Under His Wings

My class is finished.  I sent in my term paper last night.  The class was extended six weeks and Tim still didn’t get to cover all the things he wanted to cover.  The final exam was last week.  The class on worldviews also started last week, but I am just auditing that one.  Writing the paper was stressful for me.

Hopefully, I can get back to writing here soon.  Hannah has some friends coming tomorrow and I have to clean the house.  I also have my time at the center this afternoon.   I feel wiped out.

I’m currently working on a second post regarding covenant obligation.  But, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with projects I have going on right now.  I am trying to work on my term paper for the soteriology class, trying to knit and trying to learn a new way to eat.  I have been finding more and more things that have been triggering migraines since I did the candida cleanse in November and the list has grown to include beef and possibly nuts.  We have found that wheat is in many more things than you can ever imagine including spices, rice milk, and commercially canned soup.  At least I don’t have a migraine today!

And we are not getting any snow.  In southern Wisconsin they are getting a lot, up to more than a foot where my sister lives near Milwaukee.  Josh is in Wisconsin Dells with a couple of families from our fellowship group and they are staying an extra night because of the storm there.  Of course, this is nothing compared to the severe weather in Arkansas and Tennessee.  Right now I am thinking of Beth and her family and hoping that they are ok.

This afternoon is my time to volunteer at First Choice.  I pray that the Lord will give me compassion and sensitivity to the needs of the clients that come in.  I pray that I would have discernment and wisdom and a listening ear.  I pray that I would be on God’s agenda and not my own.

For His Name’s Sake.

The crisis pregnancy center where I volunteer has signed up with Good search website so that if you choose to use this search engine you can money will be contributed to our center.  You will find a link on Good Search to designate where the donations should go.  Our center is First Choice Pregnancy Resource Center (Stevens Point, WI).  If you decide to sign up and use Good Search I would appreciate you leaving a comment and letting me know.  We really appreciate it and the girls we are helping through crisis pregnancy are benefiting also.

For His Name’s Sake.

Yesterday I finished two major projects!  I finished my midterm exam for my class.  It was due by today.  I have mixed feelings about this because I feel perhaps I should have done a little more, but at the same time, I feel I did adequately.  I will have to wait for the results.  It is my first time taking a class online and so I will just have to see how it goes.

This is the second project I finished.

I made this pair of socks for Hannah.  This is the first pair of adult socks that I have knitted.  The first socks was ripped out an amazing amount of times until I found a video at the library which helped tremendously.  The video had an easier patter than the one I was using so I copied that one to use from now on.  I’m glad that you can’t see all the flaws in this pair.

What’s been going on since Hanukkah?  Well, we have had quite a bit of snow.  The first snow storm here yielded around 14 inches and then we got another 8-1o shortly after that.  Last week it rained here, but we didn’t get the thunderstorms and tornadoes that went south of us.  It snowed a couple of inches again last night so everything looks white again.  Hannah keeps telling me she hates winter, but I find it is better to just take each day as it comes and not complain.  I don’t tell her that.  Hopefully, it shows.

The beginning of the new year has been slow at the crisis pregnancy center.   Right before the holidays we were busy.  I did a couple of pregnancy tests on that were negative.  Unfortunately, I don’t think I convinced the girls to stop having s**.   They keep telling us to pray for more clients.  They are going to train more volunteers in the next couple of weeks.

We are currently learning about the covenants in the salvation class I am taking online.  The midterm was posted last night.   How would you answer these questions?

• Discuss the issue of mankind’s inability to know or to believe in God.
• Discuss the doctrine of election.
• How would you answer a person who argues that if God chooses who will be saved, then there is no need to evangelize anyone?

These are just part of the midterm. I have a week to answer the questions.  For my term paper I have chosen the topic, “The Doctrine of Salvation in the Emergent  Church”  so I have been reading a couple of books from  emergent writers which has been interesting.

I have made some inroads as far as knowing what my migraine triggers are.  I have found that  gluten is a major trigger and red dye.   I have been on a diet of no sugar, no dairy, and no wheat since just before Thanksgiving.  There have been weeks in this process that I have had a migraine every day and have been more able with the restricted diet to pinpoint the problem.  This is good news, but it also means learning news ways to cook.

I have also been doing a lot of knitting and have just finished one sock of a pair I am making for Hannah so when the other sock is finished I will take a picture to share with you all.

May the grace of Messiah be with you all in this new year.

For His Name’s Sake.

We had a wonderful time with our Bible study on Saturday evening as we celebrated the Feast of Dedication, Hanukkah.   I will only take a few moments to share some pictures here and later today I will share some thoughts on the holiday.

This is a picture of the children in our home fellowship group.  They comprise roughly half of our group.  Aren’t they a good looking bunch?!

We had some games for the children which included a treasure hunt.  Above you see the “Hebrews” team with the prize.  Unfortunately, they were not the first to find the prize this year.

The “Maccabees” were the first to find the prize!

During the week prior to our party, the children each made their own Hanukkiahs.  After a dinner of potato latkes, cheese, and donut holes the children watched a video of the story of the Maccabees while the adults watched a power point presentation of the history of Alexander the Great and the events surrounding Hanukkah.

Then we all gathered around the table with our Hanukkiahs, read the Scriptures about God bringing us from darkness into Light and lit our candles.

This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:5-7)

(My daughter took most of the photos.  I was holding the newest member of our group.  Little Matthew was born 6 weeks ago and is the sixth child born to our Bible study leader and his wife. )

Covenant obligation.  What is it and where does it begin?  These are the things I have been pondering and confused about in the last couple of weeks.  What is our obligation before God?  Most of the world lives like we do not have an obligation to Him, but that He is obligated to us.

In our Western mindset we tend to think in a linear thought.  We want things to be black and white, either this way or that way.   We don’t like the tension that is at times inevitable in both Biblical thinking, as well as, in relationships.  For example,  the arguments that have gone on through the ages regarding free will or predestination.  We want it to be one or the other, but Middle eastern thought would accept a kind of tension.  Remember the movie, “Fiddler on the Roof” where Tevye says, “On the other hand”.  One can look at both sides of the situation equally.

Growing up in Evangelicalism I was taught that we are saved and then we make Jesus our Lord.  The model that I always pictured was the Israelites coming out of Egypt……a linear progression.  God saved them from slavery, then He “baptized” them in the Red Sea, then He made a covenant with them at Sinai.  While this is a model of what happens to us spiritually, it is not quite as linear as this in reality.  When God does a work in us it is relational and not necessarily a nice and tidy, step by step account.  We can’t necessarily say that He will do this first and next He will do this, etc.  But,  we can say that He saves His own and brings them into covenant with Himself.

So I guess those who are saved are obligated to God since we are in covenant with Him.  But, what are our obligations?  What is the covenant?  Each covenant has to have at least three things: 1) the parties 2) the stipulations 3) the promises.  The covenant we, as Gentiles, are a part of would be the New Covenant which can be found in Jeremiah 31:31-33 “Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

Who are the parties to this covenant?  God and His people which are here stated as Israel and Judah (and in the same passage, all of Israel) In the gospels, Jesus said that His blood was part of the New Covenant and in the Apostolic Scriptures, Paul says that the Gentiles are grafted into Israel.  So this covenant includes us when we are In Messiah.

What are the promises?  In verse 34 God says that He will forgive their iniquity.  He also says that He would write the Torah on their heart and that they would be His people and He would be their God.

Writing the Torah on their heart would enable the people to keep the stipulations, or obligations of the covenant which they could not keep in the flesh.  God made this possible when the Holy Spirit was given at the Feast of Shavuot or Pentecost in Acts 2.   There are obligations to obey the covenant.  God gives us the ability to obey.  It is only by His faithfulness that we are able to walk in His ways.

This quote is from a forum I am on and it encouraged me so much when the woman wrote it that I want to share it with you in the hopes that it will encourage you also.   For His Name’s Sake.

“Ultimately, however, our faith is a gift from God, and likewise our faithfulness to Him is guaranteed by His faithfulness to complete His work in us.  Even though we must cooperate, if we are truly His we will do so, even though not always perfectly. Thus while I think such a distinction is very important to understand as clearly as possible, ultimately we must rest in His faithfulness to us, and we strive to be faithful to Him because He has given us the heart to do so. To God be the glory!”

We are in the fourth chapter of the book of Romans in my Sunday evening Bible study.   It has taken me quite some time to write about this because I have been mulling over the the concepts of this study for the past several weeks.   It is, at times, difficult to wrap my brain around Paul in his Hebraic context when my 21st century evangelical mind has been taught so differently.   Such is the case in the concept of righteousness.

“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1) God takes us from having no ability to seek him, from doing nothing good, and He does the work in me. “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit”(1 Peter 3:18)

What is Righteousness?  ” ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.” (Romans 4:3)  Abraham’s faith was credited to his account as righteousness.  Righteousness…….acting in accord with moral law, free from guilt or sin.  This is the idea that we have of righteousness and we think that it means that we have a ticket to heaven.  In one aspect righteousness does mean to act in accord with moral law; to be upright, to do what is right.

If we talk about the righteousness of God…….for example in Romans 1:16-17 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”  In the gospel, the good news of God sending Messiah as He promised, His doing what is right is revealed from faith to faith.  God’s righteousness is His doing what is right.  Faith is the idea of faithfulness.  God’s faithfulness and our faithfulness which He enables.

Another aspect of righteousness is in the context of a law court.  You see this especially in the book of Psalms where you read of the righteous and the wicked.  God will judge the righteous and the wicked.  The righteous will one day be vindicated.  The wicked will be punished.  “Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the wicked will perish. ” Psalm 1:5-6

One final way righteousness is used is covenant membership.  In the first few chapters of Romans, Paul is addressing Jews and Gentiles as to who should be covenant members of God’s household.  He is using Abraham as an example and the sign of circumcision which was the seal of the covenant.  By the time of the Second Temple period, in which Paul was writing, the Jewish elders had made circumcision a requirement to come into the covenant.  Paul is making a case that this doesn’t need to happen.  “Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.”(Genesis 15:6) “”And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be the sign of the covenant between Me and you.”(Genesis 17:11)  God declares Abraham righteous and then makes him a covenant partner.

Now, there are ramifications of being a covenant partner.  Covenant partners have obligations.  If you look back in Genesis 15 there are three things that God promised Abraham that he would do: give him land, give him descendants, and give him a seed that would bless the nations (Messiah) .  But, what were Abraham’s obligations to the covenant?  This is where my thoughts have been dwelling these last several days.  Since this post is getting long and I have to do final preparations on the two studies that I am leading today, I will come back to this topic of covenant obligation later.   Please share any thoughts that you have.

For His Name’s Sake.

I’ll just pop in here quickly to say that last week we had our First Choice banquet for the community.  We had around 380 people in attendance.  Hannah put together a slide show of the center with some of the girls’ testimony of why they like to come to the center.  Our Executive Director spoke and mentioned that in the 10 months that we have been open we have seen 35 clients.  Many of these girls keep coming back because they love the atmosphere and they feel welcome, they love the support they get and they enjoy being with other mom’s going through the same situation.