God Who Sees Me

I just finished up the first week of my year-long Bible reading plan. Yea! I am praying really hard that God will give me the endurance to finish this. He will.

Reading for this week:
Matthew 1-4:11
Acts 1- 4:37
Psalms 1-7
Genesis 1-20

Here are some of my reflections through the week. Note: Most of this may not make sense. Love to hear any additional comments/insight.

Matthew
*(1:5) love the fact that Rahab is in the lineage of Jesus--God's work is not limited by human mistakes.
*(3:7) Do not put the Lord your God to the test. We shouldn't try to manipulate God by asking for signs...
*When faced with temptation (4:10) worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.

Acts
*(3:19) Repent then and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Christ, who has been appointed to you--even Jesus.

*This verse pairs nicely with one of my favorites in Hosea (6:3)Let us acknowledge the Lord, let us press on to acknowledge Him. As surely as the sun rises He will appear; he will come to us like the winter rain, like the spring rains that water the earth. Repentance is SUCH a difficult thing. It seems painful and honestly my flesh always wonders if the trade-off can really be worth the effort. Shame on me. The Lord's refreshment which will come as "surely as the sun rises" has got to be better than anything my flesh craves.

*Peeps in the early church really knew how to live:)

Psalms
(5:1-3) Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my sighing. Listen to my cry for help my King and my God, for to you I pray. In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation. At the encouragement of my pastor some years back I had memorized this passage of scripture. I really love it--the part about waiting in expectation. Like we are just waiting to see how God will work--fully knowing He will.

Genesis
*I thoroughly enjoyed reading from Genesis. I guess it's because I can relate to so many of the people and how messed up they were! The last part of chapter 18 had me rolling! I don't know why. It seemed like a biblical SNL scene as Abraham kept asking "but what if 45 are righteous? but what if 40? but what if? what if? what if????" I guess it shows that God doesn't get tired of our questions. On the other hand, He was about to destroy an entire city. That part was not funny but rather a sobering reminder of the justice that we all deserve but are spared because of His mercy.

*(18:13-15) from The Message (for comedic effect) God said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh saying, 'Me? Have a baby? An old woman like me?' Is anything too hard for God? I'll be back about this time next year and Sarah will have a baby." Sarah lied. She said, "I didn't laugh," because she was afraid. But he said, "Yes you did; you laughed."
I know, I'm weird but this was also comical to me. It's just the way God is like "uh, YEAH ya did. You LAUGHED." and then Sarah must have thought to herself, oh yeah he's God. He knows if I laughed or not. I remember the day I finally realized that I could be honest with God--since He already knows my heart.

*Love the name Hagar gave God in 16:13--God who sees me. I LOVE that. I'm going to start calling Him that.