The Bible contains many numbers and each one holds symbolism and significance. Some numbers have similar meanings.
For instance, several numbers symbolize completion and perfection. The numbers, three, four, seven, ten, and twelve all refer to completion, they each signify a different type of completion:
3: Means divine perfection
4: Means completeness and universality in terms of creation
7: Means spiritual perfection
10: Means divine order
12: Means governmental perfection
Numbers 1-10 and there significance:
Three: This number symbolizes divine fullness or completion. It is the minimum number to establish a pattern. The Trinity consists of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days. Paul was blinded for three days. Jesus rose from the dead after three days.
Four: Four is a creation number of the earth that signifies completeness and universality. For instance, there are four seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall. There are four elements, earth, air, water, and fire. There are four divisions of the day: morning, noon, evening, and night.
Seven: This is the number of spiritual completeness and totality. The number seven appears about 600 times in the Bible. It us seen throughout the Book of Revelation, seven angels, seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven vials, seven horns, seven candlesticks, seven stars, seven plagues, seven spirits seven eyes, seven lamps, seven thunders, seven crowns. The Tribulation in the end days will last 7 years.
10: Ten is a perfect number meaning divine order as in God’s Commandments. The number 10 is part of our anatomy based on God’s order for us. We have 10 fingers to do the work of God, and we have 10 toes to walk upright.
12: Twelve is a judicial number. Jesus had 12 disciples to follow the pattern of the 12 tribes of Israel. There are 12 gates in Jerusalem. It is interesting to note that in the United States, there are 12 people on a jury.
“The devil made me do it.” Flip Wilson popularized this catchphrase in the early 1970’s. It was a comedy. But he didn’t originate the notion that we somehow would justify our sinful actions by blaming the devil.
In Genesis 3:13 Even told God “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” It didn’t work for her, it doesn’t work for us either.
The devil is our adversary. He wages war against God’s people and is bent on leading us into sin. There are examples of this in 1 Corinthians 7:5; 2 Corinthians 2:10-11; and 1 Peter 5:8. Consequently, we understand the reason for James’s command in James 4:7, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you. The promise he will flee assures us we are not defenseless against satan’s devices. We cannot alibi “the devil made me do it.” because we are able to resist him with God’s help. So, when the devil attacks we can use the following tactics:
1. Run To God
Our first and greatest defense against the schemes of the devil is to live in a right relationship with God. James 4 gives us severity ideas.
“You adulterous people. Don’t you know that friendship with the works is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes a enemy of God” -James 4:4.
Jesus was saying: Stop your affair with the world! Quit flirting with the devil. Instead, make the intentional choice to live as an enemy of the world and the devil by aligning yourself with God.
“Submit to God” (James 4:7). This means to put yourself under God’s authority. The intent is to stop resisting God and resist and resist the devil.
“Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8). We cannot resist the devil if we are not living in close relationship and intimate communion with God,
2. Humble Yourself Before God
Pride makes us vulnerable to Satan’s attacks. Pride was the devil’s downfall, and he wants us to be prideful. It is one of his chief weapons in his warfare against us. Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction and an arrogant spirit before a fall.” James teaches us in 4:6 :
“God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble
“Humble yourselves before the Lord (v 10). To humble ourselves before God means to stop resisting Him, to fall prostrate (stretched out) before Him, to submit to Him and to lean on His power (v 7).
Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify our hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail (v 8-9). To call to God in verse 8 suggests James’s audience has moved away from Him. Verses 8-9 are a call to repentance and purity of heart.
James 4 tells us the person who lives in friendship with this world does not view sin as a big deal. And it is through the sind we tolerate that Satab gains a foothold in our lives. James urges us to take sin seriously. Grieve over it. Weep over it before God.
3. Take Up The Word Of God
The Word of God (Bible) is a theme in James 1. We have the Word of God to fend off the enemy’s attacks.
By “the sword of the spirit -which is the Word of God *Ephesians 6:17) we stand against the schemes of the devil (Eph 6:11). The devil’s only weapon against us is deception. God’s truth protects us from satan’s lies. (2 Corinthians 11:3).
Jesus responded to the devil’s temptations by quoting the Word. “It is written…it is written (Matthew 4:4-5; 7). If Jesus resisted Satan’s attacks with scripture, we also should meet satan’s attacks on the same basis (Psalm 119:9-11).
Jesus was able to use God’s Word because He knew God’s Word. If we do not know the Word, we cannot use the Word. A sword can deflect an enemy’s attack only if we are able to handle it skillfully and precisely, otherwise, we are left vulnerable to Satan’s deception.
The promise of James 4:7 not only eliminates “the devil made me do it” alibi but assures us we can resist him. James 4:4 promises, “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.“ Jesus is our victory.
“When Satan Knocks, I send Jesus to the door.” – Billy Graham
My favorite type of weather used to be summer. I absolutely love it. Thin comfortable clothes and sandals all season. Long summer wallks in the mountains, listening to the sounds of the nearby water flowing, and maybe a scampering of a squirrel or a chipmunk. It brings peace to my soul.
There’s just something about camping by a spring of water and having a bonfire to sit around in the dark with my family, telling stories and having a big glass of wine that warms me heart.
God’s goodness never fails. If His people would only trust Him more they would see the unending mercy flowing like a mighty river, an unending supply. Our lives would be a testimony to the surprising ways He uses to supply our needs.
If we give our hearts to Him, the cruse (jar) of oil will never run dry. In times of lean and fat you will never want for what you need.
Go over God’s goodness in your mind and praise His faithfulness. You will be surprised at the remembrance of His goodness. There is a pattern that you will recognize,
A few ways to remember God’s faithfulness:
1. Notice His beautiful creation and stand in awe of nature.
2. Recall His faithfulness in other hard times on your life.
3. See Him in the lives of His people in the pages of the Bible.
My most influential teacher. He was a professor in college, in my crime scene investigation class. I’ve always been good at scanning a room and picking up on things that didn’t belong. But this professor taught me the in and outs of real murder scenes. Which I loved. And in the process I learned a few things about life.
Do you ever feel like you wasted your day? Having started with the intention of knocking our two or three goals, then as your morning goes by you still need to do it. At the end of the day your checklist is unchecked.
I believe that we all have a mission in this life. Whether is to love and serve God, more to get married and raise a family or to focus on a career. But for the most part, we lack a personal mission or clearly defined purpose. These need a more focus, and a specific point to aim to.
I love the focus story in Luke 5:17-26.
One day while Jesus was teaching, some Pharisees and teachers of religious law were standing nearby. These men seemed to show up from every village in all Galilee and Judea, as well as from Jerusalem. To see Jesus and His healing power.
Some young men were carrying a paralyzed man on a sleeping mat. They tried to take him inside to Jesus but they couldn’t reach Him because the crowd was too large. So they went up to the roof took of some tiles, and then lowered the paralyzed man on his mat down to Jesus. Jesus said to the man, “Your sins are forgiven.”
But the Pharisees and teachers said to themselves, “Who does He think He is? That’s blasphemy! Only God can forgive sins.”
Jesus knew what they were thinking, so He asked them, “Why do you question this? It is easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven, or take up your bed and walk?” He proved that He the Son of God and was giving authority to forgive sin. Immediately, as everyone watched, the man got up, picked up his mat and went home praising God.
This is an excellent example of what happens when people have a clearly defined purpose and focus on a solution rather then complaining and feeling hopeless.
The man’s friends focused on a good mission to get their friend to Jesus. They started with a lot of faith in Jesus and loved their friend, they took kinetic action, and the results were that their friend was forgiven and healed.
Knowing our purpose and sustaining our focus is essential to living an intentional life. This is how to can say yes to a life full of meaning rather that spending out time on distractions.
The power of focus helps us prioritize our goals, stay on track, and progress towards achieving them.
The power if focus is like the energy of the sun through a magnifying glass. Every third-grade boy knows that when you focus sunlight through a magnifying glass on something that it can burn.
A clear sense of purpose lets us focus on what matters.
If you were able to describe our works in one word, would you choose the word “peaceful”? I’m guessing there are a lot of other words that come to mind before peaceful. Your list may include words like, chaotic, broken, unstable, frightening or disintegrating.
As a nation, we have lost confidence in our government, medical institutions, and scientific exploration. And many have lost confidence with the church, which is at a all-time low with attendance.
Right now, the world is anything but peaceful
But we all desire and need peace. So many people look for peace in superficial things, including drugs, alcohol, entertainment and money, and yet still feel empty.
The truth is we’ve been looking for peace in all the wrong places and the world cannot offer us true peace, We need a peace that isn’t of this world,
Otherworldly peace is what Jesus offers us. Palm Sunday, a week before He was to go to the cross, suffer and die. Jesus took His disciples aside and gave them an amazing promise saying “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.
What a remarkable promise
Think about what Jesus was going through when He made this promise. Be had spent the last three years of His life hounded by the haters and suffocated by persecutors and oppressed. There was constant pressure on Jesus’s life.
Despite all of this, Jesus had peace. It is this peace that He invited His disciples and by extension, us to share in.
Still Today, Jesus offers the world three minds of peace.
1, Peace With God
Jesus offers us peace with His Father. In Romans 5:1-10, Paul tells us that all human beings begin as enemies with God and that it is only through faith in Jesus that we can have peace with God. It is Jesus’s death and Resurrection that made this peace possible.
Jesus knew this was the case. He knew His death was the only way to reconcile a sinful people with a righteous God. But He wept to God, because He experienced and understood the same feeling as the people around us. But He still prayed “Not my will be done but yours.” This is what Jesus came to do and it is why, hanging on the cross a week after giving His disciples His peace, He could proclaim “It is finished!” This war is over. Peace between God and humanity is now possible.
2.The Peace of God
Jesus also offered His followers the peace of God. Earlier in John 14m Jesus gives an interesting instruction to His disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” This is a daunting command and I would imagine all of the disciples wanted go do was ask, “How?”
The answer is found in Isaiah 26:3, “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you.” Jesus is saying that our minds are crucial to experiencing God’s peace. With our minds fixed on Him, we can be a peace in this chaotic and anxious world,
Paul tells us this in Philippians 4:8-9. He tells the Church, “Finally. brothers and sisters, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy -think about such things.
The result is “The God of peace will be with you.”
3. The Peace God Will Bring When Jesus Returns
We are offered the peace Bod will bring when Jesus comes back to dwell among us.
It’s no coincidence that one of Jesus’s titles is “Prince of Peace.” We are promised that the world won’t have true, lasting peace until Jesus comes again. But when He does, Isaiah 11:6 tells us strange things will happen,
“The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat; The calf, the young lion, and the fattened calf together; and a little child will lead them.”
Isaiah is saying,
There will be peace that our minds can’t yet fathom. Deep lasting transcendent peace. A piece this world can’t explain or recreate.
But it’s a peace that makes perfect sense if you know Jesus.
At the very end of John 16, the very end of Palm Sunday, Jesus gives His disciples a powerful promise. Today, over 2000 years later, Jesus extends to us that same transcendent promise of peace saying,
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart. I have overcome the world” -John 16:33
What do I wish I could spend more time doing? I would love to spend more quality time with my adult children.
Life gets so busy, both my children are successful people. They work many hours to keep food on their tables and pay for the things they want out of life.. But we don’t get to spend quality time together.
My son works in a different state, and my daughter works constantly and never has any extra time. I would love to be able to go camping with them again, or have lunch with them every day.
I have a difficult time not spending time with them. At the same time I know I raised them to be successful in life.
For many of us, the things we want to give to God are weighing on us down and keeping us from experiencing His peace.
It’s difficult to get our problems and worry to God. Letting go of what we’ve held on too for so long and letting God have His way is not an easy thing to do.
God is able to handle anything we give Him. Jesus bore the weight of our sins and disobedience on the cross. That was no small task. Just think of the sin you have in you’re life and them multiply it by billions. There is not sin we can commit that God can’t handle.
Letting go of something and letting God be God means we are willing to not dwell on the past but focus on the future. It means we are willing to see our lives through the grace given to us by God, through His Son Jesus.
Letting go and letting God means we are willing to choose to allow Jesus to carry whatever is weighing us down.
When we choose to keep hanging onto things that God wants us to give to Him, we are missing out on the blessing of God’s peace. Imagine living every day with a 100-pound weight changed to both your feet. If we give it to God we can have those weights lifted and be able to walk in true freedom.
Giving our sins and worries to God has to happen every day. We as humans tend to give our worries to God and then just pick them right back up.
My son lives a long way away from me, and I worry about him often. I pray for God to watch over him and protect him. Then I pick up the worry again when I’m done. I know I need to submit and release my son to him. But it’s the most difficult thing I have to do.
Ephesians 3:20 says,
“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.”
What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?
What tattoo do you want and where would you put it? I have a tattoo on the calf of my leg. It’s a panther.
I have absolutely nothing against tattoos. But some people don’t have much sense when getting them. If you’re going to get a tattoo put it somewhere you can hide it or let it show. If you want a successful job such as a manager position there is a chance you won’t get hired for that position if you have a tattoo on your neck or face,
Once we believe something with heart, it becomes fixed and steadfast and no one, including ourselves, can talk to us out of it -even when it’s not the truth.
Unfortunately, many people believe the truth of the good news of Jesus, but they have not been persuaded of the truth by the Spirit within their. hearts.
When the Spirit persuades us of the truth of Jesus we have the assurance of salvation and cannot be moved. It would take God Himself to convince us otherwise.
We come to believe all that we believe because someone or something persuaded us to believe it to be true. This is the “Trust and Authority Principle.
Faith from the heart is enduring. Once we believe something with the heart, it becomes fixed and steadfast The steadfastness of heart belief is made evident by our certainty of the Lord’s salvation. When we believe the good news with our hearts, we are made right with God as the scriptures declare.
“For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved” -Romans 10:10.
When we become persuaded of God and convinced of the good news, it is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” Romans 1:16).
Intellectual belief is not saving faith. Intellectual delivers often struggle with feeling assured of their salvation. It is possible for them to be swayed by persuasive arguments, knocked off course by a difficult life experience, and if they don’t feel saved they deny what they do feel and try harder to believe,
They do their very best to “be saved” by trying to believe the good news of the Gospel, but because they have not been persuaded of this truth by the Spirit within their hearts, they lack “assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). When we know the truth in our hearts we have the assurance of salvation and cannot be moved. It would take God Himself to convince us otherwise. When the Spirit has persuaded us of the truth in our hearts, we are confidently assured of our place with God. If we do not believe with our hearts, then we are not saved.
No person or circumstance can ever talk me out of what I believe to be the truth in my heart. I did not decide to believe and become saved, the Spirit convinced me off the truth and as an outcome. I believed.
People who struggle with the assurance of their salvation may want the assurance may want to determine if they have believed with their heart, or they only have a mental assent of the Gospel (good news).
We are persuaded by the truth, not by effort or determination to believe, but because we have been convinced of the truth by someone or something that we trust and know has greater knowledge and understanding than we possess ourselves. This is why unless someone with greater influence than God comes along and convinces me otherwise, I will continue to believe and be assured of my salvation. I believe because the Spirit convinced me the truth of the Gospel.
We come to believe all that we believe because someone or something persuaded us to believe it is true. Everything that we currently believe was because we were persuaded of it. Belief is always the outcome of having been persuaded by some outside force. Once we are persuaded it requires someone or something that we trust and who holds a higher authority of knowledge to talk us out of what we believe.
We can know how to become a believer in Christ with knowledge and study of the. Bible. But, unless God shines His light into our hearts and brings about this belief, we cannot be saved.
We can believe the scriptures with our intellect and still never be transformed by them. Unless God “opens the eyes of your heart,” We cannot have faith. God said, “Light shall shine out of darkness is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6).
If I was to describe myself in one word it would be quirky.
Some try to hide their quirks to fit in with the crowd, while others embrace their unconditional side.
I have a unique fashion sense. I could care let about what’s in style and what’s not. If I like something I’m buying it.
I have unusual hobbies and interests. I like to iron my money. I hate dirty money so if I get dirty money, I try to get rid of it as soon as possible or wash it in the sink. I also hate wrinkled money. So I it on it. I picked up this habit from my Nagymama. She did the same thing.
Most people love television I have no desire to sit in front of the television for hours. Life is short, get out and enjoy it.
I March to the beat of my own drum. Some people act differently for the sake of being different, I am just myself.
I knew from a young age j was not like anyone else. It took me a long time to learn to be myself and not try to fit in with the crowd.
God created everyone differently for a purpose. How boring would it be if we were all the same? And it’s exhausting trying to be something you are not.
From Pity to Praise 