Journal for week 9

Sorry it took so long to get my journal for last week posted... Be sure to read the 'Did you know' post that I posted just a few minutes prior to this one!

- God placed the stars in the heavens and He names them and they proclaim His glory. It can be argued that the zodiac symbols tell the gospel!

- My prayer is that God would open my mind to understand the scriptures like He did for the two men on the road to Emmaus.

- God is real and God is speaking now!!!! He spoke tangibly and literally to the Israelites through the twelve stones on the high priest’s Ephod. He revealed His Shakina glory through the burning bush, the cloud and pillar of fire leading the Israelites. All of these show that God speaks literally and tangibly to His people, in History, and now! I also saw this demonstrated in the testimony of how God led Laurence and Peggy Epp to missions with Muslims. God spoke to each of them individually and made it clear that He was leading them to Yemen. This showed me that God still does reveal His will tangibly today! It made me realise that I need to trust that He will lead me. In fact, since He is I AM and is outside of time, He has already led me! It is not that He is outside of time as in that He is over time, but that He is now, He has no past or future, only ‘now’. Therefore, He has already accomplished His will in my life! I realise now that I can say, like Rahab, that He has given what He promised! He has saved me, He has redeemed me, He has accomplished His will in my life, and He has brought me into His presence (Ephesians 3:1, notice the past tense). And, when I am no longer in time, when I am with I AM, it will not be eternity in the sense of endless days but eternity in the sense of unlimited ‘now.’ Every moment will be filled and complete by the presence of God.

- Christ is better than angels, better than Moses, and better than a High Priest. This is because He is the Son of God, He is Creator, and He is to be served and worshiped. Because Jesus is the Son, He carries the attributes of God. This should be the same for me since I have been adopted as the ‘son’ of God and since Christ indwells me. Although Moses accomplished a lot, Jesus accomplished more, bringing all who will believe into eternal rest. This rest is a Sabbath rest, an active rest where everything that is done is done according to how God meant it to be done. A High Priest could only serve as a mediator between God and the people for a limited amount of time but Christ intercedes forever. He is the complete sacrifice and therefore I can be assured of my salvation.

- Jesus is also a better covenant, sanctuary, and sacrifice. He not only restored humanities relationship with God but renewed our inner nature! He made it possible for anyone to come into God’s presence and so I can come to God in confidence. Also, He is the final sacrifice. He only needed to die once.

- I need to be careful not to drift away from God. This can happen slowly, without me even noticing. I also need to be careful that my heart is not hardened and that I do not fall away from God because of ignorance or laziness.

- The law given to the Israelites was not meant to last forever. It was meant to show the character of God, to protect and instruct them. It was also to foreshadow the coming Messiah.

- The law cannot and never could bring salvation, it could only, like a mirror, reveal sin. Now, with the new covenant, our hearts are changed. It is internal as opposed to the external law.