Bible Study Chat 6

Fearnot wrote: That was absolutely wonderful!!!!!! Thank you soooooo very much!! It was so uplifting, so helpful to see the truth about our hard lives. I think I even felt joyful...imagine me feeling joyful! I am actually so glad I lived long enough to read that!!!

 

ol, you're such a sweet heart! I DO imagine you joyful Barbara. In fact, I know that what you felt was just the beginning of the amazing joy the Lord has for you hon. And that joy you felt is available to you all the time - right now, every day. Ask the Lord for His Joy, and ask Him daily to help you to remember the things you read that you need to know, that are good for you, and He will. Ask Him to remind you of those helpful things you've read when you most need to, and again, He will. That's one of the things the Lord loves to do for us and all we have to do is ask. So many of us do without and only because we haven't asked....

Whenever I read something that really inspires me, I'll copy it and read it over again, sometimes every day, until I've totally saturated my mind with it. It's kind of like good medicine for our minds, since it's one of those things the Lord tells us we're to think on. So that's why I do that. After my mind is overflowing with it, I'll then think of a few words to describe what the main theme of it is and write them down and stick them in places around the house where I spend the most time to remind myself of them. I leave them there until the next thing comes along like that and then change them. It's a great way to reprogram your mind with the things of God instead of the things of the world. Right now the words I've got laying around the house are "Be content and thankful always".

I'm so glad that it was helpful to you though hon. You're such a wonderful person and I know the Lord was thrilled that you felt His joy from it!

Fearnot wrote: 

I read most of it to my husband yesterday and he thought it was great too!
So I am going to re-read it.....joy now, but even more to look forward to, joy evermore, ever growing, ever delightful. Wow!

Go for it! God bless you both!

 

jackswife wrote:

I wish I could remember where, but I recently heard that Job is the oldest book in the Bible. If so to me it becomes even a more significant book to study because it means that mankind (or at least someone) was wrestling with the question of suffering and why God allows it before they felt the need to record anything else- including the Creation story.
Nobody much likes to suffer. I sure don't. But God in His wisdom sometimes understands that we often learn more down in the Valley than we do from the Mountain Top. Everyone- saved and unsaved, faithful or not- have trials in this life. It's what we do with those trials- turn to Him or turn bitter- that shape our lives the most

Eva wrote:  Thank you Cindy! This thread is a Christmas gift for me! You know I have studied Job on my own some time ago. Now its time to have all my questions answered :) Thank you

 

You're welcome!

I've just got to share this piece about redemption that I'm reading in another book with you guys tonight:

Redemption is about faith. It's about trusting that God can and will do all He says He can and will do.

Redemption doesn't mean you stand in triumph over your circumstances. And it doesn't mean that the "new" makes you forget about everything that happened in the "old" (although in heaven someday these light and momentary afflictions will pale in comparison). Redemption is about the confidence that God is bringing good out of the bad, prosperity out of desolation. God's not interested in evening things out; He's interested in taking those things which are so painful, earth-shattering, and devastating and turning them into marks of His goodness and kindness.

Moses was a shepherd for forty years, but God redeemed his experience in the desert. He gained a knowledge of the land that would be vital because he spent the next forty years leading the children of Israel through the same desert. David spent his childhood learning how to defend sheep with meager weapons. God redeemed his defensive skills as he shepherded the people of Israel, slaying giants with small stones. Luke had an obsessively ordered and detailed mind, but God redeemed it, enabling him to record in a logical way the ministry of Christ and the early church. Paul spent years studying and memorizing the Torah, and God redeemed that knowledge as he became an apologist in the midst of Jews and Gentiles alike.

We often think God is in the business of swooping down and plucking us out of our circumstances. He rescues us to be sure—from sin and death and hopelessness. But His rescue incorporates those sad, tragic, devastating circumstances we want, in the moment, to see removed. In redemption God takes the shattered blocks of our lives and slowly, methodically, but faithfully, puts them back together in a way we couldn't have imagined at first. In the end there is something new and different, and yet it's made up of those same pieces of life that once looked so broken on the ground.

"You planned evil against me; God planned it for good" (Gen. 50:20). That's what we are confident of when we believe in redemption. We are confident that God is always at work, in big and small ways. He's working inside of cancer. Inside job loss. Inside suffering of all kinds. God is at work, constantly redeeming. He's taking the crumbling remnants of our lives and putting them back together.

Kelley, M. (2012). Wednesdays were pretty normal: A boy, cancer, and god.