Job's Gold Nuggets of Wisdom

The book of Job is chronologically written very early in Biblical history therefore it shows up early in annual readings...its definitely not the easiest book of the Bible to read, but here are a few thoughts I gleaned throughout the 42 chapters....

Job 1:1 “6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them.” Whoa!! Reticular activator kicked in…”sons of God” – rewind to a blog post about Genesis 6:4 a little while back about the Nephilim…same verbage used here. Definitely supernatural!! It seems that the “sons of God” were demonic, not angelic as they were appearing with Satan (and due to other researched information)…so not sure why they were still called sons of God except that demons did indeed used to be angels and of course God’s blameless creation at one point in time.

Job 1:7 The LORD said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” Whew! If that ain’t real, I don’t know what is. Obviously Satan has access to the earth and is a very real presence…not something to take lightly. The Lord has given us his power if we choose to be His, but we must use His power proactively.

In Job 1, God gave Satan the power to mess with Job’s stuff and strip him of his possessions as long as Job himself wasn’t touched. Soon after, his camels and donkeys and oxen and servants (all of his wealth & personal belongings) were stolen or killed and ALL of his children were killed in the same day! What did Job do? “20 Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground and worshiped. 21 He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, 
And naked I shall return there. 
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. 
Blessed be the name of the LORD.” 22 Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God.”

Holy Schmoly! Sit on that one for a second…let that soak in. You’re EXTREMELY wealthy. You’re the richest in the land. You have 9 beautiful children. God’s blessings reign in your life. And all in one day, you lose it ALL…and you fall down on your knees to WORSHIP??! Ouch…major challenging reality check there.

Then, Job was struck with a horrible disease – painful, debilitating, and downright embarrassing as he wasn’t even recognizable because of the terrible sores that covered him. His wife told him to curse God and he said: v 9b: “‘Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?’ In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”

Score again!

After that, Job gets complicated and really is confusing. Its not the easiest book of the Bible to kick off a year’s worth of reading. Basically, it is Job and his friends arguing back and forth about God’s goodness and sovereignty and then at the end, God rebukes Job for his reaction to his adversity and rebukes his friends for the way they viewed God and then God overwhelmingly blessed Job again even more so than he was before. I know the book is profoundly deep…has a lot of lessons to be learned, but I’m not going to say I have them all figured out. I think the overall lesson to be learned is to give thanks in ALL situations. To recognize the holiness and sovereignty of God. To avoid cursing God no matter the circumstances and to recognize His power and might as the Creator of the world and sustainer of life. AND, to remember that Satan does have power on this earth and to keep your family covered in prayer at all times so he can’t get an unwarranted foothold in your life.

Have a great day/night…depending on when you’re reading this!

Pouring Down Blessings!

This blog is going to be about whatever I feel like I want it to be about that particular day :) Sometimes it will be fun updates about life and where we're going and what we're doing. Other times, it'll be about the cool stuff I pull out of my time in the Bible. And who knows what it'll be about the other times. :) If you don't like all the posts, just stick with me... today is a reflection on some good Genesis stuff! I'll try to keep it relevant and fun whether or not you've ever read these verses or not! 

SEASONS: Gen 8:21-22: LORD said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remains, 
seedtime and harvest, 
and cold and heat, 
and summer and winter, 
and day and night 
shall not cease.”

This verse was written after the flood that destroyed the earth where God rescued Noah by providing the instructions for the ark. He was promising that he'd never do it again. The first underlined portion of that verse is an explicit statement revealing that man is inherently evil, which is why we need the redeeming power of the Savior. Because of Adam and Eve’e choice to sin, evil was allowed on the earth and man became a pawn of Satan until the Lord was able to enact his saving plan. This is why we need Jesus because He’s the only One who could bring hope back as He is the only one who never sinned.

I love the second underlined portion of that verse because it reveals that God created the seasons! I LOVE seasons! I couldn’t ever actually live in a place like Hawaii or the Caribbean even though they’re beautiful to visit because they don’t have seasons…(many would argue that Texas doesn’t have seasons either and in comparison to many other parts of the country I would have to agree), but I do love it when the first cool and crisp cold front blows through. I love it when its sweatshirt and jeans weather & football season! I love getting those few freezes and getting to have fires in the house, and then I love it when it warms back up enough to spend a day laying out in the sun. I love it when the bluebonnets start blooming in Texas around Easter time. I love it that God created seasons for us to enjoy. Variety is indeed the spice of life!  (OK Lord, now its time to reintroduce the variety of rain!! :) and hopefully soon that first cool & crisp cool front) :)

MEAT: Genesis 9:3 “Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant.”

Its interesting to me that God initially gave man only the plants to eat and then after the flood, he gave man everything to eat including the animals. I wonder if that was a reward for man or a curse to the animals or what…it was during the same time that God was making other promises about never destroying the earth again and blessing Noah’s family, so I just find it interesting…

RAINBOWS: Genesis 9:13-16  I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. 14 It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, 15 and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

God’s rainbow!!! He called it “My Bow”…how cool…and how powerful! You know when you see that pretty colored bow shaped thing in the sky when the clouds and sun are just right – that’s HIS BOW. He put it there. And when He sees it, He thinks about the covenant (everlasting promise) that He made with mankind. Don’t ever look at a rainbow the same way…cuz God’s talking to YOU when you see that ROY G BIV in the sky!

WOW!! We've actually got a big storm coming through right now! Its RAINING! and the wind is crazy! I had to pause this blog writing to drive Derrick's truck to my grandfather's to get it under a garage covering and we moved a bunch of stuff around in our garage to squeeze my Jeep in....San Antonio news said there was potential for big hail in this storm....we'll see what happens. But I LOVE the sound of rain & thunder! Signing off!

Day in Aggieland!

So for some reason, I have been looking forward to this weekend for a long time. My little brother-in-law, Austin, got to move into his dorm today and the whole Ratliff crew showed up to help. I'm not sure why I was excited about today so much. I think I was anticipating the nostalgia of Aggieland to wash over me....and of course, I wasn't disappointed. 

We went to College Station on Saturday so we'd have time to spend lots of time with our friends, the Maders, and do some errand running while we were there. For me, its like country girl goes to the city :) I LOVE having Target and Super WalMart and Panda Express and the mall and Gander Mountain and everything else you could possibly need all at your fingertips!

Plus, getting to see good friends is so very refreshing and always a welcome respite to the day in and day out of normal every day life. This morning we were greeted by our precious Goddaughters in their cute rainbow pjs. We got a few smiles and hugs from their sleepy selves before having to say goodbye, but we always get a pic when we can since they are growing so very fast!

Then the day went pretty much as planned...hot, sweaty, and fun :) We unloaded Austin's stuff from all of the trucks and hauled it all in to Appelt so he could start his life in dorm room #223. Wow do they have nicer furniture in the dorms than we had when we were in school! :) Plus, they don't have to walk uphill both ways in the snow. lol. Oh, and their washers and dryers in the dorms are FREE now instead of requiring a life savings worth of quarters. We got to eat at JCodys BBQ too which is Derrick's very favorite in the whole wide world. Overall, it was a great day spent with family and it was sad to leave College Station. Until next time Aggieland...hang on without us :)

Oldie Goldies, Nephilim, & Sheer Loneliness! (haha...now isn't that a list worth rereading!)

930, 912, 905, 910, 895, 962…what do these numbers have in common? They were the number of years the first few generations of humans lived!! Geez Mahalalel, you’re a young whipper snapper dad…only 65 years old when you had your Jared? Brown Chicken Brown Cow!! :-)  Jared musta thought his pops was a little young because he waited til he was 162! I wonder if Jared and his son Enoch threw ball in the backyard. Wow, almost a millennium for each of them!

OK, then here comes the really weird part…. Genesis 5:21 “Enoch lived sixty-five years, and became the father of Methuselah. 22 Then Enoch walked with God three hundred years after he became the father of Methuselah, and he had other sons and daughters. 23 So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. 24 Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.” POOF! Enoch’s gone! Like 500 years early! That’s such a unique situation and probably a very dramatic situation for that day. He wasn’t even middle age yet and besides Abel, it sounds like he was one of the first to die “young.”  Well actually he didn't die...he just disappeared. Talk about modern day CSI case right there. I really really wonder what the Lord was thinking. Since the verse said “Enoch walked with God” it sounds like Enoch was a righteous man and a true companion to Christ, so guessing the Lord was jealous for Him and brought him home. Sure wish God had given us more details on that one!

Now check this one out!!! In Genesis 6: “Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. 3 Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”

There is lots of crazy stuff in those verses that I don’t know much about but I’ve never read them quite that closely before. So either God was claiming boy babies but not girl babies as His own (not likely), or there was some kind of supernatural being (the Nephilim)…which if you research seems to be a Biblical possibility, that there was some kind of intermingling of human and supernatural in that time period. The result was “the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.” Another seemingly research possibility is that the Nephilim were of Seth’s descendants and were a giant people, which is possible, but I find it odd that God would use the verbage “sons of God” and “daughters of men.” After further research it seems that indeed there was a mixture of the demonic and human which resulted in evil which is one reason God chose to destroy almost everything on earth…to wipe out that unnatural state of life.

Interesting one to think through on that one!

So its interesting to me that by Chapter 7 in the Bible, the earth has already multiplied several generations and there were LOTS of people…enough to have corrupted the earth so severely, that God couldn’t take it any more. This goes back to my last post about how dramatic Adam & Eve’s choice really was in the spiritual world. Its obvious that by them doing what they did, some form of legality was broken that released Satan to wreak havoc on the earth….literally all Hell broke loose. I’m sure it was Satan’s goal (as it is today) to destroy humankind and to totally corrupt the concept of creation that Jesus meant for glory. So mankind exuded evil and the Lord, in His holiness, had to start over. However, He found one man and his family who were righteous and who had stood up to the sin and chosen companionship with the Lord. So, God provided an escape route for Noah & his family and gave them directions on how to avoid the devastating flood to come. Noah of course built the Ark to God’s specs out of sheer blind faith (they’d never had rain before so what the heck was a ginormous boat out in the middle of a field for??) So Genesis 7 comes around and God “blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, and they were blotted out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark.” From my quick interpretation/calculations, it seems as though Noah was on the Ark somewhere around 12-14 months before there was dry ground to walk out on…12-14 months!! I’ve been in a season of life that I haven’t enjoyed for that long before and even been in times of uncertainty for longer, but I ain’t go NOTHIN’ on Noah! Can you imagine stepping off that life perserver?? Everything desolate, destroyed, drowned, dead…except him, his family, and a bunch of (probably by then) ANNOYING & stinky animals...Can you even consider how lonely he felt? How much uncertainty arose before him? How much he questioned his future? So Challenging Question for the day…was Noah lonelier before the flood when there were lots of people around who he had nothing in common with or after the flood when the world was barren and dead and he just had his family and God? So question to you - Would you rather be with lots of people who you have nothing in common with or by yourself with God? Seems like a duh question, but I bet we don’t truly live the “right” answer. Most of the time, I don’t think that I truly wrap my head around the concept that God is all I need. That if everyone else fails me, He is enough. He saved Noah from the biggest catastrophic event in human history. He gave him a new life and allowed him to be the ancestor of every human being left on the planet….HE is all I need. 

Heartbreak, Sin, & Babies!!

So my best friend, Brittany Mader, started a new blog called "A Joyful Perspective"....its all about finding joy in ALL situations. Obviously this is a big challenge as this world so revolves around instant gratification and the "its all about me & my happiness" mentality (guilty as charged!) Along with her new blog, she challenged her friends to read through the Bible in a year along with her. I have been desperately needing the Word of God in my life as I haven't had a great source of Christian fellowship for a while so I decided to jump on board with her. I've done this several times over the years before so if I just can't handle it right now, I'm not going to beat myself up about it (Christianity is NEVER about rules & regs), but for now, I'm excited. As I read, I am going to start blogging about the revelations I come across and here goes day one...


So of course Genesis 1 starts out with the creation story, which is terribly fascinating and thought provoking if really read carefully. As the Bible presents it, it does take a certain amount of blind faith to believe it as the Lord didn't really leave enough details on the surface to be able to wrap your head around it. I jotted down lots of notes about my questions, but for the sake of not having the time to write a novel, I will just jump straight over to the first sin. You know, God created earth for His pleasure...and day after day, He said "this is good." The Lord called it GOOD! So you know it was pretty darn awesome! He created companions in His image in the form of man and He walked and talked with man and woman day after day. Then Satan entered the picture, which obviously the Lord knew was going to happen, and man chose to sin. All over the Bible, CRAZY things happen that are presented fairly non-emotionally...but can you even imagine the immense amount of emotion & drama that occurred in the spiritual realm!…way more dramatic than the Bible presents.  You know Satan’s army was rejoicing as they thought they had conquered Christ's deepest love and God probably wasn’t surprised but yet I’m sure he was gravely sad, disappointed, and heartbroken. Of course he had an eternal plan to redeem the sin, but His love connection was broken due to a choice. 
Quickly does the sin trickle into mankind as Adam & Eve's first kiddos (Cain & Abel) ended up being bitter enemies. Cain became incredibly jealous of Abel and started plotting against his bro. I find it fascinating that in the 2nd generation of mankind and in the 4th chapter of the entire Bible, God was already counseling humans on what to do with sin as he admonishes Cain on how to deal with his negative thoughts...  “And why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” – interesting verse…never really read that one before! The Lord tells us to master sin so do (or choose) well. As the story ends, Cain ends up being defeated by the sin crouching at his door and he killed his own brother, Abel. Soon after, he bitterly regretted it as absolutely nothing good came from his choice...only heartache. 
Of course we are oftentimes hopeless without His help, but this is an age old concept that is still relevant today....master sin and choose. "Go & sin no more!" 


OK, now the fun ah ha of the day (this is for all the new moms in my life these days)....OK, so Adam & Eve were created (did they have belly buttons since they never had an umbilical cord....hmmmm?) Then they had to leave the Garden of Eden after Satan did His thing. So they are living out wherever they were and apparently they had discovered "love" by then. So Eve gets pregnant...except how the heck was she supposed to know what "pregnant" meant?? Unless Jesus told them about babies and how they were made while they were walking & talking, this was a whole new concept to Eve! Can you imagine not knowing about the concept of pregnancy and then being pregnant?? Having no idea that a human was growing inside of you, you’d for sure think you were getting fat or about to die from some expanding abdominal issue. Until you felt a kick?? Whoa!! What the heck was that? Then, you start feeling major pains and this thing comes out of you that kind of looks like you and Adam, but not really…jiminy Christmas! What a strange concept haha. Poor Eve...we women think we have it hard nowadays. Kudos to Eve...the first Mommy. 

 

In The Beginning...

Well, God chose to start off His pretty important book thataway so I figure its a good first few words :) Welcome to my blog people! I'm really excited about finally getting all of my creative energy out there...I seem to be bursting at the seams quite often with it and I don't really have anyone to be artsy and craftsy with so blog world, here I come. First, I'll give you a little insight into my life, and then I'll jump off sharing the inspired random thoughts of Cherise K Ratliff.

My name is Cherise (like Paris!...thank you Steffi Coats) and I currently live in Shiner, Texas. First and foremost, I'm a daughter of the King of Kings...a Christian by choice and by the grace of God. Secondly most important, I've been blessed with an amazingly special guy, Mr. Derrick W Ratliff, who treasures me and challenges me to be who I was created to be. I love him very much, consider him my best friend in the whole wide world, and well.....we've just got a pretty darn good thing going on.

Those are the two most important things in my life...besides that, we've got a couple of pretty cool dogs named Mutt and Jeff, I mean Skye & Shooter...

If you can't tell, their purposes in life are quite different. Shooter is a working man...lovable as all get out, but he likes to fulfill his duty as Derrick's biggest bud when it comes to duck and bird hunting. Skye on the other hand was created to....look pretty :) They're loads of fun and great dogs!

Derrick & I live a pretty adventurous life...we rarely if ever sit still and "I'm bored" doesn't really have time to enter our vocabulary. We are the marketing team for my family's company, Ranch Hand Truck Accessories. We own our own freelance marketing company on the side, Eclipse Wildlife Technologies, and we are filming for a TV show for the Sportsman Channel called Ranch Hand Horizons. We are never home on the weekends and evenings are filled with working on websites or media kits or film editing or facebooking or something. We kinda prefer it busy this way, but not gonna lie...looking forward to having a place we can call home and settling in a bit. 

Some of the things I enjoy most: playing softball, watching Aggie football, spending time with friends (especially the Maders & Phillips...love y'all!!), Facebook, taking photos, spending time in College Station (did I mention I spent 4 wonderful years at a very special place called Texas A&M!), spending time with my parents & brother & UncleDoug/AuntLaura & Derrick's family, Starbuck's cinnamon dulce white mochas, the color red (can you tell?), Bible studies, inspirational quotes, deep conversations (often happening after midnight), campfires & s'mores, cool weather, and staying up late. 

Well, there is the intro....now on to the inspired random thoughts of Cherise K Ratliff..... :)