saturday 4th september 2010

hello people, i just like to say this was meant for yesterday, i'm sorry that it hasn't been publised until today, a day later and there another one to follow about today's readings, but it's better late than never.

Okay so yesterdays followed what happened in fridays reading, Noah, his sons and Noahs wife along with his sons wife were commanded by God to enter the ark along with two of every bird and animal aswell food because you can't really afford the lions to get hungry can you? They are higher up in the food chain than us and with no food for human consumption i can imagine that would leave Noah and his family weak and unable to fight of some scary hungry pair of lions, i'm rambling, i'm sorry. This is because the world and it population of people and animals had become evil and corrupt leaving God feeling painned.

So after Noah had build the Ark, following Gods instructions, which i might add took a hundred years to build. They all entered the ark after seven days after it's completion and God locked them in for near on 150 days. The fourty days and nights of rain fell from the sky as promissed and wiped out everything. All that God gave the breath of life to had well and truely perished. When the land was dry enough to walk on the Ark's population were free to roam and God realvealed his Covenant with Noah and again like in the begunning he commanded them to be fruitful and populate the earth. Noah in reconistion of this built an altar and offered God burnt offerings. God promised that he would never allow this to happen again, 'never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood, never again will a flood to destroy the earth'. so when ever you see a rainbow this is a reminder of when God established his covenant with Noah, remember that when you see one, maybe tell someone the true meaning of the rainbow, and not that there is a pot of gold at the end of it.

Fast forward to Matthew, Jesus was baptised and God is well and truely pleased with him. So yesterday we read that the sprit lead him into the desert for 40 days and i can imagine he was there at night. whislt he was there he was tempted by the devil. Before i wrote this blog i read the Soul Survivors comentary (not to steal material for my own but just a little insight.) and i read some of the coments left by people who like us are doing the bible in one year and they came up with some interesting points, And one of the main reasons we're doing the bible in the year is to get to know god through the bible and bring him closer so we can live our lifes the way he wants us so when tempation comes we can then refer ourselves back to scripture for guidence and strength.

Anyway in the desert one of the ways the devil temps Jesus is through scripture, he seems pretty knowledgeable with scripture, that he belives that would be the more effective way of tempting Jesus in order to get him on the dark side. But he fails, why because Jesus knows it far better than he does, he is one step further/quicker than the devil because he knows it like the back of his hand and in that he has strenght to fight back. Then the devil left him and the angels came to attend him...(v11). wow that pretty amazing.

The devil knows our weekness that he will use our emotionals in order to temp us which resort us to become weak and accept the temptation that will do us more harm than god because it only serves us a small amount of gratifcation which then can in some cases leads to adiction. Thats no good because we then become a slave to our weakness. The devil knows these weaknesses and he will use you emotions to tempt you. We need the strength that Jesus had in the desert. We all go through times where are metohorically in a wilderness, we're weak and lonely and thing that is tempting you seems the best idea in the world, you think if it serves me with a little happyness then whats the harm, it's better than the state i'm in now? We forget what it will then lead us to, bigger things?

The whole point of this year is to have a little bit more knowledge of scripture so when tempation is put infront of you you can then fight back with the wisdom that God gives you from the bible and then the devil will leave. I should imagine that it would take more than three accounts of you displaying amazing scripture knowledge to scare the devil away because when you get older you will find that there will be new tempations and thoughs that tempted you before are nothing because it's no longer a sinful habit. We need to have Jesus strength when we go through difficult times, that we then start to have a habit of resorting to scripture to beat tempation off with big stick, bible bashing if you like because it effectively. So bash that devil with your bible, because he'll use it to bash you, because he is soo clever, but you have strenght and using it is clever, can i get a Bam Bam?

So today theme is strength, pray for it esp for this year as we do this bible in one year challenge.
love you all.x.

Tara .x.