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The Beginning of the Beginning
How does watching old seminary class lectures on the Gospels sound to you? To my husband and me, it sounds like Date Night. (Not sure if you got the memo, but nerds rule the world.) And right out of the gate starting with Matthew Chapter 1, the Bible wastes no time slapping us in our faces. Matthew Ch. 1 is a genealogy written for Jewish readers. We Americans don’t get excited over genealogies. But family trees matter in many old world cultures. (My husband’s aunt knows her family tree going nine generations back.) And the genealogy in Matthew Chapter 1 matters because it culminates in Jesus’s birth. (Matthew 1:1-16). In…
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Fear of Consequences Motivates Obedience (2 Chronicles 29-31)
Fear is a normal human emotion designed by God to alert us to danger so we will take action against it. Most teaching about fear considers it bad and always sinful. But fear is a gift. Did you know that God uses a healthy fear of consequences to motivate us to obedience? The action we take to the threat of consequences can result in sinful behavior or to obedience and greater trust of our great God. In this article, we will see how God uses fear to motivate us to obedience and the unstoppable power of God’s forgiveness when we return to Him as Lord of our lives. Hezekiah is…