For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    It is interesting to note that this proverb uses “house” when referring to the wicked, and “home” when referring to the righteous. The clear implication it that only the righteous truly have a home; the wicked merely have a place where they live.

    When we cry to God for help we need to be honest with ourselves and with God. God has examined our hearts and tested our thoughts. He knows what we truly think and feel. We may convince ourselves of the lies we tell, but God will not be fooled. However, if we are honest when we pray to God, He will answer our prayers. Let us follow His commands because He has given them to us as expressions of His unfailing love. If we follow the path He has laid out for us, we will be kept safe from our enemies.

    Jesus explained to His disciples that He taught in parables because only some are allowed to understand the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven. In the NIV, verse 12 reads: “Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” I have struggled to understand what He meant by this. The NLT translates verse 12 in the following way: “To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them.”
    The NLT reading makes Jesus’ meaning clear to me. Those who listen to Jesus’ teaching with the intent to understand it, will find more and more of it becoming clear as time goes on. On the other hand, those who listen to Jesus’ teachings with the intent of discovering its flaws will find it to make less and less sense and time goes on. In addition, the latter group will, over time, find themselves less and less able to recognize the difference between good and evil.

    When Joseph was young he was his father’s favorite and dreamed of great things. He was convinced that those dreams were visions, and we know that they were indeed visions from God. His pride in the visions which God has given him lead to his downfall and he is sold into slavery by his brothers. He ends up in Potiphar’s house in Egypt. He does not forget his dedication to God and rises to high position in Potiphar’s house. This time it is his very faithfulness to God which leads to his downfall. He is imprisoned for a crime which he did not commit.
    Despite this, Joseph remains faithful to God. Once more, Joseph’s faithfulness and integrity lead him to rise to the highest possible position. Despite the fact that he has risen to positions of authority time and again, Joseph takes no credit for his success. Rather he credits God for his skill and wisdom. It was Joseph’s continued faithfulness to God that put him in a position to raised to the highest level in the land when God’s time was right. We would do well to follow Joseph’s example. If we are faithful to God and maintain our integrity, He will open ever greater opportunities for us to serve Him.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    If you can do good for someone who deserves it, don’t put it off. If someone needs your help, deserves your help, and you could help right now, DO IT. Don’t wait until tomorrow, that might be too late.

    God is my master because every good thing I have comes from Him. When I look at the world around me I realize that it is the godly who are the true heroes. Being an athlete, a pop music star, or a movie star, or any other kind of pop culture star does not make one a hero. Those are not the people we should hold up to be honored. Instead, I will honor those who do the will of God.

    Jesus says that whoever is not for Him is against Him. Yet, shortly after the Transfiguration,He told the disciples that whoever is not against us is for us. These two statements seem in contradiction. However, when taken together they tell us something about Jesus and Christian faith that people often try to sidestep. There is not such thing as being neutral when it comes to Jesus. Sooner or later everyone must reach a decision. They are either for Him, or against Him. You must decide if you believe that He is your Savior, the Son of God, or you must believe that He is some combination of crazy/evil.
    There are those who try to get around this choice by saying that He is fictional. However, that only puts off the problem for a bit. If you believe that He is fictional, you will still have to decide whether the teachings attributed to Him are good or evil. Ultimately, the teachings attributed to Jesus cannot truly be good if Jesus is a fictional character. This leaves you with the conclusion that those teachings are evil when taken as a whole, even though you may think some of them are bad. So, either Jesus was God, and the only path to salvation, or He was evil/crazy (or the invention of evil/crazy people). Those are the only two options and, sooner or later, everyone is going to have to choose between them.

    I find the story of Judah and Tamar interesting. One thing I wondered about when I was younger was why God made the Israelites slaves in Egypt. Why did His chosen people have to suffer through that slavery? I found that answer in the story of Judah and Tamar. Judah thought nothing of joining into pagan worship by visiting a shrine prostitute. I take Judah’s attitude as typical of his brothers. If Jacob’s sons were already casually integrating with the pagan practices in this way, how long would it have been before they had completely adopted the local practices?
    So, the answer to the question I started this section with is, the Israelites had to suffer through slavery in order to forge them into a people separated from others by their worship of God. We see this still to this day. From time to time the Church becomes too much a part of society around us. When that happens, God allows persecution to arise in order to call His people out from the midst of society so that they will renew their dedication and love for Him.