Happy Monday y'all!! What did y'all get into this weekend? This weekend was all about cleaning and doing hair. Speaking of hair, I gave JJ his first trim. He's not a big fan of the brush or the comb, but his hair was long and needed to be combed at least once a day. So, I took some of the length off it and it makes combing and detangling go faster.
Anyways, here we are just wrapping up Week 36. It seems like now that the end of the year is almost here, the weeks are going by faster. But what better way to pass them than growing stronger in my faith and completing a challenge?
So, we started off with the book of Habakkuk. He was prophet who kind of had a Job situation. He was faithful to God and living his life right but unfortunate things always seemed to still happen to him. In his mind, Habakkuk felt like bad things shouldn't happen to those of us who live right and acknowledge God as our one and only true God.
His frustration is very evident in the very first verse where he cries out to God saying, "O Lord, how long shall I cry; and You will not hear? Even cry out to You, 'Violence!' And You will not save" (Habakkuk 1:1). I know that many of us can relate to how Habakkuk is feeling right here. We go about our lives doing right, but still seem to experience hard times. But like Habakkuk, we have to learn that we aren't exempt from that evils of this world just because we're Christians and we live right.
At the end of the day, God points out to Habakkuk that as long as there are evil people in this world then bad things can happen to anybody. It's just a part of the territory of being humans and having free will. Our reward for living right comes in the After Life. And of course, let's not forget that we're not down and out 100% of the time. God rewards us with miracles and blessings here on Earth all the time too, but we often take those for granted like waking up, having good health, jobs, etc.
God tells Habakkuk that we just need to focus on walking by faith. Don't live your life thinking of all the negative that could happen, but just have faith in God's plan and trust that everything will work out the way it is suppose to. Now, this was something the Israelites had trouble doing and I'm sure that's why they couldn't stay focused on the Promise Land. So, in the book Zephaniah (I almost named Moo that), we learn about how God has planned to punished His chosen people for their disobedience and disrespect.
He sends Zephaniah to get them to see that they have caused this wrath on themselves. But of course, they don't want to take personal responsibility. And why should they when it's so easy to blame God or the other nations leading them astray? Placing the blame on others is always easier for us to swallow than the acknowledging the truth. But alas, God gives them another chance and in the books of Haggai and Zephaniah God orders them to rebuild the temples and to repent so that they can get back to the practices of making sacrifices and offerings.
But y'all already should know that by the end of the book of Malachi, they are back to complaining again (Malachi 3:13-15). I just don't get why they can't be happy? The Israelites have to have been the most depressed and demanding people in the history of the Bible! Seriously, they had it all given to them on a silver platter and despite messing up every chance God gave them to come back into His grace, they pretty much spit in His face or stabbed Him in the back. Crazy!!!
In the first couple of chapters of Matthew we read about the birth of Christ, His visit from the wise men and Satan and we read about his cousin, John the Baptist and how he started preparing the way for people to receive Jesus. I'm telling you it was action packed in Week 36!
Week 37 Readings
9/09: Matthew 5
9/10: Matthew 6
9/11: Matthew 7
9/12: Matthew 8-10
9/13: Matthew 11-13
9/14: Matthew 14-15
9/15: Matthew 16-18
Why do you think it was so hard for the Chosen Ones to be obedient?
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