AT A CROSSROAD 12-7-14 DEEP THOUGHTS REST
Deut 11:26 I’ve brought you today to the crossroads of Blessing and Curse. MSG

Deut 30:19 I call heaven and earth to witness this day against you that I have set before you life and death, the blessings and the curses; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live AMP

Isa 30:15 For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning [to Me] and resting [in Me] you shall be saved; in quietness and in [trusting] confidence shall be your strength. But you would not, AMP

Ex 14:13 Moses spoke to the people: “Don’t be afraid. Stand firm and watch God do his work of salvation for you today. Take a good look at the Egyptians today for you’re never going to see them again. MSG

Ex 15:1 THEN MOSES and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord, saying, I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider or its chariot has He thrown into the sea.
2 The Lord is my Strength and my Song, and He has become my Salvation; this is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him.
3 The Lord is a Man of War; the Lord is His name.
4 Pharaoh’s chariots and his host has He cast into the sea; his chosen captains also are sunk in the Red Sea.
5 The floods cover them; they sank in the depths [clad in mail] like a stone.
6 Your right hand, O Lord, is glorious in power; Your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy. AMP
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Ex 15:1 Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to God, giving voice together,
I’m singing my heart out to God — what a victory! He pitched horse and rider into the sea.
2 God is my strength, God is my song, and, yes! God is my salvation. This is the kind of God I have and I’m telling the world! This is the God of my father — I’m spreading the news far and wide!
3 God is a fighter, pure God, through and through.
4 Pharaoh’s chariots and army he dumped in the sea, The elite of his officers he drowned in the Red Sea.
5 Wild ocean waters poured over them; they sank like a rock in the deep blue sea.
6 Your strong right hand, God, shimmers with power; your strong right hand shatters the enemy. MSG

Deut 11:4 the way he took care of the Egyptian army, its horses and chariots, burying them in the waters of the Red Sea as they pursued you. God drowned them. And you’re standing here today alive. MSG

Deut 2:1 Then we turned around and went back into the wilderness following the route to the Red Sea, as God had instructed me. We worked our way in and around the hills of Seir for a long, long time.
2 Then God said,
3 “You’ve been going around in circles in these hills long enough; go north. MSG

Gal 2:19 For I through the Law [under the operation of the curse of the Law] have [in Christ’s death for me] myself died to the Law and all the Law’s demands upon me, so that I may [henceforth] live to and for God. AMP
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Gal 2:19 What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man. MSG

Gal 3:10 And that means that anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure. Scripture backs this up: “Utterly cursed is every person who fails to carry out every detail written in the Book of the law.” MSG
11 The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way. The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you. Habakkuk had it right: “The person who believes God, is set right by God — and that’s the real life.”
12 Rule-keeping does not naturally evolve into living by faith, but only perpetuates itself in more and more rule-keeping, a fact observed in Scripture: “The one who does these things [rule-keeping]continues to live by them.”
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Gal 3:10 And all who depend on the Law [who are seeking to be justified by obedience to the Law of rituals] are under a curse and doomed to disappointment and destruction, for it is written in the Scriptures, Cursed (accursed, devoted to destruction, doomed to eternal punishment) be everyone who does not continue to abide (live and remain) by all the precepts and commands written in the Book of the Law and to practice them. AMP

Gal 3:13 Christ purchased our freedom [redeeming us] from the curse (doom) of the Law [and its condemnation] by [Himself] becoming a curse for us, for it is written [in the Scriptures], Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (is crucified); AMP
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Gal 3:13 Christ redeemed us from that self-defeating, cursed life by absorbing it completely into himself. Do you remember the Scripture that says, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”? That is what happened when Jesus was nailed to the Cross: He became a curse, and at the same time dissolved the curse. MSG

John 1:16 For out of His fullness (abundance) we have all received [all had a share and we were all supplied with] one grace after another and spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing and even favor upon favor and gift [heaped] upon gift. AMP ↕↕↕
John 1:16 We all live off his generous bounty, gift after gift after gift. MSG

Acts 2:32 This Jesus, God raised up. And every one of us here is a witness to it.
33 Then, raised to the heights at the right hand of God and receiving the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, he poured out the Spirit he had just received. That is what you see and hear. MSG

Isa 44:3 For I will pour water upon him who is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground. I will pour My Spirit upon your offspring, and My blessing upon your descendants AMP

Ps 133:3 It is like the dew of [lofty] Mount Hermon and the dew that comes on the hills of Zion; for there the Lord has commanded the blessing, even life forevermore [upon the high and the lowly]. AMP

Prov 10:22 The blessing of the Lord — it makes [truly] rich, and He adds no sorrow with it [neither does toiling increase it]. AMP
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Prov 10:22 God’s blessing makes life rich; nothing we do can improve on God. MSG

Prov 11:11 By the blessing of the influence of the upright and God’s favor [because of them] the city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked. AMP ↕↕↕
Prov 11:11 When right-living people bless the city, it flourishes; evil talk turns it into a ghost town in no time. MSG

Isa 65:16 Then whoever prays a blessing in the land will use my faithful name for the blessing, And whoever takes an oath in the land will use my faithful name for the oath, Because the earlier troubles are gone and forgotten, banished far from my sight.
New Heavens and a New Earth
17 “Pay close attention now: I’m creating new heavens and a new earth. All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain are things of the past, to be forgotten.
18 Look ahead with joy. Anticipate what I’m creating: I’ll create Jerusalem as sheer joy, create my people as pure delight.
19 I’ll take joy in Jerusalem, take delight in my people: No more sounds of weeping in the city, no cries of anguish;
20 No more babies dying in the cradle, or old people who don’t enjoy a full lifetime; One-hundredth birthdays will be considered normal — anything less will seem like a cheat.
21 They’ll build houses and move in. They’ll plant fields and eat what they grow.
22 No more building a house that some outsider takes over, No more planting fields that some enemy confiscates, For my people will be as long-lived as trees, my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.
23 They won’t work and have nothing come of it, they won’t have children snatched out from under them. For they themselves are plantings blessed by God, with their children and grandchildren likewise God-blessed.
24 Before they call out, I’ll answer. Before they’ve finished speaking, I’ll have heard. MSG

Amos 9:13 Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine and all the hills shall melt [that is, everything heretofore barren and unfruitful shall overflow with spiritual blessing]. AMP

Mal 3:10 Bring all the tithes (the whole tenth of your income) into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and prove Me now by it, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. AMP

Rom 4:6 David confirms this way of looking at it, saying that the one who trusts God to do the putting-everything-right without insisting on having a say in it is one fortunate man:
7 Fortunate those whose crimes are carted off, whose sins are wiped clean from the slate.
8 Fortunate the person against whom the Lord does not keep score.
9 Do you think for a minute that this blessing is only pronounced over those of us who keep our religious ways and are circumcised? Or do you think it possible that the blessing could be given to those who never even heard of our ways, who were never brought up in the disciplines of God? We all agree, don’t we, that it was by embracing what God did for him that Abraham was declared fit before God?
10 Now think: Was that declaration made before or after he was marked by the covenant rite of circumcision? That’s right, before he was marked.
11 That means that he underwent circumcision as evidence and confirmation of what God had done long before to bring him into this acceptable standing with himself, an act of God he had embraced with his whole life.
12 And it means further that Abraham is father of all people who embrace what God does for them while they are still on the “outs” with God, as yet unidentified as God’s, in an “uncircumcised” condition. It is precisely these people in this condition who are called “set right by God and with God”! Abraham is also, of course, father of those who have undergone the religious rite of circumcision not just because of the ritual but because they were willing to live in the risky faith-embrace of God’s action for them, the way Abraham lived long before he was marked by circumcision.
13 That famous promise God gave Abraham — that he and his children would possess the earth — was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God’s decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed.
14 If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That’s not a holy promise; that’s a business deal.
15 A contract drawn up by a hard-nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise — and God’s promise at that — you can’t break it. MSG

Heb 4:1 THEREFORE, WHILE the promise of entering His rest still holds and is offered [today], let us be afraid [to distrust it], lest any of you should think he has come too late and has come short of [reaching] it. AMP
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Heb 4:1 For as long, then, as that promise of resting in him pulls us on to God’s goal for us, we need to be careful that we’re not disqualified. MSG

Heb 4:7 Again He sets a definite day, [a new] Today, [and gives another opportunity of securing that rest] saying through David after so long a time in the words already quoted, Today, if you would hear His voice and when you hear it, do not harden your hearts. AMP
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Heb 4:7 God keeps renewing the promise and setting the date as today, just as he did in David’s psalm, centuries later than the original invitation: Today, please listen, don’t turn a deaf ear . . . MSG

Matt 11:29 Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest (relief and ease and refreshment and recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls.
30 For My yoke is wholesome (useful, good — not harsh, hard, sharp, or pressing, but comfortable, gracious, and pleasant), and My burden is light and easy to be borne. AMP
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Matt 11:29 Walk with me and work with me — watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.
30 Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” MSG

Ps 81:6 “I took the world off your shoulders, reed you from a life of hard labor.

Isa 9:6 For to us a Child is born, to us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father [of Eternity], Prince of Peace.

Ps 127:2 It’s useless to rise early and go to bed late, and work your worried fingers to the bone. Don’t you know he enjoys giving rest to those he loves? MSG

Ps 116:7 I said to myself, “Relax and rest. GOD has showered you with blessings.

Prov 1:33 First pay attention to me, and then relax. Now you can take it easy — you’re in good hands.” MSG
Ps 23:3 He refreshes and restores my life (my self); He leads me in the paths of righteousness [uprightness and right standing with Him — not for my earning it, but] for His name’s sake. AMP

Dan 12:13 “And you? Go about your business without fretting or worrying. Relax. When it’s all over, you will be on your feet to receive your reward.” MSG

Jude 2 Relax, everything’s going to be all right; rest, everything’s coming together; open your hearts, love is on the way! MSG
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