Writing Through the Bible in a Year

The Knowledge of God

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Tamar

Today’s Reading: Hosea 5:1-9:17


Well my friends, today I started my classes at Grace University right here in my living room where the Holy Spirit is homeschooling me. Together, the Holy Spirit and I, have been working on my Master’s degree in Christian Studies for the last three years now… I’m not sure I’ll ever really graduate, not that I want to mind you, but I am certainly taking on a full course load this semester! I’ve committed to watching three sermons daily by Joseph Prince, Creflo Dollar and Joel Osteen – all Grace Ministers. I’ve also committed to reading several books, “They Thought for Themselves” by Sid Roth, “Every Man’s Battle” by Stephen Arterburn, Fred Stoeker with Mike Yorkey, “School of the Seers” by Jonathan Welton, and of course continuing reading through the Bible in a Year. I will also be doing/leading a Bible Study by Beth Moore, “Believing God” and then blogging daily about the things that I glean from all of these wonderful people of God. My exams are of course, LIFE. As part of my Sabbath recreation I told God that I would like to start working on a fictional novel; He gave me the story line in a dream a couple of weeks ago… but we’ll see how He leads me in all that. J And then of course I’ll still be working on getting up and running smoothly all while being the best mom and wife that my family could ask for! What’s funny is, writing it all down like that makes it sound like SO much… but it’s not any more than what I’ve already been doing!

In the verse that I pulled out today (Hosea 6:6) God tells us that He desires for us to acquire the knowledge of God more than He desires our burnt offerings (or works). He wants for us to know Him. He wants us to spend our lives and our after lives getting to know who He is, how He works, and most importantly of all doing all that by simply spending time with Him. He wants us to know what He has done for us, what He has given us, what He has promised us. And when we start harvesting from His abundant field of grace we begin to understand those things. We begin to fathom how much we might mean to Him, how deep His love for us runs.

Did you know that God’s love runs? Did you know that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are running after you right now? Yup, they really are. To this very day one of my deepest desires is that someone would want me; my husband, my friends, my family. I’ll never forget the day when I heard the truth that Jesus wants me so badly that He follows me everywhere. It changed my life! God wants me more than I want Him! Wow. His desire for you is so strong that neither life nor death can separate you from Him. Jesus wants you so badly that He was willing to die rather than to live one more moment without you by His side.

As Jesus is, so are we in this world. When He died on that cross and covered us with His blood we were instantly made righteous in the sight of God Almighty. We didn’t do anything to gain that standing… so is there any way that we could do anything to lose that standing? NO!!! However, we can lose sight of that right standing with God. We can chew on and believe the lies the Enemy feeds us when he tells us that we’re not “good enough” to be righteous. Guess what folks, . Do you know what that means??? Justified = just as if I’d never sinned. You are JUSTIFIED, which makes you RIGHTEOUS, period. I was tempted to put you are justified which makes you righteous in God’s eyes, but that’s only half true. You are righteous in the Enemy’s eyes too. He KNOWS you have been justified, he KNOWS and he makes it his primary concern in your life to hide that TRUTH from your eyes! Because you ARE justified, you are righteous. Period. There is nothing that you can do; there is nothing that the Enemy can tempt you to do to make that truth go away. The only thing that can hinder you from living that truth out is your unbelief in that truth. And since it is impossible for God to lie, and it is in His Word that we find this truth what is there not to believe? You have been justified… by His grace as a gift. Do you accept that gift?

While I was meditating earlier God showed me what I’ve been doing. He showed me a picture of my self bent over in tear-filled prayer, hands desperately clasped together as I pleaded to Him to “give me… give me… give me…” and He said to me “Beloved, give Me your eyes (that’s what I say to my kids to get them to look me in the eye), I have already given you… given you… given you… I gave it to you the first time you asked, you just haven’t unclenched your hands enough to receive the gifts I’ve been trying to give you. Child, open your hands and receive the gifts that have already been given!”

Next He showed me a picture of water rolling off a duck’s back and the way that the water simply beads up and rolls away never really even touching the feathers of the duck. Then He showed me a picture of the duck’s feathers having just been ruffled and exposing the downy fluff underneath. Water was poured onto the duck and it soaked right in. And He said, “The Enemy does everything he can to get your feathers ruffled because it is only then that his lies have any impact on you. He presents you with situations in life that contradict My promises to protect you, IGNORE THEM. Do not let him ruffle your feathers; simply allow his attacks and lies to roll off your back. Give Me your eyes, keep your eyes on Me and My love for you and we can weather any storm of life together.”

The knowledge of God, how much He loves you, it’s a powerful thing. Something the Enemy simply can’t fight, although he certainly does try.

Categories: Hosea | Leave a comment

Grown-up Love

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Tamar

Today’s Reading: Hosea 1:1-4:19

In today’s reading the prophet Hosea is called by God to take a promiscuous wife and have children with her in order to be an object lesson to all of Israel in how they are behaving towards their God and husband. God is our husband! He is our provider and protector, our shield and our salvation, but beyond even that He is our lover! He doesn’t just love you as His child, just because you were born from His supernatural loins. He loves you with the passion of an adult. Right now I want you to think of your spouse, how do you love them? Why do you love them? What are some of the ways that you show them you love them? What are some of the ways that your spouse shows you that they love you? You see while we were children we loved our parents and our grandparents because they loved us first. We loved them simply because they were all we knew. But as we grew our horizons were broadened and our eyes became opened to the idea that there were other kinds of parents out there. Parents that let their kids stay up later or let them eat things we didn’t get to eat and we began to resent our parents. But then after entering into adulthood we began to realize how right our parents really were. And we began to mimic their ways, most of the time without even knowing that we were doing it. And then we met “The One”. *Romantic sigh…….* That man who is the complete package, the real deal, Mr. Right and we fall in love. This love is nothing like the love that we feel for our parents! This love is deep and passionate and hot. We do things with our husband that we don’t do with anyone else. We say things to our husband that we don’t say to anyone else. We have a level of intimacy with our husband that we don’t have with our parents. Though our relationships with our parents may still run deep, it is very different from the relationship with a spouse.

Then we have children and everything changes!!! We experience another kind of love that is, again, like nothing we’ve ever felt before in our lives. We suddenly love someone we’ve never even met before simply because they have come from this deep passionately hot relationship of intimacy that we have with our spouse. We have this deep need to tenderly care for this precious tiny thing that we have created. We delight in every single moment they are with us and long for them desperately when they are away from us. We worry if they are cold or hungry, if they are clothed well or dirty, we care about them even when they are away from our sight.

In a way that God can only understand He loves us like all of that. He loves us as the parent and as the lover – and not in a gross way either… somehow. While Yaweh is our Father, Jesus is our husband and that helps us separate the two kinds of love a bit I suppose. But yet it is through the Holy Spirit that we are able to have the intimacy with both of them the way that we can. It is through the Holy Spirit that we can have fellowship, friendship and yes even spiritual intercourse with God. Woo! Did I just say that??? Yup, I sure did! But it’s true! So often in the church today people don’t talk about God in “that way” because they feel it is disrespectful of Him somehow. But look at the book of Hosea!!! He’s talking about Himself in “that way”! If there is one thing our society knows about and can relate to it’s sex! And yet here is God, wooing us in every possibly way imaginable so that He can be intimate with us and we can be intimate with Him and know Him in “that way” and yet people are going hungry right and left because they’re just not getting it. They do not understand just how deep God’s grace goes. When Jesus’ blood dripped down the cross it didn’t stop running when it hit the ground. It hit the ground running! Grace doesn’t mean that you’re forgiven until your next sin, the blood of goats and sheep did that, Jesus’ blood is ever so much more effective than that!!! While the blood of animals wiped away the sin from the slate until we wrote all over the slate again, the blood of Jesus made the slate so that it couldn’t be written on ever again! It didn’t just wipe it clean, it took it away completely! And yes, some of you may be out there thinking “there’s no way that’s how it works”, “can God really be that good?”, “but all I’ve ever learned is that we need to pay close attention to the things that we do so that we don’t fall into sin against God and make Him angry”. Guess what my friends, when God said “I will remember their sins no more” He meant it! Can God really be that good? YES!!!!! A THOUSAND TIMES YES!!!!! I pray that God will give you ears to hear this today my friend, because it is the God’s honest truth. It’s a truth that I have been fighting for the last three years to learn and really digest. I have LIVED this message every moment of every day for the last three years. I LIVED through the Law and attempting to follow it to the letter. I LIVED through the cords that it tied me up with and I can’t begin to tell you how depressed and downhearted I became because of it, not to mention extremely judgmental and condemning. But best of all, I have LIVED through the acceptance of Grace and what it really means to be SAVED. I have heard it said that when you get “saved” you are saved from the wrath of God. And I believe that to be true. But to me, to be saved is so much more than that. You become saved from condemnation. When Adam took that first bite of the forbidden fruit he chose to stand in agreement with Satan and his lies instead of standing in agreement with God and His truth. Before that moment Adam and Eve knew no sin. They had no concept of the fact that they were naked. God made them naked, He didn’t care that they were naked otherwise He would have clothed them now wouldn’t He have. But no.

You see there’s this thing called ignorance. Ignorance is when you are blissfully unaware of what is right in front of you. Adam and Eve were ignorant of the fact that they were naked… UNTIL they stood in agreement with the Enemy. Then and only then did they realize that they were naked and needed covering. Up until that fateful bite, GOD had been their covering. When we step away from God we are no longer covered and become shamefully buck naked. BUT. Oh praise God there’s a but! BUT then there came Jesus! And what was it that His blood did? It covered us! It covered us in a way that nothing else, not the blood or skins of sheep or goats, not the fibers of cloth, nothing covers like the blood of Jesus. When we choose Jesus, we are saved! We are saved from God’s wrath and anger. We are saved from judgment and condemnation. We are saved! Jesus died to bring us back under the covering of God, back to an intimate God-love relationship with Him where He loves us in a way that no one could fathom or begin to understand. And because of how much He loves us, we love Him back. How could we not? With a love that hits the ground running how can we not run with it? How can we not dive deep into that ocean of goodness and not come gasping back up praising His name? How can we not allow Him to wrap us up in this blanket of steadfast love and mercy?

My friend, Jesus loves you. He is truly faithful. He is “The One”, the real deal, the complete package, Mr. Right. He is your friend AND your lover and He is calling for you right now. He is calling you to an intimacy with Him that you’ve never experienced before. He’s calling you to come to bed with Him and experience a new kind of love, His God-love. It’s not like anything else in this world, it’s better!

Categories: Hosea | Leave a comment

The Bottom of it All

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Tamar

Today’s Reading: Hebrews 11:1-13:25

You answer Him, “Well, no one really told me that, I just figured that since the door wouldn’t open for me that it must have been closed forever.”

Shaking His head Jesus answered, “Now why would you think a silly thing like that? Let not your heart be troubled. Don’t you remember what was said on the cross? When I said ‘It is finished’ I was NOT talking about miracles, I was talking about the job I had come to do. I came so that you would see LIFE, and not the kind of life that those before Me had seen but life filled with abundance and peace!”

Beloved, I am the good shepherd; I lead you in paths of righteousness; and not paths built by your own righteousness or your own doing, but Mine. I am the righteous One, I am the One that came and was completely perfectly sinless so that you wouldn’t have to be. I am the One who came and suffered unmentionable things, horrors that you could never even begin to imagine and will now never have to experience because I went through them first. I am the only one in all of history that has truly seen and been through the valley of darkness. Yes, you too may walk through it, but you do not walk through it alone you pass through that darkness with Me, The Light by your side, never leaving you nor forsaking you. I will never desert you. I will never give up on you. I will never abandon you. I am your Light. I am your guide. I am yours! I am faithful when you are not. I believe in you when you do not. I trust you when you don’t. I made you just the way you are, trust Me when I say that you are perfect in my eyes. Not because of anything that you have done or said, but because of everything that Jesus has done and everything that Jesus has said. I see you through His perfect blood sprinkled upon your now perfectly clean heart. His blood is so much more precious than the blood of goats and sheep that never cleaned a single heart but rather foreshadowed the perfectly innocent blood of the Lamb to come; born in a barn like all the rest of the sacrificial lambs, He came so that you could be free. Free from sin. Free from guilt and shame and the condemnation that sin brought into this world; the condemnation of self-righteousness, the thought that you need to be more than what I made you to be; more than human. I didn’t make you to be Me. I made you to be you, I already had a Me I didn’t need another one! I needed someone to love Me, someone to trust Me, someone to believe in Me and that I tell the truth when I say that I love you more than you could ever possibly imagine. My Beloved, you are mine and I am yours – believe in that, trust in that, hope in that, hold on to that – I am YOURS! I belong to you. I am your possession as you are mine. I am your hope and salvation in times of trouble. I am yours to have and to hold from this day forward. I am your deliverance in the day of doubt. I am yours from this day on forevermore; I am yours.

Now. That door will open at the slightest push. Take out your Faith. Not your faith in Me; while it is helpful it is not the way to get through the door. While Your faith in me opens the door, it is My faith in you that gets you through it. While I am the door, it takes faith in your ability and position to walk through it and lay hold of the treasures behind it. In the desert I provided the miracle of manna, but they each had to put on their shoes and in faith walk through their front door to take possession of that bread from heaven. The woman subject to bleeding was not healed until she made the decision to do something about her condition, get up, seek Me out and lay hold of the hem of my garment. Though Blind Bartemas called to me from the side of the road, he was not healed of his blindness until he heard me call him to come, throw off his heavy cloak of darkness and walk to Me to receive his healing. My friend, no one is worthy in their own eyes of the miracles that I am about to perform on this planet. But each and everyone is worthy in My eyes. Do you know why? They are worthy in My eyes because they are My Beloved. My people have been fed too many lies for too long and it is about time that step in and take them back from the food poisoning that has overtaken them. They have been poisoned with the apples of sin consciousness and the self condemnation that comes from a self focused life. I want them to realize, I want YOU to realize that a life focused on Me, My perfection and My righteousness and My holiness leads to a completely free and abundant life, right here in the land of the living. Today. My Darling, it is your job, today, to help them see how much I love them. That it matters not how much they love Me, that really makes no difference in this world. But how much I love you, how much I love this world, how much I love every living thing in this world; THAT is what really matters. Yes, faith CAN move mountains but Love is greater than faith and hope.

Now. Get up, walk through that door and take hold of the blessings I have been storing up for you!”

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Doors

Posted on August 13, 2012 by Tamar

Today’s Reading: Hebrews 7:18-10:39

As your eyes become more accustomed to this light you begin to look around you and see that this room is filled with doors of all different shapes and sizes. A skinny green door named healing, a large round door labeled prosperity, as far as the eye can see there are doors in this huge room all leading to various things. But this door, the smallest door in the room painted yellow and just the right size for you catches your eye. You walk up to it and tentatively reach out your hand to tenderly touch the gold lettering at the top “Miracles”. You catch your breath as you think of the Red Sea parting, the manna falling like snow, the Jordan River separating, heavenly armies surrounding earthly enemy armies preparing to attack men of God, the sun standing still in the sky to bide our ancestors more time, a widow pouring oil from a jar that just keeps flowing and filling containers until she runs out, a fisher of men fishing and catching a fish with money in its mouth. Could it be… a door with all these things and more besides that behind it? You look to Jesus to see what He has to say and with His smiling eyes He nods, this door is all yours. Everything behind it has been waiting for you to discover it, to come and step over the threshold of possibility. You excitedly reach out and turn the knob but it won’t budge! Why? And that’s when they appear. Doubt and Discouragement, little more than wisps in the wind, voices in your ears they whisper back and forth putting thoughts into your head making you think you are the one thinking them. “Jesus didn’t actually say that these miracles were for me.” “I’m not like Moses or even the prophet’s widow, who am I to deserve something as grand as a room full of miracles?” “I’m not special enough to have God intervene in my life in a miraculous way.” “I certainly haven’t done anything worthy of a miracle being performed in my life, that’s for sure.” As this barrage of thoughts floods through your brain like an all out attack on your morale your head begins to droop and you slowly turn away from the door, convinced that it wasn’t meant to be.

You look to Jesus thoroughly discouraged and disappointed in yourself for even thinking that He might love you that much to give such a gift as wonderful as that. You think “Sure, He loves me enough to die for me, and maybe even enough to help out with little things in my life here and there, but to change my life completely; to turn everything bad in my life around? Probably not, that stuff has to be earned right?” You slump down on the sofa next to the door and put your head in your hands and say “What was I thinking? God doesn’t really do miracles today. That door has been closed for a long time.” At this Jesus comes unglued, “Who told you that?” He says with a tone you’ve never heard in His voice before. He can tell that someone has been feeding you lies and He’s about to get down to the bottom of it all.

(To be continued…)

 

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Blessed assurance

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Tamar

You know that I never double post unless it’s an accident. Today is no accident! Last night I dreamt that I was sitting in church and when the offering plate came around I looked in my purse to give and there was a really old savings bond for $100 that had NOT been there before! Then when I woke up the tune only for the old hymn “Blessed Assurance” was going through my mind and wouldn’t stop until I remembered enough of the words to be able to look it up on you tube. I have already sung it through twice and once i’m finished sending you the link I will be singing it over and over again!
My friends we have such a wonderful blessed assurance in Christ, celebrate that today on this glorious day the LORD had made! Bask in His presence, get lost in His love! Get so lost in His love for you that you can never find your way out…not that you would want to.

Categories: Writing Through the Bible in a Year | Leave a comment

The Hallway

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Tamar

Today’s Reading: Hebrews 2:9-7:17

You are standing at the end of a long white hallway with a single door at the end of it. Walking down the hallway you notice that the door has something written on it, a label describing what lies behind the door, “Salvation”. You go to push the door open but it doesn’t budge so you turn to Jesus and the Holy Spirit who have been walking behind you on this journey and ask them why it won’t open. As a wordless answer to your question with a sparkle in His eyes Jesus hands you something, the key to unlocking the door. And as you stare down intently into the palm of your hand you find the tiniest of things, a single grain of mustard seed. You look to Him questioningly again; this is going to open the door? And like a refreshing summer breeze in the heat of the day flowing through your heart you hear the Holy Spirit’s words “For truly I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed you will say to this mountain ‘move from here to there’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20) Suddenly, in your hand, the grain of mustard shifts into a mustard yellow key with the word “FAITH” engraved in it. Not surprisingly, it fits the door perfectly and as you turn the key the door springs open as if it had been anxiously awaiting. You take one hesitant step forward and enter through the door of salvation as you remove the key from the lock and it swings gently shut once more. The room you stand in is filled with a light that you simply can’t describe, perhaps because it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before in your life. You can’t quite seem to find the source of the light, nothing is hanging from the ceiling, no lamps on the tables that you can see until your gaze falls behind you once more and you realize that the Light is streaming from Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

(To be continued…)

 

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Haggai & Hebrews

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Tamar

Today’s Reading: Haggai 1:1-2:23 & Hebrews 1:1-2:8

I apologize for all the delayed readings; I’m trying to get my house and kids ready to start school. Next week should be a bit better… I hope!!!

Categories: Haggai, Hebrews | Leave a comment

Mustard Seed Faith

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Tamar

Today’s Reading: Habakkuk 1:1-3:19

Here I sit today under the tulip tree in our front yard, sunlight dappled upon the pages of the book I’m reading when the author quotes the story from Matthew (17:14-21) of the father bring his demon-possessed son to the disciples and they can’t cast it out. So the father brings his child to Jesus. He is able to immediately cast out the demon and the child is instantly healed. Later the disciples question Jesus why they couldn’t do it and He says to them: “Because of your little faith. Truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you.”

I can’t even begin to count how many times I have read this verse or heard this verse, and never caught the message like I did today. Jesus wasn’t rebuking their faith in Him! He was rebuking their faith in themselves!!! Look at the situation, the disciple’s faith was in Jesus and His ability to heal the boy, that’s why they brought the boy to Him. But whose faith was in the disciples? Jesus and the father’s. The father brought his son to the disciples for healing, he trusted these men to heal his son because they had done it for others. But in that moment they were unable to perform the miracle, why? Most likely for many reasons, but I propose that perhaps Jesus wasn’t talking about the demon that possessed the boy, rather the Doubt that hindered his friends. You see they didn’t doubt in His ability to perform the miracle, they doubted in their own ability to be part of it. Why? Perhaps they were really doubting how much Jesus loved them. They hadn’t been chosen to go up the mountain like Peter, James and John and perhaps they were a little hurt by that. Perhaps that was the foothold the Enemy used to get into their heads and totally psyche them out of their God-given ability to heal in His name.

Satan did the same thing to me last summer with swimming. It had been so long since I had been swimming in a real pool that I became afraid of going into the deep end of the pool without a floatation device. It took me all summer to work up the nerve to jump off the stinkin’ diving board for Pete’s sake! My dad was a swim instructor, I grew up in the water and here I was suddenly afraid of it for no reason! Ridiculous! I doubted my own ability to swim, something I had always been able to do. The disciples doubted their ability to perform miracles, we believed the Lie.

I want you to pay close attention to the words Jesus uses to finish His lesson on faith: “Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Woah, woah, woah, hold the phones, hang on, what!?! For who? We started this story yesterday hearing from an angel who had seen so many of the wondrous things that God is capable of that we could never even begin to imagine them all and he’s telling us with a laugh “nothing is impossible with God.” Yet here stands God in flesh saying to us that nothing will be impossible for us! When we hold fast to our faith; our faith in our mighty God AND our faith in our ability to do what God made us to do, to be who God made us to be – then NOTHING will be impossible for us. NOTHING! I pray that your ears hear this word for you today, THE Father believes in you – His friend, His child. He believes in your ability to do what He has called you and made you to do. He has placed hopes and dreams deep within your heart, don’t lose sight of those dreams, they are from Him, they are His call on your life don’t you dare give up on them. “For still the vision awaits its appointed time, it hastens to the end – it will not lie. If It seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.” (Habakkuk 2:3) He is faithful. “Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.” (Joshua 21:45) Nothing, nope, nothing is impossible. Not for God, and not for you. Keep on believing my friend, your miracle is right around the corner. He is faithful because He loves you!!!

Categories: Habakkuk | Leave a comment

NOTHING

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Tamar

Today’s Reading: Genesis 45:16-47:31

For the last three years I have had an 8×10 of this picture on my desk. “For nothing is impossible with God” Luke 1:37 It got put there as inspiration, to begin with, because I was living through an impossible marriage – but nothing is impossible with God and He changed that impossible marriage in thirty short days. I went from constantly being furious and unhappy with my husband and our relationship, to fulfilled and blissfully aware of our newfound intimacy. We recount that 30-day adventure in “True Intimacy” where I open the story with this very verse; for nothing is impossible with God, including an impossible marriage.

I find the story it is found in even more inspiring however; maybe because it is the story of Jesus’ conception through the Holy Spirit. You see the angel Gabriel has just come and announced to Mary that she will bear the Messiah; that she, little insignificant Mary has been chosen to be the woman to rear the God-head in human form. And she says to Gabriel “Ummm… I’ve never been with a man before, how is it that I am pregnant? I mean, I know I’m young and all, but I do know enough to know how these things work. I know that it takes a man AND a woman to make a baby so… how is this going to work… exactly?”

It makes me think of Sarah when the angels came to visit Abraham and told him that in a year from now they would have a child; and Sarah laughed. Why did she laugh? Because she was old and the “way of women” had stopped in her body. And on top of that Abraham had dried up! In other words they had stopped doing that dance a long time ago. So Sarah laughed because any natural way of conceiving was beyond them at this point.

While Sarah laughed, Mary asked “how can this be?” and this time God’s messenger Gabriel is the one who laughs. “Ha! You don’t know God very well do you? Nothing is impossible with Him! He’s GOD. He holds this planet in space, He keeps your little world spinning in motion, He tossed the stars in the sky and He knows the name of every single one of them, is anything too hard for Him? And yet you ask how He will do for you what He has said He would do? Nothing is impossible with God.” Just think, such a phrase as “nothing is impossible with God” was used to confirm to Mary that she need not concern herself with the “how”, but merely with the truth that God had chosen her to be His mother and His partner in His plan to save the world from guilt and condemnation.

This picture stood watch over me in my struggles to seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness so that I might receive the gift that God had chosen for me, intimacy in my marriage. This picture verse stood watch over me as I struggled to write that journey down so that others could find that gift as well. I had a dream of people actually reading what I had written and even when they weren’t, this picture stood watch over me reminding me that even this impossible dream could come true too if only I kept believing and seeking His face. And through it all Satan has been there shoving his lies in my face, trying to distract me from God’s goodness and promises with his half-truths his twisted thoughts and trying situations, and through it all God has ALWAYS pulled me back to His truth with one word, “nothing”. What is impossible for my God? NOTHING! What is it that God can not do for me His child? NOTHING!!!

This month, with a gift to the ministry you will receive:

Any amount – 4×6 greeting card.

$15 – Unframed 8×10 of Luke 1:37

$25 – Framed 8×10 of Luke 1:37 OR True Intimacy printed format (please designate which you would like to receive)

$45 or more – True Intimacy printed format, a framed 8×10 of Luke 1:37 & a framed True Intimacy contract

Contact me (tamarknochel@gmail.com) to donate, I’m working on some e-options at the moment but they’re not quite ready yet.

Categories: Genesis | Leave a comment

Surprise!

Posted on August 5, 2012 by Tamar

Today’s reading: Genesis 42:18-45:15
The other day I was driving in my car praying and asking God why He wasn’t giving me the sign I had asked for that what I had been believing him for would happen. Gideon got his sign, why not me? Then a story came on the radio that perfectly answered my question.
They were talking about how this Olympics had been the Twitter Olympics, if you’re plugged into the internet during the day you generally know the results of the competitions before they show them at night on TV.  One DJ was sharing about his kids and how they had been watching the games the night before until midnight, sitting on the edges of their seats anxiously awaiting to see what would happen, who would win. Then they would jump up and down and scream when the US would win…just like their father knew they would. He had seen the results online already. And the other DJ asked him “you didn’t tell them who won?” He responded “No way! I wanted them to go through it and be surprised!”

Are you believing God for something? Don’t you want to be surprised? Can you just imagine God sitting up in heaven watching you, waiting for your own response to His plan and how it will all unfold so perfectly. Waiting to jump up in celebration with you when it does work out. Perfectly.
As much as I want to know how He is going to work things out for me, like He always does, if He wants me to be surprised, then I want to be surprised too. The anticipation may about kill me, but I know it will be worth it. And sooooooo much more exciting when it does happen.
God is good, all the time.

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