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X-O-Dus (Pt3)

Posted by: Fiona | 2 December 2009 - 1:34pm Permalink

READ: Exodus 2:23-25

When I was studying at Youth Dimension (which is kindof like Bible Tafe), we had to do a fair few activities which involved drawing pictures which represented our understanding of a particular passage in the bible

It was a bit of a running joke among us about how Jase drew God. I have tried to upload a rendition of the way he would depict God during class. Essentially, God was a cloud with arms. I know, I know...the creator of the universe and humanity and the world around us was reduced to a cloud with arms - its a bit of an underestimation.

But I guess its fair - I mean, how DO you draw God? How do we even imagine God? Heaps of people see God as this big dude who lives in the clouds and occasionally glances down at the world and checks up on what we're doing with ourselves.

Others see him as this floating mass of, like, Gas or something - not unlike one of those glowing things in outer space...

And even aside from what God actually LOOKS like, people can have all sorts of impressions of God himself - imagining him in their heads as this person who doesn't really care much about the things they are going through, or that he has no personality or sense of humour, or that all he does is sit there and judge us on how well we perform or the decisions we make. Amongst all that, there's not much room to feel like he's a God that anyone would particularly want involved in their lives. And it's an understandable feeling...it can be hard to know God and to understand how he feels about us.

Its a good thing, then, that we have the bible and passages like this one to open our eyes to the truth about who God is and how he sees us.

The Israelites were going through a pretty stink time in Egypt. What had once been a land of opportunity and freedom under the political leadership of Joseph was now a place of slavery, oppression and poverty. They were not happy. At all.

I"m sure that they would be feeling that, as God's people, they had been ripped off - maybe that God was sitting watching them from far away, but not caring enough about them to act.

I don't know about you, but I have felt that way many times in my own life. Times when I feel like I have done everything right by God but am still in pain for one reason or another. Or when I have made mistakes, I have felt like because of those mistakes God won't care about me anymore.

Someone once said to me that sometimes we can take all the things we feel about ourselves, or the ways other people have treated us in our lives and transplant that onto our picture of God. Like, we expect God to treat us the way others do, or to see us the way we see ourselves. But that's not how God works. God has his own way of doing things. God IS love. He loves when no one else does.

Exodus 2:25 says 'So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.' God did care. He cared a lot. He had made promises to protect and guide his people, and God isn't one to break promises.

The Israelites would have felt like nothing was happening. Like nothing was changing. But as I talked about in Part 1 of this blog, God was already organising things so the Israelites would be rescued from slavery. Did they know it at the time? No. Would it take a while before things kicked into action and started to change? Yes. Did it mean God didn't care about what they were going through? DEFINATELY NOT!

God sees. God knows. God cares.

Sorry to sound cliche, but things don't always get fixed the way we want or when we want. But God is definately concerned with us, and he always acts in one way or another.

WHAT MIGHT THIS MEAN TO YOU?

What picture of God do you have in your head? Do you see him as distant and uninterested in your life?

What sort of stuff to you talk to him about? The hard stuff? The easy stuff? The little stuff?

Is there anything you leave out because you think he doesn't care about it?

Do you think you might be assuming God feels the same way about you as you do about yourself or as others seem to feel about you? Do you think its fair to think God is only as caring or loving as a human?

How can you try to let God into your whole life this week, and remind yourself that he is watching and DOES care?

Well, that's another chapter down. Tune in again tomorrow for Chapter 3:1-10!

See ya then!

PICTURES OF YOU! But actually not. Day 29?

Posted by: Max | 2 December 2009 - 12:27pm Permalink

So I'm on Facebook, Oh wowwww Max, great achievement, want a medal? Not gonna happen.

Quiet you trolls! Get ye back to youtube!

And I realise I've had the same photo for like, ever. I don't wanna change my photo every day, but it's been there since pretty much day 1 I think. And its a really poser photo and I feel a bit weird having it next to my name.

But I have no other photos! Why??? Cause I don't take any photos! And then I end up photoless.

And trust me, this isn't a "I have no photos to use" like a teenage girl's "I have nothing to wear" statement. Even when you open their cupboard and half of sportsgirl falls out. I seriously have none. You open my photo album and you get the photo I have on facebook now, photos I've been tagged in, usually in mid turn with my mouth in a % shape. (like open closed open? getit?) and then a small albumn of photos where I went through a phase of thinking I was cooler than everyone else and posing hardcore, like full gangsta hoodie poses and everything, jdakhsjkhg, it gives me goosebumps thinking about it, I should really delete that evidence.

Anyway I know how much you'd like to laugh at those photos, but I want a new one. I realise you guys are hectic busy/ LAZY, and can't find the time to comment, but if you're in a creative mood, drop a comment and tell me what would look good in a facebook photo, tell me if you like yours, if your in the same predicament as me, or if you've found the perfect photo and will never change yours ever.

Or you could just tell me I'm shallow.

ps I have twitter follow me @MaxMarinus yeah, don't hate me! twitter is fun and you are scared of change if you don't like it :P

maxs0240@gmail.com

X-O-Dus (Pt2)

Posted by: Fiona | 1 December 2009 - 10:31am Permalink

Hey all! I'm back from sunny Coff's Harbour and am ready to get right back into this Exodus Blog!

So, READ Exodus 2:11-22

You know, when I was a kid, I kindof had anger management problems. My sisters would pick on me, make fun of me and hit me (as sisters do), but time after time I would ignore them and not react to whatever they were doing. But after many occasions of ignoring them and walking away, all that anger and rage that I had felt would build up until I would explode into this screaming, kicking, scratching and punching monster who was determined to take them out!

You'll be happy to know that things have changed since then! My sisters and I get along great and I no longer go psycho at random! (well, not most of the time :))

But back then, I would always suffer the consequences of my mentalness- I would feel terrible afterwards, and more often than not I would get in trouble from my parents.

So I can kindof understand what Moses is going through in this passage. He's probably watched as his people have been treated like dirt, over and over again, until this one time he just can't stand by and watch anymore. And while what he did came from a good place of wanting to help and stand up for the opressed (a part of his character which will be extremely important in his future), what he did was wrong. He murdered someone and tried to hide it.

Moses was going to have to live with the consequences of his actions - the shame, guilt, fear of being caught... So he runs away to a place where nobody will know him, where he thinks he can hide.

We've all done things, said things, even thought things which we regret later. It can be the way we treat a friend, a lie we tell, something we look at, someone we hurt, a habit which we can't seem to escape. These things can leave us with uncomfortable consequences to face. Many of us, like Moses, try to run away - from those who know us best, those who care for us, and many young people (and old people too) even try to run away from God. We can run away by getting involved in things we never would have done before, we can avoid our friends and family and we can try to distract ourselves with any number of things so we don't have to think about who we have become or what mistakes we've made. I guess it just seems like it will be easier that way.

The interesting thing about Moses is that after he killed that Egyptian he could have completely given up and decided there was no point to trying to be a good man anymore - that it was too late to be a good person. He could have run away from who he is. But he didn't. He showed kindness to some women trying to look after their father's sheep. He decided to still be a good man, a Godly man, and because of this he was rewarded with a place to live and even with a wife! If he hadn't helped out, who knows what sort of spiral he would have gone into.

Moses shows us that ITS NEVER TOO LATE TO MAKE A CHANGE.

And this is the beginning of the rest of Moses' life. While he has made this massive mistake, he still chooses to do right, and God provides and protects him until the time comes when God will call on him for a very important purpose. Moses can't run away from God. God still has his eyes on him and still has a plan to use Moses for good in this world.

WHAT MIGHT THIS MEAN FOR YOU?

Can you think of a time you did, said or thought something which you later regretted?

How did you respond? Did you try to run away somehow? Or did you decide to still try and do the right thing afterwards?

Have you ever tried to 'run away' from God? If you stop and think about it, do you really believe that God would ever give up on you?

Can you see any ways God has been providing for you or protecting you, even though you feel like you have stuffed everything up?

Is there something that you need to talk about with God? Maybe you should take some time to do that today.

That's all for today! The next blog will be on Exodus 2:23-25, so if you want to read it sometime soon that would be excellent!

See ya!

Fuel Youth

X-O-Dus (Pt3)

PICTURES OF YOU! But actually not. Day 29?

X-O-Dus (Pt2)

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