It’s been a while since I have read through the Bible from beginning to end. I am in the Word daily, but this is different… reading through the whole Book allows you to keep the Scriptures in context and it also allows the Holy Spirit to bring truth to remembrance when you need it from an area in the Bible that usually you just don’t spend a lot of time in… like Nahum. I mean if you can quote a Scripture verse off the top of your head from this book, stop now, and scroll down to the comment box and type it in 😉
I can’t remember who Nahum was or what He wrote… so that means it’s time for me to renew my mind because God no doubt had something important to say through him or he would not be in The Book.
This year I am reading through the Scriptures chronologically, which is the Bible in the order of time in which the events occurred. Yesterday my readings were Genesis 1-3. Earlier that morning I wrote a blog post entitled Speaking from Experience. Within this post is a fifteen minute video of the “older women” of my church. The purpose of the video was to interview these ladies and have them share their wisdom with the “younger women” in our church, you know, fleshing out Titus 2.
I am a firm believer that if we ladies need marital or parenting advice we need not seek it from other young women, but from the “older women” who have the wisdom to guide us with truth and not shared emotion. I am afraid that sometimes we younger women might advice each other to do things we secretly wish we could do ourselves because we might be in the same hard place yet we won’t because we know deep down we can’t or shouldn’t. The whole vicarious living through thing.
Anyway…
I began my chronological read through in Genesis 1-3, and of course those chapters perfectly coincided with where my heart had been that morning… the family… specifically being a wife who loved her husband and loved her children with God’s love, not because I feel like it love. As I read through these chapters I was reminded of God’s ordained plan for me and what sin did to wreck it. I re-read once again the curse upon we women…
To the woman He said,
“I will greatly multiply
Your pain in childbirth,
In pain you will bring forth children;
Yet your desire will be for your husband,
And he will rule over you.”
Genesis 3:16
Now before I read these verses in Genesis, but after I wrote the blog post that morning… Satan tried to trip me. I have learned that anytime I speak out on any subject, I can guarantee that the opportunity for me to put my money where my mouth is or walk my talk is no doubt going to happen.
If you follow my blog, you know that I have been sick for a while… I have been running a fever all this past week and just feel like cruddy ole crud… and my husband also has not been well, but he had to go to work yesterday anyway. So as I looked out the window at the sunshine and knew that the weather was giving me the perfect opportunity to remove the outside Christmas decorations, I decided to pull myself up off the couch and get a shower and get to work.
In the meantime, my husband came home early from work, in order to attend his Uncle’s visitation service. I came down the stairs, showered and dressed, with an arm load of laundry to start, and planning to get busy removing the last of Christmas 2013 from our house. As I walk by my husband he looks at me and says something like, it’s really beautiful outside today, why don’t you get outside and do something and get some fresh air, I think it will help you feel better.
Remember that this was the very reason I had gone upstairs to shower and dress, but the moment he said that my flesh rose up in rebellion and I just looked at him with I am sure a not so nice look, because he then said, or just go sit outside in the sun for a bit, I didn’t mean you had to work, I just thought the fresh air would do you good.
Oh my how quickly that curse jumps upon us! My first thought to his suggesting me doing what I had already planned to do was to not do it just because he suggested it… why on earth is that? SIN that’s why…ugh, how aggravating it is!
All these thoughts are running through my head and my flesh is crawling up my throat, but I remembered what I earlier wrote and thought about what I would read later and I took a deep breath and instead said, well that’s what I went upstairs to get showered and dressed for… but my flesh still fought hard for control, because before I went outside to tackle the decorations, I opened the back door to let fresh air in, but still piled back up on my love-seat sick bed and covered up in my blankets, because I could justify that action with the fact that I really did feel like cruddy ole crud and I was having to push through that to even get a shower. Needless to say, it took me a little wrestling with my flesh and the Spirit for me to actually attack those decorations.
How quickly it became less about getting some fresh air and taking advantage of some sunshine and more about being obedient to the Word of God and honoring and loving my husband.
There it was staring me in the face… Genesis 3:16 and Ephesians 5:22-24… Friend, have you been there?
“But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go work today in the vineyard.’ And he answered, ‘I will not’; but afterward he regretted it and went. The man came to the second and said the same thing; and he answered, ‘I will, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.”
Matthew 21:28-31