Weekly Scripture 7-21-2024

Answer:

This comes from Judges.

__:__-__And she made him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him. And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.

*A lot of Christians today find themselves not operating by the power of God. They might have started out strong for Jesus, but as time has gone on they might have dabbled in sin and God is not blessing the work they do until they come to Him and confess that sin and repent of it. That is when God can bless that person and the work they do again. In his lowest moment Sampson in Judges 16:28 began to pray and repent. God brought him low and even though his physical eyes had been gouged out, his spiritual eyes began to see. He asked God for one more chance and God gave that chance to him. If you are like this or have ever been like this it is important to know that God is a God of mercy, forgiveness, and second chances. Nobody should ever believe the lie that Satan spreads so often to people that you are too far from His grace.

Weekly Scripture 7-14-2024

Answer: Jeremiah 18:11-12

This comes from Jeremiah

__:__-__Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you: return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good. And they said, There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart.

*J. Vernon McGee used to tell a story about a man that had a donkey and a cart and a neighbor needed a ride into town, and so the man agreed to take his neighbor into town using the donkey and the cart. The neighbor climbed up on the cart and the man that owned the rig before moving it an inch went around to the back of the cart and came back with a 2x4 and struck the donkey on the head. The neighbor of course asked why he did it, because he had seen nothing the animal had done wrong, and the owner of the rig simply replied...”I did it to get his attention”. The people of the day that God was speaking to were very evil in their ways and they refused to listen; they were the sophisticated type of people like we have in our day that think they know everything. God was giving them a warning that he would bring judgment on them if they did not turn back to Him. They would not listen to God and they followed their own evil ways, as most of our sophisticated folks do today, so God had to exact the punishment of eventually allowing these people to go into captivity to the Babylonians. I leave you with the question, does God have to get His 2x4 out to get your attention or are you the kind of clay that yields and can be molded into a useful vessel for God's purposes?