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Dear Friends, I hope you had a great weekend. This week's devotional message is the first in a three part series on worship. We hope you are blessed and encouraged! Last week, my computer suffered an outage, due to a bad power supply unit. My hard drive is damaged, but a local computer store is trying to recover my data. Please pray that it is recovered. I have a backup copy from a couple of months ago, but I would really like to get all of my recent data. Welcome to the new readers of this message! Here is your Devotion, A Moment of Introspection, JCSM's Challenge, the Word of the Week, a faith-builder from "The Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Corrected and Explained," and the Quotes of the Week. Have a fantastic week and God bless you! Love in Christ, Jason Gastrich, Ph.D. Contact Us: http://jcsm.org/contact.php
JCSM's Weekly Devotions (click here to listen!) "Give the Lord a Clap Offering" 2 Kings 11:12 "And he brought out the king’s son, put the crown on him, and gave him the Testimony; they made him king and anointed him, and they clapped their hands and said, 'Long live the king!'" Psalm 47:1, 2 "Oh, clap your hands, all you peoples! Shout to God with the voice of triumph! For the LORD Most High is awesome; He is a great King over all the earth." Psalm 98:8, 9 "Let the rivers clap their hands; Let the hills be joyful together before the LORD, For He is coming to judge the earth. With righteousness He shall judge the world, And the peoples with equity." Ezekiel 25:6, 7 "For thus says the Lord GOD: 'Because you clapped your hands, stamped your feet, and rejoiced in heart with all your disdain for the land of Israel, indeed, therefore, I will stretch out My hand against you, and give you as plunder to the nations; I will cut you off from the peoples, and I will cause you to perish from the countries; I will destroy you, and you shall know that I am the LORD.'" Insight: How often do you give the Lord a clap offering? Whether you clap in church or clap on your own, don't forget to praise God with this form of worship. It's one of God's commands to us, recorded in the scriptures. Prayer: "Dear Lord, bless us and lift us up. Thank you for being worthy of our praise and worship. There is no other like You! Help us to remember to praise You by clapping. Thank you for giving us instructions in your Word. Help us to intimately know You and your Word, so we can please You. Thank you for loving us so much. Please increase our faith in You and our love for You and others. In Jesus' name, Amen."
Jacob Broom (1752-1810), who, in addition to being a signer of the Constitution of the United States of America, was also a banker, entrepreneur, farmer, merchant and surveyor. Jacob Broom is described in the Official Papers of Delaware, written in 1909 as follows: “A fair example of the product of a sturdy, energetic, sagacious ancestry and evangelical Swedish orthodoxy, co-operating amid the trying environments of a struggling colony in an undeveloped land…. “He lived in one of the potential crises of history, in which and for which the sublime visions and words of prophets and apostles had developed and inspired a stalwart manhood…. “As it is an accepted fact that ‘the foundation of all permanent prosperity is a right regard for the Divine Being’, it is proper to say that Jacob Broom was a God-fearing man.” ¹ Being a delegate from the State of Delaware, he would have complied with the requirements for office stipulated by that State’s Constitution, which included: “Article XXII Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust… shall… make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: ‘I, _____, do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore, and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.” ² In a letter to his son who was a senior at Princeton College, Jacob Broom wrote in 1794: “Do not be so much flattered as to relax in your application; do not forget to be a Christian. I have said much to you on this head, and I hope an indelible impression is made.” ³ ¹ Rev. William Campbell, Papers of the Historical Society of Delaware (Wilmington: Historical Society of Delaware, 1909), p. 27, 35. Tim LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1987), p. 153. ² Constitution of the State of Delaware. Church of the Holy Trinity v. U.S., 457, 469-470 (1892). M.E. Bradford, A Worthy Company (NH: Plymouth Rock Foundation, 1982), p. x. David Barton, The Myth of Separation (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 1991), p. 23. ³ Rev. William Campbell, Papers of the Historical Society of Delaware (Wilmington: Historical Society of Delaware, 1909), p. 27. Tim LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1987), p. 153. If you'd like to see more quotes from those that framed and founded America, please click here: http://jcsm.org/AmericasFounders/.
Do you know how the Bible instructs us to worship? Have you tried to worship like God wants us to worship? The One who deserves our worship should be worshipped as He prescribed in the scriptures.
Give the Lord a clap offering! God bless you as you meet this week's challenge!
tawkah (Hebrew, see Psalm 47:1): to clatter, that is slap the hands together
The Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Corrected and Explained "The Skeptic's Annotated Bible" claims: Exodus 7:3 - God hardens Pharaoh's heart for the second time. But this contradicts 1 Samuel 6:6, which says that the Pharaoh hardened his own heart. "The Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Corrected and Explained" responds: The Egyptians were unrepentant sinners. They had foreign gods and enslaved the Israelites. God hardened Pharaoh's heart, but he had hardened his own heart, too. (This explanation came from "The Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Corrected and Explained", by Jason Gastrich. This book is on CD and gives over 4,000 answers to alleged Bible errors, regarding the entire Bible at http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.org. There is also a 300 question workbook that accompanies the CD-ROM.)
There are no new quotes this week, but we have we have thousands in our archive! Visit http://quotes.jcsm.org. Plus, if you'd like to read a new quote every day, please go to http://jcsm.org/Wisdom.htm and bookmark it!
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Jason Gastrich, Ph.D. JCSM's Director ______________________________________________________ JCSM is a 501(c)(3), non-profit organization. Copyright © 1997-present. |
