Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.
Today the name of God we consider is El-Roi, the strong one who sees.
Scripture
Genesis 16:13
She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”
Devotional
El-Roi, the strong one who sees
I expect we have all hit that point in our life at one time or another when we think no one care about us. No one sees our plight. No one would notice if we just disappeared from the face of the earth.
Drama of the Old Testament
Unlike the stories of other heroes
Points out the flaws and failures of those we should emulate
Abraham, father of the Israelite nation
Promised a son who and progeny that would be the spark of a nation that was innumerable
At 100 he had no children
Sarah gives her maidservant to Abraham in an effort to help God along
Common practice for barren women
Servant acted as surrogate and their child became the heir of the estate
Adopted into the family
Hagar became arrogant and took liberties with Sarah she should not have taken
Sarah drove Hagar and Ishmael away
Hagar, though a servant, lived in luxury and wasn’t prepared to survive in the desert
Alone
Lost
Without hope
In despair, resigned to die in the wilderness
God, in His strength and power, sees her
God does not abandon her as Abraham did
God sees her despair and hopelessness
God recognizes her need
God intervenes and provides water and food for Hagar and Ismael
Important aspect of the story
God doesn’t take Hagar out of her difficult circumstances
He tells her to go back into the situation from which she fled
God puts her back under Sarah’s thumb
Bt with a promise
Ismael will also become a great nation, and he did
If you want to learn more about my church, you can find us at SAF.church. If you like the devotional, share it with someone. If you don’t, tell me. I hope you’ll join me again tomorrow for “A Little Walk with God.”
Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.
Today we explore God’s name Jehovah-Shammah, the Lord who is present.
Scripture
Ezekiel 48:35
The total distance around the city will be 6 miles. From that day forward, the name of the city will be The Eternal One Lives There.
Devotional
It might seem like an unusual verse to talk about God’s name, Jehovah-Shammah, the Lord who is present
Ezekiel given a vision of heaven, the home of God, the place He resides on His throne of glory
Jehovah lives there
Indescribable by those who say they have seen it in near death experiences
Music
Color
People
Many talk about the brilliance of the light, but no one talks about the presence of a sun
Jehovah-Shammah, the Lord who is present
Whenever the Israelites followed Him and called on Him, He was there for them
Jesus promised His followers never to leave us or forsake us
Promised His spirit to live with us and within us to help us on this journey of life
Promised His presence eternally for those who believe He is the Son of the living God and ask forgiveness of their sins.
Everywhere, at all times, in every circumstance
Jehovah-Shammah, the Lord who is present
Today, knowing Jehovah-Shammah is always by your side,
How will you live today?
How will you act today?
How will you demonstrate His love to someone around you today?
If you want to learn more about my church, you can find us at SAF.church. If you like the devotional, share it with someone. If you don’t, tell me. I hope you’ll join me again tomorrow for “A Little Walk with God.”
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 13:52 Jesus: Every scribe and teacher of the law who has become a student of the ways of the Kingdom is like the head of the household who brings some new things and some old things, both out of the storeroom.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
If you really want to learn, there are two kinds of teachers you want to avoid, those that have the “we’ve never it done it that way” attitude, and those that chase after every new idea that comes along. Both will lead you down the wrong path.
The first will hold you back and make you think progress is terrible. Only the old ways are God’s ways. There’s a problem with that kind of thinking, though. God gave us a brain to use it. He enabled us to progress. He gave us the intelligence to build cities, make machines, discover the science behind things. If He didn’t want us to discover and use that knowledge, He would have hid it from us. There is nothing wrong with progress.
I doubt if those that only want the “good old days” really do. The good old days mean hot water comes from boiling water over an open fire after you’ve hauled it to your house from the closest creek or river or pond. It means cooking over an open fire because progress means no stoves have been developed. The good old days means oil lamps haven’t even been invented and anything that is done at night is done by fire light. Do you really like the good old days? The good old days mean walking wherever you go because no cars are around, no saddles for horses, no wagons. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
No, God doesn’t intend for us to stay in the stone ages. He wants us to learn and progress. That means even progressing in what we know about Him. We should know more about Him than our ancestors did. Each generation should be able to build on its knowledge of God if we will take what our fathers knew and add to it in our own search and study of His word and infinite wisdom.
Conversely, the teacher who jumps at every new idea and throws out the old is bound for problems. You see, we have progressed to the we are today because of the knowledge of those who have gone before us. If we throw out the principles and understanding of those that made the present possible. When we forget all the principles on which our current successes are founded, we find ourselves standing on a slippery slope. We see it in our nation today.
At one time, we were a Christian nation. Kids could play outside without supervision, without parents’ fearing they would be taken, bullied, introduced to drugs or gangs. Kids left the house after breakfast and came home safe when the street lights came home. Adults looked out after each other’s kids and authority meant something. We didn’t hear about police brutality. Neither did we hear about out of control crime rates, overcrowded jails, rampant evil.
Why was America less insane that it seems to be today? I think in great part because we lived by the principles of our fathers and their fathers before them. Somehow, the last couple of generations have felt it’s okay to forget the past. It’s okay to forget what made us great. The thing that made us great was not our ingenuity or brilliant ideas, it was a combination of the our reliance on the principled life our forefathers lived coupled with those brilliant ideas. It was the importance of keeping the past and reaching out into the future.
Jesus’ message is just as true today as it was when He spoke it 2,000 years ago. When we fail to live by the principles that make us live with respect and admiration for God and each other, the foundation upon which this nation was built, we can never achieve much. We reached for the moon in the early sixties, but what have we done since? We decided we could live by our own rules and in so doing, we have almost destroyed our society today.
It’s about time we go back into the storehouse and pull out some of the old and mix it with some of the new. We’ve forgotten the old things that make the foundation strong and rich and fruitful. Unless the foundation is there, the rest just blows away in the storm. We need to find that foundation again. We don’t need to go back to the “good old days” as some would have us do. But we do need to go find those sacred principles of life, family, godliness, purity, holiness, that God’s word tells us are so important. Those things haven’t changed since the beginning of time. If we think we can stand long without them in this modern era, we are sadly mistaken.
