It has been almost two weeks now that I've been back at NTBI and it already feels like I've been here for an entire semester! I mean this in a good way because that is how much I feel like I have learned in the short time I have been back. The beginning of this semester has been much different than last semester because this time around I felt like I was coming home instead of coming to a foreign place. The first few days that Bethany and I were here I probably introduced her to almost everyone who was there at the school. It was interesting to see how she reacted to everything because it gave me an idea of what I was doing last semester. I honestly don't really remember all the stuff that went on that first week because of all the new things that I was experiencing.
The most important thing that I have learned here in the short time that I have been back is this: to take the Word of God for what is says it is. This seems to be such a simple thing, but it has profoundly changed my life. I started doing some of my homework two days before we officially started classes because I am striving towards discipline this semester and thus found myself reading the book of Deuteronomy. Now, I read Deuteronomy last semester in my Pentateuch class but apparently I learned nothing at all from that because this second time around I fairly drooled over this beautiful book of the Bible.
I never imagined that I would come to love the book of Deuteronomy but I am infinitely grateful that I have done so. Through the pages of this Book I have seen a powerful and loving God. A God who speaks out of darkness in the midst of the fire on a mountain to His people who He has brought out of oppression with a strong and powerful arm. This God so terrified His people with His very voice that they pleaded with Moses to talk with God for them because they were afraid they would die if they heard His voice again. They were surprised that they were alive after hearing God's voice! This is a God who gave to His people such a law that people would wonder at its justice and righteousness. This is a God who promised His people that He would either bless them to the utmost or bring them to desolation in curses. Through this Book I have discovered a mightier God than I have previously known. Reading Deuteronomy with an attitude of discovering God has shattered the box that I have been subconsciously holding Him in this whole time. I could not reconcile my own thoughts of who God is with what He Himself was telling me through His Word. Oh how I wish that all such inferior thoughts of the Almighty God might so shatter into dust and blow away in the winds of foolish thinking!
I cannot begin to tell of the multitude of things that I have learned of God, but I will make an effort to communicate my new knowledge of Him sequentially and soon. I wish to end this blog by thanking those who have supported me throughout my life. Without friends and family to support me I would long ago have fallen in the dust of discouragement. Yet I steadfastly cling to Him for He clings to me. I fall to my knees in gratefulness for His work in the lives of those whom He has used to work in my own life. Rejoice with me in the Master's work and let us obediently follow Him in love for He has first loved us.
