The resources God has given us to live a thriving life are His Word, Spirit, and People.
Read God’s Word:
1 Chronicles 1-2, Psalms 43-44
Act 2: God’s Covenant People
Scene 5: Kings and Prophets: God shapes a kingdom people
Background Information: 1 Chronicles 1-2, Psalms 43-44
Chronicles is not merely a repetition of information from the books of Samuel and Kings. It, like some of the Psalms, was written from the perspective of people in or just recently out of Babylonian captivity. A priest named Ezra was the spiritual leader of Israel long after the glory days of King David and the magnificent temple of Solomon. The people were straggling back to the land with an incomplete temple, a mostly forgotten heritage, and little knowledge of the law as given to Moses. Ezra writes to remind the people settling back in the land of their heritage that they are God’s children, and that God’s promise to David of a lasting kingdom still stands. He does this by summarizing their history from creation all the way to nearly their own time. He was giving them not just history, but the meaning of history from God’s perspective. If you had been born in captivity and had never heard of the Exodus, the law of Moses, and the promise of David’s lasting kingdom, and you were hearing this genealogy read out loud, it would not bore you. It would stir your heart. Imagine that throughout your entire life you had been a nobody, a foreigner in a land with a strange language, strange ways, and strange gods. Where was your supposed powerful God, the covenant God in all this? Now you find out that it was all part of God’s long plan. The sin that brought captivity was man’s fault, at the same time the captivity itself was a part of God’s plan of the ages. The God of human history still had plans for a people to make his name known to the nations. The God of human history had a plan for that single Israeli, unknown to us, whose heart was stirred as he heard these words read for the first time. That same God has a plan for you as you make your way through long dead names on a page. They speak of the living God’s plan which will come to pass; nothing can stop him.
Pray:
Praise God for…
Thank God for…
Confess your sins to God
Pray for the River Youth Mission teams. Ask God to provide the resources they need for their trips. Ask God to prepare the hearts of the students who are planning to go. Ask God to prepare the hearts of those the students will be meeting and sharing with this summer.
Ask God for… (what else concerns you?)
Reflect:
Write down one passage of scripture that stood out to you today.
Write down why this passage stood out to you.
Engage Community:
Text or call someone now and tell them…
– What you are praying for.
– What stood out from God’s word today.