Genesis 4:7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” God's words to Cain. This is after Cain and Abel each presented offerings to God. God was very pleased with Abel's offering and less so with Cain's. God tells Cain," If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”   God says this before Cain killed his brother, Abel. God was talking about the offering but perhaps also about what God knew was coming. God told Cain to do what is right, that sin is crouching at your door, that sin wants him and that Cain must rule over sin. God is warning Cain to beware. To be aware of anger and his jealousy and his penchant for giving enough, but never his best.  God warns Cain, then Cain kills Abel. How often do we do the exact s...

According to the Bible, the first three people to sin were the first three people. Adam, Eve, then Cain killed his younger brother, Abel. In each sinful event, God confronted the sinner.  In each event, they denied their sin. I want to repeat that.  In each event, they denied their sin.  They blamed someone else, or made excuses or tried to pretend it didn't happen. We still do that today.  No matter the issue, we try to dilute it by calling it something other than sin. We all do it.  Then when we are confronted with the sin, we make excuses or try to convince others that it isn't really a sin. There was a tragic shooting in Arizona a few days ago.  Some are trying to say the shooter isn't responsible for his actions.  We just can't face it when we do wrong. We can't accept that there is evil in the world. But the Bible is pretty clear that there is evil, and there is sin and that we will be held accountable.  Thank God for Jesus who died to t...

There were two "special" trees in the Garden of Eden.  ( Genesis 2:9 ) The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.    Notice one was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is the tree Adam and Eve were supposed to leave alone because they would "surely die" if they ate its fruit. The other tree was the Tree of Life.  This phrase is mentioned eleven times in the NIV version of the Bible.  Sometimes it is more of a metaphor than an actual tree.   In Genesis 2 it is an actual tree. Genesis 3:22 And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” Genesis 3:24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Ed...

http://wanweihsien.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/scripture-homosexuality-and-difficult-truths/ Genesis 32:22-37 tells the story of Jacob wrestling with God...... physically ... wrestling ... with God.  I'm afraid that some of the oldest stories in the Bible just seem......unlikely to me.  I'm not saying they didn't happen. I just wonder if they are somewhat exaggerated, or if there was some misunderstanding, or if the people or writers were less sophisticated so some things SEEMED like the way they are recorded in scripture. I know thinking like that can cause doubts in other areas of the Bible. But a man (Jacob) physically wrestling with God and GOD was unable to overcome Jacob?  See what I mean?  I just don't think this is the whole story. Seems a lot of stories in the Bible don't give us the whole story. In fact, many stories leave as many questions as they do answers. For example, why is this story even in the Bible?  I'm not sure I get the point, any poi...

Genesis 22 :12 " Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." I have to be very honest about the story surrounding this verse. It bugs me.  First God tells Abraham to take Isaac, his son, the one he'd been promised, Abraham's ONLY son born to him when he and his wife were very old, to a place on the mountain and offer him as a burnt sacrifice.  This is a very difficult request to understand and an even more difficult one to comply with! But let's not get into that. After Abraham takes Isaac to the mountain, he ties him and places him on an altar that Isaac probably helped build for the sacrifice.  Abraham is ready, with knife in hand, to slay his son. At the last second, an ANGEL appears to tell Abraham not to harm the boy.  An Angel. Not God, but an angel. He personally told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac but sends an angel to tell him...

I'm reading a book called " The Top 100 Miracles of the Bible " .  I haven't gotten very far, only to page 17 and miracle number 5. The first miracles noted in this book are about creation in Genesis .   I'm intrigued because I hadn't thought of each line of the creation story as a separate miracle. I hadn't even thought of each day separate from each other day in the narrative. If you reread the story, one verse at a time, you will see an interesting picture.  Before the first day, God created the heavens and the earth.  Picture this, the heavens and the earth.  I picture the stars and a dark sky. But the earth is more difficult. Genesis says the earth was formless and empty, dark, covered with water.  This was BEFORE the first day.  How do we comprehend that?  How can we grasp the meaning of before time. Then - sometime later, when it became the first day, God created light.  He didn't dispel the dark though. He separated darkness from...

by Deanna Etienne.  Used by permission. What do you see? Water? Rocks? Sunlight?  Do you see the frog? God made this frog this color, and shiny - like the water he lives in, to hide him from predators. Even though he is hidden from predators, he isn't out of God's sight. After Cain killed Abel, God sent him away.  Cain was afraid that he'd be hidden from God's view. Genesis 4:13 - 15 (NIV) says " Cain said to the LORD , ' My punishment is more than I can bear.....I will be hidden from your presence'. But the LORD said to him, 'Not so...'" 1 Samuel 2:3 (CEV) says: Nothing is hidden from the LORD... Job 26:6 (CEV) says: Nothing in that land.... is hidden from God... Psalm 33:15 (CEV) says "The LORD gave us each a mind, and nothing we do can be hidden from him." Psalm 38:9 (ESV) says O Lord, all my longing is before you; my sighing is not hidden from you. This is a recurring theme. Nothing is away from God's ...

I have a friend who watches 6 very young children, give or take one or two, each day. There are several reasons I am glad she is helping raise these children. 1) They will be introduced and get to know God. The world needs for our children to be introduced and know God. It would be a much nicer place. 2) She tells such wonderful stories about them, about her experiences during a typical day with them, about how they understand or misunderstand what seems to be simple things. 3) She shares photos from their journeys outside. Many times these are very innocent glimpses of childhood. 4) I learn a lot from her stories and experiences. This post is about one of the things she has told me. As I said, she has anywhere from three to six children, all under two years old in her care.  Think about the diaper changes alone. She has a plan for this. By the time they are a year old, she has already started potty training. She starts so young because as she says, "they don't have will yet...

I just love finding Jesus in the Old Testament.  He's there from the beginning ( Genesis 1 :26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness..." ) and interspersed throughout the rest of the Old Testament. Today, I found Him in Hosea 6 .  Hosea 6:2 says   After two days he will revive us;        on the third day he will restore us,        that we may live in his presence. When the Lord gave these words to Hosea, I doubt that he had any idea what he was saying.  He was only doing as he was told, repeating the words that the Lord told him to say. But as we read it, we can see Jesus.  "On the third day" is when Jesus was raised and offered us forgiveness and salvation. That's when we were revived.  That is when we were restored.  That is when we were offered the opportunity to live in his presence. I have a study Bible that says that Hosea became a prophet in 753 BC. He...

There are a lot of unnamed people in the Bible.  Many of them are key to some aspect of the Bible story. For example, Genesis 4:17 says "Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch."  I'd say that the mother of all the descendants of half the population was a key person.  There is a servant girl in the story of Naaman. (See 2 Kings 5 )  In the New Testament, there is the person who supplied the colt that Jesus rode when entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and another who supplied the "upper room" for what came to be known as the Last Supper was also unnamed.  In one case I can easily think of, the person isn't even mentioned. Luke 2:7 - "and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn." Christmas programs all over the world portray the innkeeper as turning awa...

Jesus was home, in his hometown. He was with people he'd grown up with, in the town where he learned his trade (carpentry), where people knew him. He was where he felt that comfortable it's-good-to-be-home feeling. He brought with him those with whom he'd been traveling, preaching and teaching, those with whom he'd been spending most of his time, eating with, and healing with -  His disciples. He was with all the people he loved the most.  His friends, his family, and his disciples. But Mark said in chapter 6 verse 5  " And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them." Can you imagine how Jesus hurt from this? He loved these people. He wanted healing for them.  He wanted them to accept God's greatest gift. He wanted so much for them. But he was unable to do any " mighty work there ".  Why was Jesus unable to do any "might work" there? Was he powerless there, like Superman arou...

This morning, I was sitting outside listening to the birds chattering, the leaves rustling, and the other noises that are about on an early Monday morning.  Genesis 3:8a (ESV) says "And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day..." This passage hurt me and calmed me at the same time.  There was a time when God, in His magnificence, walked in the Garden. This sound wasn't the wind rustling the leaves, birds chirping, or the water babbling in a nearby stream.  This sound was God walking in the Garden.  Oh, what a gift that would be!!  To be walking with God in the Garden.  To hear Him approach.  To be THAT close. Then comes the rest of the verse: "and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden."  They were in the Garden with God. They couldn't enjoy "the cool of the day" with God. Their sin caused them to lose their joy and wallow in guilt. ...

God used two arks in the early lives of His people.  One was to save them from the world-encompassing, cleansing flood.  The other was to save them from eternal damnation.  After creation of the world and eviction from Eden, the peoples of the world grew increasingly bad. At one point, it was so bad that God was grieved.  Genesis 6:6-9 Verse 6 says: " The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. " Verse 8: " But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD."  Verse 9. ... "Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God."  This time God had Noah build an ark with instructions that upon completion he was to load it with his wife and sons with their wives along with a boat load of animals.  Thus the animal part of God's creation was saved from destruction. The second ark was quite different but had a similar function - to save God's creation...

Colossians 1:9 (NIV) .... asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. This passage tells of Paul's prayer for the Colossians.  He asks God to fill them "with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding".  For some reason when I read this passage, the word "knowledge" is what I saw.  It reminded me of the Garden, where there were two specific trees mentioned. Genesis 2:9 mentions these two trees.  The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  "And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."  Notice that there was no tree of the knowledge of God's will. I guess that was not necessary since they did not know good or evil, they only knew God...... at that point.  In ...

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding." How many times do we say we trust the Lord, we believe in His ways, we will follow? Yet oftentimes we will argue with another or demand our own way when it comes to what the Bible says. Each time we do this, we are in effect limiting (what we believe to be) God's power. I know this is a tired debate but I want to bring it up anyway. No where in the Bible does it say that there is no such thing as evolution. There is nothing in Genesis that says "on the first day that God did anything, he created xxx, then on the very next day that God did anything, he created xxxx." No, Genesis uses terms like (Yes, I know the terms are translations from the original text - which was also not the original because the original was not text at all but rather an oral history!) anyway, Genesis uses phrases like "the first day", "the second day", "the third day". ...