day no. 13,177: I AM FEAR‏

Genesis 31:42

If the God of my father, the God of Abraham, the Fear of Isaac, had not been with me, certainly now you would have sent me off empty-handed. But God has seen my affliction and my hard work, and He issued His verdict last night.”

I had never before grabbed on to this particular title for God prior to Candeo going through Genesis:  Fear.

Did you catch that?

The Fear of Isaac.

He is the One with whom we have to do and here Jacob calls Him the Fear of his father Isaac.

If that weren’t enough, a few verses later, he says it again.

Genesis 31:53

The God of Abraham, and the gods of Nahor—the gods of their father—will judge between us.” And Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac.

God is love and mercy and kindness and FEAR.

He is a terrifying God, almighty and able to do whatever He desires whenever and for however long He determines.

Those of us who are in Christ no longer have anything to fear because Fear is on our side. 

If you are not a child of God by faith in Jesus Christ, you have much to fear for He who is FEAR is against you.

But if you have faith in Jesus fear not little flock, your Father and Fear in Heaven is leveraging all of His resources to love you and conform you to the image of His Son.

day no. 13,176: in charge of working and watching‏

Genesis 2:15 

The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it.

Men are called to work and to watch over the responsibilities God has given to them.

In other words, we must cultivate and guard what has been entrusted to us by God.

That includes our marriages, our children and our ministries.

Cultivating is a lot of work.

It is a front end investment.

It works with the promise of future reward.

It produces abundant fruit.

Guarding is a lot of time.

It is a back end investment.

It watches over what it values.

It protects the fruit.

We are called to work and watch, to cultivate and protect.

This means time, energy and money spent on your wife in order to see her bloom.

This means time, energy and money spent on your children in order to see them have fruitful lives.

This means time, energy and money spent in your local church serving the body with your talents to assist in the harvest of souls.

It is a lot of work and it is what God has called men to do.

day no. 13,175: emptying the cross by our clever coolness

1 Corinthians 1:17

"For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to evangelize — not with clever words, so that the cross of Christ will not be emptied of its effect."

It is easy to empty the cross of Christ by adding our coolness or cleverness to it.

People don’t need to think that you’re cool.

They don’t need to think that you’re clever.

They need to worship Jesus for the fullness of what He has done for us.

Do not take away from the completed works of Jesus by adding the stumbling block of your coolness and cleverness to it.

Let the stumbling block of the Cross be enough to trip others up.

day no. 13,174: an under-utilized text on parent-child relationships

2 Corinthians 12:14b

…For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.

Parents are obligated to save up for their children. 

If you are a parent, you are under the obligation to save up for your children, not spend your resources on yourself.

If you wanted to spend everything on yourself, you should not have sought to have children.

2 Corinthians 12:20

For I fear that perhaps when I come I will not find you to be what I want, and I may not be found by you to be what you want; there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder.

This builds on the former point of proper behavior between parents and children in both directions.

Children are disciplined by parents that love them.

Only parents who HATE their children refuse to discipline them (Proverbs 13:24).

The reality for those parents is that they love themselves too much to endure the difficulty of disciplining their children.

They don’t want to spend their energy and tears to do what God has commanded them.

Children ought to respond to their parents’ commands with obedience and discipline with corrected attitude and actions.

The end point is this:

Selfish parents spend everything on themselves and refuse to pay the cost of loving their children.

Selfish children refuse to pay the cost of obeying their authorities and spend their time in rebellion.

day no. 13,171: flexing our weaknesses‏

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

⁹ But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. ¹⁰ So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, catastrophes, persecutions, and in pressures, because of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

If you spend all of your energy attempting to hide and cover up your weaknesses, you will have no energy left to boast about God’s strength for you.

If you exhaust yourself trying to be strong, you will leave no ambition to make much of His strength for you.

Religious people trying to earn their way to God’s favor will see you and be spurred on to try even harder and be even better and BOTH of you will fall short of the grace of God by refusing to receive His power in your weakness.

day no. 13,170: thistle farmers‏

Galatians 6:7-10

⁷ Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows he will also reap, ⁸ because the one who sows to his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. ⁹ So we must not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up. ¹⁰ Therefore, as we have opportunity, we must work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith.

We are all by nature thorn and thistle planters.

If we reap what we have sown, we will reap disaster and judgment.

If we want a fruitful harvest, we have to be in the Spirit.

To have the Spirit we must be reborn.

The flesh sows corruption and will reap devastation.

The Spirit sows redemption and will reap glorification in Jesus.

If you are not reborn, you are not a child of God.

You are a wicked one sowing seeds of thorns and thistles and weeds among the wheat harvest.

You may be camouflaged by the harvest popping up in your proximity, but you are dead, unfruitful and choking the life of those around you that are genuinely reborn by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

Stop sowing destruction.

Start reaping salvation by the perfect Seed that fell to the ground in death and rose again to eternal life.

day no. 13,169: we marginalize God when we rationalize sin

Genesis 29:26

Laban answered, “It is not the custom in this place to give the younger daughter in marriage before the firstborn.”

We marginalize God when we rationalize sin.

When we choose to sin rather to trust God, we are saying, “I’ve got a plan and it’s better than Yours.”

Laban rationalized his sin by appealing to what he thought ought to have been done.

Where are we doing the same thing?

Where are we rationalizing our sin based on culture or tradition and in so doing marginalizing God in our lives?

Maybe we should abandon our attempts at self-realization through self-determination and self-reliance.

Just a thought for those of us who call ourselves Christian.