{"id":4478,"date":"2023-01-06T16:52:35","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T22:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=4478"},"modified":"2023-01-06T16:52:35","modified_gmt":"2023-01-06T22:52:35","slug":"devotional-on-judges-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-judges-22\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Judges"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 1600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-IwBSr6B_COg\/XbY8YrLs65I\/AAAAAAABCUI\/rv1X3zAdzKc7OCKSa_nLW30voJ2xAbu2QCKgBGAsYHg\/s1600\/P9259770.JPG\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1200\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2014 &#8211; Grand Canyon, AZ<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Grasping at straws<br \/>\nJudges 17: Stay here with me. Be my father and priest.<br \/>\nThings go from bad to worse as I progress through the book of Judges. The lofty mountain top encounter with God through his servant Moses of centuries before is forgotten as is Joshua&#8217;s declaration of faithfulness to God. The light of the promise made by their ancestors at the Red Sea and then at the Jordan River is nearly extinguished. Judges is a downhill book. There are occasional heroes but they become fewer and fewer. The heroes we do find become more and more flawed. Here\u2019s the story of Micah and his hired Levite priest. In this spiritual night, there\u2019s a hunger for God, but it\u2019s so broken and disfigured that we hardly recognize it. Using God to get wealthy or for the purpose of fortune telling is the order of the day. The tribes that were so united under Joshua and Moses are now fragmented politically and greatly influenced by the pagans of the land. The tug of war over who gets the priest is a pitiful reminder of the result of spiritual emptiness. In spite of the uniqueness of this story, I think it\u2019s being lived out in my own culture. People who think they\u2019re beyond needing God grasp at anything that promises to satisfy their emptiness. As I see the pitiful people of this distant day fighting over the Levite priest, I\u2019m reminded that our message of \u201cGod with us\u201d is the one the world desperately needs today.<br \/>\nTake Away: There\u2019s a hunger in our lives that can only be filled by the Lord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Grasping at straws Judges 17: Stay here with me. Be my father and priest. Things go from bad to worse as I progress through the book of Judges. The lofty mountain top encounter with God through his servant Moses of centuries before is forgotten as is Joshua&#8217;s declaration of faithfulness to God. The light of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1511,7],"tags":[137,546,870],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4478"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4478"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14173,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4478\/revisions\/14173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}