Phileosophie

Perhaps because I have not understood, and have cried out to God in frustration - explain Yourself! What do you mean by this verse? What do you want from me? He has taken to repeating himself endlessly.  I am the One True God. I am The Beginning and The End. You shall have no idols before me.  Everything has pointed to this one thing, and slowly slowly I am beginning to understand. Please keep speaking Oh Lord, for I am forgetful and may lose this message as easily as it has come. Please keep going for a little longer so it that might sink into my soul.

This is a great sermon and has taught me a fair bit about friendships. The below is an abbreviated transcript, because it has been worded so nicely I really couldn't say it any better than he has. You can't rush relational intimacy. It doesn't happen in a day. Sometimes in the eagerness, because we are so starved for actual people in our life, when anybody shows us any attention, we just come on so strong and lay it on so thick coz we're trying to Amazon Prime the relationship. But when it's just this tiny little thing, you just add tiny little twigs to it and a little bit of kindling to it. You can't get to the big logs right away. That little flame is not enough to take on that big log. So you need friendship kindling and that takes time. There are things in society today that have made it harder for us to develop friendships. There is an increased ease of movement. Where in the past, you would have lived and died in a similar location, these days, you can tak...

Our purpose in life is to praise the Lord and speak of His faithfulness (Isaiah 38: 18-19) so when we pray, do not pray for our own protection or for our own benefit, but pray in order that God may be glorified.  In Isaiah chapter 37, we see Hezekiah cry out to God to save Judah. But he doesn’t ask for Judah’s salvation. He asks that God may prove Sennacherib wrong so that the world will see that God is not like the wooden and stone gods of the other nations.  In Isaiah chapter 38, Hezekiah is given 15 more years of life, after an illness that was meant to kill him. But he doesn’t say that God has given him life for Hezekiah’s benefit. He says instead that he has been humbled by God - that he has been kept alive because if he was dead he would be unable to sing God’s praises. A dead Hezekiah would be unable to hope for God’s faithfulness or tell his children about the Lord’s faithfulness.  Why is God against those who are proud? Because humility allows you to see that all...