Matthew 5:45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
As we continue in the festival of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles), where believers are commanded to rejoice — let’s remember an important principle the Lord laid out for us. The Lord is quoted in this scripture in Matthew. It contains an important precept that believers sometimes tend to overlook. Many believe and even teach that if you’re blessed, your life will be filled with material prosperity and that if you are undergoing extreme trials, it must be because you have sinned or that you lack faith. The Lord says that the sun rises and the rain falls on both the righteous and the unrighteous alike.
A life of good circumstances does not mean that God is with us. And likewise, a life of trial and suffering does not mean that God is not with us! If we base our lives on our circumstances, we are no different than people without God. What makes us different is that we have something far greater than our circumstances! We have a relationship with the Living God!
So this Sukkot season, let’s remember that in His presence is the fullness of joy [Psalm 16:11]. So let’s choose to enter into His presence and learn to rejoice not only in the good times but in the tough times as well — however, hard that may be!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]We arrived at the airport late Thursday night with our bags and our kiddos only to find out that our flight was canceled because of a freak accident — a tractor ran into the plane, of all things! So we repacked our ourselves tightly into a small rental car to make the two hour drive to get back home to Arad in the middle of the night. Our flight was postponed till Sunday.
The Hebrew letter mem, equivalent to our English letter “M,” has a fascinating characteristic: it has two forms. The “open mem” appears at the beginning or middle of a word, with a small opening in its design. The “closed mem,” however, is used exclusively as the final letter in a word, fully sealed in its appearance. This distinction is consistent throughout the Hebrew language—except for one extraordinary exception found in the Bible.
Yeshua (Jesus) gave a remarkable parenthetic instruction in the middle of His Olivet discourse on the time of His coming and the end of the age. While it is unlikely that He himself said this, He certainly inspired Matthew to insert, “..let the reader understand”, concerning this critical event prophesied by Daniel, the Abomination of Desolation. His exhortation intended us (the readers of Matthew’s gospel) to learn what this means.
In John Bunyan’s best-selling book, Pilgrim’s Progress, the central character, Christian, begins his journey leaving the city of Destruction and ventures on his way toward the Celestial City. Early on his journey, Christian decides to depart from the narrow path onto an easier one which leads him to the territory of Despair and its stronghold, Doubting Castle.
The United States is currently experiencing a polar vortex—a surge of frigid air from the Arctic circle that blankets the country, bringing massive winter storms in its wake. As of now, over 350,000 people are without power. This sudden and unexpected cold snap brought to mind a story I’d like to share.
During this frigid weather across the United States and the devastating fires in California, millions have been grappling with widespread electricity blackouts. Thousands of people across the country remain without power. Across the United States, many teens are experiencing life without electricity for the first time—an adjustment that also means living without their cell phones. Can you imagine?
Mount Ibu, a volcano on Halmahera island in Indonesia’s North Maluku province, erupted on Saturday, spewing hot lava and sending a column of smoke and ash soaring over three miles into the sky. It’s a reminder of how volatile Indonesia can be as it has nearly 130 active volcanoes. All of this volcanic activity reminded me of another explosion that took place in 1991.