Psalm 37:5-7
Trust in the LORD and Wait Patiently for Him
5 Commit your way to the LORD;
trust in him and he will do this:
6 He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn,
the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
7 Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him.
John 11:38-44
38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
John 4:1-29
From Faith to Believing
1 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John —2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17 “I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”
1 Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God.
2 Joshua said to all the people, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods. 3 But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the Euphrates and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants. I gave him Isaac, 4 and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I assigned the hill country of Seir to Esau, but Jacob and his family went down to Egypt.
5 “‘Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I afflicted the Egyptians by what I did there, and I brought you out. 6 When I brought your people out of Egypt, you came to the sea, and the Egyptians pursued them with chariots and horsemen as far as the Red Sea. 7 But they cried to the Lord for help, and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians; he brought the sea over them and covered them. You saw with your own eyes what I did to the Egyptians. Then you lived in the wilderness for a long time.
8 “‘I brought you to the land of the Amorites who lived east of the Jordan. They fought against you, but I gave them into your hands. I destroyed them from before you, and you took possession of their land. 9 When Balak son of Zippor, the king of Moab, prepared to fight against Israel, he sent for Balaam son of Beor to put a curse on you. 10 But I would not listen to Balaam, so he blessed you again and again, and I delivered you out of his hand.
11 “‘Then you crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho. The citizens of Jericho fought against you, as did also the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites, Girgashites, Hivites and Jebusites, but I gave them into your hands. 12 I sent the hornet ahead of you, which drove them out before you—also the two Amorite kings. You did not do it with your own sword and bow. 13 So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.’
14 “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
16 Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! 17 It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our parents up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. 18 And the Lord drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God. ”
19 Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. 20 If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”
21 But the people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the Lord.”
22 Then Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the Lord.”
“Yes, we are witnesses, ” they replied.
23 “Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”
24 And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and obey him.”
25 On that day Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there at Shechem he reaffirmed for them decrees and laws.26 And Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the Law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak near the holy place of the Lord.
27 “See!” he said to all the people. “This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the Lord has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God.”
28 Then Joshua dismissed the people, each to their own inheritance.
29 After these things, Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of a hundred and ten. 30 And they buried him in the land of his inheritance, at Timnath Serah in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.
31 Israel served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had experienced everything the Lord had done for Israel.
32 And Joseph’s bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem. This became the inheritance of Joseph’s descendants.
33 And Eleazar son of Aaron died and was buried at Gibeah, which had been allotted to his son Phinehas in the hill country of Ephraim.
The Psalmist tells us to trust the LORD and wait patiently for Him...This is excellent advice, but has always been difficult for me...We seem to want to have faith, then lose some or a lot of our faith -and we do not want to (for one reason or another) trust Him or want to serve Him...
It seems like mankind has a very difficult time in believing in some things...It seems we are easier at believing in things when we are young...Maybe that is because we are more curious...When we hear the story of Noah, or Jonah and the great fish, we believe these things when we are younger...We believe in God...Then we get educated and are taught that the world is fifteen billion years old and we came from a primitive chemical soup, and we were first in the oceans and evolved to where we are today then lose some of our earlier beliefs...We then are bombarded with TV (for one reason or another) and movies and often, if not very often see things that are not of the great morality that we hear from the Bible and our Bible teachings and our younger days...Evolution, many TV shows, and many movies undermines the earlier learning that had taken place...Someone, who is a believer, tells us the world is six thousand years old (not all believers believe the world is six thousand years old), and an educated scientist tells us the earth is fifteen billion years old...That is quite a difference in years...You think who is right?...So we get confused and question the Bible a little, if not a lot...We question God and His Son...Then we gradually drift from the Two Most important things in life...
This drifting and falling away from faith is not new...There are many examples in the Old and New Testaments of things that make us drift and undermine our faith...Most theologians believe it our sin that came in the the fall in the Garden of Eden...But God is a seeking God always looking for a lost son or daughter...It is because God is Love and He awaits us...Love, His Love helps bring us back to Him...
Back to the earth and where and what we believe today is still our choice...What we do know is that the earth is finely tuned for man, and the sun, the rain, the moon, and the air are a few of the things that are required if humanity is to survive on earth...Somehow all these things got perfected for man to live on earth and survive...You have a choice in believing man is here randomly or man is here by God, through creation...This debate will continue....So whether one believes in evolution and we are mutants of this primitive soup and later man has mutated for the ape or we are from God's image will be debated everyday...
God gives us free will and a choice to believe in Him...When Martha, a friend of Jesus, met Him soon after her brother died He comforted Her -she had faith in Him...Jesus ask her "Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”...She did not yet trust Him...She would trust Him much more, after He raised Lazarus for his death...When someone Jesus had never met -a woman at a well with a reputation, she seemed a little lost and maybe had lost some hope in her life...Jesus told her He was the Messiah...He gives her hope...When He told her somethings about her life that only she and God would know, she believed more -but still did not completely believe...She told the townspeople “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”...She did not yet trust Him yet...But you can tell by reading, a little zest and hope are with her...Even thousands of years ago, when Joshua is talking to God's people at Shechem -there are some who have stronger faith than others...Joshua feels he must renew the covenant with the LORD to strengthen not only his faith, but those of others...And God has been close to them...
It seems in our faith, it may be a leap...A leap towards Love, because God is Love...Sometimes, I think there is an order of things -that first there is hope then faith, then Truth, then belief...That is why, I believe Jesus told Martha, didn't I just get through telling you to believe (I will and can bring your brother back to life)...
Martha, The Samaritan woman at the well, and Joshua needed a leap of faith, a transition to faith -they needed to trust God and His Son...We all need this...Today when we get bombarded by information and media that undermines our faith, we still have this choice...We have the choice to choose God or not to choose God...We have a choice to Trust in the LORD, or not Trust Him...I choose as Joshua did thousands of years ago...When he said "But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord."...
These are stories of great hope...I think the world needs this hope, this faith, this belief, this Truth, and this renewed Trust in the LORD...