Exiled! part 4

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Tim Sorbo

Have you ever broken a promise? I have. And other people have as well. In a word, it is disappointing.

God never breaks His promises. And that is awesome.

The last three weeks have seen the Israelites being exiled, commanded to stay and settle in Babylon all because God has a plan for them.
You can click here to read Exiled! part 3. It might be good to catch up. =-)

So now, in the last post of this series, we will see the best part about the Israelites being exiled.

Let’s look at a couple of verses to start things rolling. Jeremiah 29:12-14 reads, “12Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares theLord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

God is making some promises in these verses. In fact, I will copy these verses again but I will add some underlines this time.

“12Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity.^b I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares theLord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

When I read this, it seems very obvious to me that God has a plan. I feel like He always has a plan. But in that plan, there is always our part. We have to obey God in order for His plan to succeed. Even though God is all-powerful and could do anything He wants to, He has chosen for us to be a vital portion of His plan.

He needs us.

He set it up so we could play our part and both of us win. A true win-win situation.

Just for fun, here are those verses one more time. This time, however, I have put our part in bold letters.

“12Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity.^b I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares theLord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

Call
Pray
Seek
Find

God wants us to give Him everything. Our whole heart. Jesus said the same thing in the New Testament.

If we call, pray, and seek Him with all our heart, we will find Him.

And that is just one of the many promises that God has never broken.

Exiled! part 3

Posted on January 27, 2016 by Tim Sorbo

“For I know the plans I have for you…”

That has got to be one of the most encouraging and hope-filled statements in the Bible.

If you are reading this post before part 1 and part 2, please click to go back and read those.

It will make more sense. =-)

The Israelites are finally getting the words they have been longing to hear. God told them to settle down and work. This verse is tells us the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’.

What were they supposed to do? Look at the verbs in verses 5-7: BUILD, SETTLE, PLANT, EAT, MARRY, REPRODUCE, INCREASE, SEEK, PRAY

That is the work God called them to do. And now He explains why.

He has a plan.

He knows that plan.

The plan is to prosper, bring hope and a future.

Jeremiah was not the only author to write about the plan of God. Here are a few highlights;

Genesis 50:19-20 reveals Joseph understanding that God had a plan.
Exodus 1-5 explain how Moses was part of God plans to free the Hebrews.
If we skip to the new Testament, there are too many examples of Jesus talking about ‘the plan’. He kept saying how it was not His time yet. There were words of a plan in those statements.
Paul, writing to the church in Galatia, eludes to the plan of God. Here is verses 4 and 5 of ch. 4, “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.”
Turn to the back of the book. Revelation 22:20 tells us, “Yes, I am coming soon.”

God always has had a plan. That plan is never gone. Whatever our situation is at any given time, we can know and trust that God’s plan is still there. The really cool thing is that He wrote it down for us so we don’t have to doubt it.

I think the exiles were grateful that the letter they received had the what (meaning the work they needed to do) but it also contained the why (God’s plans for them).

The point is to go to work and understand that God has a plan for your life.

Trust in Him and work hard.

Exiled! part 1

Posted on January 12, 2016 by Tim Sorbo

Have you ever been exiled? I know, not a word we use in everyday speech so here is the Merriam-Webster definition:

Full Definition of exile

1a: the state or a period of forced absence from one’s country or home 1b : the state or a period of voluntary absence from one’s country or home
2: a person who is in exile

Last week, in my post 3 small simple words, I briefly mentioned Jeremiah 29:11. It was in reference to popular verses in the Bible. Let’s zoom out and start at the beginning of the chapter. Here are the first 3 verses:

“1This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. 2(This was after King Jehoiachin and the queen mother, the court officials and the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the skilled workers and the artisans had gone into exile from Jerusalem.) 3He entrusted the letter to Elasah son of Shaphan and to Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. It said:”

Can we put ourselves in the place of the Israelites? They were not in their homeland. And I don’t think they were camping for the weekend either! Check out the map;

They most likely had feelings of anger, frustration, fatigue and a whole host of others. And to top it off, they knew they were God’s chosen people! How could God let this happen!?!? Did he not love them enough to destroy the enemy and bring them home? Of course God can do it for he can do anything. But that is not the point. The people of God were exiled because the rebelled against God. Sin was the reason. We see this pattern in the Old Testament frequently. The people of God rebel and backslide. Bad things happen. Then, through a leader, judge, prophet or an event, the people humble themselves and God restores them. In this particular instance, God uses the exile to discipline the Israelites.

Fast forward to 2016. Are you in a state of exile? Are you far from your home? I am not really speaking literally now although that could be the case. Is your heart far from God? Do you feel as if you are living under the control of an evil ruler? Is your life forced upon you rather than you living free?

You see, sin will exile you from God. It separates us, the created, from God, our Creator. Our choices can affect our standing with God. We can consistently choose to keep sin between us and God. That is living in exile. There are also times, perhaps, when we are the victim of other people’s choices. Life clocks us up side the head. More feelings of exile. Overall, living in exile seems to be more common than living in true freedom!

So what do we do? If I find I am living in exile, what can I do? The answer will have to wait until next week. but I do have one final thought for you.

Verse 4 says, “4This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:”

Read it again.

One more time.

“to all those I carried…”

Even when sin or circumstance sends you into exile, God is really not that far off. In fact, if God did not want you to be in exile He could stop it. But he loves us so much that He gave us free will. We get to choose whether or not we will love Him or hate Him. Serve Him or deny Him.

His arms are big. He can carry the entire human race. We just need to choose Him and not exile.

Be encouraged, God loves you. Until next week.

3 small simple words

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Tim Sorbo

What is the most popular verse in the Bible? Have you ever seen something like this at a sporting event?

What verse pops up in your head? Here are some of the others that came to my mind:

Genesis 1:1; Philippians 4:6-7; I Corinthians 13

To read these verses or any other verses in the Bible, click Biblehub.com

There is another passage that also comes to mind. But before I get to that, let me give you the back story.

Back in December, I was meditating on 2016. Multiple questions were circling through my head about things I wanted to do, blogs I wanted to write, places I wanted to visit, and goals I wanted to accomplish. What were my plans for 2016? This is what I go through at the end of the year. I evaluate myself and then project what the future holds.

It was in this place that these three small simple words came to mind.

Do The Work.

What!?!? God, I am making plans here. You need to reveal great things for my life. Do the work? Are you crazy? That is all God has spoken to me as of right now.

Let’s get back to the popular verses. I have listed four of them and you might even have others. Here is the one that also came to mind. Jeremiah 29:11.

If, by chance, you don’t know this one by heart, here it is, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

This is the stuff that I was hoping to hear from God about. He was going to lay out the next 12 months so I could follow Him. At least that is what I thought I needed from God.

That passage in Jeremiah is one that I have heard literally dozens, if not hundreds, of times. But it is coming into a completely different focus for me right now. A new light is shining into those words. God is speaking to me. And I want to share it with you.

But for right now, I am just trying to do the work.

Divine Deluge!

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Tim Sorbo

“Oh the weather outside is frightful…” Actually, it has been raining a lot here in Green Bay. We are truly wondering if we will have a white Christmas.

Monday morning, I was driving to work. At a particular stop light, I normally turn left. However, I could not turn left because the road was closed. There was a police car and some orange barricades. As I drove straight, I looked to see why the road was shut down. Flooding. There was a 40-foot section of road that was covered in water. I just had to go a few extra blocks out of my way to get to the Olive Garden.

Here is the ironic part. I was listening to the worship song, “Open Up the Heavens.” One of the lines in the song says, “Open up the floodgates. A mighty river. Flowing from your heart…”

So that song is playing and I am seeing some flooding happening right before my eyes. That whole scenario got my brain thinking.

Historically, floods have always been associated with destruction. Noah and the ark ring a bell? I lived in Minneapolis, MN during the flooding of 1993. I still recall some of those images. In 2013, my wife and I were in New Orleans. On a tour of the city, we saw flood damage from Hurricane Katrina. You can probably recall some flooding in the recent past as well. Here is a funny picture from Alberta, Canada.

CALGARY, ALBERTA.: JUNE 21, 2013 — Blake Wartenbe catches his wife Desiree as she jumps over flowing water in a flooded downtown Calgary, Alberta on June 21, 2013. For City story by ? (Leah Hennel/Calgary Herald)

Here are two observations of mine:

Flooding will cause diversion. You may have to travel a different path due to road conditions.
Flooding will cause destruction. There is always cleanup after a flood.

Let’s look at a flood from a different perspective now, not a historical one.

Flooding can be a good thing when a spiritual perspective is adopted. Think about God’s heart for a moment. Can you fathom how much love it contains? Is there a limit to the grace and mercy of the Almighty? What levy is going to hold it all back? When God decides to pour out His spirit, nothing can stop. It will go where it pleases and do what it wants. Spiritual flooding is a good thing. Let’s look at those two items again.

Flooding will cause diversion. In my sin, I need to be diverted now and then. Sometimes, I don’t see the end result but God does. He loves me too much for me to go down that road. A flooding of God’s spirit can divert me from sin. I like that.
Flooding will cause destruction. Every time I choose something other than God, I am building my own kingdom. Ultimately, my kingdom will end in ruin. A great crash is coming. God’s flooding can destroy the works that I am trying to do. This is a good thing. Now, with my ugly excuses for a kingdom cleared away, God can begin building HIS Kingdom in my life. The destruction was necessary. Rebuilding the new requires destruction of the old.

If you like a challenge, let me set one out for you.

For the next week, ask God to flood your life.

Ask Him to fill your heart with extra compassion during this particular season.

Ask Him to break your heart for the lost souls around you.

Ask Him to cleanse your heart from all sin.

Ask Him to prepare your heart for great and mighty things to come.

Go ahead and ask for a flood. But be careful because He may just do it.

Two Minutes With Tim

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