The exhausting work of being your own foundation: Christopher Cook says, “And as much as I wish it were different, the Word of the Lord from Isaiah does not promise the storm will lift on your timeline; it promises a foundation that will not move while the storm within (and without) rages. The counterfeit tells you to become stable enough to stop being afraid.”
Our motive for obeying God shouldn’t be gratitude: John Piper says, “There is an impulse in the fallen human heart—all our hearts—to forget that gratitude is a spontaneous response of joy to receiving something over and above what we paid for. When we forget this, what happens is that gratitude starts to be misused and distorted as an impulse to pay for the very thing that came to us gratis. This terrible moment is the birthplace of the ‘debtor’s ethic.’”
Why God goes by Elohim, El Shaday, and Yahweh in the Pentateuch: Wyatt Graham begins, “In the Pentateuch, God reveals himself through three names: Elohim, El Shadday, and Yahweh. Each name is associated with a different covenant (Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic) and is accompanied by a covenantal sign (rainbow, circumcision, sabbath).”
The situation: Chris Martin says, “Every god we grasp disintegrates in our hands because the one, true God cannot live in submission to us, be earned, or achieved.”
Google earth takes you on Lewis and Clark’s 8,000 mile voyage: Pretty cool.
Photo by Fons Heijnsbroek on Unsplash