Time with God

This morning I was reading the Book of Jude. It was written to warn the people that Jude was writing to about their sin and godlessness.

Jude talks very frankly to them as they are living a life full of sin and enjoying it a little too much. Jude is warning them of what could come of it if they continue to live in it too long. If you do not know Jude is the second last book of the Bible in the New Testament. As Jude is writing he talks about some things that happened in the Old Testament. First he talks about the people that God freed out of Egypt but that he later destroyed most of those people because of their faithlessness. Then Jude mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah with how these towns/cities were destroyed because their sexual immorality. He mentioned a couple of others but I decided to dig deeper into these two familiar stories to get more background as to what Jude was talking about.

I went to the Israelites first and read about them complaining continuously and how everyone twenty years old and older were destroyed with the exception of two men; Joshua and Caleb. I got to thinking of my own life right after reading this passage of Numbers 14. "How does this apply to you?" you might be asking. The answer is simple for me to tell you. I can say that I do not like my job, I often complain about my manager, the customers and some of the scheduling issues that I have been having. This has made me realize the kind of hindrance I can be to people towards my Christian faith. Most if not all of my co-workers know that I am a Christian and that I live the life so to speak of a Christian. I have gotten comments that I don't swear, they wonder why, why don't I drink? What do I want to do after I am done school? I even receive apologies from some members of my team for the language that they use. How is my complaining influencing them? Probably not in a godly way...can we say conviction? Give me a resounding YES! Lord catch me in the act and help me to see what damage I could be doing. I need a Saviour for a reason and here is one small example.

The next passage I went to was the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot was the main person of this passage and Lot was the one who took care of the angels that were sent to "take care of" the city. People in the city saw the angels go in who were actually described as men, the city people came banging on the door wanting to defile the men inside. Lot fought against that idea and told them that they could not have the men and that he has them in his house to protect them. Anyway I'm not going to go through the details of the whole story* but will fast forward to a part that had me asking questions. After Lot and his daughters were safely away from Sodom it talks about the daughters taking turns laying with him. I wonder what happened to their men that they were to be married to? Lot told them to flee with him, but it doesn't say what happened. So the daughters still felt the need to carry on their family line so they had sex with their father in order to do so. Now here is another area that I was thinking about. Had that way of life or the culture set in so deeply into these two young ladies that they were influenced to carry out a sexually immoral act with their our father. Hmmm...we see things like this all the time in our world. Kind of scary if you ask me. Thank you God for working in me to help me see my need for you and my ever need for dependence on you.

* For the whole story please find it in Genesis 19 but 18 is crucial to see how God works in the unfolding plan for 19