Cazsadventblog22

There shall come forth a shoot from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.  (Is 11:1-2) The other day I was out driving to the next town and had to stop the car on a country road to jump out and take a photo.   This is what I saw. That's a perfectly formed holly tree growing out of a fence post.  It caught my eye and immediately reminded me of the verse about Jesus being a shoot growing out of a stump. We all know what it means.  From a once mighty but ultimately ruined line of kings would come a new king and kingdom.  But Id never before considered the fact that the stump is of the root of Jesse, not the root of David.   Jesse wasnt a king.  Jesse was actually just a shepherd, a farmer.  His name actually means ' King' but he wasnt one.  He wa...

  Did anyone  else see this the other day?   ( for non UK readers this is Mike Tindall , ex UK rugby player and husband of Zara, niece of the King, coming out of the jungle where he had been for 22 days participating in a gameshow) And did anyone else feel what I felt when I saw that image? Im not sure I can quite put it into words.  But something about those powerful arms grasping and holding the princess he has been away from for weeks......   sigh.  It has stayed with me all week.  Partly its just that slightly sad girly longing to be wanted and protected and loved by someone that strong and passionate.  But partly it is a deeper ache of my heart for the day when I will walk across a bridge to meet the lover of my soul who will sweep me up in a strong embrace and let me know that I am both safe and loved. It got me thinking about strong arms. Isaiah 40:10-11 Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for h...

  ( Malachi 3:1) Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts. I like it when I discover new things in familiar passages of scripture. I didnt know, before I started to look into this verse, that Malachi's name actually means messenger.😊  Which just goes to show God's sense of humour don't you think?  He gives a message to a man called Mr Messenger about two messengers who He is going to be sending in the future.  😂😂  Gotta love God.   The first messenger in the verse is John the Baptist - Jesus Himself quotes this verse in Malachi when referring to John. (Matthew 11 ;10-15) - and we all know what is was that he was proclaiming.  The coming of Messiah.   The second messenger is Jesus who is given two names in this passage.  He is called T...

 I can't believe it's that time of year again!  This is the eleventh year of pre-Christmas blogging and the challenge is to continue to find something new to say about the wonders of the Nativity.  But of course the fantastic thing about the Holy Spirit is that He is constantly able to reveal more of the Father and the Son to us in the words and stories we know so very well.  Every year around the start of November I start to mildly panic about what Im going to say ( which is really incredibly silly because I know fine well what I should be doing is starting to pray rather than starting to panic! 😀 ) .   In the past I have quite often just written about what God is saying to me on the day Im writing, but this year I think I might take a different tack and spend the next four weeks looking at the names of Jesus. The Bible gives Jesus over 150 different titles - so we won't get through all of them.  But over the coming weeks of festive madness and stres...

 According to professor Google there are over a hundred names for Jesus in the Bible.  Dont fret, we wont be looking at all of them but I thought it would be interesting to move away from the ' Wonderful counsellor, Mighty God, Emmanuel ' names which we hear so much at Christmas and explore some of the lesser known names of Jesus.  Well ,lesser known to me anyway.  You have probably got books on your shelves about these names 😁 Way back in Genesis, the second name we are told He is given is Shiloh “The scepter [of royalty] shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh [the Messiah, the Peaceful One] comes, And to Him  shall be  the obedience of the peoples.   (Gen 49 ;10) Shiloh is a difficult word to translate into English apparently.  When broken down into its component written parts it literally means ' He whose it is'.    Which is somewhat mysterious but reminds me alot of the name God g...

 Right from the beginning, in Genesis chapter 3, we see that Jesus is foretold and anticipated.  The first time he is referred to is as ' the seed of woman'   (Genesis 3:15) ( speaking to the serpent )  “And I will put enmity (open hostility) Between you and the woman, And between your seed (offspring) and her Seed; He shall [fatally] bruise your head, And you shall [only] bruise His heel.” ( Amplified) The mission of Jesus is plain right from the start - the defeat of the evil and deception which Satan brought into the world and to which Adam submitted.  But He is to do this not as the Son of God - that is not the first title the Bible gives Him.  He will accomplish the end of the rule of darkness as a man.  So within the first three chapters of the Bible we see the creation of everything and of mankind, the entrance of temptation and the fall, and God's plan to rescue us from our ' lostness'.   And the plan is to use a man - the secon...