{"id":5390,"date":"2014-05-26T00:05:31","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T07:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=5390"},"modified":"2014-05-25T18:33:10","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T01:33:10","slug":"what-me-worry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2014\/05\/26\/what-me-worry\/","title":{"rendered":"What, Me Worry?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cThus says the LORD, the King of Israel,
\nAnd his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts:
\n\u2018I am the First and I am the Last;
\nBesides Me there is no God.
\nAnd who can proclaim as I do?
\nThen let him declare it and set it in order for Me,
\nSince I appointed the ancient people.
\nAnd the things that are coming and shall come,
\nLet them show these to them.
\nDo not fear, nor be afraid;
\nHave I not told you from that time, and declared it?
\nYou are My witnesses.
\nIs there a God besides Me?
\nIndeed there is no other Rock;
\nI know not one.\u2019 \u201d (Isaiah 44:6-8)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No one can stop God. All the supposed power and attributes of all the gods that the Israelites knew of from the people around them were combined into just the one God\u2014their God\u2014the only God that really existed. The Israelite\u2019s neighbors, Egypt and Mesopotamia, not to mention the Canaanites, believed there were many gods\u2014and since there were many, they were in conflict with one another. Each had his or her own agenda. The gods did not get along. The gods were like squabbling bureaucrats, each striving for advantage and prestige. So sometimes people got caught in the crossfire between them. Just because a god wanted something to happen didn\u2019t mean that some other god couldn\u2019t stop it. Just because you faithfully obeyed your god didn\u2019t mean some other god might not get mad at you.<\/p>\n

God reassured his people that there was only him to contend with. Unlike the non-existent gods their neighbors\u2014and all too often the Israelites\u2014worshipped, Yahweh was firmly reliable. He was strong, he was united, and he would take care of them in a consistent way. What he had said, that\u2019s what would happen. There wasn\u2019t some other god trying to thwart his goals. <\/p>\n

God\u2019s will was going to happen: he had a plan, and he knew what he was doing. So what have we ever got to worry about?<\/p>\n

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\u201cThus says the LORD, the King of Israel, And his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: \u2018I am the First and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God. And who can proclaim as I do? Then let him … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5391,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390\/revisions\/5391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}