Commit your way to YHWH, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. Psalm 37:5 (Hebrew text) Trust – First I must accept the seal of ownership. God rolls over my path. Now it belongs to Him. Then I must act according to the directions of the new owner. Batach is the…
Commit your way to YHWH, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. Psalm 37:5 (Hebrew text) Commit – The Hebrew language is wonderfully tactile. It’s a language formed from the land, full of nice, clean dirt under the fingernails, streams of water, sun on your back and wind in your hair. …
And YHWH was gracious to them, and pitied them, and turned toward them, for the sake of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and was not willing to destroy them not to cast them out from His presence as yet. 2 Kings 13:23 Gracious – God’s keeps His promises even when circumstances might warrant…
“He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal.” John 12:25 Hates – In Greek, the root is miseo. It usually implies active ill will toward someone or something. It is the opposite of agapao (to love, cf. Matthew 5:43). This is…
“And you shall remember there your ways and all your deeds by which you have been defiled in them. And you will hate yourselves to your faces for all your evils which you have done.” Ezekiel 20:43 Hate – In a world governed by mantras of self-esteem, Ezekiel would probably be fired. Actually, he was. …
For you have said in your heart, “I will go up to the heavens. I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit in the mount of meeting, in the side of the north. I will rise over the heights of the clouds; I will be compared to the Most…
Though the fig-tree shall not blossom and the fruit is not on the vines, the work of the olive fails and the fields make no food; the flock is cut off from the fold and no herd is in the stalls, yet I will exult in YHWH, I will rejoice in the God of my…
“Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Acts 16:30 Do – “The ordinary believer is not necessarily someone who has made a major decision, but rather someone who continues the tradition of his ancestors, perhaps by merely drifting or wandering about. . . . The moral argument against such a person is that he…
“For you shall not worship any other god, for YHWH, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” Exodus 34:14 Worship – In order to avoid idolatry, we must know what it means to worship. This might seem like a fairly simple thing, but we soon discover that it isn’t. One problem is our rationality…
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; 2 Timothy 4:7 Kept – In Greek, this sentence reads a little differently. The direct objects come first (“The good fight I have fought, the course I have finished, the faith I have kept”). This doesn’t seem like much…
