! God doesn't work like that!

Be more close to God so that you won't be discouraged when things are out of your expectations. Be more close to God so that you will have that kind of faith to expect the unexpected might happen. Be more close to God so that no matter what happen you can accept that peacefully and perhaps joyfully!

Dear Lord Jesus,
Help us to know that you always work against human expectations and categories. Lead us to be closer and closer to you each day so that when those unexpected things come we can accept, trusting you will give us the best. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

Reflect on these questions:
1. Have you been discouraged when something unexpected happened? How did you deal with that emotion? How did you experienced God?

2. Do you agree that God always work against human expectations and categories? How can this knowing help you being with Jesus more each day?

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 119:9-16

Jeremiah 42:1 -44:23

2 Timothy 2:1-21

Proverbs 26:3-5

Photos of my copying the Bible using Time with Abba passages

Golden Verse