Psalms 37:24 Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand.
Our little Elianna is not a baby anymore, someone reminded us recently as we were saying something in passing about “our baby”. Boy do they grow fast.
It seems like yesterday that she was just beginning to walk. She would pull herself up by our two forefingers and take off while we run behind her! Later, she got a little more daring. Every once in a while, she'd look at us as if to warn us, and then let go! It's a good thing that we were right behind her, ready to catch her when she falls!
Isn't it like that in our journey with the Lord, though? Our nature as humans is to want to be independent. We want to walk on our own without any help, but when we try -- we quickly fall! Not only is our Abba always behind us to help and encourage us along the way, but we can walk farther and faster when were holding onto Him!
God desires that we hold firmly to Him and cling tighter with each and every step we take! If you've fallen today, no worries -- just grab hold of His hand again -- He's right there behind you!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]For years, when I visited my father-in-law’s home in Jerusalem on the Sabbath, we would break bread and bless the bread with the traditional blessing – “Baruch Ata Adonai Eleheynu Melech HaOlam Ha-Motzi Lechem Min Ha’aretz” – which translated means,”Blessed are You Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has given us bread from the earth”. After the blessing, my father-in-law would take salt and sprinkle the challah bread as he broke and passed it to everyone at the table.
One day a passerby saw a homeless man on the roadside. He stopped for a moment to hand him some loose change and casually said “God bless you, my friend”.
“I thank God,” said the homeless man, “I am never unhappy.”
Here in Israel we have an interesting geographical phenomenon – there are two landlocked seas. One is alive and one is dead. The sea full of life is the Kinneret, better known as the Sea of Galilee. The dead sea is…….you guessed it, the Dead Sea. Now the Kinneret is constantly emptying as it flows through the Jordan River valley…. into the Dead Sea. But the Dead Sea does not empty its water at all. Instead, the Dead Sea is continually shrinking, because the intense heat at this lowest place on Earth actually evaporates more water than is flowing in. Do you see a parable here?
One of my passions is studying history, especially the American Civil War. Here is an amusing story about General Stonewall Jackson’s famous Valley Campaign. During the war, Jackson’s army found itself on one side of a river when it needed to be on the other.
We tend to focus on the part of that scripture where God does the blessing — but why did He bless Him? The answer lies in the passage! The Lord told Abraham: “I will bless you — and you shall be a blessing.” Abraham was blessed so that he could be a blessing!
In the Olivet discourse recorded in Matthew 24, Yeshua prophesied that “… nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” The word “nation” in Greek is the word “ethnos”, from which we get the English word “ethnic”. All of this polarization and ethnic warfare which the media feed upon and incite is the work of the enemy as he stirs up the sinful nature of men.
Several hundred years before Jesus was born, a plague broke out in Athens, Greece. In an effort to stop the plague and appease the ‘gods’, the Athenians sought counsel from a wise man named Epimenides from the island of Crete.