June
What Did You Learn?
by Cynthia Saladin
If I asked you what action verb is associated with the three holy day seasons, what would you say? For the Days of Unleavened Bread, we are to eat unleavened bread for seven days. It’s not about getting leaven out - that should already have been done before the holy days start! It’s about taking in of Jesus Christ, eating the unleavened bread which represents living our lives God’s way, subsisting on His word, seeking Life because that’s what truly sustains us. Eating should be the obvious verb to focus on - it’s inherent in the name of the Feast.
For the Feast of Tabernacles, the action verb is again in the name: we are to dwell in temporary dwellings, tents, tabernacles, for seven days. It reminds us that it is God who brought us out of slavery to sin. He is our Redeemer and Savior. Furthermore, we’re not to get too comfortable in this world. Don’t get too settled because, if we’ve been redeemed and we belong to God, then this world is not our home. We’re looking for God’s kingdom. We’re aliens and strangers in this land. We want to dwell in Christ. We want to walk in His ways. We want to be found in Him always.
So what about the Feast of Weeks? Pentecost? Again the verb is in the name. We are to count. And as we count for seven complete weeks - during the spring harvest - we should again see Jesus Christ and our relationship with Him. It is in
participating in God’s holy days that we learn more about Him and who we are in Christ.
So what did you learn as you have been counting these past few weeks?
It’s really to get busy with the harvest, or life, or stuff, and neglect to count every day. Quick! Without counting on your fingers from last sabbath, what day of the count is it?
The days can pass by very quickly. Suddenly you’re at Pentecost and you find yourself wondering where all the days went! If you didn’t make a conscious effort to number the days, they are gone in the blink of an eye! And so isn’t it the same way with our lives. If we don’t make a conscious effort to make each day count, to intentionally choose those things which draw us closer to God, our days can slip by like sand through our fingers - and we have nothing to show for it.
The harvest is hard. Just as the plants have to be weeded, watered, and cared for - if you want a good harvest - we need to be diligent in our own lives. We need to weed out the habits and choices which are choking out our fruitfulness to God. We need to water our relationship with God with prayer, Bible study, meditation, fellowship with like believers. We need to intentionally care for our pursuit of holiness. Otherwise, we will have missed the opportunity to be fruitful for our God.
Just because the days are hard or discouraging or exhausting, we can’t give up. We have a goal in mind, in sight! As Winston Churchill adjured: Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. Or as the seven churches of Revelation were similarly adjured: to him who overcomes . . . We overcome obstacles. We don’t doubt God’s goodness. We don’t rely on our own strength. We don’t expect life to be too easy. We are in preparation for service in God’s kingdom and we must persevere regardless of the obstacles and difficulties before us.
God expects you to rest. Even in the midst of the harvest, even when you have more things to do than you can shake a stick at, God expects you to observe the Sabbath. It is a gift to you from your Heavenly Father - to rest physically from your labor, to remember to rest in Him for your strength, to be exhorted and encouraged by your church family. The sabbath is not optional. It is not a lesser commandment. It is one of God’s Ten Commandments. And God expects you to love this gift that He has created for you each week.
Life rarely goes as planned. When you’re in the midst of the harvest, one of the busiest seasons of the year, it sometimes feels like you have more to do than can possibly get done. And! You may plan to do one thing, but, as you begin, you find two things
that have to be done first. It’s easy to get frustrated and try to work faster. That doesn’t usually work well. Remember Ziggy? My American lit teacher in high school had a poster of Ziggy that said, “The faster I go the behinder I get.” Just keep calm and carry on. The unplanned detours of life are not a surprise to God. So put your trust in Him and do the next thing.
Never forget the value of a well-timed word and an expression of gratitude. When life gets busy and we get frazzled, we tend to focus on the next thing we need to do, sometimes forgetting that everyone else is experiencing a similar state of frazzled-ness. AT&T’s slogan is very important: reach out and touch someone. Let the people around you know how much you appreciate them - not just their efforts - but them, as fellow travelers in the Way. We could all take a page from Barnabas’ play book and be a son of encouragement to those around us. It can make a huge difference.
We have just a few days left before the Day of Pentecost will have fully come. I hope you’re counting. I hope you’re evaluating how you live each day to the glory of our Great God. I hope you have fruit to harvest for Him. I wonder what you’ve been learning. Wanna share?
The reason we have 17,000 pages in our law books is because we cannot follow 10 lines on a tablet made of stone. ~Ravi Zacharias
Yes, There is Good News!
- By Bill Rollins
In October 2016, our family kept the Feast of Tabernacles in St. George, UT. I was privileged to give two messages: “What is God Worth to You?” and “Do You Have Any Zeal?”
So, let me pose that same question here, first; what is God worth to you? Have you ever pondered that question? He is the Creator of all things. He is the one who provides all things. He is so beneficent that He gives good gifts to both the righteous and the unrighteous. The sun shines on the Christian and the non-Christian, the Godly and the atheist, the diligent and the slothful. As the song says, “God is good, all the time!”
One of our side trips was to Zion National Park. I am sure that some of you have visited that awesome park. To travel through that canyon with shear cliffs rising a couple of thousand feet on both sides is pretty awe-inspiring. But to see the beauty of the landscape and not recognize the One who created the landscape is to miss out on a great opportunity to really worship God.
What does the word “worship” mean? It is a contraction of two words , “worth-ship.” It is to consciously recognize the worth of God and so revere Him and all that He is. Worship can take place sitting by a rushing stream with mountains all around. It can occur while one sits under a night sky with thousands of stars twinkling overhead. It can happen while one looks out over the rolling hills of Iowa with a seemingly endless stretch of corn and soybeans waiting to be harvested.
I could go on and on and I am sure you could add many more examples of the greatness of our God.
So, is God worthy of your time? Do you greet Him every morning in prayer? Do you say good night to Him every evening before bed? God is good to us and He loves us very much. Are you a parent? If you are, do you enjoy the times when your children sit and just visit with you? For me, those times are a blessing - will you be a blessing to your Heavenly Father? What is God worth to you?
Can we bless our Heavenly Father? Will He be blessed by us? And if we can, will that blessing of ours turn out to be something we might call “good news?”
In Psalm 103 we read, “Bless the Lord O my soul, all that is in me bless His holy name.” This is how Psalm begins and it ends with the words, “Bless the Lord, O you, His holy angels ... Bless the Lord all His hosts ... Bless the Lord all His works ... Bless the Lord O my soul.” So, in answer to my first question, we can bless God!
The word “bless” comes from the Hebrew word “barak,” which literally means to “bend the knee, to kneel, and by implication to bless God.”
It is the very same word that is used back in Genesis 1:27-28, “So God created man in His own image ... male and female He created them ... and God blessed them ...”
When God started to work with Abram (later called Abraham) in Genesis 12: 2-3, He said, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you ... and all peoples on Earth will be blessed through you.” God is the originator of life and so He is the originator of blessings. But as we saw, these blessings may be reciprocal in that when we are blessed by God, we are to kneel before Him and bless Him with reverence and awe.
Have you ever been blessed by God, the Creator and Sustainer of life? The question is really ludicrous. The answer is an emphatic yes! The fact that you have life is the first blessing. The fact that your life is sustained by oxygen, by water, by food in abundance is a blessing that some of us may take for granted. But where should we stop in enumerating the many blessings we receive from our Heavenly Father? We have five senses that connect us with the world around us. We have a super computer the size of a small melon within our skulls that processes all the information our senses feed it. But perhaps most of all, we have “the breath of life” from our God within us which enables us to reason. Yes, of all the creatures on the Earth, we are the only ones who can come to truly know the God who created all things. And in His love for us, He even allows us to try and reason Him away. He does not crush the non-believer; God feeds all His creation. He “so loves the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
“Bless the Lord O my soul.” Amen.
The scripture says that God “Causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”(Matthew 5:45) I guess this is somewhat obvious considering there are many out there who do not believe in God, and yet their fields produce crops in abundance. They have food enough to eat. Perhaps as humans who inhabit our planet, this might seem somewhat counterintuitive. But God lets us know that He is not as we are! “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the Earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts,” (Isaiah 55:9). I believe that says it quite nicely!
God is God. He is perfect. And so God says to us, “I have set a high bar for you to attain to.” It is not easy to love your enemies, and to pray for them. Be perfect as God is perfect. God knows what he is talking about. There is another place where God talks about wanting to attain perfection - it is found in Matthew 19, where a rich young man wanted to know what he must do to attain eternal life. Jesus, understanding the man and knowing where his heart was, told him to obey the commandments. The man acknowledged he had kept them and wish to know where he lacked. Jesus told him directly, “If you want to be perfect, go sell all your possessions and give to the poor.” Basically Jesus told the man to separate himself from all that was important to him. And so the man went away sad, because he had great wealth.
I believe we all know there isn’t anything we can do to get eternal life; it is the free gift form God for those who believe. So what was Jesus getting at by telling this man these things? I think Jesus was telling the man that he believed in his wealth more than he believed in God. The man had ‘good news” staring him in the face, literally, the good news of eternal life. But all he could see was his fortune.
Is there something sitting before your eyes that keeps you from seeing your Savior? Or perhaps some wealth you are having a hard time parting with? There is a song I enjoy seeing where in the chorus says, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the thing of Earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.” Try doing that, and perfection may be just around the corner. Jesus bids you to come to Him.
Until next time, there is good news!
"To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is unforgivable.” - Beethoven
What Did You Learn?
by Cynthia Saladin
If I asked you what action verb is associated with the three holy day seasons, what would you say? For the Days of Unleavened Bread, we are to eat unleavened bread for seven days. It’s not about getting leaven out - that should already have been done before the holy days start! It’s about taking in of Jesus Christ, eating the unleavened bread which represents living our lives God’s way, subsisting on His word, seeking Life because that’s what truly sustains us. Eating should be the obvious verb to focus on - it’s inherent in the name of the Feast.
For the Feast of Tabernacles, the action verb is again in the name: we are to dwell in temporary dwellings, tents, tabernacles, for seven days. It reminds us that it is God who brought us out of slavery to sin. He is our Redeemer and Savior. Furthermore, we’re not to get too comfortable in this world. Don’t get too settled because, if we’ve been redeemed and we belong to God, then this world is not our home. We’re looking for God’s kingdom. We’re aliens and strangers in this land. We want to dwell in Christ. We want to walk in His ways. We want to be found in Him always.
So what about the Feast of Weeks? Pentecost? Again the verb is in the name. We are to count. And as we count for seven complete weeks - during the spring harvest - we should again see Jesus Christ and our relationship with Him. It is in
participating in God’s holy days that we learn more about Him and who we are in Christ.
So what did you learn as you have been counting these past few weeks?
It’s really to get busy with the harvest, or life, or stuff, and neglect to count every day. Quick! Without counting on your fingers from last sabbath, what day of the count is it?
The days can pass by very quickly. Suddenly you’re at Pentecost and you find yourself wondering where all the days went! If you didn’t make a conscious effort to number the days, they are gone in the blink of an eye! And so isn’t it the same way with our lives. If we don’t make a conscious effort to make each day count, to intentionally choose those things which draw us closer to God, our days can slip by like sand through our fingers - and we have nothing to show for it.
The harvest is hard. Just as the plants have to be weeded, watered, and cared for - if you want a good harvest - we need to be diligent in our own lives. We need to weed out the habits and choices which are choking out our fruitfulness to God. We need to water our relationship with God with prayer, Bible study, meditation, fellowship with like believers. We need to intentionally care for our pursuit of holiness. Otherwise, we will have missed the opportunity to be fruitful for our God.
Just because the days are hard or discouraging or exhausting, we can’t give up. We have a goal in mind, in sight! As Winston Churchill adjured: Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. Or as the seven churches of Revelation were similarly adjured: to him who overcomes . . . We overcome obstacles. We don’t doubt God’s goodness. We don’t rely on our own strength. We don’t expect life to be too easy. We are in preparation for service in God’s kingdom and we must persevere regardless of the obstacles and difficulties before us.
God expects you to rest. Even in the midst of the harvest, even when you have more things to do than you can shake a stick at, God expects you to observe the Sabbath. It is a gift to you from your Heavenly Father - to rest physically from your labor, to remember to rest in Him for your strength, to be exhorted and encouraged by your church family. The sabbath is not optional. It is not a lesser commandment. It is one of God’s Ten Commandments. And God expects you to love this gift that He has created for you each week.
Life rarely goes as planned. When you’re in the midst of the harvest, one of the busiest seasons of the year, it sometimes feels like you have more to do than can possibly get done. And! You may plan to do one thing, but, as you begin, you find two things
that have to be done first. It’s easy to get frustrated and try to work faster. That doesn’t usually work well. Remember Ziggy? My American lit teacher in high school had a poster of Ziggy that said, “The faster I go the behinder I get.” Just keep calm and carry on. The unplanned detours of life are not a surprise to God. So put your trust in Him and do the next thing.
Never forget the value of a well-timed word and an expression of gratitude. When life gets busy and we get frazzled, we tend to focus on the next thing we need to do, sometimes forgetting that everyone else is experiencing a similar state of frazzled-ness. AT&T’s slogan is very important: reach out and touch someone. Let the people around you know how much you appreciate them - not just their efforts - but them, as fellow travelers in the Way. We could all take a page from Barnabas’ play book and be a son of encouragement to those around us. It can make a huge difference.
We have just a few days left before the Day of Pentecost will have fully come. I hope you’re counting. I hope you’re evaluating how you live each day to the glory of our Great God. I hope you have fruit to harvest for Him. I wonder what you’ve been learning. Wanna share?
The reason we have 17,000 pages in our law books is because we cannot follow 10 lines on a tablet made of stone. ~Ravi Zacharias
Yes, There is Good News!
- By Bill Rollins
In October 2016, our family kept the Feast of Tabernacles in St. George, UT. I was privileged to give two messages: “What is God Worth to You?” and “Do You Have Any Zeal?”
So, let me pose that same question here, first; what is God worth to you? Have you ever pondered that question? He is the Creator of all things. He is the one who provides all things. He is so beneficent that He gives good gifts to both the righteous and the unrighteous. The sun shines on the Christian and the non-Christian, the Godly and the atheist, the diligent and the slothful. As the song says, “God is good, all the time!”
One of our side trips was to Zion National Park. I am sure that some of you have visited that awesome park. To travel through that canyon with shear cliffs rising a couple of thousand feet on both sides is pretty awe-inspiring. But to see the beauty of the landscape and not recognize the One who created the landscape is to miss out on a great opportunity to really worship God.
What does the word “worship” mean? It is a contraction of two words , “worth-ship.” It is to consciously recognize the worth of God and so revere Him and all that He is. Worship can take place sitting by a rushing stream with mountains all around. It can occur while one sits under a night sky with thousands of stars twinkling overhead. It can happen while one looks out over the rolling hills of Iowa with a seemingly endless stretch of corn and soybeans waiting to be harvested.
I could go on and on and I am sure you could add many more examples of the greatness of our God.
So, is God worthy of your time? Do you greet Him every morning in prayer? Do you say good night to Him every evening before bed? God is good to us and He loves us very much. Are you a parent? If you are, do you enjoy the times when your children sit and just visit with you? For me, those times are a blessing - will you be a blessing to your Heavenly Father? What is God worth to you?
Can we bless our Heavenly Father? Will He be blessed by us? And if we can, will that blessing of ours turn out to be something we might call “good news?”
In Psalm 103 we read, “Bless the Lord O my soul, all that is in me bless His holy name.” This is how Psalm begins and it ends with the words, “Bless the Lord, O you, His holy angels ... Bless the Lord all His hosts ... Bless the Lord all His works ... Bless the Lord O my soul.” So, in answer to my first question, we can bless God!
The word “bless” comes from the Hebrew word “barak,” which literally means to “bend the knee, to kneel, and by implication to bless God.”
It is the very same word that is used back in Genesis 1:27-28, “So God created man in His own image ... male and female He created them ... and God blessed them ...”
When God started to work with Abram (later called Abraham) in Genesis 12: 2-3, He said, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you ... and all peoples on Earth will be blessed through you.” God is the originator of life and so He is the originator of blessings. But as we saw, these blessings may be reciprocal in that when we are blessed by God, we are to kneel before Him and bless Him with reverence and awe.
Have you ever been blessed by God, the Creator and Sustainer of life? The question is really ludicrous. The answer is an emphatic yes! The fact that you have life is the first blessing. The fact that your life is sustained by oxygen, by water, by food in abundance is a blessing that some of us may take for granted. But where should we stop in enumerating the many blessings we receive from our Heavenly Father? We have five senses that connect us with the world around us. We have a super computer the size of a small melon within our skulls that processes all the information our senses feed it. But perhaps most of all, we have “the breath of life” from our God within us which enables us to reason. Yes, of all the creatures on the Earth, we are the only ones who can come to truly know the God who created all things. And in His love for us, He even allows us to try and reason Him away. He does not crush the non-believer; God feeds all His creation. He “so loves the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
“Bless the Lord O my soul.” Amen.
The scripture says that God “Causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”(Matthew 5:45) I guess this is somewhat obvious considering there are many out there who do not believe in God, and yet their fields produce crops in abundance. They have food enough to eat. Perhaps as humans who inhabit our planet, this might seem somewhat counterintuitive. But God lets us know that He is not as we are! “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the Earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts,” (Isaiah 55:9). I believe that says it quite nicely!
God is God. He is perfect. And so God says to us, “I have set a high bar for you to attain to.” It is not easy to love your enemies, and to pray for them. Be perfect as God is perfect. God knows what he is talking about. There is another place where God talks about wanting to attain perfection - it is found in Matthew 19, where a rich young man wanted to know what he must do to attain eternal life. Jesus, understanding the man and knowing where his heart was, told him to obey the commandments. The man acknowledged he had kept them and wish to know where he lacked. Jesus told him directly, “If you want to be perfect, go sell all your possessions and give to the poor.” Basically Jesus told the man to separate himself from all that was important to him. And so the man went away sad, because he had great wealth.
I believe we all know there isn’t anything we can do to get eternal life; it is the free gift form God for those who believe. So what was Jesus getting at by telling this man these things? I think Jesus was telling the man that he believed in his wealth more than he believed in God. The man had ‘good news” staring him in the face, literally, the good news of eternal life. But all he could see was his fortune.
Is there something sitting before your eyes that keeps you from seeing your Savior? Or perhaps some wealth you are having a hard time parting with? There is a song I enjoy seeing where in the chorus says, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the thing of Earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.” Try doing that, and perfection may be just around the corner. Jesus bids you to come to Him.
Until next time, there is good news!
"To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is unforgivable.” - Beethoven
