An interesting study I did for my Old Testament History class

"The Making of a Nation"

After 400 years of enslavement in the land of Egypt, the cries for deliverance coming from the Israelites to God were heard. God answered the Israelites cries by bringing them out of slavery with several miracles leading up to the Exodus, and many miracles during the Exodus. God chose a leader for His people to journey out of Egypt, to the Promised Land. Moses was chosen by God to lead the Israelites. After much encouragement and counsel from God through a burning bush, Moses was ready for the task. God gave Moses instruction for His people to have a feast and spread the blood of the slaughtered lambs on their door frames, so they would be excluded from God’s ultimate plague on the Egyptians, the death of the firstborn sons. God softened Pharaoh’s heart after this and the Israelites Exodus began. Everything that God had done was to lay the foundation for the establishment of a Holy nation of Israel (Tyndale 2005).
The Lord could have led the Israelites on a much easier journey, the road would have led the Israelites into the land of the Philistines, which may have discouraged the Israelites and they could have gone back to Egypt. So the Lord chose for them to take this route which would show His love, power and strength to His people more clearly. After the Israelites had started their journey, Pharaoh decided to go after the Israelites with his army of chariots. They pursued the Israelites to the Red Sea where through Moses and his staff, God parted the Red Sea for His people to cross safely. After all the Israelites had crossed the army of chariots had made it to the Red Sea and part way across the dry bottom of the Red Sea when the water was reformed back into its place, wiping out the pursuing Egyptian charioteers. The Lord’s awesome hand had been displayed for the Israelites to see.
God through Moses led the Israelites into the desert where they came upon Mount Sinai. At Mount Sinai, the Lord established with His people the covenant that He had made with Abraham. He was making the Israelites a nation that is Holy and a kingdom of priests. The Israelites were to give complete obedience to the Lord and keep His covenant (Tyndale 2005). The Israelites had been through and seen many miraculous, but scary things for humans to go through; yet they complained about many things. Their reluctant obedience had brought them through everything to this point.
While on Mount Sinai, Moses received the Ten Commandments from the Lord. This was the law which Israel would use to establish a nation in the Promised Land. These were the laws that the Israelites were to live by to show the world God’s holiness through the example of His chosen people, the nation of Israel (Tyndale 2005).
The Lord instructed Moses to have His people make an offering of gold, silver and bronze, blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, goat hair, dyed ram skins, sea cow hides, acacia wood, olive oil, spices, and onyx stones, as well as other gems (Tyndale 2005). The Lord wanted the Israelites to construct a tabernacle for the Lord to dwell with them. This was a place for the priest to communicate with the Lord, known as “the holy place”. There was a curtain in the tabernacle which separated the place for the priests and a place for the Lord which was known as “The Most Holy Place” (Tyndale 2005). The tabernacle was an earthly instrument used by the Lord to establish worship of the Israelites.
The exodus was the beginning of the fulfillment of the covenant between God and Abraham. The Lord used Moses to lead His people out of captivity into the Promised Land. The Lord taught His people the way to be obedient and glorify Him with the law. The tabernacle was established for the priests to communicate with God through sacrifice and prayer. This was God’s plan of making a nation of Israel, holy and honoring to the Lord.


References
NIV Life Application Study Bible, Tyndale House Publishers Inc. Carol Stream, Illinois, 2005

"An Autobiography of Me"

I was born on July 19, 1970 to Herbert and Agnes. It was a special day for them because I was born on their 18th wedding anniversary. I had a good childhood. I grew up going to church with my Mom. I attended church school, accomplishing the sacraments of first communion, first confession, and confirmation.
I went through my life up through my 20’s believing that I could be nice to people and help them when they were in a pinch, attend Sunday Mass, say the necessary prayers and be forgiven for all my shortcomings, then go do them all over again. I blended in well with society. The majority of people around me were doing the same thing. In reality, I was a foul-mouthed young man, who was following the crowd, not really sorry for anything. I thought it was all okay to do.
In the late 1990’s, I started working at the local high paying factory. My Dad had my brother get me an application, and he made sure that his long time friend, who worked his way into being the supervisor, knew that I had applied By the year 2000, I was able to move into a different department. I befriended many there. I became friends with one man that really was different from the rest. He listened to this strange radio station I never heard of before, he read his Bible frequently in my presence, which led me to discuss Biblical things with him. I had my Catholic view and he had a Protestant view. I realized I had no clear knowledge of many Biblical events. I definitely had no idea what these words meant. After much debate with him, I realized that I shouldn’t debate with him on things that I knew nothing about. I couldn’t figure out why this guy and others I knew in my own family were always so happy; there was nothing much I could see to be happy about.
In 2001, after many different health problems, my Mom was diagnosed with liver cancer. I could see it really devastated my Mom. Though I was very scared and heartbroken, I kept up a positive attitude with her. I went to church with many prayers from me and many friends and family. My Mom continued to get worse, radiation treatments were not working. By April of 2002, my Mom became so ill that she was admitted into the hospital. The doctors did several procedures on her and she started to get a little better. Then, the call came from one of my brothers that Mom took a turn for the worse and she wanted to see Dad and all her boys. I prayed harder than I ever had the entire 50 mile journey to the hospital. I was able to spend a few last moments with Mom, and on April 17, 2002 she died. I was very upset with God for taking my Mom from me. I really didn’t want to go to church anymore, but for my Dad’s sake, I went. While at church, instead of prayers, I gave chastisement in my mind to God for not answering my prayers. Eventually, my grief and anger toward God subsided.
Something made me look up on Yahoo Personals, the profiles of single women in the area. After much looking I came across a few in my close area. After talking with them, one stood out. I became an IM and email friend with her. After much hinting and coaxing on her part, I asked her out on a date to see a movie “Sweet Home Alabama.” I eventually met her family. Her parents and grandparents intrigued me. The debates I had with my friend at work came flooding back into my mind. These people were professing Christians. I developed much respect for them. My heart softened a bit toward Christianity.
In the winter of 2003 my Dad was diagnosed with lung disease. It was not long until I started praying to God again for his well being. He was in ICU for weeks. Eventually, the doctors were doing a routine tracheotomy, when they made a mistake and nicked an artery. Because of this, my Dad died during this procedure. Once again, this devastated my family. Shortly afterward, I asked my girlfriend Jennifer, and her three kids to move in with me. We lived together for 15 months before I finally mustered the courage up to ask Jennifer to be my bride. I used our overused credit card to buy the wedding/engagement ring. I used Christmas Eve alone with her to pop the question, while putting out the presents. We set our date for November 5, 2005.
As November approached, we received a foreclosure notice in the mail along with several collection agencies attempts to get us to pay our debts. This caused me to talk us into getting another loan from a loan company that advertised in our local paper. This company turned out to be fraudulent and stole $1800 in “insurance” fees from us. This put us in a state of disarray. We could not afford to get married the way we had planned. On September 20th we discussed postponing the wedding. We were both just devastated. We talked about God again in a bad way and took this as proof that there was no God.
I was given a job that evening at work far away from my workmates. Then, a thought came to mind about that radio station that my friend listened to when I debated with him about Biblical matters. I turned to it. There was a teaching show on there “Living on the Edge” with Chip Ingram. He came on and introduced what his show was about that night. He was doing a study from the book of Job. This drew some interest for me. I heard a kind voice say “Listen, this message is for you to hear.” Then I heard another gruff voice say “No don’t listen.” This went on for a short time. I decided to listen with great interest. All the while this gruff voice became a spiritual presence and things on my machine started falling onto the ground. At the end of the teaching, Chip Ingram said “If this message sounds like something you can relate to, remember that Jesus longs for you to come to him. Pray this prayer with me, ‘Jesus, I have lived my life separated from you, please come into my heart and rescue me from this turmoil in my life. I turn from my sin and will follow you, Jesus I love you. Amen.’”
I then left my work area hastily to call Jennifer and tell her what had just happened. I could not control my emotions. I cried quite uncontrollably barely getting the words out that I just said a prayer to ask Jesus into my heart. She was so overwhelmed by this that after she calmed me down on the phone and hung up, she asked Jesus into her heart as well. The wedding, though scaled down, went on and was more enriching to both of us because God was at the center.
Since then, we have grown greatly in the Lord. All three of our kids accepted Jesus as their Savior and are currently learning how to stay on the path of righteousness. Recently, I was called into ministry and am currently attending Grand Canyon University for my Bachelor’s in Christian Studies with a focus on Ministry.
As well as being a story of my testimony, and of God’s never-ending love for me; it is also a story of God’s usage of people who don’t know Him as their Savior. He longs for them to know Him and love Him. He used my Dad, my brother, my Dad’s long- time friend, and several other people; believers and non-believers. My never-ending prayer is for them to come to know Jesus as their Savior, and know that He used them in bringing me to Jesus.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me

Hello to all my faithful readers:

I haven't posted much on here because of busyness. So far, I have completed my first semester at Grand Canyon University. I took New Testament History and Old Testament History. In all I wrote about 16 essays. I so richly blessed with all the reading, research and writing I did in those two classes. Perhaps I will post a few of my papers I wrote, some of them are very interesting.
My wife is going on her 5th week of recovery from fusion surgery. I really enjoyed taking care of her intensely for 4 of those weeks. She is getting increasingly independent daily, which is good, but I have to keep an eye on her from overdoing it. I welcome it though, I have had a tough time keeping up with everything around here. All of these things around here mean nothing compared to my wife's care. The kids had their good days and bad days of being helpful, but we are working on it. Constant prayer for God's providence has paid off. God provided us with great parents and church family as well as great friends at where I work to help get us through these tough times. God is so good to us! That's all for now! God be with you all!