I'm Taking A Break

Just in case anyone's following my Bible Reading Challenge
(in case you haven't noticed)
I want to inform you that I've been taking a break
and will continue to do so for a-I-don't-know-how-long-time.
Er, just in case... someone thinks it's strange that I haven't posted in that label in a while.
You know...just in case.

12th Day of the Challenge

Reading:
Jeremiah 34-36
.
What it meant to me:
Jeremiah speaks to the king while his city is attacked by all countries and kingdoms known to him. I think I would have been quite uneasy by the thought of going with a message (and not very good news either) to the king of the country when the city was being attacked. But still. Jeremiah fears God more than the King, the warriors attacking, the panic that must have been and all other things.
.
God is angry because of Israel’s broken promise to Him. They sat all slaves free and it was right in God’s eyes, but after a while they took them back and dishonoured God’s name. It reminds me of how easy it is to recognize sin in one’s life, repent and then go straight back into it afterwards. And this is then even more dishonouring…
.
Jeremiah is told by God to go and meet with some men who were true to their father’s command and obeyed his commands in everything. God uses them as an example of how the Isralites should have responded, but didn’t, the people of Israel wasn’t true to God. God rewards the obedient men for their obedience.
.Jeremiah was asked to write down all the words God had spoken to Him in a scroll, and so he did. He asked the scribe to read it aloud in the Temple on a day the people was fasting. When it happened, the king asked to hear the scroll read, and he burned it and tried to arrest Jeremia and the scribe. But the Lord hid them. This reminds me of the fact that God is the God of the impossible and that dangerous situations isn’t more than He can manage, not at all.

Peace to you,
åslaug

Eleventh Day of the Challenge

Reading:
Jeremiah chapter 31-33
.
What it meant to me:
God repeats again that He shall be the God of the people of Israel, and that they shall be His people. Trough our faith we are children of Abraham and parttaking in this promise.
.
From far away the Lord let them see Him, with eternal love He loved us and let His mercy towards us last. This is a declaration of love, from the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace.
.
He makes a promise to lead them on their way home (lead us to Him), from far away, the hurt, blind and suffering, when they come crying and humble prayer. He will lead them, to brooks of water and roads without holes and stones, so they won’t stumble. When we come humbly and crying to Him, He will receive us. What a promise, what a God!
.
God spread the people of Israel, but then He leads them back together again; He hurts to be able to heal, and spread to be able to recollect.
.
The people of Israel will shout with their mouths and their faces will shine with joy because of the Lord’s good gifts to them. This made me think, because how often does my face shine with joy or do I shout with joy because of the Lord’s good gifts, even if I’m showered with them every day?
.
God promises to make their sorrow to joy and comfort and give joy to they who mourned. Reminds me of how mighty God is and how, whatever sorrrow we experience, even things that in every aspect is impossible to heal, He is able to.
.
The Lord promises the crying that the captives will come back and that there is hope for the future, bacause He is able to bring the children back. This reminds me that there is hope for my loved ones who are captives of this world and who can’t see how the way they live their lives lead them away from God, not closer.
.
God says again to the people of Israel, to mark the road back to Him, remember it and come home. How long they will turn their head to look for a substitution for Him? Reminds how so many of us look for love in all the wrong places. We look and search and long for anything but God, to fill a gap that only God can fill.
.
A new aspect of God’s characther: Compassion. He lets the exhausted drink till their satisfied, and He feeds all in need.
.
Then there is a prophesy of times when each one shall be responsible for his own sin. New times when all will know the Lord and He will forgive their sins and never remember it again. If the sun and the moon and the stars will cease to light the Earth, then Israel shall ceaseto be His people, if the heavens can be meazured and the depths of the Earth be explored, then He will not be Israel’s God forever. What a promise..
.
There is a prophesy of the new Jerusalem that shall never be broken, it must be the next Jerusalem that haven’t been built yet.
.
God says that He is the Lord, the God of all ccreation and that nothing is impossible for Him. Will I trust that? I hope so.

Peace to you,
åslaug

Tenth Day of the Challenge

Reading:
Jeremiah chapter 28-30
.
What it meant to me:
Jeremiah meets a false prophet, and God tells him to go and prophesy against him. Reminds me that we should speak the Truth whenever we hear a false promise. When people say, in exemple, that the Bible says that as long as you believe in Jesus it’s (meaning living in sin and supporting sin) okay, we should speak against it. The Bible says exactly the opposite (Read James’ Epistle). When I’m in a situation like that I should speak the Truth, because I know it.
.
Peace to you,
åslaug

Ninth Day of the Challenge

Reading:
Jeremiah chapter 25-27
.
What it meant to me:
Jeremiah has now spoken the Truth to the people of Israel for twenty three years. And now he says again that the cities and towns of Israel shall be ruined. But that after 70 years God will punish the Babylonians for their evil deeds towards God’s people, and ruin their land as well. Then the Isralites will be set free. I can just imagine that quite a lot of people thought (and probably said it to him as well) “Well, now this Jeremiah has treathened us with destruction for more than twenty years, when is it really going to happen?” I bet they mocked him.
.
There was an other prophet, speaking the words of the living God, Uriah. He was treathened by the king, who wanted him dead. He was frightened and ran away to Egypt. But the kings men chased him and found him and brought him back to Israel, were he was killed. I remember God’s word to Jeremiah when He first called him; Don’t be afraid of them, but trust me, or I will make you afraid of them. To be afraid is to distrust God. Well, in that case I really don’t trust God at all. Perhaps I should?

Peace to you,
åslaug

Eighth Day of the Challenge

Reading:
Jeremiah 22-24
.
What it meant to me:
God ask Jeremia to go to the king and again tell him to do right and not wrong. To rescue the robbed from the robber’s hand, to be kind and friendly and true to the people moving in to the country and others that are weak (widows and orphans). If they do they can live in their house, if not, God will tear it down. I guess the same counts for me. I don’t think God ever stopped caring for orphans, widows and foreigners.
.
God critisises for building great halls and letting the people work for no wages. The king’s father did also have food and drinks, but at the same time he did what was right. And it served him well. He cared for the rights of people who couldn’t speak for themselves. And God says: Isn’t that to have knowledge to me? Yes, I’d think so.
.
Another verse that made me think was about like this, I spoke to you when you were safe, but you told me you didn’t want to listen. It was your habit from youth not to obey me. How easy it is to ignore God when all is well. How easy it is to make it a habit not to obey Him. No wonder God so often uses pain to bring us closer to Him, we don’t really listen when He doesn’t?
.
There is a prophecy of Jesus. A prophecy of a righteous king that will rule with wisdom and save Juda, Israel shall live in safety. His name shall be “The Lord, our righteousness”. No wonder they expected a king…
.
There are curses over priests and prophets that does not seek God’s counsel or listen to His words, but instead speak of their own thoughts and make up dreams and tell the people it’s from the Lord. I think we have just a few cases of that today as well…
.
God says to Jeremiah that He have mercy with the captives from Judah in a foreign land and wants to bring them back to the land of their birth. He wants to give them a heart so that they can know Him, and understand that He is the Lord. They shall be His people, and He shall be their God, when they repent and turn to Him with all their heart. Oh how I want to be His people, to be given a heart that can know Him and understand that He is the Lord. I want to repent and turn to Him with all my heart.
.
Peace to you,
åslaug

Seventh Day of the Challenge

Reading:
Jeremiah 19-21
.
What it meant to me:
Jeremiah buys a jar from the potter, on God’s command and bring some elders and priests out into a valley to prophesy. God says that when they gave their sons and daughters as burnt offerings to heathen gods, that was nothing He had asked them to do, it was never on His mind. Makes me think should we never do anything God didn’t ask us to do, or not what was never on His mind, or should we just not do what He told us not to do. Or all of it?
.
Jeremiah breaks the jar and says to them that God will break this people and this city as the jar; so that it won’t ever be the same again.
.
Jeremiah is punished for saying a prophecy in the temple, and is whipped. The next day, when he is released he tells the priest, who ordered his whipping, that the Lord does not call him by his name anymore, but calls him “The man who lives in terror”. I’m amazed that even if the people of Israel were so many and did so much wrong (like the people of the Earth is so many and and does so much wrong), God still sees all the induviduals. He knows all thoughts and every attitude of heart in EVERY SINGLE PERSON of the people of Israel, even if they’re mostly referred to as “the people”.
.
Jeremiah speaks of how when God called him, he couldn’t refuse, and even when he faced tribulation and wanted to stop knowing God and speak His word, he couldn’t. It was like a fire within Him. I want that fire within me. I want to not be able to spend a single second without focusing on God. Lord I pray.
.
Jeremiah also curse the day he was born, and he praises the Lord and sing songs of worship (recites at least). What an attitude =) Our God is worthy of praise under all circumstances.

Peace to you,
åslaug

Sixth Day of the Challenge

Reading:
Jeremiah 16-18
.
What it meant to me:
The Lord tells Jeremiah not to take a wife or get children in his country, because children born, mothers giving birth to them and fathers raising them in the land of Israel shall have a painful death and none will bury them, their bodies shall lay on the ground and rot. It was a great shame not to be buried.
.
Further, the Lord orders him not to go to parties or funerals, cause God have taken His peace away from this people. And Jeremiah shall tell them about it.
.
God asks him to go to the potter’s house. He sees how the potter shapes the clay into jars and mugs. Whenever something didn’t turn out as it should, he did it all over again. And God tells him that it is in the same way He rules over Israel; He treathens a people with ruin, but if they repent from their evil, He change His mind and saves them from the evil He was planning against them. In the same way, if He promises a people to build up and plant, if they do what is evil in the eyes of the Lord, he withdraw His promise and refuse to do the good things He had planned. It reminds me that I am potty in His hands. I have no life of my own, I am what He is shaping me into, according to His good will.

Peace to you,
åslaug

Fifth Day of the Challenge

Reading:
Jeremiah 13-15
.
What it meant to me:
Like a belt around the waist of a man, have God drawn the people of Israel and Juda close to Himself, so they (and we) would be His people, His glory, praise and adornment. To be the adornment of the King of Kings, who could ever dream of more? A better compliment?
.
God calls again and again the people to turn back to Him, to listen to Him and let pride go. Before it’s too late. I think I have a lot to learn from that; to listen to God and let pride go. I have a tendency to always think I can do things all by myself. And when I see that I can’t, I struggle hard with letting go of pride and listen to God for what I should do next. Also when His plans contains that I fail to succeed in something important. It’s hard to turn to Him then, and be happy about hurt pride.
.
In the last chapter God speaks through Jeremiah of how the ruin of the land and people of Israel shall be to scare for all the rest of the world. Everything that used to mean something is gone, there shall only be fright and terror.
.
Jeremiah suffers persecution, but God saves Him when he repent.
.
Peace to you,
åslaug

Fourth Day of the Challenge

Reading:
Jeremiah 10-12
.
What it meant to me:
God tells us to not think or act like the people around us, people of this world that do not belong to Him, we shall not fear what they fear, because we know Him, and that is a totally different reality.
.
He describe in detail how false the heathen gods are and how they make no harm (!), but neither no good. He say that all human beings are stupid and unwise. He also make it clear that the reason He brings them into tribulation, is not His wreath alone, but so that we/the people of Israel shall find Him.
.
He describes His people like a olive tree, and that explains how He created us, placed us where we are, uphold our life, and also how little we are, how easy we can be attacked and disappear from the Earth. He calls us “my beloved”.
.
Jeremiah discuss with God, and even as he does, acknowledge that He is always right. He asks the hard questions, why everything works out for bad people, why people who don’t believe are safe and not in danger of bad things. God is the One who created them and upholds their life.
.
I think Gods answer is in the next paragraphs, where He says that in His time, He will punish the nations whom He today gives victory over Israel. He uses them for punishment and to make the people, His beloved, find Him, and later, He will punish them for their sins against His people. For they will be cruel.
.
I guess that if God was so small and easy to understand, that even I could do it, it wouldn’t be much reason to believe in Him after all.

Peace to you,
åslaug

Third Day of the Challenge

Reading:
Jeremiah 7-9
.
What it meant to me:
These chapter continues to describe how God has seen Israel’s betrayal in the way they live: gossiping about friends, false hearts, harsh words, violence, betrayal, lack of love towards friends and family and communiry and so on (quite like we do/I do), and God is so clearly disgusted about our behaviour. So heartbroken because we/they have left the path He has chosen for us because it is our best.
.
It’s told of a whole family, men, women and children, working together to sacrifice food to the heathen godess Astrarte. Reminds me of School of Astarte and “how to get in contact with your inner angels” and so on. And God’s response to this worship of her, is this: It is not bad because we insult Him, because we do not (7,9!) because we are ashaming ourselves.
.
Quite astonishing that God is this upset, on our behalf, but then again, He did sacrifice His life for us, so it shouldn’t (though still is) so surprizing that He cares for us. So many truths in the Bible is listed again and again, in new circumstances every time, from different angles, seen with different eyes, sometimes seemingly totally out of context. Just the same stuff, over and over again.
.
We should make a slogan: Get it in with a teaspoon: Read the Bible!
.
But to be serious; It’s a thing that is very very important for my understanding of the Word, I know, and it also there are more hidden depths of the Truth in all these new angles and contexts. I think I will learn very much from this, and change even more.
.
There’s a change in the wind.

Peace to you,
åslaug

Second Day of the Challenge

Reading:
Jeremiah 4-6

What it meant to me:
Here Jeremiah speak God’s word telling of the treath from North, what is to come (Jerusalem’s ruin and the people being taken captives in Babylonia) is told with great detail.
.
He also tell that God sees the people and their ways, he see how they choose to do evil and refuse to do good, as I often do.
.
He show them the right way, the way of doing good and reverence the Lord, but the people of Israel is stubborn and say “we don’t want to walk there”, just as I often do.
.
He tells them the truth, but they refuse to listen, just as I often do.
.
And even when He tells them of great dangers from the North (and yes, it’s quite scary) they won’t listen.
.
Then he tries to remove the evil from the good, but it’s not possible. Evil is a part of the people, they, in a way, really don’t want to come to Him and be rescued. So they are not.
.
The people praise Him with words, but behind their words are false hearts. And they try to fix the problems in their attitude in easy ways. Just as we do when we complain that there’s not enough forgiveness in the church, not enough love… What’s really missing is not enough hearts truly seeking the Lord, with all their hearts.

Peace to you,
åslaug

First Day of the Challenge

Reading:
Jeremiah, chapter 1-3
.
What it meant to me:

.
The first chapter tells of Jeremiah’s call from God, how He knew him before He created him in his mother’s womb. Jeremiah’s protests reminds me of my own, how it’s so easy to say to God;
.
I’m too young, too busy, I don’t know how to do this!!
.
And yet God reminds Jeremiah over and over again:
.
I will be with you, I will guard you, they will fight you, but they won’t win. Don’t be afraid of them!
.
In the next chapters Jermiah speak from God of Israels unfaithfulness, of the people’s love towards other gods, and how disgusting God thinks it. How impossible it is for Him to take her back as His beloved bride.
.
Yet, in the very last chapter, He turns His anger away and look with mercy upon her. And Israel understands her betrayal, and she is disgusted and ashamed from her behavior. And God receives her.
.
It reminds me of how unworthy I am of His love, of His mercy, His forgiveness. And how much in my life that compromises Him, how disgusting it is to Him, and how I still can repent and ask forgiveness.

Peace to all of you,

åslaug

Bible Reading Challenge

I have decided to do a one year Bible reading.

I got the challenge at Rachel's blog.

If you'd like to join it would be great, just visit the link above.

.

.

Here is what you have to do:

.
*Read the three chapters a day - after reading them, pray for at least 15 minutes, for anyone who needs prayers and for your heart to be opened, and whatever else you need.

.
*Post about what you read on your blog when you read your Bible, giving the Scripture you read and what it meant to you.

.
*Make a category for this on your blog to post your posts in.
.

*Announce the Challenge on your blog, using the icon and banner I made.

*Sign the Mr. Linky, which will be on every one of Rachel's Bible reading posts, with the link to

your post (So she can check it out!)

.

Her reasons for posting the challenge is as following:

.
*I know there was the 90-Day Bible Reading Challenge blog that Jenna set up for the people who wanted to read the Bible in 90 days, and some of you may have done that. But I don’t want to just zip through the Bible and not understand what I am reading. I tried reading the 12 chapters a day for the 90-Day Challenge, but I couldn’t keep up. I think 3 chapters a day gives you enough to think on and is enough to understand what you are reading.

.
*I plan on getting up early in the morning and doing my Bible Time then and my Prayer Time also. But you can do it before you go to bed or during the day. I would recommend that you do it in the morning when you get up. I feel more refreshed in the morning when the gray dawn is approaching and the birds are starting to sing. Don’t you? :)

.
*Well, I hope you join me. You don’t have to post about your Bible Reading everyday if you can’t, but that is one of the requirements. I would like to read over your posts is all and comment on them.

.

.

.

One of my favourite Scriptures is in 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 15-17 -

.
15And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
16All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
17That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

.
Some more Scriptures I like are about the wisdom that comes from God and reading His Word.

.
Psalm 111:10The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.

.
Proverbs 1:7The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

.
Proverbs 9:10The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.

.
To fear the Lord is to begin to have knowledge. We all need to remember that.
The Lord is greatly to be praised, as 1 Chronicles 16:25

.

“For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised: he also is to be feared above all gods,”

.

says. One way we can praise Him is by reading His Word and by acting on it. Jesus and Paul tell us how to act in the New Testament. You can find all about it if you go read the Word for yourself. :)
.

I hope you join the challenge. If you write in Norwegian, I'm sure that's no problem, it will anyway be so fun to share thoughts of what we read.

.

Peace to you all,

åslaug

**PS! (Almost) all text in this post is copied from Rachel's blog. I did not write it myself.