Genesis

Hello folks,
Today’s reading is Genesis 21:22-24:44
The Knochel family will be representing 7×70 ministries in the Hamilton county demolition derby at 7pm tonight in Noblesville IN. More than anything we need your prayer support but if you’re in the area we would love to have your moral support too! To have people in the stands is a big deal for Sean and I. People there to be eyes and ears for us, to help us pray for those in the crowd and arena.
Please pray for open eyes to see and open ears to hear the One who is calling them home to Him.
Pray, pray, pray for the Knochel family and our ministry today!!!

Today’s Reading: Genesis 13:1-17:27

Wow. I was smack in the middle of today’s reading when I simply couldn’t read anymore. I just had to stop and write down the whopper of a truth that God plopped right down in my lap!

Abram has just met with King Melchizedek, cut a covenant with God and now we enter into Sarai’s story of longing for a child of her own. And it is from this place of longing that she says “Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” (Genesis 16:2) Now this is a verse that I have read over and over and over again and normally would have passed right on by without seeing the significance in it except for the fact that when I started this writing through the Bible in a year project, God led me to pick up a different Bible instead of my usual NIV translation that I’ve read from since I was in middle school. But even more than reading from a different translation I am reading from a simple standard Bible, no fancy leather cover or silver edged pages, no commentaries to cloud my vision, no other voices being spoken except that of the Holy Spirit straight to my heart. And it is because of the simplicity of this Bible that this verse stood out to me today, because it had a footnote at the bottom of the page and in this Bible there aren’t that many of those. So in my Bible the verse looks more like this:

“Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children2 by her.”

Usually in this Bible the footnotes generally point to another scripture that this one might refer to, or an alternate meaning of the word in the original language. So when I saw the little two next to children I thought it was quite strange that there would be a footnote for that word in particular. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but in Bible Study it’s the stuff of discovery!!! This one little footnote has completely confirmed a theory for me that I had felt in my Spirit for so long and experienced in life over and over again but never really understood until today! (Am I building the suspense up enough for you? Are you screaming at the screen, “Get on with it!”?) You wanna know what that foot note said?

“Hebrew be built up, which sounds like the Hebrew for children” (pg 10. The Holy Bible. English Standard Version (ESV) copyright 2001 by Crossway.)

Now I know that on the surface that doesn’t sound that terribly exciting, but trust me it is! At least it is if you want to know more about a relationship with Jesus.

In Galatians chapter four Paul introduces to us the concept of Sarai and her servant Hagar being symbolical of something more, something deeper than just a story of two women competing over the same blessed man. Sarai, being Abram’s covenant wife is the wife of promise and a symbol of the Holy Spirit and grace. While Hagar, being a slave woman in Abram’s household, represents slavery in general and therefore of course slavery to the Law, our own efforts and slavery to religious traditions and customs. To be a slave you don’t have to wear chains or have a physical master, to be a slave to something you feel like it’s something that you have to do, rather than it’s something that you get to do. When you are in slavery to something, like a tradition or a religious custom, you feel like you have to do it or if you don’t, it will bring condemnation down upon yourself, whether from God, religious leaders, or simply your friends. You can be a slave to your addictions like drugs or smoking, but you can also be a slave to the idea that in order to gain God’s favor, forgiveness or pleasure you have to do something to earn it.

Traditions and religious rigmarole build us up. Think about all the pomp and circumstance that goes into attending just one church service. You get up early, shower, get all dressed up, try not to scream at each other as your trying to get out the door in time, usually fail 😉 , drive to church, go to Sunday school perhaps, walk into the sanctuary filled with fancy decorations, candles, banners, pews or nicely padded chairs. If you get there early enough you may mill around and check on your friends see how they’re doing, grab a donut and some coffee, this time seems like a break in the pandemonium of the morning thus far right? Then the service starts and you sing to God with all your might, church announcements are made, the most biblically educated person in the room steps forward and says an official prayer for the church, the country perhaps, individuals in the church with ailments and issues, etc. They finish their prayer and begin the sermon. After this we sing a few more songs, receive a blessing from the pastor and we are set free to once again roam the earth with those who have not participated in a church service possibly ever.

(*) Now, I want to make sure that you understand in NO WAY am I condemning any of these actions, I for one am a huge sucker for a good church service, trust me, I am. However, I want to make clear my point that the process of religion strips away the feeling of casual familiarity with God and puts on the robes of formality. I have attended many different church services and I have never stepped foot into a service where I felt like I was stepping into someone’s living room to have a casual encounter with a friend, no matter how casual the dress code or the music. Yet this is the very relationship that God wants with us. He is not opposed to worship of His greatness and superiority, if he was then Jesus never would have allowed people to fall at his feet, bathe them with their tears or dry them with their hair. However, when it came down to his very last moments on earth he showed us how he wants us to see him, how he wants us to worship him and how he wants us to spend time with him. He had supper with his friends. HE scrubbed their dirty stinky feet, the job of a servant. (*)

You know, there’s just something very special about holding someone else’s foot in your hands. This foot that bears every pound of weight they carry with every step that they take, including the weight of the stress sitting upon their shoulders and the worries upon their head. In the end it all comes down to our feet, they are what hold us up throughout every day. Feet are what make it possible for us to stand tall, to stand firm. To hold that in your hand is very powerful indeed. And there was Jesus, outer garment removed, towel wrapped around his waist and a bowl of water in his hands. He stooped down before Peter, most likely completely aghast at what his LORD was doing because he is the one that said “Lord, do YOU wash my feet?” Jesus tried to calm Peter by telling him that he would understand later but it didn’t help and Peter refused to let Jesus wash his feet by saying “You will never wash my feet”. Oh Peter, never is a very long time isn’t it! I mean it was so obvious that it was what Jesus wanted to do, he was doing it. Yet Peter refused to allow Jesus to have his own way. Here Jesus was trying to show Peter just how much he loves him by washing the dirt and stink off the burden bearers of his entire body and Peter was refusing to allow him to do it. How often do we do that to our friends and to Jesus? We think that we have to carry all our burdens by ourselves. We refuse to let anyone help us, maybe because by allowing them to help us it admits that we need helped; that we are not strong enough to bear all of our burdens ourselves. You know what the Holy Spirit said to me once about that? “Human shoulders were never designed to carry burdens.”

Did you catch that? From the creator himself, your shoulders were never designed to carry around stress and worry and doubt and fear. So why do we INSIST on keeping those burdens shouldered? Why do we bear them alone when there are people that God has sent into our lives for just such a time as this? While humanity was not designed to shoulder burdens, we were designed for companionship! Why else would solitary confinement be such a horrid punishment? Yet we place ourselves in solitary confinement all the time in order to shelter our problems, nurse our worries and harbor our fears. Jesus came to show us that he cares for us, that he loves us and that he wants to be that kind of trusted friend with whom you can share that dirty little secret that has been weighing you down for so long, too long. He wants to wash that worry and stress away with the Living water of his Spirit and the Word. And there are times when that can be accomplished through a church service, I’ve seen it happen and I’ve had it happen. But you know what; Jesus washes my feet the most when I’m talking to my friends.

We have a little group that meets once a week, usually at the park or an indoor play place, sometimes in each other’s homes, and all we do is share prayer requests and talk. Sometimes we will bring something that we read through the week that meant something to us, a scripture or a reading from a devotional or a book, but usually we just hang out and share our burdens with one another. No ceremony, no pomp or circumstance, just a few friends hanging out with their kids at the park. Simple. Casual. Friendship. Relationship is not a ritual. Sarai didn’t feel like she was ever going to have a child so she decided she would do the thing that would build her up, have a child through the slave woman, religious law. Yet that child was not the child she had hoped for, longed for, he was the child whose children have persecuted others for generations. My friend, we can enjoy and find religion through relationship, but it is much harder to find relationship through religion. Religion builds us up to make us feel like we’ve encountered a supreme being, and we may have. But it’s not the continual friendship experience that Jesus longs for from us. He wants us to lean on his breast at the dinner table and talk about the day. He wants us to share our burdens with him across the table with some bread and good wine. He wants to laugh with us and cry with us. Yes, he is a supreme being with supreme powers and supreme authority… but he set all that aside to make friends with you. Are we willing to set it all aside to be friends with him? Would we be willing to set aside all the things that we do that build us up in order to let him build us up? I honestly don’t know that I could.

For one, this blog builds me up; it makes me feel like someone who has something important to say just because a few people read it from time to time. For the most part, I gave that up this summer. And for a couple of months, I was just me… and it was great, and I almost didn’t come back. Except that God showed me that he wanted me to come back, to continue posting and sharing my stories, because they’re stories about him. And because he uses this blog to build me up. But he had to show me, test me, to see if I was willing to give it up for him.

What do you do that makes you feel like you’re doing something for God? What things in your life make you feel like you’ve encountered a supreme being rather than a friend? While those things aren’t bad, they’re not the entire relationship so don’t rely on them completely for your spiritual wellness. Remember Jesus. He was born in a barn. He slept in a feeding trough. He grew up a poor carpenter’s son with no pomp, no circumstance, no trumpets announcing his arrival into the room at dinner every night, he was just Jesus. Common every day Jesus; son, brother, FRIEND!

 

 

(*) If you have not read the entire post yet (to the line) do not read what I write next!

Spoiler alert!

 

If you have read the entire post, go back up and re read the section between the *’s. Just now I was proof-reading back through it and as I was reading that section the Holy Spirit spoke to me again. And while I know that I may not explain this correctly I am praying that Ruach will help you understand it the way he just did for me. Thinking about the significance of feet and how they carry burdens. Jesus showed us that he is asking that we allow him to wash away our burdens by washing our feet. This is where the * comes in: Think about HIS feet! The burdens they carry, having picked up all of ours. They are certainly feet worthy of worship are they not? Yet what was the picture message that he gave me to finish that sentence? The woman washing HIS FEET with her tears of gratitude!!!!! Our gratitude washes the burdens that he carries away!!! Wow! Oh wow! Wow! Wow!!! There is a way WE can wash HIS feet, wash his burdens away and it’s simply by being grateful for him carrying ours. Seriously, we make this relationship with him WAY too hard on ourselves don’t we?!? It’s as simple as saying “thank you” and meaning it; taking a moment to capture gratitude and hold it captive in our hearts. Instead of being slaves to tradition we can become masters of gratitude! Wow, our friend God is AWESOME!!!!!!!

Today’s Reading: Genesis 8:13-12:20

Because I love you!

Everything has a season

Because I love you!

There is a time for every matter under heaven

Because I love you!

There are times to be born

Because I love you!

There are times to die

Because I love you!

There are times to plant

Because I love you!

There are times to harvest

Because I love you!

There are times for death

Because I love you!

There are times of healing
&
refreshment

Because I love you!

There are times you just need to break down

Because I love you!

I will build you up

Because I love you!

There are times for weeping and wailing, you‘re allowed

Because I love you!

Sometimes I make you laugh

Because I love you!

At times you will mourn

Because I love you!

Sometimes ya just gotta DANCE

Because I love you!

Sometimes you’ve got to drop the stones from your hands and forgive

Because I love you!

It’s time to gather stones for an altar to remember forever what I have done

Because I love you!

Sometimes you’ve just got to embrace the truth, even if it hurts

Because I love you!

There are times you’ve just got to let go

Because I love you!

It’s always time to seek My Kingdom

Because I love you!

It is time to lose yourself in My LOVE for you

Because I love you!

It’s time to hold on to who you are; My precious bride

Because I love you!

It is time to cast away Fear, tell him to GO

Because I love you!

It’s time to separate yourself from the world and become holy, special, Mine

Because I love you!

It is time to sow the seeds of Life, watch them grow and bear much fruit

Because I love you!

There are times to keep silent

Because I love you!

Now is the time to SPEAK let My voice in you be heard

Because I love you!

There was a time for hate

Because I love you!

Now is the time to LOVE each other the way I have loved you

Because I love you!

It is time to erase denominational lines and unite for war against the Evil One

Because I love you!

You will enter My eternal peace

Because I love you!

There is nothing better for you than to be joyful and to do good as long as you live

Because I love you!

Whatever I do endures forever; nothing can be added to My love, nor anything taken away from it

Because I love you!

There is a time for everything under the sun

Because I love you!

I am the Father of time and everything is in My hand

Becaused

 

Words adapted from Ecclesiastes 3:1-17 by Tamar Knochel

Creative Commons License 2012

www.TamarKnochel.com

Today’s Reading: Genesis 4:1-8:12

(Just for you today Brenda, I love you! J )

I’ve been marveling lately at John 15:15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. No longer servants, but friends. For so long, well, OK, all my life I’ve been told Jesus is our friend, Jesus friend of sinners, but I’ve never really felt like his friend. Maybe I’ve never seen myself as his friend but rather more as his favored servant. But right here, in this verse Jesus himself tells us that when we love, when we ourselves are friends of sinners then we transform from servant to friend. And that we are called “friend” because of the secrets that he shares with us.

What secrets? You might be asking, well the secrets of the universe of course! They’re all here, right in the Bible, we just have to open our eyes and read them!

Just this morning when I opened my Bible to read (for the first time in a longer while than I would like to admit) I could hardly get past the first paragraph! Ruach (the Holy Spirit) was so anxious to share this new truth with me that he wouldn’t let my eyes get past the first line break before I just HAD to go back and read it again. And I did, I read and read and read that first paragraph until I noticed the things I was lingering on the longest. Like a supernatural finger pointing me in the direction he wanted me to go, right there on the page I couldn’t stop reading “Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground.” (Genesis 4:2) Now normally when these verses are taught the person teaching them loves to focus on the offerings that these two are holding up to God and how God rejects Cain’s and accepts Abel’s. Then they talk about WHY God did this. Now, I’m not necessarily refuting those age old claims that God rejected Cain’s sacrifice because it wasn’t a firstfruit… however, what if the rejection came from something deeper?

Like I said before, it wasn’t the verse about the offerings that God was emphasizing to me this morning; it was the verse before that. He was emphasizing to me what these men did. The last thing that happened in this story was that these men’s parents had been tossed out of the garden of intimate fellowship with God and were told, among other things, “cursed is the ground because of you;” (Genesis 3:17) and what was it that Ruach pointed to this morning? Abel was a keeper of sheep and Cain was a worker of the ground. Friend, the ground had just been cursed! It’s no mystery why Abel’s offering didn’t please God! It reminded him of the curse he had just pronounced over it! This truth was so overwhelming to me this morning that I was glad I was sitting down.

Just last night I was listening to a sermon about rest and how when we work God rests, but when we rest God works!!! Which was something else that stood out to me in this verse from today, while Abel kept, Cain worked. When we rest and allow God to work we are showing God how much we trust his work to be good work. We are showing him, ourselves and those around us how much we are choosing to trust God for in our circumstances. God is trustworthy, but how far are we willing to trust him? His word says, taste and see that He is good, how much have you tasted of his goodness? And right here, immediately after THE curse has been handed out God gives us an illustration of two people, one keeping sheep and one working the cursed ground. They are themselves a story, but also an illustration for us today. We have a choice; we can live as a keeper of sheep or a worker of the curse. As a keeper of sheep (a symbol of God’s children) we love the sheep, God’s children. We do whatever each situation calls for to love His people with zeal and vigor. From the day the curse was handed out Satan has done his best to place as much focus as he can on work. He has stolen relationship from us and replaced it with religion, a work based format where in order to show God how much you love him you have to DO something.

If I have learned anything from God over these past few years it has been that there is NOTHING that I can do that pleases him more than simply recognizing how much HE loves ME! I have had countless times when He himself has told me to stop working so hard to please him and he has even sent messengers to come and tell me to stop working so hard to please him and I still will often times slip back into that pit of working to please him. Guess what, working, trying, doing, they simply remind God of the curse; while resting, choosing to believe, and just being who God made you to be, reminds Him of Jesus and grace and forgiveness from the curse. But you know what, even more importantly than reminding God of grace and forgiveness, it reminds us of His grace and forgiveness. Choose to rest and believe that God didn’t make you to be perfect; he made you to be the person that you are right now. We wouldn’t dream of scolding a toddler for stumbling while learning to walk would we? Yet we do this to ourselves and each other all the time! We hold ourselves up to standards that we could never achieve! We expect ourselves to run when we’re still just learning how to crawl or walk! We expect ourselves to obey all the rules that religion has created over thousands of years when the only rule that God is asking of us is to be nice to each other. And while religion and Bible teachers have been saying that as part of their teaching, they tend to tack on HOW to be a good friend, HOW to be a good neighbor when honestly, if you have good friends surrounding you, do you really need to be told how to be a good friend back?

For example, my friend who loves me and the rest of our group of friends dearly, had scheduled a surgery that was going to leave her bedridden for several days. She has a large family that would need taken care of during that time. She didn’t need to ask us to help her, in fact she didn’t want us to help her, but did that stop us from making her a huge dinner that would leave her with plenty left over for a day or two? Of course not! Did anyone need to tell us what to do to be a good friend to our friend in need? No! Because of all the times she loved us by being there just to talk, the spirit moved within us and because she first loved us we wanted to do something, anything to help her and show her that we love her too.

We are no longer servants who are expected to serve or work; we are keepers of the sheep, friends to one another when we obey the one commandment that has always been foremost to God, Love. Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself, all the rest of the “rules” of religion are contained within this one choice; the choice to love. Love is an action, it is a decision, it is a verb. Today take action! Hug someone you love, tell your friends that you love them; they are the face of God in this world. Their love for you is God’s love for you. What they do for you is what God does for you. Make a list today of some of the things that a friend, any friend, has done for you lately. Something they’ve said that really meant a lot, or something they did that made you smile write it all down and thank God for each of those moments where He used that person in your life to change you, shape you, mold you and make you into the work in progress, the toddler learning how to walk in this unstable world filled with rules and expectations, where it’s Father only has one rule, one expectation be who I made you to be; YOU.

Today’s Reading: Genesis 1:1-3:24

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) What a way to start a book right?!? In any story the most logical place to start is in the beginning. This is where God chooses to introduce all the characters in this play we refer to as life and He starts with none other than Himself. He kinda has to considering He’s the only one that even exists in the beginning!

I want you to think about the importance of firsts for a moment. Your first kiss, your first date, the first time you met your spouse, they’re all really special right? Well, here in Genesis we have all the first firsts! Right here, in the beginning, is where we first meet God and what is He doing? Creating. He is creating something out of nothing. He is simply speaking and something that was mere thought, imagination, and idea; becomes.

“The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2) Did you know that the water we have today is the exact same water that is spoken of here in this verse. Though water changes forms, liquid, solid and gas, there is no more or less of it than when the world began. Talk about recycling! God is good! I believe that He still hovers over the waters. Think about how often you’ve gotten an epiphany when near water, especially running water, like in the shower or washing dishes. I believe this is because He is still hovering over those waters, waiting to wash our spiritual eyes clean so that we can see Him more clearly.

This is my prayer each morning, to see Him clearly through the din and chaos of the storm that is my life. To see Him is pure bliss and blessing, it is clarity and understanding without knowing. He is peace and love and joy and to focus on Him brings peace and love and joy. He is what He was and He will be what He is, the great I Am, creator of something, from nothing.

Another part of my morning routine is reading a short devotional on my smart phone. One of the verses in that devotional today really struck me because it completely contradicted what I had just read in Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” 2 Corinthians 3:18 (from the devotional) reads: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” How is it that we were originally made “in His image” only to end up “being transformed into His image”? God’s word is 100% truth, so how can both statements be true and co-exist? God’s answer to this question has led me down quite the blessed rabbit trail this morning!

He said: “From dust to dust”.

So I looked at Genesis 3:19 again “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return”.

Dust! It dawned on me how the key to the question is in the many separations! God spends the first two full days of time creating and taking what He has created and separating it. He creates Light and separates it from the darkness. He took the water and separated it, placing an expanse or canopy between them and called it sky. He then took the water below the heavens and once again separated it exposing the dry earth… dust. Adam from the dust and finally Eve, from Adam’s rib

Oh this precious dust from wence we came! Dry powdery earth, so seemingly humble… and yet… from this very stuff came all of creation! Every scrap of food Adam and Eve ate grew out of this very dust. In fact, the very essence of life itself must exist within it. Plants get much of their nutrients and water from dust, it is critical for life! Yet it is the very thing that we tread upon day after day. We toil upon it in order to gain more gold, more stuff, more more more. Yet in heaven, gold is the pavement in the streets and the dust, us, treads upon it! How backwards things are here. The waters below acting like a mirror, reflecting the waters above from wence we came; everything is reversed.

When we attempt to comb our hair in a mirror we must comb it in the opposite direction that it looks like we should… perhaps life on this side of the canopy is the same. In order to comb through the tangles of life we must go counter to what looks right in the mirror. In order to go the right direction we must heed the second Adam’s rib we were made from and go; not in the direction our own deceiving eyes point, but rather the direction Christ’s rib, the Living water, points us toward moving always in His fluid direction.

In Acts, another beginning of sorts, we read that the Living waters from heaven come accompanied by a sound “like a mighty rushing wind and it filled the house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (2:2-4) In Genesis 1:9-10 we see the waters that the Spirit (or in Hebrew, Ruach) of God hovered over, being separated this second time exposing the dry land. The fact that it is dry is a critical point that we cannot miss here because it exposes a pivotal truth. When dust is dry it is empty, perfectly prepared to receive water from heaven. And until that happens, no seed is able to grow in that dust. It is only in the presence of water that seeds shed their protective outer coating and sprout the life that was lying dormant within. In the same way, we too are empty, dry, and unable to foster life within us; or grow the seed of God’s word without the Living Water of His Ruach flowing through us and watering that seed, giving it the nutrient lifeblood it desperately needs. Without Ruach we are simply dry empty vessels waiting to be filled, just like the clay jars at the wedding in Cana waiting to be filled with water, which Jesus then turned into the choicest of wines, saved for the very end of the party. This is the first of Jesus’ countless miracles and is a symbol of our being filled with His Ruach.

Are you like me, are you beginning to feel as if perhaps this whole spirit-filled thing might be a bigger deal than what it has been made out to be lately? Like maybe God’s trying to tell us more about this tremendous gift that He’s given us. That it goes farther than the cross and the grave. Maybe it transcends all time and space and is the biggest of all the gifts ever given! I don’t know about you, but I don’t know very much about Ruach yet… but I’m really looking forward to learning more about who He is and why He is mentioned in these three key firsts in the story of all time.