Review from Sunday, 10/24

Hiya 56ers

Here is the scoop from last Sunday's lesson

Our topic of the day was "How can God be everywhere?"

It is a hard thing to grasp that God can be everywhere, see everything, be interested and involved all over the place and be in control of all that is happening and all that is going to happen.  But it is true and it has to be true.  We can't figure that out because we are limited by our human bodies at being in 1 place at any given time, only.

Here is where our discussion carried us.
first we read Deuteronomy 4.39
God is in control.  There is no other like Him.  and still he wants to know us and to encourage us as we try to live a life that honors Him


Next, we read Psalm 139.7-12.
This is for me both one of the most encouraging and one of the most convicting passages in the Bible.  We all have hard things to go through and it is comforting to know that God is with us and will always be.  He is with us, anywhere we go and whatever our situation happens to be,  we will not be removed from where God is and where He has power to intervene.   However, there is another side to the story in this passage.  Some of the verses make it look like David is trying to get away from God.  That is not possible either, so that means that God is aware of all that we have done.  He is everywhere and so there is no way to hide our sins and the deepest thoughts of our hearts.  He knows them all.  But the great thing is that He never gives up on us.  We never stray too far for Him to find us.

Next, we read Jonah 1.1-4 & 2.1-6
Jonah is an amazing story!  It is crazy.  Jonah knows what God wants him to do, and chooses not to do it.  He heads the other direction, running and hiding from God.  We know that this is futile - there is no hiding from God.  we know the story,  Jonah is thrown overboard and a large fish comes and devours him.  So there he is, in the belly of a large fish.  This, in my mind is the perfect picture of "rock bottom" I've never been eaten by an aquatic animal, but I don't imagine that there is a lot of hope for survival or expectation of being saved from this situation.  But here is the hope of the story - that we can apply to our lives.  There at "rock bottom", in the most hopeless of situations, Jonah cries out to God and... ready for it... GOD IS THERE!!!  In even the most hopeless situation - when we have nowhere else to turn, God is there.  It was true for Jonah and it is true for us as well.  And as the rest of the story plays out, we see that not only is there hope in hopeless situations, but God has a plan that can carry through seemingly impossible situations. There is GREAT hope in that.  We just need to remember to look for God and hold on to that hope when we can't see a way out.

Finally, we read Matthew 28.18-20
Speaking of impossible situations,  Here we see Jesus talking to his disciples after they have seen Him go through the impossible.  He died on a cross, and now, a short time later, is back in their midst, risen!  He has called them together and given them a task and a promise.  The task is to spread the word to all the world about who Jesus is - this task has been passed along through the generations and now lies on our shoulders, too.  But so does the promise - that He will be with us always, to the end of the age (to the end of history).  God is with us, He will help us and will equip us to represent Him well if we allow Him freedom to work in our lives.

Our challenge this week is to remember that God is with us everywhere - and so each time we move to a different place, to think of Him, thank Him for his presence and ask Him help us to be faithful to Him in all we say and do, so others may know Him too.

Matt. 28.20 is our memory verse for the week, too.

 Last week, I put some bonus points out there and did get some feedback from it.  Thanks.  This week, we have fixed the "leave a comment" problems, and so I will again offer a bonus point to anyone that leaves a comment anywhere on the livealifealive.
Have a great week!

Crispy