Devotional Song: ... GO TO THIS LINK ... Please take the time to take in song and lyrics from Steven Curtis Chapman singing Be Still and Know … poignantly singing of how we all need to trust in God’s ways, … in His decisions, … in His promises … no matter what happens.
David Attenborough Confronts a Sloth
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Highlight Verse[s]: Nehemiah 9:17 [ESV] ... USE THIS LINK … 17 They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.
… Nehemiah declaring the truth about God’s patience and compassion in dealing with His people in the wilderness.
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Highlight Passage [context]: Nehemiah 9:13-21 [ESV] ... USE THIS LINK ...
… Nehemiah reminds God’s remnant of His compassion and His unfailing patience in dealing with the grumbling of His people in the wilderness.
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Reference Passage : … Numbers 14:18 [ESV] … 18 ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’
… God’s promise to Moses that He was slow to carry out His anger against disobedience; but that His wrath would be theirs (or ours) if they were unwilling to repent to receive His saving grace.
Reference Passage : … Psalm 86:15, 103:8, 145:8 [ESV] … USE THIS LINK …
… Anytime God repeats a promise or purpose three times, … HE MEANS IT !!
Reference Passage : … Isaiah 35:4 [ESV] … 4 Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.”
… God’s promise thru Isaiah that He would save those with faithful hearts in spite of our anxieties about life.
Reference Passage : … 2Peter 3:9 [ESV] … 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
… Peter reminds us that thru history God has been slow to bring His judgment on mankind because He so wants for many to come to Him in repentance and walk away from their (our) sin.
My Devotional Journal: Today's ODB author, Mart DeHaan, uses a rather curious illustration of a sloth to make the point that God’s wrath has been incredibly slow in coming to mankind with the selfish sin we have exhibited over time. … The ODB author wrote: In the BBC video series The Life of Mammals, host David Attenborough climbs a tree to take a humorous look at a three-toed sloth. Getting face to face with the world’s slowest moving mammal, he greets it with a “boo!” [See Photo] Failing to get a reaction, he explains that going slow is what you do if you are a three-toed sloth living primarily on leaves that are not easily digested and not very nutritious.
In the ODB entry, I don’t know about the author comparing God’s slowness to anger against mankind’s selfish sin nature to the slowness of a sloth. But, … when any reader here with me takes in the truths from God’s word above, where God, … over and over and over again, … repeats His promise of patience in dealing with the selfishness and sin of His people, … we ought to be able to at least try to do what Steven Curtis Chapman sings in the linked song … and that is to patiently … “be still and know that He is God!”
Right now in our lives we’re going thru a time of incredible challenge and anxiety with the Caronavirus Pandemic unfolding; and I can’t help but think, knowing and believing that God is in control, that our Lord is challenging the world to believe exactly what SCC sings in this attached song. So, I pray we take it in, meditate on God’s promises above, and stop to affirm our faith in our God today.
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My THANKFULNESS: ... Oh Abba Father, ... thank You, Lord, … for Your repeated promise to be slow with Your wrath and anger … and to let so many of us come to repentance and faith in Your saving grace.
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My Prayer Today: Oh Abba Father, ... King Jesus, ... I pray, Lord, that all reading here will join me to willingly surrender to a faithful and patient God for Whom we can wait to receive His saving grace. Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled “Our Daily Bread,” distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.</ span>
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