And you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.
Revelation 5:10 ESV
Biology was and is my favorite subject. I loved learning about the different plants, animals, cells, and fungi in the world, especially how we as humans fit into it all. This world belongs to our Creator and everything in it He made it with a purpose—except mosquitos….I’m not sure of their purpose other than to feed bats and dragonflies…but that’s another subject.
As a biologist, I have taught many classes on the six different kingdoms of biology. Starting from the smallest single-cell kingdoms like Archaebacteria and Eubacteria up to the largest multi-celled kingdoms of plants and animals—from the mosquito to the Blue whale. These kingdoms represent every life form on this planet.
The largest is the animal kingdom, which includes humans.
Amongst all the kingdoms we learn about, the most important one we will ever know is God’s. He created His Kingdom, and appointed Jesus as King, to represent and usher all humans into it.
Because we can’t see this awesome place God has for us, many people decide to build their own out of their dissatisfaction.
One way the enemy entices us is through our profession. We may be a secular business, a Christian ministry, or even an author—trying to build a personal kingdom of followers to buy our products and embrace our vision. Our kingdom and brand adopt our name.
You are the customer. Everyone we know—from people we worship with to friends and family becomes potential clients and/or purchasers.
We become the king of our kingdom.
This is what others teach us to do.
Now, I’m not saying we are trying to usurp God’s Kingdom and authority. But, it is easy to get caught up in our own kingdom-building.
Even the Pharisees had problems with this. They weren’t all bad either. We see in Luke 17:20:
Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.
In Matthew 5, we learn what type of people make up His kingdom.
The Poor in Spirit
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
The phrase Blessed are translates from the Hebrew as O the blessednessof or The gladness of. This is not a condition of the person who is poor in spirit, but the reality of the person.
This represents a person in absolute need of God to take care of them. This is humility at its best.
A person who is poor in spirit is the opposite of worldly thinking—independent, proud, with an “I have it all-I need nothing” attitude.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus begins with the poor in spirit in the Beatitudes?
Without the knowledge and understanding that we are nothing more than helpless beggars, we will never be peacemakers, we will never mourn, never be humble, or hunger and thirst for His righteousness….get the picture?
But that is only in this world. In the Heavenly places, God will esteem the humble, poor in spirit, peacemakers, persecuted, and the compassionate. God loves these traits in us.
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
James 4:10
O the gladness of being poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Matt. 5:3
It is a blessing as well as a state of gladness to recognize we are poor in spirit. We will have the Kingdom of Heaven living within us until the day Jesus takes us to Heaven to live with Him forever!
Happy New Year! 2020 was a rough year, let’s expect 2021 to be better–Lord willing, it will be.
It has been a while since I have been on my blog. So many things have been going on.
My publisher released my Bible study, Jewels of Hebrews, December 1, 2020. It is available on Amazon, Walmart.com, and Barnes & Noble as a paperback or Ebook. I am so excited this labor of love is finally available to you.
Both my mom and aunt battle dementia and we moved them out of their homes. They had a hard time moving but, they’re thriving now and enjoying the places they are living. If you have been there with a parent, then you know the peace of mind that comes with knowing your loved one can’t get hurt from being alone and confused.
A New Word
Like a lot of people I know, I asked the Lord for a word this year. I haven’t done that before but decided to ask and wait for His reply. I felt like He gave me the word “merciful.” I immediately asked for a different word like “grateful” :).
The word merciful slightly scared me.
Why?
Because I thought that would mean the Lord wants me to be merciful towards people who might cause bad things to happen to me or my family in the coming year. But, as I thought more on the word, I realized the mercy of the Lord when I mess up. So, I decided to “keep” my word and look at it from the Lord’s point of view.
If He can be merciful to me when I mess up–and I really do mess up at times–then I can be merciful when others do as well.
I found this verse on the Lord’s mercy:
The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.
Psalm 145:8-9
Delighting in the Fear of the LORD
The Lord also has me reading the book of Isaiah. I started in December, reading each chapter a couple of times and thinking about how it relates to me and what God wants me to learn from it.
A few days ago, I read chapter eleven and the Lord impressed on me the words of the first part of Isaiah 11:3. It says,
And His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what His eyes see, or decide disputes by what His ears hear.
Isaiah 11:3
The verses before this are referring to the Messiah as a shoot from the stump of Jesse.
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
As I read this I stopped and reread, “…His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.” This verse is speaking of the Messiah’s delight, but I wanted that to be my prayer for the year. I want my delight to be in the fear of the Lord. So, I asked the Lord to help me make that my motivation and the place of my strength.
I did a little research to find out exactly what I was praying for.
Delight
The first word search I did was on “delight.” Hebrew often has meanings that we just can’t fully express in English. They have root words, too. Although not exactly like ours.
Hebrew root words use three consonants separated by a period – like B.C.D. When you insert the vowels you make different words. But because these words come from the same root it connects their meanings.
For instance, both “amen” and “faithful” have the same root word (Reading right to left):
Add different vowels and you have two different words.
This brings me to “delight.” The Hebrew comes from the same Hebrew root as “smell.” So, delight=smell – delightful, right?
If you go back to the rest of Isaiah 11:3, you find it says, “He shall not judge by what His eyes see, or decide disputes by what His ears hear. (Emphasis mine.)
Hebrew likes to play with words. It happens all the time in the Bible which when translated by the Greeks, puzzled them. That’s why some phrases in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, are hard to understand.
Have you ever heard the expression about a dog or other animal being able to “Smell fear?” But this kind of fear has a delightful scent. One scholar spoke of it as “Fear of Jehovah is fragrant to Him.” Not His own fear of the LORD, but the fear He smells in others for the LORD.
Others say instead of using His sense of sight and hearing to judge, the Messiah will use His sense of smell to judge. Kind of like, “I can smell a rat” type of thing.
Respect or Fear
My second word search was on “fear.” Most of us have read this word over and over or heard it explained by our pastors.
Fear means, “pertaining to respect toward a superior” as well as “being afraid”.
(James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Hebrew (Old Testament) (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997)).
I think there should be a combination of both these meanings in our fear of the LORD. (The word for the Lord in this verse is YHWH or Yehovah.)
The Creator of EVERYTHING deserves all our respect, but we should also have a healthy fear of God.
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Matthew 10:28
So, my prayer is both to delight in the fear of my God, Yehovah–the Maker of all things, and to delight in the fragrant aroma of YOUR fear of the LORD as well.
You may have heard “Fear not!” is said 365 times in the Bible–one for every day of the year.
Fear is a stronghold and fear has a voice we can listen to most of our lives.
A stronghold is like an iceberg–the sea of our thoughts and emotions hides the majority. The ten percent we show to those around us is no indication of its depth and size.
Fear talks to us and for us, too! I hear the fear in people when they say things like, “I’m not doing that!”, “I can’t do it!”, or “I won’t go there!”
Freedom From Fear
God does not want us to live our lives in fear. He wants us to be free!
For God did not give us a spirit of fear,
but of power and of love and a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7
Why does this verse mention a sound mind? Because fear causes us to imagine everything bad that can happen to us. It messes with our thoughts and can make us irrational.
God gave us the power over fear through the Holy Spirit and the saving power of His blood. Jesus’ blood releases us from the bondage strongholds keep us in.
I admit, I have my share of strongholds. I am learning to be free by the truth of God’s Word and His Holy Spirit, reminding me of the lies of the deceiver.
Satan desires to keep us captive. But we need to come out of our cells.
Satan desires to keep us captive. But we need to come out of our cell. #ThisSideofHeaven #Fear #Getoutofthatcell
[Jesus will] deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.
Hebrews 2:15 ESV
No Fear in Love
Did you know Fear has friends? Their names are Control and Distrust. All three usually go together. Fear loves to control everyone and everything around it.
Fear does not trust.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
1 John 4:18 ESV
In order for us to truly love, we must not fear. Fear equals distrust. Love is trusting.
Trusting God for answers, for wisdom, for healing. for light in our darkness and confusion. When we trust God, we show how much we love Him.
Of course, I am not saying we have to trust everyone, and if we don’t we have fear. That’s not what I mean.
In order for us to truly love, we must not fear. #ThisSideofHeaven #Fear #Love
When we think we are the only ones we can depend on or the only ones who have the answers, we are not trusting God. Our Father puts people into our lives to teach us.
We must be teachable. God lets nothing go to waste. If He can’t use it for our good, then it won’t happen.
Trust God with your day-to-day life–with your fears–your desire to control–and your distrust.
I am so excited, and I wanted to share it with all of you who have not seen my FB page!
I wrote about my Bible study, The Jewels of Hebrews, last week in the post called Gift of Gab. Mt. Zion Ridge Press will publish it in December 2020. Yay!!
It is definitely a huge praise and an answer to prayer! I am so thankful the Lord has allowed this to happen and I look forward to how He uses it.
Who is like you, LORD God Almighty? You, LORD, are mighty, and your faithfulness surrounds you.
Psalm 89:8 ESV
He is faithful. So many times, I nearly gave up. So many times, I figured writing wasn’t for me….
The naysayers beckoned me to listen to them, too.
Satan’s voice was loud, but God’s was louder. He kept me on the right track and at the very moment I needed it, I received encouragement from someone who read my blog, or one of my devotionals, or a fellow writer or Word Weaver.
I remember a time I was praying, asking God if my writing mattered to anyone. That very day a woman named LuAnn sent me a message telling me how much my post on Yoga (which she read on Charismamag.org) meant to her. It was something I needed to hear.
God cares about our discouragement. If we ask, He will send someone to encourage us. I can’t tell you how many times He has for me and I am not special.
God cares about our discouragement. #ThisSideofHeaven #Signingthecontract #Biblestudyauthor
As I was driving home this weekend from my sister’s house, I saw a sign on the overpass with the words, “Are you breathing?”
Obviously this sign referred to the senseless death of George Floyd.
But, as I thought about it, I also realized that Covid-19 took away the breath of many people. As we all know this virus attacks the lungs, leaving its victims unable to perform the most basic of needs–breathing.
The verse that immediately came to me was:
Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Genesis 2:7 ESV
What sets us apart from every other created animal? God Himself breathed into us.
EVERY human being gets their life from God.
But what do we do with that breath? Scripture tells us…
Give me not up to the will of my adversaries; for false witnesses have risen against me, and they breathe out violence.
Psalm 27:12 ESV
Our country has seen so much violence over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, there are those who “breath out violence.” Anger and bitterness can breed this kind of aggression.
Forgiveness can put an end to it…even undeserved forgiveness.
Satan wishes to divide us….that is not God’s will. Yet, here we are living in a divided world in many ways, a divided country with divided families.
In John 20, Jesus met with his disciples after He rose from the grave. After He showed them His hands and feet, He said, “Peace be with you…”
…He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
John 20:22 ESV
As Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on them, He spoke of forgiveness. We need filled with the Holy Spirit in order to live the life God wants us to and be able to give forgiveness as well.
\What are we to do with this breath the LORD gave to us?
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!
Psalm 150:6 ESV
I saw many videos of people praising God instead of the hateful, hurtful speech and actions of some. Where there is praise, the Spirit of God resides. God is the answer for this world.
We are broken.
Only Jesus can fix what is broken…
He gave us His Word that we may know Him and know His ways. It says in 2 Timothy:
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
2 Timothy 3:16 ESV
God breathed out His Word as Jesus breathed out His Spirit on those He breathed life into. His Word with the power of the Holy Spirit can change the hardest or most wounded heart. HIs Word will teach us His ways and His will, it shows us our faults and sin, it corrects us and judges our intentions, and it trains us to be righteous and mature.
God breathed out His Word as Jesus breathed out His Spirit on those He breathed life into. #Breathe #ThisSideOfHeaven #Forgiveness
