Tag Archives: faith

Be Still and Know God

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Waiting, being still what is the difference?

Remember that our modern English words don’t necessary translate nicely with Hebrew words.  Wait and being still are two words/phrases that can have several meanings and depending on your favorite translation of the Bible a verse may read different ways.  Wait can also mean hope so it will help how you view a passage if you look it up in your concordance.  “Being still” also has several meanings so if you find a verse you like check it out and see how it adds to your understanding.

Sometimes the Hebrew word for “still” can also be translated “wait.” That is why the Amplified Bible can be helpful, it will give alternate meanings to words. Anyway here are some different verses and there “be still’s.”

To “Be Still” means to stand one’s ground, confront, to stand before as in: I Samuel 12:16 – Now then, stand still and see this great thing the Lord is about to do before your eyes! (rain at wheat harvest when Israel wanted a king)

Exodus 14:14 – Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today.

To “Be Still” means to be still, silent, to rest as in: Psalm 4:4 + 5 – In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent. Offer right sacrifices and trust in the Lord.

Habakkuk 2:20 – But the Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth be silent before Him.

Jeremiah 23:18 – 22 Who has listened and heard His word? …. But if they had stood in my council, they would have proclaimed My words to My people and would have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds.

To “Be Still” means to be quiet, hush or come to silence as in: Nehemiah 8: 10 + 11 – Do not grieve for the joy of the Lord is your strength. The Levites calmed all the people, saying, ”Be still for this is a sacred day. Do not grieve.

Zechariah 2:13 – Be still before the Lord, all mankind, because he has roused himself from His holy dwelling.

To “Be Still” means to be feeble, weakened, faint as in: Psalm 46:10 – Be still, and know that I AM God.  “Know” is yada it means knowing by observing and reflecting on things or by experiencing it.

In any of its meanings for me to be still is very hard; I try, sometimes I can do it many times I don’t.  For me anyway this is not meditation or musing over a thought this is just standing/sitting still and quite before God.  If you can really reach a time of being still you may find yourself like Oral Roberts in his book The Ultimate Voice (p. 101), “There was no moving of my physical body, only the wild beating of my heart.” 

All verses are NIV.

Waiting on God

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Isaiah 40: 27 – 31. This is a great Bible verse and people will frequently turn to this passage when they are tired and not sure they can go on.  We focus on verses 30 and 31 and seldom read it in context; we read #31 and start to hope so we can get strength.  I also have done this but one day I started looking up some keywords; I don’t think what I found changes the reality of the verse, but it changes where we should put our emphasis.

One thing that I always suggest in studying any verse is to look at it in different translations and look it up in a concordance, so you get the meaning of the words in their original usage.  For this study I used the King James, so I looked in my Strong’s Concordance which has the Vine’s Dictionary incorporated into it.

I feel that it is God speaking here and in verse 27 scolds and comforts by asking,” Why do you think I am ignoring your cries.” In 28 He reminds us that He is not the problem and in 29 states He is always ready to help us. But verse 31 is where I got a whole new meaning in this passage. Hope is and can be translated as “wait” and renew does not carry the English meaning I thought it would.  Renew is chalaph (H 2498) in Hebrew and it carries the meaning of letting something “slide by or hasten away or change.”  One concordance even suggested the idea of losing something.

I always thought I would get my strength boosted; instead, it seems that I will get rid of my strength and get NEW strength – God’s strength. Then we can soar like an eagle.

Isa 40:27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD; my cause is disregarded by my God”?

Isa 40:28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.

Isa 40:29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.

Isa 40:30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;

Isa 40:31 but those who hope (wait) in the LORD will renew (lose, hasten away, change) their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. (NIV) I added things to emphasize.

Another interesting numerological idea about Isaiah 40 is that if you look at Isaiah as having 66 chapters like the Bible has 66 books then chapter 40 relates to the beginning of the New Testament, and it is the chapter that transitions to the hopeful part of Isaiah.

The Holy Bible, New International Version®. Pradis CD-ROM:Isa 40:27. Grand Rapids: The Zondervan Corporation, © 1973, 1978, 1984.

It is Bad Luck to be Superstitious

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Superstitious comes from a Latin phrase “to stand in terror of the deity.”  The Catholic Encyclopedia states that there are four types of superstitions:

  • improper worship of the one true God (indebitus veri Dei cultus);
  • idolatry:
  • divination;
  • vain observances, which include magic and occult arts.

Here are some examples of these things in the Bible.

Numbers 21: 9 Moses made the brazen serpent (Nehushtan) to heal the people who were bitten by the snakes.  It worked once so they kept it and worshiped it instead of the God who was testing their faith.  In 2 Kings, 18: 4 Hezekiah (a good king) broke it into pieces because of the worship of it.  It had worked once so just always do it that way instead of following God.  People want something to see to worship; God wants it done in the spirit.

1 Samuel 4:3 Israel been beaten by the Philistines because the Ark was not in the camp.  There is no mention of them seeking God before the battle as David and Joshua had done, they were using the ark as a good luck piece.  They had put God in a box that was to magically work wonders just by its mere presence.  They acted just like they did in Jericho and they yelled so loud that the earth shook.  Jericho is the only place mentioned that the Ark was involved in a battle.  

1 Samuel 5:5 the presence of God knocked Dagon to the floor and broke off its head and hands on to the threshold of the door.  So the Philistines never stepped on it again as they went through the door.  In Zephaniah 1:9 the Israelites and picked up that habit so that God was going to “punish all who avoid stepping on the threshold.”  Probably the custom of carrying the bride across the threshold of the house roots itself in this superstition. Watching the people of the world instead of following a holy God, you pick up their religious habits.

Jeremiah 44: 17 the Israelites made cakes to the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings.  They were convinced that because they stopped doing this they were having bad luck.  “If it works for them we should do it too, and it worked once do it again.”  The concept that food can bring us closer to God is laid to rest in 1 Corinthians 8: 8; so much for eating black-eyed peas and cabbage on New Year’s.

1 Kings 20: 13 Ahab defeats Ben-Hadad and his counselors start guessing why they had been beaten and what they had to do to beat Israel. They decided that the Lord must be a god of the hills so they were going to fight them in the valley next time. Think about coaches who will wear only a certain tie while they coach or they won’t shave if they are winning. Or players who won’t change their socks or at least won’t wash them during the season they are convinced that a thing had something to do with them winning.  Dirty batting helmets or slapping a sign or spot before they go out to a game are also very common acts of luck.

Four leaf clovers, black cats, salt over the shoulder, Friday the Thirteenth or any number of other things that people think are lucky or bad luck.  Some have a natural answer why it happened once like never light three smokes with one match. A soldier did this and the enemy was able to fix the location and shoot him.

Now people also have this in the church, one minister told the story of a church where a person got filled with the Holy Spirit sitting on the piano, the same thing happened the next week.  So, the third week they were trying to get people to sit on the piano to be filled with the Spirit.

How should we act – Fix our eyes on Jesus, He is the author and finisher of our faith.

References:http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14339a.htm

Storms Revisited

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Weather and storms are an important part of how Father God deals with His world and its people.  Part of knowing God is knowing that He uses His natural world to interact with us and to make His power and glory known to us.  I like Nahum 1:3 where it says, “His ways are in the whirlwind and the storm and clouds are the dust of His feet (NIV).

Weather, storms, in particular, are where hot and cold air mix creating winds and clouds.  Hot air rises and cooler moves in to take its place.  Air flows from high-pressure areas (mountains of air) to low-pressure areas (valleys of air).  Solar energy drives all of this by heating the earth.

God uses storms to meet with His people like in Job 38.  Thunder, hail, and whirlwinds have been used to create confusion and to defeat the enemies of His people. Examples of these uses are in Proverbs 10:25, Zechariah 7:14 and 1 Samuel 7:10.  But also in Proverbs 10:25 is a promise that the righteous will be standing when the storm has gone by. (see Storms part 2)

The storms in the New Testament are just as powerful and have the same potential for destruction as their Old Testament counterparts, however, they seem to have a different function in God’s plan for man.  The disciples were beaten and battered about by the winds and the waves but Jesus used them as training tools.  The storms in the Gospel of Mark and the one that Paul finds himself in Acts 27 (see Attacks part 3) come in advance of a time of miracles.  Another element that shows its self is that Jesus is present with the people in the storm.

These are thoughts that I have collected through the years about storms.

1. Are the storms of life for God to learn about us or for us to learn about us?

2. It is hard to recognize Jesus in a storm. (T.D. Jakes)

3. A thought on Peter(see Rock or Chip) – A wet water-walker is better than a dry boat-talker.(Pastor Perez)

4. You may see Jesus in the daytime but it is hard to see Him at night in the rain.                (Joel Osteen)

Muses and preachers will always find inspiration in storms both spiritual and physical. But knowing that Jesus will be with us in and through the storm and that we will come out of them better than when we went in I hope eases the discomfort of going through them.

Final thought – Did it happen to me or did it happen for me!  All things work for good, not all things are good. (see Fight)

Test Revisited

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Spiritual test like tests in school are tools that are used by the Master Teacher for our good.  Now, most students are fearful of tests.  So here are some thoughts about testing that may help rearrange our thinking.

1. A test show what we know.

2. A test show what we don’t know.

3. A test show what we need to learn. (It really is different than #2)

I think we associate grades or our worth with a number instead of viewing test, especially spiritual test, as a learning experience and not a symbol of failure and stress.  Jesus being the Master Teacher knows that if you cannot pass the test we should not move on but when we do pass He starts us on a whole new course of study.  So retesting is part of spiritual training. Ex. – John 21 when Jesus asked Peter three times about his love. (see Rock or Chip) So remember passing test are needed to move you to the next grade/level. (see Test, Attacks, and Storms part 1)

Depending on the translation of the Bible you read the word for a test is rendered in several ways: try, prove, examine, tempt, assay, investigate, know, challenge, etc.  I think there are four major groupings of the ideas prove/test or search /know.

1. Malachi/Meribah

2. Testing of Metal

3. Search and Know (the heart/mind)

4. Miscellaneous

Malachi/Meribah may seem like a strange pairing of verses but the same word for test/challenge is what ties them together.  The famous verse about testing God and open windows are in Malachi 3:10 but most of miss 3:15 where it talks about people who test God because they believe it is futile to serve Him.  But the intensity of that testing is reflected in Psalm 81:7, 95:9 and refers to Exodus 17 and Numbers 20 where the people wanted water and Moses was to speak or strike the rocks.

The comparison of us being tested as metals is used in a number of passages.  This was done with great heat and air.  The picture is that something pure is going to come from this type of testing. (see What Type of Metals Are You Part 1)

Psalm 11:4, 139:23 and 17:3 are verses that refer to God searching, knowing and testing us. (see Fight)

Other examples of testing are when Joseph tested his brothers in Genesis 42: 15,16 and God testing Levi in Deuteronomy 33:8.  (see Timeline)

I guess if there is a thought I want you to take away from this it would be; God tests us for our good so that He can promote us to better things and that tests are not attacks, storms or trials. (see Test, Attacks, and Storms part 2, part 3)