O Lord, answer me! Answer me so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God and that you have brought them back to yourself.”
1 Kings 18:37 NLT -> https://bible.com/bible/116/1ki.18.37.NLT
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Here is not written "answer me so I have the glory", here is written "answer me so others might see YOU" which conveys "glory to YOU, not me" and I think we ought to think and act the same way every day. Glory to HIM, glory to the almighty GOD.
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"There he went into a cave and spent the night. And the word of the Lord came to him: 'What are you doing here, Elijah?' He replied, 'I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.' The Lord said, 'Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.' Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, 'What are you doing here, Elijah?' "
- 1 Kings 19:9-13
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Devotional 207: Take Heed, All You People
Ahab wanted the truth, and still had the prophet struck for saying it. What we want to hear is seldom what we need to know.
1st Kings 22:13-23
13 The messenger who had gone to summon Micaiah said to him, “Look, the other prophets without exception are predicting success for the king. Let your word agree with theirs, and speak favorably.”
14 But Micaiah said, “As surely as the Lord lives, I can tell him only what the Lord tells me.”
15 When he arrived, the king asked him, “Micaiah, shall we go to war against Ramoth…
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I read a Catholic online article on polygamy in the Bible and the problems it caused. At one point they made this claim I never heard before, that being that Adonijah, King David's 4th son, was the rightful heir to the throne because his three older brothers had died, and Bathsheba and the Prophet Nathan deceived the old king into choosing Solomon as heir. Is this claim common or uncommon in Catholicism? Didn't God already reveal to him that Solomon would inherit the throne and build the temple?
I have never heard that claim. If you have a link to the article, I'd love to read it.
The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary calls Adonijah the "apparent heir to the throne in Jerusalem after the death of Absalom."
I'm also not sure how I feel about the implication that Nathan and Bathsheba "deceived" David? They both told David that Adonijah was setting himself up as king, and while Bathsheba's wordplay in the original Hebrew is supposed to suggest Bathsheba is framing the situation of Adonijah vs. David rather than Adonijah vs. Solomon.... Adonijah did, in fact, start to act like a king before his father died, no?
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Ahab Becomes King of Israel
29 In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab son of Omri became king of Israel, and he reigned in Samaria over Israel twenty-two years.
30 Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him.
31 He not only considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, but he also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him.
32 He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he built in Samaria.
33 Ahab also made an Asherah pole and did more to arouse the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him.
1 Kings 16:29-33 (NIV)
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Fed By Ravens
Something I've been thinking about lately:
In 1 Kings 17:3-6, Elijah, one of the greatest prophets that ever lived, had to go and hide beside a hidden brook. Elijah had prophesied against the evil king of Israel, Ahab, and Ahab was looking to kill Elijah. So God told Elijah where to go and how He would take care of him: by having ravens bring him food.
Elijah was an Israelite. And, as one of God's best prophets, he was probably known as someone who was obedient to the law (as written in the 1st 5 books of the Old Testament). Ravens were marked as unclean birds (Leviticus 11:15), probably because they are scavengers. Elijah obeyed God and let the ravens feed him, but I can't imagine that he liked it. He'd always been taught that it was a sin to touch an unclean animal, and now God was telling him that was how he would be fed? If I was Elijah, I would have been very confused, probably a little disgusted, and maybe even a little angry.
Another story in which God told someone to eat something unclean:
On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending upon him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean. And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven.
Acts 10:9-16
God gave Peter this vision because He was about to send Peter to witness to a Gentile. According to Jewish law, Jews would be considered unclean if they stayed in a Gentile's house. But Jesus didn't come only to save the Jews, but the entire world. God had to communicate to Peter that the laws of "clean and unclean" no longer applied. Jesus had fulfilled the law with His death on the cross, and now the entire world would be granted access to His salvation.
So, how does all this apply to us today? Especially if we're not Jewish and have no concept of "clean vs. unclean"?
Let me tell you a little bit about myself:
I'm one of those people who believes that the Mark of the Beast will somehow be related to computers and the Internet. There's just too many things in Revelation that don't make sense unless you factor the Internet into it. Like how people will be sending gifts around the world to each other to celebrate the deaths of the 2 witnesses (Revelation 11), or how the entire world mourns when the Whore of Babylon is destroyed (Revelation 18), or even how the Beast's one-world government comes about in the first place. It can only happen because of the Internet.
As a result, I am extremely bothered by... well, by pretty much everything God has told me to do. I know God has led me into both the life I have and the life I'm working towards. And it's all about computers. My job heavily relies on the Internet. I'm a gamer and aspiring game designer. And I get so mad at God. "You're just gonna tear it all down, why did you put me here? Isn't it evil? Isn't is all leading to the Mark of the Beast?"
I've had times when I've completely avoided video games because I wanted to avoid anything related to electronics or the Internet. I've asked God multiple times to just give me the gumption to walk away from my job, from everything, and go live in a cave somewhere, away from all of it. I still have so much trouble making myself study game design. And I get mad at work and no one but me knows the real reason- because it bugs me so much that all my paycheck comes from being on a computer all day.
And what finally made me realize that, for whatever reason, God actually wants me dealing with computers all the time, was when I started volunteering at a local resale house. I spent several days fasting to ask God where He wants me to be. That's actually a big thing for me, because not only do I like to eat, I also start getting nauseous if I go without food for more than a day. I made myself sick by fasting, but I came out of it knowing for certain that God wanted me to volunteer at this place.
And you wanna know what department I ended up in? Electronics. Cleaning up modems and routers and computer equipment to put out for sale.
I finally threw my hands in the air and told God, "Fine, have it your way. But I still don't get it." Literally everything in my life is computer- or Internet-related, and it bothers me.
I'm confused and angry. Angry at God, really. But I know I'm doing what He wants me to do, even if I don't understand it.
Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
Psalm 37:4
A lot of people, including me, believe this verse means that God won't just give you what you desire, but that He will give you the desires themselves. So my interest in game design is from Him.
I often feel a lot like Elijah. "Unclean, unclean!" Yet this is the life God has given me. And it's not just being fed twice a day for a few months or years. This is for a lifetime.
So I know from experience that it is entirely possible to hate what God made you to be and to want to run away from it. To think of it as "unclean." Because that hatred comes from Satan. And he's very good at twisting the truth into a lie.
See, I was always into "eschatology"- the study of the end of the world as told in the Bible- even as a child. But I only came to Jesus 7 years ago, and He's having to rewrite my entire script, everything I've ever believed in. Truth is, even I know the Internet itself isn't a bad thing. It just gets used- and will be used- for bad things. But it takes time to readjust the way you see and feel about the world.
At present, I still believe that the Internet is related to the events of Revelation. But some of my thoughts on just what will happen have changed (too many to cover, I'll have to make posts about them all at some other time). At any rate, I keep trying to remind myself:
I'm where God wants me to be
I'm doing what He wants me to do
I'm not sinning if I am doing what He wants me to do
Sometimes God feeds us with ravens
And, maybe, sometimes those ravens are just things we tell ourselves- maybe they're not "bad" in and of themselves, after all
Is there anything in your life where you're confused about whether God actually told you to do it or not? Something where you've always said "this is bad, don't touch," but now God's telling you to do it? Maybe you need to do the same thing that I need to do, and stop thinking you have the right (ha! or the intelligence!) to decide what is "good" and what is "bad." If God says it is good, then it is good.
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