July 30 2014

July 30 2014 Greetings My Friend, As I read the Bible today I was in the Psalms and it was talking about circumcision. I usually pause as I come to this word and ponder it. Being the ADHD person I am after I graduated high school I had a job as an insurance biller. I generally said or asked whatever popped into my brain to anyone in general. I was coding a man that came in with a problem with his recent circumcision. That was the first time I’d heard that word and so of course I wanted to know what it meant. The whole office faces looked at me in the strangest of ways. I heard a few pens drop. I was told to go home and ask my husband. Not to be put aside I did that and I found out the meaning. As I began to read the Bible and ran across this passage from time to time I started my thinking in one direction and slowly I found a deeper meaning to this. As I think further I start to see how God teaches at times for me at least. Learning spiritual truths is sometimes a very hard concept to grab. First God told Abraham to do the physical circumcision. Those first signs seem to point to a time when we truly begin to grasp what God is looking for. At first it is outward and as we grow we tend to grow inward. The outward signs seem to point to cutting away at the heart, not the actual muscle but at the spiritual heart. Each time I see this word these days I tend to think of “cutting away”. Somehow my desires are changing and those old things just don’t do it anymore so I am cutting away the “old me” and becoming a “new creation in Christ.” At times I see how God first taught the Israelites outward signs so that later we are able to go inward and deeper. For the longest time I wondered why it took the amount of years from Abraham to Jesus to begin the new covenant. Then a light bulb goes off. If I look at my life my faith journey has taken years to go to the point I am at now. We now have the Bible to read and it is strange how we have the history of faith in black and white for us today. It seems like each generation had to discover God and then go deeper and that tends to be each of our journeys as well. For years the Jewish people were entrenched in their ritual obedience to God. I like that ritualistic way myself. If I do A follow it up with B then C should be the natural outcome. That makes sense to me. For me though if each step does not follow in the right order or it gets messed up then I am highly uncomfortable. My faith journey started as a child. Each week my parents took me to church. I had no problem in believing but deeper than that I tended to stay away from. Believing seemed “good enough” I didn’t want to be different than the world. I wanted to be loved by man and by God. I went along this way and I wasn’t all that happy and all that liked. Then the bottom of my life fell out and at that point I began a deeper walk with the Lord. As I kept going to prayer and Bible study I found that some of my ways were more harmful than good. I admitted to God that these things were harming me and God began to take me on a journey of cleansing. Abraham believed God. Isaac was born when Abraham and Sarah were old, too old to conceive but God provided. Isaac had two sons and Jacob his son had 12. God at that point started telling His people that He “is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” So I read these things now and realize where my focus needs to be. As I center God more in my heart I tend to go to the Bible and prayer and stay focused on the God of the Bible. This helps me not to wander off track. As I see the Jewish people wander around in the desert, trust God and forget God I am able to apply these things to my own life. It makes sense now and my focus stays where it needs to be. God is the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit guides us. Then again all three are one. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet