There is a great song out there called, "When God Ran", by Philips, Craig, and Dean.
The chorus says:
"The only time I ever saw Him run, Was when, He ran to me, He took me in his arms, Held my head to his chest, Said my son's come home again, Lifted my face, Wiped the tears from my eyes, With forgiveness in His voice He said, Son do you know I still love you, He caught me by surprise when God ran."
What a powerful song, and most definitely God will run to you when you call on Him, but He doesn’t want to have to do that.
Psalm 34:7 says, "The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear Him, And delivers them."
Jesus does not want to have to run to you. He wants to be invited to encamp, dwell with you at all times. If Jesus has to run to you, He gets there in a flash. However, the fact that Jesus has to run, means that you were at some point not with Him, and therefore in danger.
Invite Jesus to encamp around you. Tell Jesus you want Him by you at all times. When Jesus encamps around you, He is already there, before the trouble starts, ready to work for you!
How do you invite Jesus to do so? 4 easy ways.
Philippians 4:8-9 – Think about good things. No one wants to be around a negative person, including Jesus.
Psalm 1:2-3 – Meditate on God’s Word. Let it speak to you, and God will bring those words and promises to life before your very eyes.
I Thessalonians 5:16 – Rejoice always, sing God’s praises often. We all have cell phones these days. Play your favorite worship song, sing with it, and God’s presence will be there.
I Thessalonians 5:17 – Be in constant contact with Jesus. Make sure Jesus is part of your everyday conversations. Jesus has all the answers, why not include Him more often.
Try one of the above, or better yet, do all four of these and see if your circumstances don’t immediately change, and stay changed, because Jesus is encamped around you!
Don’t make God run to you. Invite Him to dwell with you always.
Remember Jesus loves you, I love you, and you are awesome!
Have you heard this phrase? Jesus is the Reason for the Season? It is a great phrase, there would be no Christmas without Jesus. Today the world is trying its best to keep Jesus out of it. We now have sayings like Seasons Greetings, and Happy Holidays. The world is trying to group Jesus with everything else to dimmish His importance. Why? Because they don’t really think He is all that. BUT HE IS!
If we are to convince people that giving their lives to Jesus is the most important gift they could ever receive we should be able to prove Jesus is who He says He is. Most of mankind wants a convincing argument they can get their head around. They would like to know for sure.
This is one of main reasons the Old Testament is written. And why there were 400 years of silence before Jesus came. It all comes down to, believe it or not, science.
The science of probability attempts to determine the chance that a given event will occur. A professor at Westmont College, has calculated the probability of one man fulfilling the major prophecies made concerning Jesus. The estimates were worked out by twelve different classes representing some 600 university students. The students carefully weighed all the factors, discussed each prophecy at length, and examined the various circumstances which might indicate that men had conspired together to fulfill a particular prophecy. They made their estimates conservative enough so that there was finally unanimous agreement even among the most skeptical students. However, the professor then took their estimates, and made them even more conservative. He also encouraged other skeptics or scientists to make their own estimates to see if his conclusions were more than fair.
Finally, he submitted his figures for review to a committee of the American Scientific Affiliation. Upon examination, they verified that his calculations were dependable and accurate in regard to the scientific material presented. For example, concerning Micah 5:2, where it states the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, the professor and his students determined the average population of BETHLEHEM from the time of Micah to the present; then they divided it by the average population of the earth during the same time period. They concluded that the chance of one man being born in Bethlehem was one in 300,000.
After examining only eight different prophecies, they conservatively estimated that the chance of one man fulfilling all eight prophecies was one in 10 to the 17th power. To illustrate how large the number 10^17 is (a figure with 17 zeros), the professor gave this illustration: If you mark one of ten tickets, and place all the tickets in a hat, and thoroughly stir them, and then ask a blindfolded man to draw one, his chance of getting the right ticket is one in ten. Suppose that we take 10^17 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They’ll cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state.
Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up the one silver dollar that has the special mark on it. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would’ve had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time.
But, of course, there are many more than eight prophecies. In another calculation, the professor used 48 prophecies and arrived at the extremely conservative estimate that the probability of 48 prophecies being fulfilled in one person is the incredible number of 1 in 10 to the 157th power. How large is 10^157? 10^157 contains 157 zeros!
That is just 48 of over 300 prophecies fulfilled by Jesus Christ.
Now back to why the Old Testament took about 1000-1500 years to write.
First, the Old Testament was written before the modern printing press was even thought of. So copies were not readily available.
Second, if the Old Testament would have been written in say 100 hundred years or less, it would be very possible that many of the prophets would have interacted with one another and could have “gotten their story straight”.
The fact that most prophets never read each other’s works, and were not alive together is significant. The fact that there are 300 prophecies concerning one man, Jesus Christ that all are fulfilled in His life is amazing since these people were not contemporaries of each other.
What about the 400 years of silence from the writing of Malachi to Jesus’s birth. So that no one could use Jesus’s life or the time leading up to his birth to influence the fulfilling of the prophecies. The prophecies would be untainted and have to stand on their own without any help.
God did all of this, part of His plan to show a skeptical world that Jesus IS EXACTLY who He claimed to be. The Son of God who can save us.
Thus why we should celebrate Christmas, and not Season’s Greetings or Happy Holidays. Jesus is truly the reason, because He came to save us all from our sins. He came for everyone! That gift Jesus came to give cannot and must not be undersold!
Jesus is God, and did all of this for you because He loves you and wants to spend eternity with you! He wanted to prove who He is beyond a shadow of a doubt!
Remember Jesus loves you, I love you, and you are awesome!
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It is January 2nd. We just rang in a new year yesterday. It was a great day, as we look forward to better things in 2025. We have hope for many better returns in the new year.
It is December 26th. Yesterday was Christmas and it was a wonderful time! Now it is the day after. The day when most people spend their day returning gifts to the store, returning to work, and/or traveling to return home to the same old same old.