Come Follow Me with Sam

 Welcome! There are 2 quotes I would like to highlight And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that  a Ahab  said unto him,  Art  thou he that troubleth Israel? Above is the last code of the great mystery of who a prophet is. and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O  Lord , take away my life; for I  am  not better than my fathers. This is a middling code of the mystery of Godliness. It is a strange God we worship who is not our divine butler, as all the idols are, but is that He is, such that we come to serve Him, not the other way around. For us, living in the way God asks us to id better than any other reward we could be offered. This can be very hard sometimes, even for he who held the sealing keys. Can we say that we too are better than our fathers in this regard? Do we deserve some better fate them them, or some special treatment for whatever reason? Or under Christ, whatever may, come is a good strugg...

 Welcome! Who is better than David? David was about the best Israel had to offer, and he still fell like anyone can. There is a profound and humbling lesson here that there is only one really good Person, and the rest of us are trying our best to emulate Him, and even though many people do good everyday, no one is good enough to say that in other circumstances, they wouldn't have ended up like David. I don't mean that specifically to the Bathsheba situation, I mean it generally to the temptation situation. There are plenty of examples of men and women who were tempted by lust resisted, who had the choice to cover their sins but didn't, and who may have wished someone in their lives was dead but never took to arrange it so. So I'm not saying that David's condemnation was out of place, however tragic that may be. I'm saying that each of us has a breaking point. Each of us has our own weakness to which we could fall. So in that sense, who can say that they are bett...

Welcome!  Why Can't Israel pass on righteousness to even one generation!? Israel really struggled during this entire time, and it seems virtually every time, with transmitting the true teaching, or the righteous way of living to the next generation. Even the very best, whom you would think would be the top of Israel in doing this, all failed out. Eli was some sort of elevated priest. He failed out. Samuel was the prophet that ended apostasy in Israel. He failed out. Saul was the one chosen out of all Israel to be king and even prophesied by the gift of God. He failed out.  What's up with that? What was going on? Why did this keep happening? What institutions (ideas to emulate, not the organizational sense) keep us from doing this today and are they really what we think they are? Compare and Contrast Samuel vs. Eli I was sent an interesting article recently about a church leader who was wrestling with the apostasy of half his family or more. He obviously did not like the oh-so-...

 Welcome! What is the story of Ruth? Legit question here, what should I write about Ruth? (update 6/12: Thoughts from a reader, based on what she studied) Genealogies in the ancient world served to communicate connectedness and identity. Sometimes a genealogy may associate a person to someone well-known in their past. Here, the genealogy indicates how the famous king David descended from these very unusual roots. The point is not that he descended from a Moabite woman, but that he descended from a line in which there was faithfulness, in contras to the tenor of the judges period. Samuel Samuel I love the prophet Samuel, not only because we share the same name. Samuel was the last judge and probably the one we have the most detail on.  He also came in a time when 'The word of the Lord was precious and there was no open vision) Samuel means either 'name of God', or 'God hears'. At this time, Israel was in a minor apostasy. But this was not brought on because God did n...