Awaken Our Ears

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July 11
Whew, I am in summer slow mode.  Sorry I'm so late posting the devos the past couple days.
I'm devouring Beth Moore's study on 1 & 2nd Thessalonians.  Today's verse of study is:

To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power.  2 Thessalonians 1:11

Moore is discussing the importance of our equipping for ministry and the intrigue that sometimes "scripture is effectively at work even when a verse does not tie directly to our task."  She mentions that "…the Word possesses inherent strength and shapes character. An open Bible also awakens our ears."

He wakes Me up morning by morning. He wakes up My ear to listen as a follower.  Isaiah 50:4

Moore states, "Hacking through the Scriptures with a mental machete is hazardous."  I know I've done that.  Going to a daily scripture reading and thinking…"That one is not for me today."  Probably, because I don't like the sound of it and don't want it to be for me. What Moore is trying to teach is that God knows what our Spirit needs to be fed.  I just realized that I had read my daily verse on Biblegateway this very morning and quickly clicked off not meditating on it, so back I go.  I will allow both the 2 Thessalonians verse and Jeremiah 32:17 to go deep into my Spirit today.  It's interesting the depth into which The Message goes with this familiar verse.

Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth 
by your great power and by your outstretched arm!  
Nothing is too hard for you.
Jeremiah 32:17

My husband share a prayer request with me this morning and for an instant I thought…that's going to be tough to do.  Then immediately, "Nothing is to hard for God" came to mind.  Returning home from our prayer walk, there in today's reading was this verse and I almost didn't have my ears awakened and would have missed the nutrition in this feeding!

Here's The Message version.

And then, having handed over the legal documents to Baruch son of Neriah, I prayed to God, 'Dear God, my Master, you created earth and sky by your great power by merely stretching out your arm!  There is nothing you can't do.  You're loyal in your steadfast love to thousands upon thousands-but you also make children live with the fallout from their parents' sins.  Great and powerful God, named God-of-the-Angel-Armies, determined in purpose and relentless in following through, you see everything that men and women do and respond appropriately to the way they live, to the things they do.


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