Quiet Time Musings

  The Interesting Truth about Ruth  In the situation of Ruth, There was nothing  wrong with Orpah going back to the land of her people at the direction of Naomi. In fact, she encouraged it. She was not judged by Naomi any more or any less for it.  But the thing is she did, and we never really hear much after that.  Ruth on the other hand - clung to her. ( When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her)  - demonstrating both loyalty and empathy for her plight. She knew  that she was not going to get married against following Naomi (or rather there was no "reward" for it). But she chose  to help the Mom -- motives we don't know.  === The Blessing of God does not necessarily remove the task at hand. I think its easy to think about God's blessing being a "be-all, end-all" or an extreme move that changes lives forever. Which - it can be. But sometimes, it may be as simple as finding favour and proceeding in the direction. When Boaz first met Ruth - H

 " ...wait for the gift, my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about..." Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to Christians. Or rather God, the Father promised to baptize Christians in the Holy Spirit. Why?  Because without the Holy Spirit, we don't have our down deposit, we don't have a councillor, Jesus redeemed us so that we may be with the Holy Spirit. " In the last days, God says,    I will pour out my Spirit on ALL people.  Your sons and daughters will prophesy,    your young men will see visions,  your old men will dream dreams..." God promises that he will pour out his Spirit on ALL people including us. And we will have great power to see visions, to prophesy. Why? For wisdom? For insight? To see and share with others... "And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord WILL BE SAVED ."  Have we ever considered how God felt? If God is the trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  And yet God, sent Jesus to die on the cross -- God at least

 When God does a miracle, he does it to bring glory to his name " The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.   They were all filled with awe and praised God..." The Kingdom of God's standards are different from worldly standards and its time to consider - which standards you wish to live by. For... " among those of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is LEAST in the kingdom of God is greater than he"  I believe this is speaking to John being greater in terms of human comparison that... as a prophet, there is no one greater than John.  But in the Kingdom, the least person, in other words, the servant is greater than the prophet who is renowned for having all this power.  So we should humble ourselves and take a position as a servant. Learn to live with God's standards instead of ours. Jesus also often refers to wisdom  rather than knowledge  because " Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up" Thu

  " Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it" In our world, we live in, it's build on distrust  and anonimity  and it goes hand-in-hand. When you see a beggar on the street - what happens? You think "Oh he could be faking it, to earn money." When asked for things... you tend to be like "ooo Can I trust him to bring it back?" As a result, we live in a world of mistrust. Yet the word encourages us - to entertain strangers which doing so needs to be more trusting. As the Bible says "Do not Judge"... "Do not throw your pearls to the pigs" and likewise if we judge them too quickly, we may not entertain them because we start to think of reasons why we can mistrust them, reasons why we shouldn't entertain them.  Rather as difficult as it sounds, but by the LORD's grace, we need to think the opposite "What are reasons to trust them?", How can we best enter

 "And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped." -> The Term "Subject to Bleeding" indicates she was " assigned" to bleeding. It was her "lot in life" so-to-speak. Especially since nobody could heal her.  And so the question should be asked - why did she come up behind Jesus with the intention to just touch the edge of his cloak?  It's likely because she heard that this man "Jesus" was healing people of all sicknesses and diseases -- He was quite literally going to heal a man's daughter. But she didn't ask the LORD to heal her, she didn't cry out to God.   On the contrary, her mindset was, he has so much power, I'm sure if I just touch the edge of his cloak - I'll be healed. She felt/saw and wanted that spiritual power flowing inside her. And she sought after it

  The word of the LORD will remain forever. And what he says will come to pass whether you like it or not. I think we quickly noted that in JEREMIAH 36 - as well as a lot of other places in the Old Testament, that God had a lot of "Punishments/Judgments" against Israel and warned them multiple times to turn away lest the disasters happen. Yet, its not the disasters that persuaded them unfortunately, in fact the response seemed rather ignorant of the warnings.  To be honest, in today's culture, people are pretty bad at "future sighting" and "risk management" - and this has been a historical trend. It's easy to focus on the "now" especially if you can see a "We can fix it later" path. and this "We can fix it later" path has led to things like Credit and Debt which plagues many Americans and even Governments today. So what does God do instead? He instead of threatening destruction which evidently had few merits throughout