Children who obey their parents in the Lord will receive a special blessing. I believe one blessing is the growth of their faith even at a young age. They learn early on that trusting God produces a faith that is strong – as they have more chances to experience God’s faithfulness.

How does a parent bring up a child in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, without provoking them to anger? Nobody, especially children, likes to be disciplined. The key, I think, is love. You can’t get angry at someone who you know genuinely loves and cares for you. I want to have that kind of relationship with my son.

King Hezekiah, Nooooo…

What just happened? He was just given a new lease in life, and the sun (and all thing in the universe related to it) just moved in reverse for Hezekiah. Then he makes this move of showcasing everything in the kingdom to these envoys sent by the king of Babylon. Isaiah confronts him, then prophesies one of the hardest times in Israel’s history. Hezekiah says to this “it is good”, thinking “anyway it’s not going to be my problem”.

?!?

I… I don’t understand God’s people. Yes, even myself. The Bible is full of stories of men who have spiritual highs then immediately followed by spiritual lows. What strange, strange creations we are.

I learned about the following insight before and it has always amazed me. Did the Israelites have an idea why all the specifics about the consensus, the formation of the tribes, why the raising of banners was necessary? Probably not. Again, we might not understand, we might not see God’s plan, but He has one. Obey, and be a blessing.

I’ll just paste this here:

From spiritandtruth.org

Using the populations given for the four camps, the ratios of their relative sizes would have been: Judah (1.0); Reuben (0.81); Ephraim (0.58); and Dan (0.85). Assuming the Levites encamped in a square and a uniform width for each camp extending strictly outward in the four cardinal directions, the view from above, as Balaam saw it (Num. 23:9) may have resembled a cross:

Camp of Israel

This assumes a uniform width for each camp—which cannot be known with certainty. If the boundary between each camp was taken to be on a diagonal (e.g., northwest, northeast, etc.) then the formation of the camp would have not been that of a cross. Even so, this does not adversely affect our main point—that the camp of Israel is a shadow of the heavenly throne.

To be glad for every opportunity to worship God. What does that look like?

Where is the “house of the Lord”? In the psalmist’s time, it was the temple in Jerusalem. While the Israelites were moving around in the desert, it was the ark that they carried along with them. We know now that the house of the Lord is wherever God’s Spirit is present. It can be at a common place of worship, at a small group / bible study meeting, it could be were two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name. It can be anywhere a child of God is, as we know that God has given us His Spirit to be in us and with us. Therefore, in anything and everything that we do, we have an opportunity to worship our God.

I pray I develop that “gladness”, regardless of circumstance or “energy levels”.

Ah, the Love and Respect chapter. We’ve come to this.

I have been referring to this passage a couple of times since the start of the year, but a different point of view caught my attention today. The part after “as Christ loves the church and gave Himself up for her”.

Usually I would stop there, emphasizing the extent of love I should have for my wife. That if I am willing to give my life for her, then all the other – smaller – things, things that do not cost me my life, should be very easy.

But the part after that verse is equally important because it gives the “why”. The purpose of my giving up of myself, is for my wife to be sanctified, that she will be made holy.

And so the bar is raised. We are not just talking about providing, listening, cherishing, doing the dishes or taking out the trash. We are talking about the giving up of my SELF, so that I can help my wife in her spiritual growth.

These past weeks I have made adjustments to my lifestyle and put effort for my own spiritual growth. Which is very important. Today God is saying, it’s time to make some new adjustments and effort for the spiritual growth of my family.