Salty Zebra

  The Lord said to Moses, “when you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.   Exodus 4:21  Take another look at the verse for today above. It’s Moses’ commissioning statement. He is being sent and told that he will not be smoothly successful. He will face opposition, but that doesn’t negate God’s directions, say that Moses heard wrong, or that he’s not doing what he was supposed to. God is telling Moses that trouble will come, but God has still sent him and is still with him. That’s all Moses needed to be successful in the face of impossibility, and it’s all we need too.   We know the story. Moses goes back to Egypt and he and Aaron go before Pharaoh, performing signs and wonders, and Pharaoh refuses to do what he is asked to do, he refuses to let God’s people go. The thing that’s interesting about today’s text is that Moses knew this ...

  Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”   Exodus 4:10  In today’s reading ( Exodus 3:19 -4:17), we return to the conversation between Moses and God in the wilderness at the burning bush. Let’s pause there a moment though and not read over the situation, accepting it as a simple, well-known story. Moses had a full-on, recorded conversation with God. Now, I talk to God a lot, and often I feel like I hear from Him. Very occasionally I even feel like I have a bit of a back and forth with Him where I say, “but this…” and He points something out to me. But I have NEVER had a full-on conversation with Him where He spoke to me so clearly and specifically as this. I’d venture to say that most of us haven’t. So, truly, this story is incredible in many more ways than we may have considered. It wasn’t just the miracle of the burning bush, but eve...

  Image credit: Gemini and me God said to Moses, “I AM who I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”   Exodus 3:14  In today’s passage ( Exodus 3:1-17 ), Moses encounters God in the burning bush in the desert. I love how God puts things together perfectly, and today’s passage was no exception. Upon encountering God, Moses asks two questions: Who am I and who are You?   Yesterday we looked at Moses’ fall from grace in his own eyes. He went from the high and mighty, self-assumed deliverer of his people to a fugitive, murderer, shepherd – the lowest of the low. This was a work God had to do in his heart to prepare Moses for the tasks ahead of him. The fact that Moses asked the first question he did is a testimony to this truth. Instead of telling God, “You’ve come to the right man! I’ll do great at this!” Moses asks God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He recognizes that he is not w...

Image credit: Gemini and me When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”    Exodus 2:10  Throughout history, women have been overlooked, oppressed, kept lower – even just a little lower – than men. We have fought for our place in society. The women’s suffrage movement for example, beginning in the latter half of the 1800s and led by people like Susan B. Anthony, worked tirelessly for more than seventy years to secure women the right to vote in America. But this societal placement has not kept women from being crucial factors in the history of the world. Yes, a few women have risen to power, ruling and leading nations, like Cleopatra, Queen Victoria, and Joan of Arc, but much more frequently it is the common women, the housewives and midwives among us who play a much more pivotal role. Today’s story ( Exodus 1:15-2:10 )– coming straight from the words of scripture – highli...

Image credit: Gemini and me but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them. Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. Exodus 1:7-8  God is a good and just God. When Abraham had journeyed to the land of Canaan, God knew what the people of the land; the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites would do and what they would become, but they hadn’t become that yet. He knew their great-great-great grandchildren would be wicked and awful, even more than Sodom and Gomorrah in Abraham’s day, but they weren’t there yet. Even though God knows what will happen, He still give us the benefit of living it out. If He dealt with us ahead of time, don’t you think we’d wonder if it really would have come out the way He said it would? God is good and just. He didn’t punish the people of Canaan in ...

Image Credit: Love God Greatly  I don't know about you, but I am NOT a fan of this whole three-week break between studies. I think I'll need to pick out a book to go through for the next break. But, for now, I'm very, very ready for this next study! In Never Forsaken  we'll be journeying with the Israelites through the wilderness and seeing what lessons God has to teach us through the book of Exodus. We'll take a long look into Moses' life and ministry, and I am certain that God will be showing us how it relates to our life today as well.   Follow along with me here at the Salty Zebra Blog, or join in on the fun! You can grab your study materials for free on your phone with the Love God Greatly App  or you can purchase the digital version of the study here . If you're a paper book person you'll have to wait a minute for shipping, but you can grab the study on Amazon  and get it in a couple of days. I would also strongly encourage you to join Love God Gre...

 I have a condition called foot drop. It comes about when there is an impingement, or pressure, on the nerve somewhere between my brain and my foot. It causes my foot to periodically, and unexpectedly, not lift my toe up all the way when I'm walking. When I am wearing just socks, this usually doesn't cause much of a problem, but when I am wearing shoes, it causes me to trip over my own feet.  Historically, when this happens, I feel really dumb how foolish am I that I can't even pick up my feet right when I'm walking? But my doctor, recently, taught me that this condition is inherent in my system. No matter how much my brain tells my foot to pick up my toe, my foot is not getting the message. I could look at my foot the whole time I'm walking and tell my foot with every step to pick up my toe, and I would still not do it every once in a while. Now, perhaps this is because my foot doesn't have ears to hear my mouth speaking, but that's what nerves are for. And...

   I have a couple of people in my life that ask me about the acronyms I use sometimes, so just to clarify, ICYMI stands for In Case You Missed It, which is exactly what today's post is about. Today I will look back on the last six weeks of studying God's wisdom, something I have been very much looking forward to. Sometimes these wrap up posts are a bit of a chore, but this time I have so enjoyed the study that I am excited about looking back on it and remembering all that God has spoken to my heart!  The first week of our study we focused on God's wisdom for our relationships and family. Our first day focused on the importance of balancing truth and mercy , something we are not prone to doing on our own. Next, we looked at how the relationships in our lives keep us sharp and how important it is to surround ourselves with people who are not entirely like-minded. When we live in those relationships though, ones where we may not feel the same way about everything, it's s...

  God spoke to my heart recently at church and the message has stayed with me so strongly that I really wanted to share it with you today. I'll wait to post it though so that I can link the sermon, although the song will take longer to be recorded. You see, our worship pastor, Michael, is also a song writer and God has used him to share some beautiful, impactful messages through music. A few weeks back, he shared a new song he had written and it touched my heart. This week, he shared the song again and invited us to sing along, but it spoke to me even more deeply because of the message a guest speaker had given. One of our fellow church members, Bryan, spoke yesterday on John 5:2-9 , the story of Jesus healing the man at the pool of Bethesda. He focused on Jesus' words in verse 6, “Do you want to get well?” This may have seemed like a strange question, but there are lots of reasons that someone may not want to get well. Illness may be all they've ever known. This man may ha...

  Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing, and perfect will.   Romans 12:2  God made us, intentionally, with a hole in our heart. We feel it deeply. We ache for it to be filled. We can’t be satisfied, we can’t be at peace, until our heart’s hunger is satiated. This causes people to do all kinds of things. You may have heard of people travelling to India on a journey to find themselves. Some join a monastery. Others devote their lives to research, finding a cure for the world’s ills. There’s a deep, driving need in all of us, and until we recognize what it is, and meet it, we will feel a constant pressure to do so.   The world has devised a plethora of options to stuff inside this hole and see if it fixes it. There are the darker vices – gambling, alcohol, drugs – things that will take hold of your life and take you where you do n...

  Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.   2 Corinthians 9:7  How are you? It’s a question we ask others all the time, but do we really mean it? Are we really interested in how they are doing? Much of the time, I would guess we are not, because we don’t even pause to hear the answer or follow up. Our culture, at least where I live, has come to see it as a greeting, not a question. We are conditioned to reply “fine” or “great” or “ok.” It is very uncommon to hear anyone say anything else. My husband went through a season where he defied the cultural norms of this question-greeting and he actually followed up on it. He would ask people what “ok” meant to them, where their percentage was. Did ok mean 51%? 60%? 75%? He wanted to know how people were really doing, and wanted them to know that he cared about it. It led to dozens (hundreds?) of interesting conversations, and all...

Image created with the assistance of ChatGpt   She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue.   Proverbs 31:26  Proverbs 31 has always held a special power over me. It reflects a goal that I feel I fall far short of and could never achieve, but I so desperately want to. One year, when I only had two little ones, My husband gave me the most thoughtful gift for Mother’s Day. He and the boys (ok, him – they were way to young to help!) wrote out how they felt like I fulfilled each line of this poem. It met me in a place I so needed and encouraged me in my motherhood and wifely duties. Now, I didn’t think then, nor do I now upon reflection, that I actually fulfilled those things, but hearing from someone whose opinion I so respected that he felt that I did meant the world to me!   Proverbs is a book of wisdom and so it only makes sense that wisdom would be one of the critical aspects of the “Wife of Noble Character.” And how is her wisdom expresse...