{"id":6622,"date":"2015-06-17T00:05:40","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T07:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=6622"},"modified":"2015-06-16T16:24:33","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T23:24:33","slug":"god-made-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/06\/17\/god-made-you\/","title":{"rendered":"God Made You"},"content":{"rendered":"

Descendants of Jacob,
\nI, the LORD, created you
\nand formed your nation.
\nIsrael, don\u2019t be afraid.
\nI have rescued you.
\nI have called you by name;
\nnow you belong to me.
\n When you cross deep rivers,
\nI will be with you,
\nand you won\u2019t drown.
\nWhen you walk through fire,
\nyou won\u2019t be burned
\nor scorched by the flames.
\nI am the LORD, your God,
\nthe Holy One of Israel,
\nthe God who saves you.
\nI gave up Egypt, Ethiopia,
\nand the region of Seba
\nin exchange for you.
\nTo me, you are very dear,
\nand I love you.
\nThat\u2019s why I gave up nations
\nand people to rescue you.
\nDon\u2019t be afraid! I am with you.
\nFrom both east and west
\nI will bring you together.
\nI will say to the north
\nand to the south,
\n\u201cFree my sons and daughters!
\nLet them return
\nfrom distant lands.
\nThey are my people\u2014
\nI created each of them
\nto bring honor to me.\u201d (Isaiah 43:1-7)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Only crazy people kill their own children. God\u2019s not crazy. As the writer of Proverbs pointed out, children need discipline and the rod of discipline will not kill the child, though the child might be convinced otherwise and will scream bloody murder. The Israelites were suffering because they had violated the terms of God\u2019s contract with them. They were suffering justly. They were being punished because they had been bad. So the Israelites were certain that God had abandoned them for all time, that they were in exile in Babylon or Assyria because God hated them and never wanted to see them again. <\/p>\n

Children often take any bad situation and magnify it beyond recognition. The children of Israel were no different\u2014and if we\u2019re honest with ourselves, we\u2019re no different either. But God reassured his people, that no matter what they went through, he would be with them and would protect them. It was all for the best and in the end, they\u2019d be glad for the experience. Punishment never seems good when it\u2019s happening. But later, the value usually becomes pretty obvious. <\/p>\n

God created his people\u2014every last one of them\u2014and not only does he love them despite their sins, their many failures, he knows that they will, each of them, ultimately bring him honor. Remarkably, God is honored to know us.<\/p>\n

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Descendants of Jacob, I, the LORD, created you and formed your nation. Israel, don\u2019t be afraid. I have rescued you. I have called you by name; now you belong to me. When you cross deep rivers, I will be with … 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":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6622"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6624,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6622\/revisions\/6624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}