Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Exodus 4:1
Moses answered, "What if they do not believe me or listen to me
and say, 'The Lord did not appear to you'?"
(As we so often do, Moses questioned the Lord again, the third time,
about God's wisdom in choosing Moses
to carry out His great plan of deliverance for His people.
While Moses has faith, his faith is not substantial enough
to trust God completely, again, so much like our own often reluctant faith.
In a completely humanistic and rational view
of how his fellow Israelites might likely receive him,
Moses poses his third basis of resistance to God's command,
the possibility that his former countrymen might not believe him
when he tells them God has actually appeared to him
and has declared that He will set them free through Moses' leadership.
After all, it had been forty years since they had seen Moses
or probably even heard about him.
He was nothing more than a distant memory, if even that.
He could hardly stand in a prominent position with them.
We, too, so often limit what the Lord promises
and declares to us through His Word
with our list of what ifs and buts,
seemingly and certainly humanly rational questions and concerns,
but which, in fact, are faith-limiting.
The amazing truth, though, is that the Lord patiently and lovingly
allows us to voice our concerns so that He can come alongside us
to relieve us of any fears or apprehensions.
Today, the Lord willingly entertains our what ifs and our buts
so that He can assure us of His love and faithfulness to us.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,
Blessings!

Sally
513 254 3874

 

[category word for today]

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Exodus 3:14b
"This is what you are to say to the Israelites
'I am has sent me to you.'"

(To convey His omnipotence, His omniscience,
His omnipresence, His complete other-ness, His self-existence,
His very Essence of Being,
the Lord declares His all-sufficiency to Moses and also still to us today.
To us today who, like the Israelites, are in slavery, bound in our Egypts,
living in a place that is uncomfortable and difficult,
perhaps bound by relationships and situations in this world,
bound by wrong thinking and the lies of the enemy,
the Lord is saying that I AM has come to us
through the Person of Jesus Christ, the very Word of God made flesh,
to reveal to us His Nature, His love, His redemption,
His victory over everything that besets us.
When we remember Who God really is,
that He is beyond and outside of anything in the made world,
that He is extraordinary, that He is supernatural,
we can only bow in awe to the One Who calls us His Own
and Who actually chooses to make Himself known to us,
to the One Who sends Himself to us,
and Who leads us out of subjection and oppression
and into salvation and freedom in Him.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,
Blessings!

Sally
513 254 3874

[category word for today]

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Exodus 3:14a 
God said to Moses, "I am who I am."
(Here is the Lord's powerful response to Moses' question
about who God is and what God's Name is.
While we often casually bandy about the name God,
in truth His Name is beyond human comprehension.
Outside of time and space and matter, completely self-existent,
the Lord reveals to Moses His Name
using words that best convey in human terms
and what can best be understood by human beings.
His Name is the essential essence of being,
complete and whole in Himself, embodying self,
as opposed to an idol which is an idea only
or as opposed to other living things that have a beginning and an ending.
He is real, outside of time, eternal,
and a completely and utterly independent existence, a self-existent one.
He is the I AM WHO IS SELF-SUFFICIENT,
I AM HE WHO IS,
I WILL BE WHAT I AM,
I AM WHAT I WILL BE, I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE, I AM THAT WHICH I AM.
Inscrutable, mysterious, unknowable, and beyond our knowing,
yet this God Whose Name we can't understand makes Himself knowable
and declares He is all that we need,
that He is all that we need from Him,
and that He is all that we could ever need.
He is more than sufficient, more than adequate, more than able.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,
Blessings!

Sally
513 254 3874

 

[category word for today]

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Exodus 3:13
Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites
and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,'
and they ask me, 'What is His Name?' Then what shall I tell them?"
(While Scripture does not record the Israelites asking this question,
Moses may have anticipated such a question
because the Egyptians named their idols and expected the name
to reflect the idol's character and characteristics.
Today, we often attach names to our idols as well,
names such as the corner office, a bigger house,
the resentment we harbor in our hearts against others,
the friends we can count on Facebook,
and any number of other names and ideas
where we place our trust and security.
Perhaps Moses himself needed to know the answer to this question
of Who God really is and what His Name really is

since he was now experiencing a much different interaction
than he had ever known or heard about before.
We, too, may need to pursue the Name of God
beyond how we have known Him to this point,
prior to the situation in which we need Him presently.
While the God of Your Fathers is a title
that certainly describes an important and vital aspect of God,
we, too, may need to understand a fuller and additional name of God
that makes Him more clearly relevant to our needs today
and that clearly separates Him from other so-called gods in our world.
Like Moses, as we pursue God's calling on our life,
we need to know in the deepest part of our knowing
that He is Who He says He is so we can more fully take in
the awesome truth of Almighty God's character and characteristics
that speak into the very needs of our lives today.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,
Blessings!

Sally
513 254 3874

 

[category word for today]

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Exodus 3:12b
"And this will be the sign to you that it is I Who have sent you:
When you have brought the people out of Egypt,
you will worship God on this mountain."
(To allay Moses' fears and concerns about the mission
to which the Lord has called him,
God assures Moses that He will give Moses a sign,
a sign that will serve as a sure marker that God has, indeed,
done what He has said here He will do.
More than some vague, unclear, ambiguous hint,
this sign is a promised and declared actual result
that will materialize as a result of God's Own declaration to Moses.
To prove that God has accomplished through Moses what He says He will do,
the sign is the promise that God's people will, in fact, arrive right here,
that they will plant their feet on this holy place to worship Him.
The Lord still gives us a sign today. His "sign" is His covenant with us,
a vow that declares that we have been delivered
out of the bondage of slavery to sin
and have been brought to the holy place of His Presence
into salvation through the sacrificial death of Christ,
where we now worship the God Who is our Deliverer and Way-Maker.
As surely as we may have arrived in our Egypt today,
the Lord says He will cause us to depart out of this Egypt we are in
and to arrive at the mountain of God's Presence.
Just as we have experienced His promise of redemption,
He tells us we will also experience release from oppression
simply because He has said we will.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,
Blessings!

Sally
513 254 3874

 

[category word for today]

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Exodus 3:12a
And God said, "I will be with you."
(In response to Moses' question expressing his doubt
as to his being the appropriate person
to deliver God's people from Pharaoh's hold,
God replies that He Himself will certainly be with Moses
and that since God would be with him, Moses had no need for concern.
The word in Hebrew for I will be is the same
as the later word for I AM, the Name of the Lord
that He will soon reveal in response to Moses asking God's Name. 
The Lord is not only assuring Moses
that He will accompany him on the mission to which He has called him,
but the Lord is also giving Moses a foreshadowing of His true Name.
Our assurance today is the same as the Lord gave to Moses.
Even in our reluctance and our resistance
to walk out the Lord's purposes for us,
He continues to remind us today of His Name,
I AM WITH YOU, I WILL BE WITH YOU.
When He calls us, He promises His Presence to go with us
to accomplish through us what He has declared.
He says to us today that He will be with us, that I AM is with us.
Because He goes with us, is in us, and has called us,
in the face of our doubts and frailty and limitations,
He declares that His strength is made perfect in weakness.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,
Blessings!

Sally
513 254 3874

 

[category word for today]

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Exodus 3:11
But Moses said to God, "Who am I
(Moses has just been directed by God Himself to fulfill God's command,
and, yet, Moses dares to question
the God of all power and sovereignty.
Like us, Moses saw the Lord's command
through the lens of his own abilities
instead of through the perspective of Omnipotent God.
We keep trying to put God in a human-sized box
Who is able to accomplish only slightly more
than we in our human strength.
Rather than looking to the Great I AM, the I AM WHO I AM,
the I AM WHO I NEED TO BE AND CHOOSE TO BE,
instead, we look to ourselves and question
who we are and what can we possibly achieve
in the face of the magnitude of what the Lord is placing before us,
focusing on our own admittedly inadequate strength to fulfill His call.)
that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"

(When we truly focus on the Lord and His call over us,

we are emboldened and empowered to walk out that call.

Seeing the task, the situation, through the Lord's strength

permits us to walk in confidence and courage

and removes the doubt that comes
from questioning and asking ourselves who am I.

When we have the Lord's declaration
that He will accomplish what He has pronounced,
we can stand assured on the truth that He will do what He says He will do.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,
Blessings!

Sally
513 254 3874

[category word for today]

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Exodus 3:10b
"I am sending you to Pharaoh 
to bring My people the Israelites out of Egypt."
(God Himself has directed Moses to deliver His people.
Speaking as the Great I AM, the Lord says to Moses
that His Name in this situation is the I AM SENDING YOU.
Today, the Lord continues to call Himself by this name,
an extension of His great Name I AM, and He continues to say to us
that He is sending us on the mission He has designed for us.
What may seem an absolute impossibility, and, in fact,
would be humanly impossible, is not only possible,
but has been proclaimed as truth.
When the Lord speaks, the work is done.
All we have to do is walk out that to which He calls us.
Today, He has declared to each one of us
that I AM SENDING YOU on a mission to go to His people,
to go to those around us, to those with whom we come in contact,
with His truth and deliverance from oppression.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,
Blessings!

Sally
513 254 3874

 

[category word for today]

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Exodus 3:10
So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh
(Having left his life of favor and affluence under Pharaoh,
Moses had been living on the far side of the desert for forty years,
banished from all he had known and living in self-exile,
had spent his life engaged in the lowly life of shepherding sheep,
but now has been brought into the presence of God Himself
Who has chosen Moses to return to Pharaoh,
the very place from which he had fled before.
Sometimes, the Lord separates us
from a place or people or activities or a situation and gives us a desert place
where He allows us to put our shoulders to some farm work, to get our hands dirty,
to do some lowly and menial "shepherding,"
and, although we may be completely unaware of it,
prepares our hearts and minds for His purposes yet to come.)
to bring My people the Israelites out of Egypt."
(Although Moses had long since resigned himself to his humble labors,
the Lord had only been putting him in a place of preparation
to do a mighty shepherding work on a much larger scale,
to shepherd His people instead of sheep.
Though Moses had not thought he would return to Egypt,
much less as a deliverer of his people,
the Lord had long intended that very thing.
Today, the Lord still calls us out of our usual routine,
out of the ordinary, into the unexpected, into the bigger picture,
into places of influence for which He has prepared us
and to which He Himself directs us.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,
Blessings!

Sally
513 254 3874

 

[category word for today]

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Exodus 2:14a
The man said, "Who made you ruler and judge over us?
Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?"
(The day before this, Moses had seen an Egyptian beating a Hebrew
and, to stop the injustice, he killed the Egyptian.
Now, he sees two Hebrews fighting and asks the one in the wrong
why he is fighting against his brother Hebrew.
The man answers, though unaware of the real truth of his words,
with a prophecy over Moses and his future life,
that Moses would, indeed, be a ruler and judge over him and his people.
Whereas Moses had tried to intervene in the two men's situation
in his own strength and with violence, in the future,
the Lord will cause Moses to intervene in the nation of Israel
through His strength and through His means and methods.
Here, even in the rejection and disdain of the Hebrew's words,
the Lord is revealing His mighty purposes for Moses
through this disdainful and sneering, yet prophetic word.
Though Moses was most probably unaware of it at the time,
the man who spoke the words to rebuff Moses
was certainly not aware that he was speaking prophetically.
The truth for us today is that even when we take wrong measures,
even when we experience rejection from others for our efforts,
even when we are trying to effect change for good,
but trying to do so through our own strength and means,
the Lord is present to redeem what we have attempted on our own
and to speak His truth over us,
sometimes even through the most unlikely sources,
and to fulfill the life purposes He has planned for us.
The Lord is determined to fulfill His sovereign plans for us
and can even use what the enemy may have spoken over us through others
to set the stage for what His future holds for us.
As we learn to discern and listen attentively,
the Lord speaks to us in many ways and through many vehicles.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,
Blessings!

Sally
513 254 3874

 

[category word for today]