To know and be known

"See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God and so we are...but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure." 1John 3: 1-3

Tough guy huh: 1 Samuel 26:8-10

Then said Abishai to David "God hath delivered thine enemy into thine hand this day: now therefore let me smite him, I pray thee, with the spear even to the earth at once, and I will not [smite] him the second time"

And David said to Abishai " Destroy him not: for who can stretch forth his hand agaisn't the lord's anointed, and be guiltless?"

David said furthermore "As the lord liveth, the lord shall smite; or his day shall come to die; or he shall descend into battle and perish."

David is someone who definitley inspires what it means to be a man of God. He had an opportunity to get rid of his enemy, the one guy who made it an attempt to kill him. I'm sure David was tired of having Saul chase him around, but in this instance he choose not to fight back.

Guys David didn't fight back because he was too scared, he surely wouldn't have entered his camp if he was. It wasn't because he wasn't strong enough either, hey David killed a lion with his bear hands! Even Saul knows that!

No David wasn't wasn't trying to prove that he was tough enough to kill Saul, but a man who follows God!

God Delights In Mercy

Psalm 147:11 :: The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy.

It's a comforting thought to have that God doesn't give his mercy to us begrudgingly. That

is not the nature of God. God knows we are prone to sin and we aren't perfect. It's also

not the case that he "doesn't mind" giving us His mercy. The truth is He actually takes pleasure

in giving us His mercy. Word.

Hillsong - Your Name High

Your innocence forsaken
Upon that cross
You gave yourself for us
Carried into your freedom
Our broken past replaced in
A second chance
The chains have come undone
Death defied in the Father's love

We are
Living to make Your name high
Jesus
Living to make Your name high
Jesus you
Gave what the world couldn't offer us
Say what they want
Say what they want
We are free

The atmosphere is changing
Oh can You hear the people rising up
In the hope of your freedom
Our former ways are breaking
We seek your face God let your kingdom come
In our praises be
Lifted high

With eyes on high we praise you
And with one voice we come together
Our one desire to praise you
And lift you up in our surrender

With eyes on high we praise you
And with one voice we come together
Our one desire to praise you

Darkness

Matthew 27:45-46

 ⁴⁵Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.

 ⁴⁶And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

3 Hours. For 3 hours, the lights went out. Total darkness. Up until this point, our Savior Jesus Christ suffered at the hands of men. The pain tremendous, and unimaginable. But it wasn't over. The event that made Jesus so anxious, that made His heart so heavy at the garden, was yet to come. The lights suddenly go out, at the peak of the day when the sun should have been shining at it's brightest. Can you imagine complete darkness? Everyone who was present at the scene, is now at a stand still. We can assume they were paralyzed with fear. His torturers put their weapons at ease. His mockers silence their mouths. It was God's turn. 3 Hours. For 3 hours Christ suffered at the hands of God, His Father. It's one thing to suffer physical and emotional torment at the hands of men, but we can't even begin to imagine what the wrath of God means. In those 3 hours, which must have felt like an eternity, God dealt with all the sins of mankind, on His son Jesus Christ. Jesus' joy was found in looking into His Father's face, but during that time, His Father's face was turned away. The creator of the world who knew no sin, was dealt with as if He was the worst of sinners, so much so that He cries out to His Father asking Him why He has been forsaken. 3 Hours. 

... and to think; it was my sins that held Him there. 

Truth is, we'll never really know how much it cost Him to free you from sin, but just flip through the leather-back book near your bedside, He says you're worth it. 
What an awesome God we serve.

Because his hands are bigger than ours.

CLASSIC JESUS!! Always answering a question with a question?

^{Luke 10: 25-28}

5 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

²⁶ “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

²⁷ He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’^[c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^[d]”

²⁸ “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

HOW DO YOU KEEP GETTING THROUGH LIFE AND HOW DO YOU INHERIT IT?

LOVE GOD! :)

Discernment

Discernment- the ability to decide between truth and error, right and wrong.

1 Thessalonians 5:21–22 - but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.


 Many of us have a discerning heart which is from God. There are those who stick for what is right, what is just, or what is true. Discerning people abstain from any form of evil. We are given the ability to question and to test in order to see what is right. It is the responsibility of every Christian to be discerning. Discernment is not optional for the believer-it is required.

1 John 4:1- Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.


 John, in this verse, is talking about being careful in what you're being exposed to. Many false prophets go around in this world spreading false information and leading people away from Christ. We shouldn't be apart of that and go with the flow. We need to know whether they are speaking of the truth by testing them. 


Jude 1:4 - For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Sometimes believers might not notice who they bring into their churches to speak on Sunday. We sometimes don't stop them from speaking or stop them from continuing with their evil. God wants us to use that spiritual anger without sin. We need to be able to stand up and test them.


Matthew 7:15 - Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

 This verse is well known by many.. Exactly as it is mentioned here, false prophets can come secretly into our assemblies and speak blasphemies. We need to be vigilant about these things. God gave us the Holy spirit inside of us that contains discernment.

Nature

I look out the window it’s raining

Even in the rain the birds sing

I look out the window the wind is blowing

But the tree stands still

I look at myself whining about my sorrows

I look at myself falling when the wind blows

What should I do?

Why does the bird sing even when it rains?

Birds actually sing sweeter in the rain

Because they want to attract there mate

Can we sing to in times of rain to attract God?

How is the tree standing?

Even when the winds are blowing hard?

Their roots are firm and deep into the ground

So it may not fall

Is our root firm and deep into the word?

Rain represents sorrow

What were things Job faced?

-ox and donkeys raided by Sabeans

-fire of God fell from heaven or say lightning burned the sheep

-Chaldeans formed 3 bands raided the camels

Think about how much love and affection and work he put into those 11, 500 animals

-Killed the servants

-Jobs’ kids feast a wind hit the house killed them

Now think about how much love he gave to those children

Job would wake up early in the morning sacrificing an animal for each son think they might have cursed God in their hearts and now they got killed instead Job weeping and cursing God

Job 1:20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped

Job worshiped rather than crying in sorrow

Wind represents waver

Mathew 4

Jesus is tested in the wilderness

Jesus didn’t eat for 40 days and 40 nights

Devil in v.3 said “If You are the Son of God,

Command that these stones become bread.”

Jesus in v. 4 “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by

bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the from the mouth of God.

At the end Devil in v.8 “All these things I will give You if

You will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said “Away with you, Satan!

For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.

Instead of Jesus wavering He was firm and rooted in the word

So small

We are small, and weak. Let me give you an example:

The Ticonderoga Pencil that I'm Holding in my hand is so small compared to me.
I'm puny compared to my apartment, my apartment is so small compared to my neighborhood. My neighborhood is nothing compared to Yonkers.Yonkers , Is just a small city in Westchester County. Yet Westchester County, is small compared to New York. Yet, New York is just a small state in the United States. The United States is just a small country in Earth. The planet we call "Earth" is just one of the 8 planets in the Solar System. The Solar System is just a part of this Galaxy called the "Milky Way" And the Milky Way is just one of the BILLIONS and TRILLIONS of Galaxies out there in the Universe.

And yet this is why David is saying "

³ When I consider your heavens,
   the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
   which you have set in place,
⁴ What is mankind that you are mindful of them,
   human beings that you care for them?"
But think about it for a second though, God has all this things to be mindful about but he's mindful about us. I know I stress this a lot but it's just the truth. Jesus, cared & had compassion when he healed the blind man. Jesus cared & raised Lazarus from the dead ! God is so amazing. He made all the beautiful wonders of the world , he made the wonderful flowers that seem to have that amazing smell that attractive sight which brings all of our attention and the smell of it is just wonderful.

Morning

Alright! The blog is back! So, I woke up this morning and it was around 8 am. I've been trying to start a morning bible reading, but could never get it started. It was a great feeling to do it today, and i need to try to to do it on weekdays, before I leave for school. I hope I can do this and I'm praying for you all. -Kevin M

Boxing

1 Corinthians 9:26-" I do not fight like a man beating the air."
This is what we call an allusion and in this verse it is given to boxing. Have you guys ever went boxing before? , maybe we should do it this summer instead of playing basketball :), When you're boxing, it is quite normal while training to strike out at an imaginary adversary for the mere purpose of exercise. This is called, "beating the air." What's amazing is that the apostle Paul wasn't doing no shadow boxing, HE struck real blows at a real adversary! Come on nowww...

Psalms 37:4

Good morning guys and dolls,

Psalms 37:4 says "Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart."

I wanna share with you that this verse DOESN'T mean that if you delight yourself in God, He'll give you everything you want..

In the original hebrew language of this passage, it really says.. "if you delight yourself in the lord, He will give you desires to desire"

As you grow in your relationship with God, many things start fading away, and you start desiring after things that you know will help you bring glory to God. If your desires don't ultimately emphasize the excellence of God and the authority of Jesus Christ, you may have to re-think on what you want. But if your heart is close Him, you'll start wanting exactly what He wants for you too...

Welcome!

Welcome to the new Season 4 blog! Hope you like it.

For season 4 we went for a simple, clean look. A look and feel that doesn't over complicate things. I encourage you to take some time to navigate through the site, not much has changed persay, but here are some of the key things that did:

• We added "Hebrew of the We-brew?" on the sidebar along with Greek of the week. We figured if we're learning greek why not learn hebrew as well? We can start getting some insight into the OT as well as the NT
• The "Worship" & "Teaching" pages are found on the top now and not on the sides.
• You'll notice something different about the videos on the pages. We've collected the videos and put them into a playlist. All you have to do is go to the season you're looking for and scroll through the playlist to find the message or worship set you want to hear. Simple as that.
• We don't need to sign our names at the bottom of our posts anymore because our names will automatically be signed under our Title as in "posted by _____"
• We wanted to encourage you guys to put tags or "labels" for your posts. That way if anyone ever wants to focus in on a specific topic, they can go to the tag cloud located on the sidebar (under the pictures)
• We also wanted to encourage comments on the posts so we can further get insight into any encouragements, devotions, studies, or pictures that is posted on the blog. You can post a comment by clicking "__ comments" next to the date posted.
• We have it made it possible to respond to peoples posts by clicking one of the response boxes below each of the posts. If you read this entire post, click "Word" when you're done and you'll understand.

This season we want to start discussing and communicating on this blog as opposed to just posting on it.

If you have any more ideas or additions to the blog that you think would be beneficial or fun, let Jay or I know.

word?

Season 4

It's was about a year ago that we met in that room at IBA.

A gathering that we had decided to call "Bibletalk"

I don't think any of us would have expected or envisioned us to be where we are at now as a group. I guess that's classic Jesus right there - going far and beyond anything we could even attempt to imagine.

It's pretty cool seeing each week by week huh? Going from a place where we maybe saw each other twice a year to seeing each other every tuesday is a pretty dramatic step. Going from a place where we identified ourselves to our individual churches to a place where we can identify ourselves as brothers and sisters is an even bigger one. A lot of time, effort, sacrifice, money, and prayer has been exhausted by this entire group to get to this very moment where we can read this post and realize that we are collectively moving into a new season.

This season we'll be going in hard on the practical side - from manners, to social skills, to etiquette, to daily living skills - each week will bring new surprises. We've done a pretty good job building a community, now it's time to really start striding towards the second part of that vision: "to be like Christ".

Let's not take this for granted, what we have here is very special, this blog and our tuesday meeting is only a small portion of the work that we need to do in our lives daily.

So with that, let's get moving on Season 4

See you tonight.