A Woman's Heart

I just completed week 3 of A Woman's Heart: God's Dwelling Place and let me tell you it is rockin' my world. I am just soaking up all this new stuff I am learning about the Israelites and their journey in the wilderness. Some fun things I have learned about are the different meanings of gold, silver and bronze. Gold being rare & pure and representing God's deity. Silver representing redemption and atonement. Bronze often for strength and judgment. I never knew that...to me it was what it was...but it really is far more. I was reminded of people we don't ever read about other than maybe in bible college like Bezalel and Oholiab. Who? Exactly! But let me tell you God handpicked them to furnish His dwelling place. You can read about them in Exodus 35 & 36. They were available and obedient to God! I have meditated on the names of God

El Elyon-The Most High God

El Shaddai-The Caregiver

Jehovah-Shamma-The Lord is Present

Jehovah-Jireh-God will provide

Johovah-Rapha-God who heals

which I meditated on the most being at Exodus last week.

I also learned a lot about bitterness and how it is "spiritual cancer" according to Beth Moore and how it can consume your life. Bitterness is so contagious that we can pass it on to our children. Woah....protect my lips & heart oh God! I don't want to pass that along by any means.

Some of my favorite statements I have read so far by Beth Moore are:

Often our character is at greater risk in prosperity than in adversity.

Only God's provision can satisfy a starving soul.

Nothing is more misleading than an unsatisfied heart.

Sin is not the product of our have and have nots. It is a product of the heart.

No amount of comfort is worth missing the greatest adventure humankind can experience.

God seeks to set his people free from their dependence on themselves so that they depend instead on Him.

God's supernatural provision for humanity is most recongnizable when we find ourselves in a wilderness devoid of self-sufficiency.

God has really been working on my heart about sin. Since we went to Exodus I have gained a new perspective on sin and recognized my own weakness of classifying them and still do as I noticed this morning as I was discussing this study with Bill and how it's hard not to see God as an angry God and that he just wanted to destroy the Israelites because they were so disobedient. Then Moses interceeded and reminded Him of the promise He made to Abraham and how they didn't want the Egyptians to say that God took the Israelites from Egypt just to kill them in the wilderness. I found myself defending the Israelites and thinking that God should of offered them more time to get their act together...and that some were killed for "big sins" and others for small sins like grumbling and complaining...then I realized what the heck and I saying? God is holy! He provided manna for them to eat each day, he was a cloud by day and fire by night, He was Jehovah-Jireh! The Israelites were so weak and needed to just trust God.

How many times do we do that? God provides, meets needs, gives and we focus so much on what we were given that we lose focus of the Giver and want more and are just simply never satisfied. I pray that I find my satisfaction in Him because when I do...not much else seems to matter as much. I feel like I don't focus on all the other "stuff"

God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Cor. 5:21

I know this post is all over the place so thanks for hanging in there...I need to go to sing another encore of The B-I-B-L-E with Lily!