Finding God's Path

January 7, 2024

Pastor Patrick presented today's message, "Finding God's Path." A video of the message is here. The name of this series is "What Everyone Wants to Know."

The text of a Facebook post announcing today's service/message said, "In the Old Testament, God's voice seemed so clear. So, how do we find God's voice in today's world full of distractions?" Another post read, "God's speaking to you. Are you listening?" And a third post read, "Have you been struggling to hear God's voice? Or better yet, how do you know if God is truly speaking to you?"

The golf analogy was perfect for staying on the path God intended for us. See the video.

Patrick wrapped up his message with four practical questions to keep in mind as you try to discern what God's will is for you (personally).

1. What does the Bible say? My opinion is that the Torah contains the vast majority of "boundary setting" attributes found in the entire Bible. The Torah solidly establishes both "God's sovereign will" and "God's moral will" (Patrick's terms in his message). Much of the remainder of the Bible, including the New Testament, echoes, expands, or further nuances behaviors already called for in the Torah. As the Torah is considerably older than the rest of the Bible, it can be harder to comprehend, but it is comprehensible with some effort, and very rewarding. Dismissing the Old Testament as basically "canceled" by the New is a gross mistake.

Patrick referenced Luke 21:33 in this regard, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." Here, the Greek word for "words" is logos (in the plural). Logos is one of two words, the other being nomos, which is often used to refer to the Torah. Even if this is not a clear reference to the Torah, it is certainly a reference to all the Godhead's words which, for Christians, includes the Old and New Testaments.

If you'd like a little more about the logos/nomos/torah connection, click here.

2. Have I sought Godly counsel? Patrick referenced Proverbs 11:14, "For lack of guidance a nation falls, but victory is won through many advisers." This is but one of many texts in Proverbs that promote seeking Godly counsel (12:15, 15:22, 19:20-21, 24:6, 28:26, 13:10, and 1:7). Additionally, one of my favorites in this regard is Proverbs 27:17, "Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." It's also interesting to note that there are many OT texts that warn of counsel from fools, the undisciplined, and the like.

3. Do I sense God's peace? Patrick's reference was to 1 Corinthians 14:33. I'll add Philippians 4:7, "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." I like the word "guard" in there as it relates so well to protecting the boundaries of the fairway (in Patrick's golf analogy). In both texts, the word peace is the Greek word eirenes which equates to the OT word shalom. The notion of peace in the Bible is much larger than you might expect. For some details on the notion of peace in the OT and the NT, click here.

4. Is it my will or God's will? It's made clear in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, that there is a difference between man's will and God's will. Genesis 28:15, "You [Jacob] intended to harm me [Esau], but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." (This refers to part of the Jacob story where he tricks his brother, Esau, out of his birthright.) For an interesting read on discerning God's will from the Old Testament, click here.

This overall topic, God's will, is a huge issue for me. God has made His will quite clear through scripture. And by following that guidance, each of us can be better individuals and our society can be a far better society. The further from God's will we drift, the worse things will be. And that's NOT because "God will punish us," it's a natural consequence of being bad/evil. It is no coincidence that the greatest society that has ever existed on this planet, the United States specifically and what has become Western Civilization generally, was formed based on Biblical principles. The most-often quoted book by the Founding Fathers, including ALL books available, is Deuteronomy. Remember, the right combo is a religious/moral people and a secular government. That's a rarely understood meaning of Mark 12:17, "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."

Bonus

Bible Baseball

At our last Family Dinner we played Bible Baseball. Quite the hit (so to speak!)! We played with ages ranging from 3rd grade to senior citizen and had a great time.

It's basically a Bible knowledge/trivia game that all ages can play together given the various levels of difficulty of questions within the game.

Set up is simple. Arrange 4 chairs like a baseball diamond: home plate, first, second, and third bases. Divide the group into two teams. One person "runs" the game by being the pitcher (all the time). Have separate seating for each team near the "field of play" (each team's dugout). The game plays with regular baseball rules, except:

The batter asks for a level of difficulty by requesting either a single pitch, a double pitch, a triple pitch, or a homerun pitch. These represent levels of difficulty in the question "thrown" at the batter. If the batter answers the question correctly, he advances on the bases according to the level of pitch. If there are any runners already on base, they each advance the same number of bases as the hitter. If the batter does not answer the question correctly, he is out.

One option is not to give the batter an option for the level of pitch (difficulty of the question). Level of pitch can be determined by lot each pitch, or let the pitcher (leader) decide each pitch.

Another option is to allow the batter to get help from teammates, or not.

It's quite alright to add rules such as max runs per inning if you see things getting lopsided. Other "balancing rules" are perfectly fine as you see fit.

Decide ahead of time on a length of game play either in innings or clock time.

There are plenty of resources for this game's questions and answers online. Try searches like "bible trivia questions answers" or the like.

There are also online apps to run the game for you. Search on "bible baseball game apps" or the like.

Bonus2

Brief Summary of the Old Testament Narrative

Click here (from GotQuestions.org). About five pages with scripture links.

Or, click here. This one is a little more concise, narrowing the OT narrative down, almost, to just eleven books.

I just started reading Woudstra's commentary on the Book of Joshua. This book picks up right from Numbers where the Israelites are about to cross over into the Promised Land and now Joshua is in charge. The book is a little dense, with lots of footnotes, many of which I have found interesting even when not directly related to the narrative.