God is interested in working with humble people.  It is hard to work with people who are very prideful because they are more interested in showing themselves off rather then seeing the needs of other people.  They hide from God and other behind their toys and selfishness.

The magi went to God so they could go to worship him with everything they had.  When they saw the baby they recognized him as the one to worship.  They knew that he was Jesus and saw that He truly was the Son of God.  There are two different people in this passage and that is of the magi and the other of Herod.  They both knew who Jesus was, but one went to worship him while the other wanted to kill him.  In fact Herod was so bent on killing them that he instigated a horrible tragedy of that time.

God always left room for redemption and ressurection.  As the branch he always left a stump so that it could grow back bigger and stronger.  Jesus did not identify himself with the noble or the rich.  He always was with the poor, persecuted, and the rejected.  He  wanted to give those people hope.  He knew what it was like to be small, rejected, and poor.  That is why he could speak to those people and the rich and wealthy could not understand.  This is how he can be so compassionate and knowledgable with our struggles.

I hope everyone had a good Easter.

What is Passion Week?
It is the week in which God opened the floodgates for salvation to come to everyone.  Some people did no want ia dn other did not think that it was relevant.  However, it is the week in which Christians remember for what Jesus Christ has done.

Philippians 2:1-18
Paul is mindful of the church in Philippians.  He speaks about joy while he is in prison.  He mentions that Joy does not come from comparing ourselves to others.  We don't always want to try to be better then others or not to be as bad as others.  There is no joy in that striving to out do another person.  In effect doesn't that give us pride over the other when we are "better"?  Then right after Paul states that we should be humble and consider others before ourselves.  Paul teaches us to not be selfish and comparing ourselves to others makes us think where we are rather then where the other person is.

In this way Jesus had put aside everything that made him equal to God.  He made himself less then God even though he had the same traits as God (verse 6-8).  Paul really wants us to think about what that means.  Often times people are blamed for things they did not do, and Jesus certainly did nothing that deserved death.  He not only accepted the blame, bue he went out and saught to take it from other people.

What does it mean that Jesus humbled himself to be put on the cross and take the sins of others with him?

God wants to use Moses as a person to do the work of God.  He did not want Moses to think that the things he had were what God wanted to use to drive His work.  It's easy to think that we need a certain skill or ability in order to serve, but this is not the case and God proves that with Moses.  God used a bush to do his work to attract Moses over and it was called Holy Ground.  God was there so the place was special as He called it holy ground, just a bush.

God then has a little exchange with Moses and we see that He is wrestling with Moses.  When God wrestles with us it is because He wants to teach us something and reveal His heart to us.  The same thing happens when Moses returns to Egypt and God sets on the plagues there.  Often times the things that we value the most are the things that we depend on.  Then God wrestles with us to show us that it is foolish to trust in those things and they can even let us down.

The first plague the that God turns the Nile into blood.  The Nile is a great life source for the Egyptians as it provided so much being a source of water.  God turned it into blood to show the Egyptians that the precious thing they depended on could fail.  The second plague was the plague of the frogs.  One of the Egyptian Gods at that time took the form of a frog.  So many frogs came out of the Nile that the thing the Egyptians revered suddenly became a nusence.  The interesting part about the frog plague is that even though they were causing such a problem Pharoah wants to get rid of them tomorrow.

Unfortunately I think that is the response of myself and many others when the problems comes.  We want to fix them tomorrow rather then now.  Tomorrow is just a metaphor and i think that the Pharoah could have equally said later.  We want to hold on to the things that we clearly know are a problem and have them fixed later because we enjoy those things.  Alcoholics, drug addicts, porn addicts, or even something thats not considered as bad like too much TV can be problems that God wants us to rectify, but we say tomorrow, later, or after this.  After a period of time of excuses we do not even see the issue anymore.  It's like when a ship is off one degree, after about 100 miles or so it's no where near where it was heading.  There are a total of 10 plagues and we see that God takes Pharoah through all of them because God does not always work instantly.

Sorry for the lack of updates it's just me being lazy that's it.
This week we talked about Jacob and looked at Genesis 31.

Jacob leaves his uncle with all of his belongings and Laban, his uncle, was very upset and pursues after him.  God comes to Laban and tells him not to change the path that Jacob is on.  Laban was a man that knew who god was, but lived as if he did not.  He had his own household gods as shown when Rachel and Leah left in verse 19.  He is unable to let go of his own things as he shows by the gods he has.  Often times we speak of God in such high terms, but our lives even in our own home do not reflect that.  That is the message that we should learn from Laban that we can not claim to know who God is when we value non godly things above Him.

Jacob then went back to Esau as God told him.  He was very afraid since he had taken Esau's blessing and his birthright as the first born in the family.  Jacob then learned that Esau was coming out to meet him and all his faith that he had quickly disappeared as he feared for his life.  Jacob prays in desperation, but right after he goes back to his scheming self.  He returns to what he was before he encountered God.  Right after the deep moment of prayer he goes back in trying to solve his problem by himself.  He thinks of ways to please Esau before he meets him face to face.  I think this is a good picture of what it can be like in our walk with God.  I can listen to great Bible studies and sit in wonderful Sunday worship service and then the week starts and it's all going.  I can be a Christian on those days that I meet with church people, but the rest is like whatever.  It is a struggle of mine to always to remember God's Word on the days that we do not have large meetings and such.

God wants us to struggle with Him because he wants to teach us.  This is what Jacob did.  Jacob was a self made man, but this did not impress God at all.  All the success that he had with the world just gave him a limp when he was faced with God.  What do we want to characterize us?  Through the struggle Jacob learned that he needed God's blessing even though he already had so much material possessions.  God asks Jacob what his name was and Jacob comes to realize that he is a deciever and that is when God gives him a new name.  The name Jacob means deciver in Hebrew.  Once he realizes that then God changes his name to Isreal.  It is the same when we realize that we have nothing without God's blessing.  God tells Jacob that he had finally won and God let him go so that he could overcome.