March 5 2015

March 5 2015

Greetings My Friend

Going through all the laws in the OT can be daunting and then the specific directions for building the Tent of Meeting, the Temple, even the Ark can boggle my mind. The directions are long and tedious and probably necessary. Listening to the passages as I read is opening my thoughts as to how we learn.

I understand that each class in the fall goes over what they learned the previous year since a lot may have been forgotten over the summer. There is something about repetition that helps us to absorb and keep the information.

As I read/hear these passages again this year I am reminded that God teaches His people to remember. I look at the Israelites again with new eyes. God performed great miracles and a short time later they forgot what God had done. By teaching His people to praise Him, to recall the times God provided in the past they began to trust God in the present struggle.

I find this is true of my faith journey as well. I need to be taught the same lesson over and over until I have it planted deep in my heart. God wants all of “me” and the only way I will know how to do this is by redoing things until I get it.

I find that the attention to detail is important. I learn how I was created, why I was created one detail at a time. In the NT I hear Jesus teach “clean the inside of the cup, not only the outside of the cup” and I learn to not act but to be true through and through.

The more I read these intimidating passages I also see God’s patience and the opportunity to be forgiven. I see I don’t have to be perfect but to try with all my heart. I learn to ask to be forgiven for in confessing I am understanding that what I was doing, thinking wasn’t good for me or “I agree with God”.

For a few years now I have found these long detailed passages hard to read through and more often than not I skimmed them. In listening and reading I am hearing more and I am learning deeper. By listening I can’t gloss over these passages.

Even with these intimidating long passages I find lessons waiting for me to unfold. I learn again that God isn’t expecting perfection from the start of our journey. He is teaching me to check out where my heart is focused and how to focus it on Him which in turn begins to change me.

God is perfecting me step by step and day by day and that is okay. Today I find I am into something unhealthy for me and when I turn around to look a few years later I no longer struggle with that in fact I’ve learned a whole lot about walking away from those things that harm me. I also know I am not done being perfected and in a few years I will marvel at the look back.

I also learn to focus on my walk and quit comparing my walk to another person’s walk. A minister taught one time “stop the sin of comparison” and he was right.

May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you.

Love

Janet