Google and God

Google searches this past week have been crazy.  Between how much triple 19 fertilizer to use on our yellowing corn and how to clip duck wings so they can't fly out of their pen, there's a wide range of "I don't knows" that have been answered. 

Then there were concordance searches on Blue Letter Bible.  How I love that website!  When I can't remember the reference to "Christ is all, and in all," Blue Letter Bible comes to the rescue.  When I want to know the nuances of meaning for "keepers" in the King James Version of Titus 2:5, Blue Letter Bible grants me a window of understanding into what the author (and God) meant.

I had some questions for God this week too; and you can't treat God like Google.  No using specialized search terms that bring you back 1,697,832 results! Questions for God require reading all the blog posts God ever published. Do you know, that as I pondered some thoughts with regard to marriage this week, God used some passages from 1 Samuel to shed light on the subject?  It's just where I was reading.  But as I was praying for insight and wisdom, God opened doors of understanding from what He had written in stories about Saul and the Philistines, Saul and David, David and Goliath, David and Jonathan. 

This is why it is so important to continue reading the Word even when you may think there's no way that where you are reading could possibly relate to your current situation.  You breathe a prayer to Heaven for food for your soul and your daily needs and then begin reading, and God gives you manna!  The rock--as dry and hot and huge and ugly and hard as ever you saw--God strikes it and out flows water to quench your thirst. 

Do not count deserts and rocks and oceans and mountains and desolations and ashes as impossibilities!  Do not take blindness and handicaps and leprosy and illness as forever! 
The Word of God meets your point of desperation and says, "Yep, that's a strong thing, all right.  In fact, it is a stronghold!  It is a legion of devils!  It is something which no human has ever successfully overcome before. Wow, you are up against something entirely beyond yourself!"

And then it adds, "Don't be afraid!  One of you will chase a thousand!  Two of you will put 10,000 to flight!  Be of good courage!  I will fight for you!  I HAVE OVERCOME THE WORLD!  Ashes mean nothing to me:  I create beauty out of chaos.  Deserts and oceans--I create paths and roses where there were none.  I turn rocks into water, empty morning mist into manna.  Every single thing that you think is impossible--I can turn that thing upside down and inside out and even make it disappear!"

Dear friends, read the Word of God so that you are not faithless but believing!  Read the Word of God so that you have courage to face impossibilities.  Read the Word of God so that you overcome and are victorious instead of cowering and being a victim.  Read the Word of God so that the world does not overcome you, but that you overcome the world.
 
"I have written to you who are young in the faith
because you are strong.
God’s word lives in your hearts,
and you have won your battle with the evil one."