He Is God!

"Crying out" prayers are never perfunctory.  Make sure you use them when your heart is fully engaged, time is short, a critical decision requires wisdom, healing is urgent, calamity looms or a need is overwhelming.  God hears our urgent cries and lovingly responds.  He will answer but not always in the manner we expect.  He sees the big picture.  God is God, you see, and we are not.    

A Prayer begins . . .

Heavenly Father, we praise your name.  We are thankful that you are God and hear our prayers. 

An Announcement begins . . .

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Selected book quotations begin . . .

The Power of Crying Out

"The most honored and remembered Old Testament story of God's salvation was His rescue of his people from slavery in Egypt.  What triggered this rescue?  Very early in Exodus we read,       

'The children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage.  So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.  And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them.' [Exodus 2:23-25 NKJV]

The people cried out to God, and he heard and remembered.  In a sense, the story is now already over practically before it begins!  The people's rescue from slavery is now assured and guaranteed--a done deal.  Already the victory is won.  It's only a matter of time until the world sees exactly how the victory plays out.

Right away God clued Moses in on what was happening and why.  He said to Moses,

'I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.  So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey.' [Exodus 3:7-8]

Moses was given a position of leadership on the side of the guaranteed winner in the coming conflict, though there were still plenty of seemingly impossible hurdles on the horizon.  In fact, when their flight from Egypt was halted at the Red Sea, and the people in fear looked back to see approaching chariots from Pharaoh's army, all seemed lost.

But again, 'the children of Israel cried out to the LORD,' [Exodus 14:10] and God mercifully heard them.  And you know what happened next!"

SoAmazing Review: Bill Gothard notes Biblical accounts of desperate, urgent circumstances when individuals or groups raised their voices, cried out to God for help, and He answered.  If you face a heart-wrenching situation or know others who do, why not buy one or more copies of The Power of Crying Out for guidance and inspiration. 

Buy The Power of Crying Out Now! Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Christianbook.

An Ark For Moses

Angela Elwell Hunt, The Shadow Women, Warner Faith, Warner Books, 2002, pp. 62, 63. SoAmazing.com

"I shivered as a vision rose before my tired eyes--my mother carrying her baby in this basket, wading into the river until the waters lapped at her knees, her thighs, her waist.  Yet she would continue until the river claimed her and the baby.  She would give both her soul and the baby's to God before she would let the Egyptians take him.

'Miryam!'  Mother's voice, sharp and insistent, woke me from my shallow doze.  'Take the jar of pitch outside and heat it in the fire.  Do it now.'

I stared at her for a moment, not understanding, but there was no disobeying the energy in her eyes.  Obediently I pulled the jar of pitch from its storage place, then carried it outside to the fire pit.  Wood was a luxury slaves could not afford, so we had learned to cook with charcoal and wormwood.

Inside the house, my mother kept weaving, but now she hummed a song she had learned from her mother, 'a song about God's power and protection. How could she sing that song?  We had not known God's protection in years.  Our men had died at the hand of Pharaoh's taskmasters, our babies drowned in the Nile.  Our young men worked until their bones snapped beneath the heavy loads their masters forced upon them.  

'Pay attention, Miryam.  The pitch will be smoking by now.'  

So it was, using a forked branch, I lifted the jar from the coals, then carried it inside to my mother.  With a singleness of purpose I rarely saw on her face, she dipped a flat piece of wood into the pitch, then began to slather it on the outside of the woven basket.  

Then I understood.  She was making--

'A teba.'  She guessed at my thoughts.  'Like that of Noah.  As God preserved Noah and his family in the teba, he will preserve my son.'

I sank silently back to the packed earthen floor.  I knew my mother loved me, but if I had been born under a decree of death, would she have gone to this extreme for my sake?  Now I think so, but as a child of eight I could not understand the depths of a mother's heart.

I pondered these mysteries for the length of the night, watching from the shadows as my mother made an ark for the infant she could no longer hide."

SoAmazing Review: The Shadow Women is a fictional account of the life of Moses from the point of views of some important women in his life--his older sister, the Egyptian princess that rescued him, and the young girl who became his wife.  Angela Elwell Hunt, a best-selling writer of historical fiction, brings to life the Biblical narrative for an unforgettable look at Moses, a great man of God and one of Israel's greatest leaders.

Buy The Shadow Women Now!   Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Christianbook.

Editors: Douglas W. Scott, Douglas E. Scott, Marilyn R. Scott

Another Great Book Quotation . . .

Christian

"Now I can see that I am in error.  Didn't the Shepherds warn us to beware of the flatterers, those deceivers who give false hope and deceitful encouragement?  They are able to persuasively entice the careless into following their ways." John Bunyan, faithfully retold in today's English by Cheryl V. Ford, pp. 165, 166, Buy The Pilgrim's Progress Now!

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