Sometimes I’m really sad by how amazed I am at what God does and how He constantly speaks into my life. Let me see if I can use the right words to give justice to how amazed I am currently…
One big thing seems to be the books that are coming into my life out of all kinds of different places but all seemingly connected in themes. A week before coming out to Catalina in January I went to three different thrift stores looking for jeans and wound up in the book section of one looking for random books to take with me since this place is so conducive for me to sit back and read. There I found “Piercing The Darkness” and “This Present Darkness” by Frank Peretti. Both have heavy themes of prayer and spiritual warfare. I’ve been working on consistent and continual prayer in my life more deliberately in the past year and these books have been a perfect timing to open my understanding and questions about prayer. Then I have this amazing friend named Eric. He has this heart for prayer and justice that is infectious and inspiring. He brought a few books with him while he’s out here for the summer and lends them to me. Reading “Red Moon Rising” and soon “Punk Monk” have just continued to spur me on in pursuing this thing we call prayer. Also this past year I’ve been put in more than a few situations that have seriously forced me to go to God in prayer because I had nowhere else to turn. They were/are some pretty powerful things that make me fall to the floor seeking for God’s hand and will in the situations.
So that’s one area where God is just amazing me by how many things he’s coordinating in my life to make sure I don’t miss out on what he’s trying to tell me. Another thing was just in this last week and mostly today. Last week I listened to a sermon from Kansas City’s Boiler Room’s podcasts. They have at least three podcasted series, yet another thing that Eric has turned me on to. This one is called The God Story and breaks down the Bible into 33 sermons. The one we listened to last week spoke partially about Hosea, one of the “minor prophets”. What they talked about piqued my interest in a couple ways. First, I realized that I was unfamiliar with the person Hosea which doesn’t happen very much for me having grown up in the church and hearing most of the Bible in kid-friendly stories. And God called upon Hosea to marry an “adulterous wife” so he could understand God’s relationship with the Israelites. That’s just crazy for me, and having never heard it before I wanted to actually read the whole book after listening to the commentary to it. Then there’s the fact that I really identify with where Israel was at this time, being close to God then turning away to worshipping idols, warnings to come back followed by judgment until they come back to God and then restarting the cycle so many times. So today, my day off, I decided to actually read the book, the first time in a while that I’ve read the Bible just to read it. I mean I read it and discuss it for church and our small groups and different devotionals we do here, all constructed by someone else, but never like this. Anyway, so my Bible is a study Bible and the top half of every page is actual scripture, then the bottom of every page goes deeper into everything on the top half of that page. So it explains important words and concepts, interprets “difficult verses”, draws parallels between specific people and events, describes historical and textual contexts of passages, and demonstrates how one passage sheds light on another, to name a few things. There are introductions to each book and cross references.
So I’m reading Hosea, finding so many parallels to my own life and to the other topics we’ve been talking about this summer in our small groups and themes for the weeks. Like Hosea 2:19-20… “I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD.” Justice and faithfulness being two key traits and actions that have spent a lot of time in my brain getting tossed around for the past couple of weeks figuring out what they mean in my life and in God’s will for my life and the world. Then I was reading Hosea 2:23… “I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’; and they will say, ‘You are my God.’” which by itself in this context is pretty powerful stuff and then I look at some of the cross references it lists 1 Peter 2:10, the verse after the verse that just happens to be our verse for the entire summer that we recite at every meal every day. 1 Peter 2:9… “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” v.10… “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” I had to step back for a second and be amazed at how everything always ties together and that this can’t be just coincidence.
Oh yeah, and about two months ago I borrowed a couple of books from this family that’s living here. The one I’ve been reading for the last couple weeks is called “Prophet” and is another one written by Frank Peretti. It’s about this guy who starts to see visions and becomes a present time prophet no matter how he tries to resist it and the importance of paying heed to God’s warnings to turn away from our evil and return to him. I have no idea what God has for me in the coming years or even the next few months but I can’t help but to make sure I’ve got my eyes open to what’s coming next in my life
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