Genesis 18:27, “Abraham answered and said, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.”

On my window sill, near the far corner is a small pile of dust. What if it was more than a pile of fine dust but an actual city? A miniature, thriving metropolis too small to see with the unassisted eye. i figure, in a way, i live in Dust City, but to be more accurate, i actually live in the slums of Dust City where the small dust lives. Yes.

i live in the outer rings of Dust City, where the small dust settles—the kind of places that never make the maps, the corners the wind forgets to sweep. That is real. The edges are real. The smallness is real.

And still YHWH bends down.

Not with thunder. Not with a throne that demands you climb up. He leans in close enough that the distance between eternity and a cracked sidewalk disappears. Mmm, so close. He smiles at me with a smile as wide as eternity, like someone who has all the time in the world can smile, and He asks the simplest question in the universe: “Wanna’ get coffee?” So if He is asking, the only thing left to do is answer. “Yes, I’d like that”, i say. The table is already set at the edge of town.

As i read that back i feel a certain delight in God rising in my chest. Wow!         And i, the small dust at the edge of the scale do know and will know Jesus. i cannot know Him through someone else’s encounter. i will know Him not through the visionary dreams i often have, but through close encounter and through the Word of God. i will get to know His offices and attributes, His drives and reservations. i get to know what kind of ice cream He likes, what’s His favorite tree, and maybe He’ll tell me if i have relatives among the star dust in the universe. Incredible though, i, the small dust, yes i, get to know the King of the Universe and i think that’s amazing. i don’t have titles or book deals, no invitations to speak anywhere, i really don’t have anything, in my opinion, God would want, but yet He loves me and wants to hang out, skip stones, and go on walks together.

And that right there, yep, that is the whole scandal and the whole comfort. The God who named the stars by number also knows the name of the dust that thought it was too far out to matter, people of little weight on the world’s scales of status, usefulness, or value. The small dust at the edge of everything. He does not wait for you to become cleaner dust, or bigger dust, or dust that finally lives in the better part of town. He meets you where the small dust lives, and He treats the invitation like it is the most natural thing in the world. We, the dust-people, are not defined by our low estate, but by the fact that the Risen Jesus has declared us worth His blood and places Himself in our place.

From what i can see and hear of God, the value of dust matters because it becomes the stage on which His power, mercy, and faithfulness are displayed. He does not need impressive material. He chooses the dust so that no one can boast. Dust matters to God. Why? Because He made it, He remembers it, He lifts it, He identifies with it, and He is glorified through it. The world’s measurement of worth is not how God measures value. What looks like nothing on human scales is often the very thing He chooses to use.

Jesus does not merely notice “the least of these”. Oh no, God goes to the utmost for the least, the lost, and left behind — He identifies Himself with those like me, small dust.

Matthew 25:40, “Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” Through out the gospels, Jesus continually demonstrates that “dust-level” people are not peripheral to Him, but are actually pretty central to the revelation of who He is.

And who are “dust-level people,” you might ask? I say they are those the world ranks as insignificant, overlooked, or disposable—yet who are central to God’s heart and purposes. Dust-level people are the overlooked-ones, low-ranked, ash-heap dwellers in forgotten corners, many are weightless and discarded, living brilliant lives before the Lord in the fringes, the left overs, and doing the calling of God while practicing life in the margins.

So much of the industrial Church model in our country makes a face so as to appear to help the small dust at the edge of their sanctuaries, but it rarely amounts to much more than their need to gain a following and shape a response. Matthew 25:40 shows that when we feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, or visit the sick and the prisoner—those are acts done to people the world often treats as mere dust in the window sill—Jesus receives those acts as done directly to Himself. He does not merely notice them… on Calvary He placed Himself in their place.

God calls us who are the small dust valuable. He says we’re not a side concern or an optional ministry focus. We sit close to the center of God’s revealed heart. What the world calls dust, Jesus calls His own. We are the small dust at the city’s ragged edge—Dust City’s forgotten corners where the Least sleep under broken signs, the Lost wander without names, and the Left Behind keep watch huddled around dying fires. Yet we have seen ourselves in the scars of the Risen Saviors. He called us worth the blood, worth the empty tomb. So, we stay, unashamed. Here among the ash and the overlooked, we live as those already raised—small dust still, but shining. God’s glory is shown in the transformation of the lowly. Psalm 113:7-8, “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people.”

The same Creator who numbers the stars also remembers that we are dust, Psalm 103:14. We are not accidental or discarded material, what God makes, He values. Dust represents the humble, the powerless, and those of low estate. The “small dust” at the edge of the city—the least, the lost, and the left behind—may be dismissed by society, yet they’re perceived worthlessness does not determine their value before the One who weighs all things.

The symbology of the value of dust is this: God chooses what is low, fragile, and overlooked in order to display His own glory, mercy, and power. He forms life from dust, remembers those who are dust, raises the dust-born to honor, seeks the lost among the dust, and identifies Himself with “the least of these.” In the resurrection hope, even those who return to dust will be raised in glory, 1 Corinthians 15:42–49. Dust therefore points beyond itself—to the Creator who does not abandon what He has made, and to the Redeemer who turns the small dust of Dust City into living witnesses of grace.

The “small dust” at the edge of the city and the “dust of the earth” that fills the promise of Genesis 13:16 are not two different substances—they are the same dust, viewed from different angles. One angle shows our need; the other shows His power to multiply, redeem, and keep covenant even with those the world counts as nothing. Friend, if you think you’re too small for God to use, how small is too small? God counts even the dust as part of His appointment and Kingdom. C’mon, small dust was God’s idea. He made it. What He creates, He claims. He remembers it. God does not forget the fragile or the overlooked. He raises it. Small dust becomes the stage on which His power and compassion are displayed. He identifies with it. The Risen Jesus does not merely notice small dust; He stands with it and in it. He multiplies it. Small dust is not a dead end; it is the starting point of abundance in His hands. The small dust at the edge of the city carries the weight of divine attention, affection, and purpose.

In short, “the dust of the earth”, like me, reminds the world that the very people who appear most ordinary or insignificant are the ones God has chosen to make innumerable and to carry His promises and standards forward.

Maybe you live in town where the tall people live among those who buff their shoes to a high shine in the light of their own faces, but, honestly, i just get lost down town, and out here in the small places where the small dust lives, practicing my koinonia with dust-level people, life is brilliant and full of God’s presence.

What do you think?

i’m Social Porter for Living In His Name Ministries

“Hineni” (Hinne-Hinni)  Surrendered availability

In 2020 the Lord began to approach me with the question, “Where are you?” Don’t get me wrong—I knew, or at least I thought I knew, where I was physically, mentally, and spiritually. But that wasn’t what He was after. His question was about proximity. Not location, but presence. How near was I living to Him as a constant?

Around the same time another phrase floated across my mind like an airplane pulling a banner: “all your heart.” It shows up again and again—Deuteronomy 11:13, Joshua 22:5, Proverbs 3:5—roughly twenty-five times across Scripture. Serve Him with all your heart. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Love the Lord your God with all your heart. That phrase is what stands behind Paul’s call in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to “pray without ceasing.”

But I have to ask: short of someone manic or obsessively driven, do any of us ever do anything with all our heart—without wandering off, and without getting lost in lesser or useless things?

I even wonder if we sin with all our heart. i’d bet, almost everyone, at some point, feels a quiet reservation that what they’re about to do is a bad idea. We are rarely undivided. Most of the time we are half-present, half-committed, half-sincere. We typically give attention in fragments. Even our strongest desires usually have competing currents and changing tides running underneath them all the time. Honestly, whether any of us actually do anything “with all our heart” or “unceasingly” for long stretches is an open and uncomfortable question, and yet Scripture refuses to lower the bar to match our usual performance of “more or less”, “pretty much”, and “for the most part”.
These days the word of God has been slowly diluted and softened for the sake of convenience, thereby reducing repentance and relationship with God to a low-cost transaction. Confession becomes something we do for relief and validation, removing the weight of being truly seen. “With all your heart” and “without ceasing” get softened into “keep a prayerful attitude” or “stay in continual dependence.” Merely saying “sorry” is as though that’s enough to satisfy the requirements of repentance, but the truth is … casting “sorry” over our shoulder as we leave the room is like tossing someone a crumb of bread, it minimizes and dilutes the requirement in James 5:16 to confess our faults to one another—and notice that after the confession, “pray for one another” was never optional.

We have replaced transformation with performance, transaction has replaced repentance and covenant. But the intent behind Paul’s words is more absolute than our diluted, domesticated versions. “Without ceasing” is the same word used for “uninterrupted remembrance” — a continuity that does not switch off when circumstances change. It is the same idea behind 1 Thessalonians 1:3 – “remembering without ceasing your work of faith…”, and 1 Thessalonians 2:13 – “we also thank God without ceasing…”.

Most of what we do is intermittent and fragmented. We rarely give anything our entire, undivided, undistracted heart, at least not for long. We typically give attention fragments, and maybe, for a fleeting moment, we are undivided and undistracted, but our motives are mixed. The idea is not that you never stop speaking prayers out loud. It is that the underlying posture of dependence, attention, and openness toward God remains constant.

In that line of thinking I asked the Lord where to start —something small, something consistent, something Kingdom-oriented. What God gave me was simple: change the perception of prayer from an episodic event full of drama and theatrics into something conversational. Create continuity. Make it more like the walk-around-every-day conversation that once existed in the garden between man and God. I began presenting myself before the Lord in the morning, standing like Moses did in Exodus 34:2, and saying the Hebrew word Moses used: hineni — “Here I am.”
At first I didn’t know what else to say other than “Here I am.” Then it became walking and praying. Gradually the words came easier and fuller the more I practiced. I was trying, consistently, to walk my distances not for the sake of the walk but for the sake of the time with God.
The same impulse showed up in the question of who is the first and last person I speak to each day—giving God the honor of first and last mention and recognition, like a daily tithe of attention. All of it aimed at creating something closer to a work-a-day, walk-around conversation with God. I have not arrived, but I am trying. Prayer has begun to feel less like a couple of minutes here and there and more like an all-the-time constant, which was the goal. Nice and simple. Nothing complicated. Special times of prayer still exist, of course. I’m just trying to get closer to “pray without ceasing” and living before the Lord “with all your heart.”

Let me be clear: I did not manufacture this continuity. It was something God worked in me. A young woman once asked, “It is the truth that we can do nothing without Jesus, so how do we pray without ceasing?” The answer is simple. You don’t. It is something God works in us.

The word hineni itself goes all the way back to Genesis 3:9, when God asked Adam, “Where are you?” God was not confused about Adam and Eve’s physical location behind the bushes. He was asking something much deeper: Why are you hiding from Me? What has happened to your heart? Where are you in relation to Me now? Be assured— God is asking us the same questions. How do you answer my friend?

Adam’s pattern set the default for mankind: Shame → Fear → Hiding (physically or emotionally) → Excuses → Blame-shifting.
Do you see it?

By the blood of Jesus though, when we announce hineni—“Here I am”—we set the precedent back toward the garden. “Repent” becomes more than “change your mind” and, more accurately, becomes “return,” or “come home.”

Our becoming the hineni people means more than a geographical location, it means a presence of heart, not just mind and body and it has weight in those calling moments. The word means, “I’m not hiding.” “I’m fully here with You.” “My heart is attentive and open.” “I’m on Your side, ready to respond.” It is the opposite of Adam’s evasion and denial of responsibility. No openness, just deflection.

Leviticus 14 gives us a quiet picture of the same total consecration. The priest was to anoint the right earlobe, the right thumb, and the right big toe of the one being cleansed. The symbology of that is: The right ear—so that this one should hear God first. The right thumb—so that this one should put his hand to God’s will first. The right big toe—so that this one should walk God’s path first. Together they signify the consecration of the whole person: hearing, doing, and walking — body, actions, and lifestyle. All of it.
Here I am— not half-hidden, not bargaining with soft words, not offering fragments.
Here I am— ear turned to hear, hand opened to taking action, feet already moving toward you Lord.

Our life unto the Lord was never meant to be reduced to going to church, praying a little, reading a little, and giving a tithe. God’s heart is for us to be the people, those who do life as more than a low-cost transaction. Give Him the honor of first recognition and practice your walk-around-every-day conversation. Stop hiding. Yield and let the Lord persuade your heart.

Do more than the academic “change your mind.” Return. Come home.
Let the following become our all-encompassing attitude toward God: “I’m not hiding,” “I’m fully here with You,” “My heart is attentive and open,” “I’m on Your side, ready to respond.”

Hineni.

Here I am.

Idolatry amounts to anything which is competitive with our affection for God (YHWH)

“Things we make with our own hands & trust in” (Josh24:14)

Israel’s history of their thinking as it relates to idolatry ―
The Progression:
• There are many gods, YHWH is one of them
• Other nations have their gods, but YHWH is the only God we worship
• No, YHWH alone is THE God, others are non-entities (lo-eloha + lo el, not gods, not divine). Ref – OPPENHEIM
NOT GODS – Gal 4:6-7, 2 Kings 19:18, 2 Chr 13:9, Jer 16:20, Acts 19:22.

Deut 32:16 “demons” only twice (Heb “shed”) powerless spirits. Ref TWOT pg. 305)
“Shed” is connected to Babylonian “shedu”. Ref “Ancient Mesopotamia”, Oppenheim, pg 201.
Kaufmann, “The Religion of Israel” pg 65 says “shedun” does not mean they are evil spirits but insubstantial shades, or “no gods”, neither divine or demonic functions.

From YHWH perspective they are to be nothing, as in “nothing compares to YHWH” or even in the same category, as in “THE God”. Deut4:35
Not until Isaiah 40-55 did anyone in Israel, in so many words, say “no other God but YHWH.” Only then did they visualize there is only One House with only, and exclusively only One Occupant – YHWH. (Richard Bauckham “Out of Egypt: Biblical Theology and Biblical Interpretation)
C.J.S. Wright, “Mission of God”, “are other gods a something or a nothing? They are nothing in relation to YWHW; they are something in relation to their worshippers.”

1Cor 8:4-6 Idols and gods do exist but they have no divinity. Is41:21-24 (Mockingly) Bring your proof of divinity and worthiness to be called “god”.

Implying our God, YHWH will save us, and in Is44:9-20, false god can’t save worshippers and worshippers must save themselves. Pointless to have a god who will not save but must be saved. Dagon, unless was nailed down, just fell over. Baal was always absent when he was needed, etc.

Deut 4:39, 10:14, 10:17, 32:39
Other gods were basically completely ineffective divinities (Deut 32:17-21)
Deut.32:17 “not god”, what is no god, “lo’ eloha” (לֹא אֱלוֹהַּ), Deut 32:21 “not divine”, “lo’ el” (לֹא אֵל) who are followed by “not, not my people”, “lo’ lo’ ami” (לֹא עַם לֹא). NOT GODS – Gal 4:6-7, 2 Kings 19:18, 2 Chr 13:9, Jer 16:20, Acts 19:22.

They are nothing to God, but “they”, the “not gods” are a something to men. (C.Wright, pg144, Hoffman pg 70-71)

Deut4:15-21 is the reverse of created order. Is40-55 Israel returns from exile but as they did, when in Egypt, they returned with a few false gods… again.

From Job9:6: H4656 from ->H6426, with H4656 being “a horrid thing” and H6426 meaning to tremble or shudder, and the idea is of “a trembling or shuddering horror”, as in “The Object of Fear”.
H205 Trouble, wickedness
H6089 Pain, sorrow, toil, hardship, grief of mind. Both H205 and H6089 are connected with the eventual degenerating human condition as it relates to Israel and idolatry.

FIRST MENTION is in 1Kings 15:13, and it’s a “horrid thing”, H4656, pronounce “mif-leh’-tseth”, a terror. i wonder if there’s a connection between present day temple of “set” and the last syllable “tseth”, with the temple of set being the satanic temple and “house of idolatry”?
2Chron33:15 uses H5566, pronounced “say’-mel”, spelled samech, mem, lamed, being “an image to resemble”. This is not the typical word for “idol”. Why the need to spell it different? The different spelling gives the word “idol” a different slant. Why?
2Kings21:3-6, Manasseh added worship of stars to “the other gods”.

Ezekiel 8:16 was shown people in the courts of YHWH bowed to the sun with their butts to YWHW. Giving God their backside instead of their face and attention was like the ultimate insult and disdain for all things YHWH.
Isaiah 40:26, he calls Israel to account, as in “who created all this?” Not gods nor the stars who are not all powerful, nor do they control destiny of nations? Not gods at all, only one and one alone and all is under the authority of YWHW alone.

Ps106:19-20 sarcasm? “You exchanged YHWH glory for a thing which eats grass!”
Ps106:28-29 “you ate sacrifices to dead ones and dead things, and YHWH allowed plaque to break out.” They did it to themselves, YHWH didn’t “do it to them” He simply stopped protecting and allowed them to have the results of their actions. This is an important insight for us today. YHWH simply lifts His hand of protection and allows us to have the results of our actions, and iniquity, transgression, and sin do have results, not active judgement but passive judgement.

PS106:35-38 Israel followed the practices of Caananites.
Ps96:5, not “demons”, but “elilim” H457 (special note: notice the double yoke, אֱלִיל, lamed yod lamed), H457 as something worthless, weak, powerless, of no value. H457 translated as “idols” in Is2:8, 20, Is 19:1. Also implied to “physicians of no value” in Job 13:4; a “worthless shepherd” in Zechariah 11:17). It carries a deliberate theological judgment of futility. Reference: https://www.bibliatodo.com/en/strong-concordance/hebrew/457

Hab2:18, “idols” used twice. (special note: again, notice the double yoke)
1 – H6459, “graven images”, that which is made with our hands which are trusted in. We make up words for them to say, claim “the idol spoke” and then believe it is true. TWOT, pg729.
2 – H457, אֱלִיל‎, (special note: notice the double yoke) something of the heart, more than our hands but of hands, head, and heart which the person has wholly bought into, again, something worthless. Lev19:4, 26:1 uses the same word as it applies to any work of man’s hands as an object of trust and worship, yet it has no thoughts, does not hear, does not see, can NOT act, no power, no divinity. Lev26:1 most specifically “idols” H457, as in “graven image”, a carved thing as an “idol”, a “standing image”, an “idol” made stationary like a post or “idol”, or an “image”, meaning even a picture as an “idol” to be revered and bowed down to and honored, ascribed power and guidance even. Finishing the verse with “I AM the Lord your God”, with “I AM” being present in the tense of past, and present, and future, together all at once, with no beginning and unending, world without end.

Is10:10-11. In Isaiah’s day Jerusalem and Samaria were described as “kingdoms of idols”, a people who worshipped a vain thing (the people imagined a vain thing, Ps2:1) TWOT, pg 46.
Scripture itself repeatedly treats idolatry as something that seizes, enslaves, and chokes the people who practice it:
• It “fills the land” (Isaiah 2:8) and becomes the object of trust that cannot deliver.
• It dulls the senses and hardens the heart (Isaiah 44:18–20; Psalm 115:4–8).
• It is portrayed as spiritual adultery and bondage (Hosea; Jeremiah 2–3; Ezekiel 16, 23).
• The New Testament continues the theme with language of being “enslaved to those that by nature are not gods” (Galatians 4:8) and the warning that “whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved” (2 Peter 2:19)
REV9:20 pairs the work of their hands with worshipping demons (Gr. 1140, “daimonion”)

READ THE FOLLOWING IF YOU READ ANYTHING ELSE:
REPENT — “Burn down the house” / REPENT
The call to repentance in the prophets and in Jesus often includes the radical dismantling of the structures that house and sustain idolatry:
“Burn the Asherah poles… tear down the high places… smash the sacred stones” (Deuteronomy 12; 2 Kings 23; etc.).
Jesus’ language about the temple (“Destroy this temple…”) and about cutting off the hand or plucking out the eye that causes sin (Matthew 5:29–30) carries the same severity: the “house” (whether literal temple, personal life, or communal system) that shelters the strangling thing must be dismantled or purified. “REPENT” is spelled shin vav bet (right to left). it is pronounced Shuv although we would spell it shub. We all can look up meanings of Hebrew letters and see that shin is teeth, change, fire, etc., and vav is usually a nail, a peg, a connecting device like a hinge possible. and bet is predominantly the house – the inside and out. but after a little reading stuff written by people way smarter than me I’ve begun to realize that the use of the word for repent in Old Testament was different than “come home” or even better, “return”. (The “repent-return” sequence: 1 Kings 8:47-48, and 2 Chronicles 6:37-38, with “repent-return” and “repent-return”) The whole idea of the word REPENT initially and probably even till today is more about God addressing idolatry and the carved images people made, then invented things for the images to say, then claim it spoke to them. a literal pictographically perspective of the word repent is fire plus a nail plus the house, fire nailed to the house, quite literally meaning burn the house down. Tear the house apart. Change the heart of the house inside and out. meaning get rid of your idol temples, tear the houses down of your false gods, BURN THE HOUSE DOWN, and allow me to change your heart and person inside and out. I was most intrigued with “burn the house down” and it was almost like I see God influencing Israel to burn the idol houses down with their own hands, have no other gods before me, and he’s flipping matches at the idol temples.
I think of our idolatry today and how subtle but even more widespread it has become. it is not nearly as obvious as it was back then maybe, but it is idolatry nonetheless, glaring, overbearing, insinuating itself into all of our actions and thinking. I’m sure you can think of a long list of modern idolatry items. and now these idols even talk to us for real like the AI talks to us on our phones influencing billions.

Paul’s “you are God’s temple” (1 Corinthians 3:16–17; 6:19) intensifies the point—idolatry is an invasion of the very dwelling place of God, so the only proper response is decisive expulsion.
(Ref: https://www.abarim-publications.com/
(Ref: https://www.abarim-publications.com/Dictionary/)
SEE 1Corinthians 10:20-21 1 “But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.”

(Gr.1140 “daimonion”), This leads us to the magic literature. Here are reflected both the myths and figures of the official cult and also popular ideas. Prescriptions are given against
δαιμονῶντες (“dimonontes” – those who are possessed),
δαιμονιζόμενοι (“daimonizomenoi” – those who are demon possessessed, the demoniacs, under the power of evil spirits,
δαιμονιόπληκτοι (“daimonióplēktoi” – those who are struck/smitten by a demon, or demon struck),
and δαιμονοτάκται (“daimonotáktai” – rulers of demons or commanders of demons).

Their main content is the conjuring of a demon, god, κύριος or similar spirit who with the help of magic formulae and practices, or through the power of a higher name and can be impressed into service (K.Preisdanz. “Papyri Graecae Magicae, 1928 Zaub., V, 164 ff). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, pg 8 – Theological Dictionary of the New Testament – Volume II.

1Thess1:9 – demons & idols, demons: things which consume, idols: things copied as in a statue.
Habakkuk 2:18-19 “Idol” H6459 (noun masculine), a thing made from H6458 (verb), a lying vanity, See Deut27:15, H779, different word from regular “curse”, this is worse than “curse” (Qalal), but to “detest utterly, to execrate.”
Habakkuk 2:18-19, LDS made doctrine thru their own reasoning and trust in it. Ps115:4-8, 135:15-18. We often mock what we do not understand. Legaspi “Opposition To Idolatry in the Book of Habakkuk”, and John Barton “The Work of Human Hands”.

Is46:1-2, idol gods can not even save themselves much less anyone else. Idols are not the gods themselves, only images of something “up there”, somewhere else, and the statue is “down here”. “Mission Of God”, C.J.H. Wright

It is ludicrous nonsense of a god who needs defending when THEY should be the ones defending you. Judges 6:30-31, Baal was AWOL, 1Kings18:27. 1Sam5:2-4, Dagon was useless. Couldn’t keep himself upright. A worthless thing.

Idols were all human constructs, no divinity, no reality, no power. Just because worshippers believed they had those attributes, they had no reality. There was not even an alternate reality source. Barton, “Work of Human Hands”, pg63-72, all were within the “created order”.
In worshipping “them”, we give allegiance, attribute power and authority to submit to something we have created. Is44:9-20, Is46:7. In Is46:8-11 YHWH declares idols are no more powerful than those who made them, they are the ultimate deification of pride. Our doctrine, which we think is so right, without searching out the matter from God’s Word, can be an idol, a thing we have invented and we trust in, pledging allegiance to. (5 points of Calvinism, giving no thought beyond what we’re told.)
Often Kings and gods are interchangeable (U.S. Govt, Chinese Govt?)
See 2Kings 19:15-16, Hezekiah points to One God and King and there is not another.

Habakkuk describes in detail the arrogance, violence, and worthlessness of Assyria’s god and scoffs at their powerlessness, Hab2:3-17, and vs18 – 20. Vs18 hits all the main words, covering carved things, molded things, teachers of lies, those who trust in nothing-gods, and the sheer foolishness to trust in not-speaking, not-hearing worthless things which men have made with their own hands, and that includes an obsession with our doctrine which we have invented to suit our own agenda, not reflecting the heart of the Lord but reflecting the lying heart of the creators of lies and trust, blindly, that they are right, more right, most right above others. In Hab2-3-20 there were two most pointedly, 1) the worship of other gods, who were no gods at all with no divinity, and 2) the worship of idols who represented the “not gods” who are “up there somewhere”.
The problem is that we, as people, tend to identify with and carry the characteristics of the idols and false gods we worship. YHWH said, “be like Me, not like them. Don’t do it like “they do it” but like “I Do It”.

Ps80:8

Hosea 9:10, “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at her first time: but (but = with exception) they went to Baalpeor, and separated themselves unto that shame; and (Romans 1:28-29) their abominations were according as they loved.” What “they” loved became their obsession and a thing to worship, indirectly saying they loved themselves as their own mother and father, their own first and last, their own beginning and end, and they pray to themselves and they answer themselves and it is sufficient, and they did not see the need for God.
Numbers 25:1-3, Israel whores with Moab, and “whores with” is not about infidelity, but about a willingness to jump over God’s standards and to basically “take another lover”, someone who agreed with them. “I just wish I could find people who agree with me. That’s what I’m looking for.”, said a man to me who said he’d been a believer for many years, and when i asked him “what do you want”, that was his reply. i’m still aghast, to this day!
Amos 5:26 pointedly makes mention of the “star god”. People even invented intelligence, power, authority, and even gave words (from themselves) to the stars and claimed “the stars have spoken). The point was Israel’s apostasy from YHWH, not the wrongness of other cultures. Israel says: “the Chaldeans did it like thus and such”, YHWH says: “I’m not talking about them, I’m talking to you about YOU!”

Jeremiah 6:15, “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nooooo! (“No” is sarcastically accented in Hebrew), they were not at all ashamed (accented with wide eyed accusation), neither could they blush (accented metaphor pointing out the brazen blindness, lack of conscience and accountability): therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD.”
See John Day “Hosea and the Baal Cult” Publisher: T&T Clark, Published: 2014, ISBN-139780567299369

From God’s perspective, are we truly assured and persuaded in our heart and minds that we are made righteous in Christ? Do we think more about our condemnation than our sanctification? Why is that? i think we are far more convinced of our badness than we are of being justified by the blood of Jesus. We often think we are far worse than God’s goodness is able to overcome. A lot of people spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about their sin, truly are convinced of their sin, but merely hope in their salvation as some ethereal, distant thing which could be debatable based on the depth of their sin. Why would i say that? Consider how much time is spent, and how many words are given to making sure we know how bad we are than how good God is? Are you convinced of God’s forgiveness for your sins? Are you secure and absolute concerning your standing in the Lord by the blood of Jesus? Friend, after all the seasons you’ve walked through—every unexpected turn, every quiet disappointment—are you truly convinced of God’s faithfulness? Do you rest in a confidence that no longer doubts Him?

Maybe the road didn’t unfold the way you hoped. Maybe the ending looked nothing like the picture you carried in your heart. Maybe the silence lasted longer than you thought you could bear. Maybe the answer arrived in a form you never would have chosen. Just because things haven’t gone as expected, or as predicted, does that mean God failed you? No. He never has.

And still… we doubt. Our mouths declare that we trust Him fully, yet the quiet habits of our days—the worry, the grasping, the planning without Him—tell a different story.

Let us be convinced. In Genesis 31, Jacob having completed his agreement with his slippery, conniving uncle Laban, secretly picks up his wives, all his livestock and goods and leaves town. This really irked Laban so he flies out the door in hot pursuit of Jacob because he thinks Jacob has taken things from him which aren’t his to take. Suspicion evidently played a large part of Laban’s life i think. After chasing Jacob and company for seven days, Laban finally catches up to Jacob and all his people, Laban accuses Jacob of wrong doing and insists on searching through all their stuff, trying to catch him in some underhandedness. After all his searching, he finds nothing in Jacob’s stuff, wherewith Jacob hotly says in Genesis 31:37, “For you have felt through all my goods; what have you found of all your household goods? Set it here before my kinsmen and your kinsmen for all to see, that they may decide between us two.“ There, right there in the last sentence where he says, “that they may decide between us two.” The word “decide” is a word used in a judicial sense, meaning “convince”, in the sense of two going to court together, with one trying to prove true or false the accusation of the another.

God’s idea of being “convinced of sin” is not merely about using an argument to prove someone’s guilt. His intent in using that word carries a far heavier purpose—it points toward repentance and a return to the Lord.

There is also a real difference between being convinced and being convicted. You can be convinced of something without being deeply convicted. Conviction is more than just believing the truth; the truth settles in your spirit. It presses on you and changes the way you live. Being convinced and having strong convictions go together like travelling companions. Many people can say with their mouths, “I am convinced God is faithful,” while their habits still quietly reveal lingering doubt. True conviction closes that gap. It takes what the mind has accepted and drives it deeper—into the heart and the conscience—until belief and living begin to match. To be both convinced and convicted does more than expose sin. It points beyond the sin, lifting our eyes to see God Himself—the One who restores the wayward and leads them back into right living.

We often feel the need to convince the world of its sin. But God’s way is different. True, He convicts of sin, yet even more so, He opens our eyes to how good He is to forgive. The upward gaze toward His mercy is always more important than the downward gaze toward condemnation.

Proverbs 3:12, “…for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father who absolutely delights in his son.” Reproves occurs once, loves and delights occurs twice. We often stop at the “conviction of sin” part, but the Lord advances the vision for us to step further in order to see His goodness, not just our badness.

To “convince” means to use persuasive words of wisdom and insight. Like in Luke16:31, “He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” Meaning do we really think, regardless of our gift of persuasion and much speaking, if they haven’t believed the multiple testimonies previously given, even if someone were raised from the dead, do you really think that will “do the trick”, and then, yes then, they will have that amazing AH-HA moment, convinced? Beating someone into submission with a club doesn’t convince them of anything other than to be afraid.

In 1 Corinthians 2:4-5, Paul writes, “…and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

What are the earmarks of our being convinced about who Christ is? When we are convinced, we “heed and follow”. When Jesus said “follow me”, do you think they stopped what they were doing to go after Jesus hoping to be convinced along the way? Probably not. The Holy Spirit did something so huge there, that on the spot, they were so, SO convinced AND SO convicted they stopped all they were doing to go with the Lord.

In Titus1:16 the word “disobedient” is used, which from Greek, literally means unconvinced, which gives rise to lies, false teachers, and arrogance which says “i know better than you, and you’d better follow after me because i know and you don’t.” Those who do not “heed and follow” are not convinced and definitely not convicted, making room to achieve their own agenda, often pointing out how much others fall short rather than how we are so loved by God, and that His forgiveness far, far outweighs our wrong.

Are you convinced of whom you have believed and do you hold a conviction that Jesus is Lord? If you do, it is most evidenced in your “heed and follow” lifestyle. If i still make some room for the world, maybe i’m not nearly as convinced as i’d like to think i am, nor do i have a strong, inward persuasion that Jesus is the answer, He is the personification of the Truth, and that everything in the Bible matters… personally, cover to cover.

But i will add this, the longer i “heed and follow” the more i “heed and follow” because i am increasingly convinced Jesus is all He says He is, and so much more.

Here continues from Unheard Conversations Part 1, and i’ll pickup where i left off for the sake of time, short attention spans, and space. In short summary, the focus is on the sailors, their whispered dialogue between two select men, their re-playing of the events of the day, and the miraculous encounter with God Almighty, and them being pressed to decide if the Lord is God or not.

          In their recounting of the day, don’t you think they were pursued, haunted by it all, and the very words of Jonah, “save yourselves and throw me over the side” meaning to treat him as a sacrifice, don’t you think it changed the way they saw the world and influenced their decision-making abilities? They tried to save themselves to no advantage. They threw all their cargo into the sea ruining their bottom line profit margin, but the storm increased and raged on with the ship every moment being threatened with complete destruction. They appealed to their gods with their frantic prayers, “every man unto his god”, and that was a total dead end street. They seemed to do everything possible to keep from being involved with God, but in the end, He was the ONLY one who could help them.

The sailors went on to make sacrifices and vows to the one true God after things calmed down. They had met God, and were profoundly changed by the situation, caught up in the wake of Jonah’s rebellion. It would appear they made a decision to follow after the Lord.

The entire event was beyond their reasoning. i mean, think about it…how would you react if you were in the storm of the century, and it all went from roaring and raging to dead still because you did something, from your standpoint, unthinkable until that moment? From their natural mind, they saw it as doing a radical unconscionable thing, for illogical reasons, to gain an outcome of hope and survival.

Here’s another idea: God was willing to pitch the entire ship, cargo, and crew onto a trajectory of chaos and destruction to get at Jonah. Initially, God said, “Go”, Jonah said, “No”, God said, “Yes you will”, Jonah said, “i will not”. Then Jonah said, “i’ll run far away”, and God said, “I’ll bring you back.” And that’s exactly what happened. Finally, Jonah got to catch a ride in a very large fish where he probably died and God brought him back to life a few times. Alive! Dead! Alive! Dead!, Alive, and vomited out on a foreign beach head. This time though, when God said, “Go”, Jonah said, “Ok”. God got his attention.

From the sailors point of view, there was this thing we call nature, and somehow, we, today, tend to see “nature” as something outside of the Lord and that’s simply not true. Every aspect of nature expresses the character which God wishes it to express. i believe there are in-your-face facts gathered only by observation, like the raging sea, and only by personal observation do we grasp the concept of a raging sea, but observation can’t give us knowledge. C.S. Lewis wrote that knowledge requires reasoning, and i can see that is true. With that knowledge born from reasoning, understanding is required, meaning the union of observation and reasoning… it’s putting things together, or connecting the dots to an “ah-ha” moment and an action item called wisdom. The raging storm was totally within their understanding, they had reasoned through their observations in the past to have the knowledge and understanding of what was happening in the present. But the part where Jonah was thrown into the sea, swallowed by a completely beyond-all-reasoning sized fish, which, by the way, was right on time to do God’s bidding in exactly the right place, and then for the raging storm to suddenly cease… that blew their mind. To think of the events as somehow an isolated fluke of nature was out of the question. Maybe the idea began to seep into their minds that the living God Himself, the only real God was not only the cause, but was a cause and effect within Himself. God’s interaction with them, and us, is not a one way street of action, but a two way street of interaction, which, in itself is a cause, and all His benefits come from it. The Lord is never causeless, never doing stuff just for the doing. Can you see that? God’s miraculous isn’t just an event which happens to us, but is an opportunity for relating and corresponding with the Lord. If He didn’t extend us the opportunity, we would not and could not interact with Him.

We love to see miracles, but we need to see the bigger picture, which is…miracles are, and i say this with all emphasis, miracles are not merely an event without cause and without results. The “cause” IS the activity of the Lord, and the results follow in accordance with the natural, physical, or material world, as He has designed it.

Miracle > Astonishment > Revelation > Decision. Those sailors were swept into the supernatural, the beyond of the beyond of the Living God. So, was God’s pursuit of Jonah the only reason? Scripture doesn’t spell it out, but knowing the Lord as i do, i’d say… no. He brought the entire crew into a miraculous event, an undeniable event to not only capture Jonah’s attention, but for the crew to choose what was real.

Most commentaries always focuses on Jonah, but as in all unheard conversations, the back dialogue in the white space, all the characters involved were affected, and effected, meaning God brought about the situation and all those involved were deeply impacted.

Friends, God is entirely capable of getting our attention when He needs to. It’s not that He is “trying to do something”, as if He might fail. Believe me, if He can get the attention of a hard headed prophet like Jonah, along with a bunch of pagan, dead-end god worshipping, crusty old sailors, you can rest assured He can do the same to you, me, and anyone else when He needs to. That’s how much He loves us in that He’s willing to go with us into the worst situations, making all things work to the good of those who love Him. Even in the midst of a raging storm, the Lord has a plan. Pay attention! The Lord is speaking to you. Don’t just read the black letters, see the white space too, there are libraries of God’s wisdom buried between the letters, lines, and paragraphs.

Here ends this program, part 1 and 2 about of the unheard conversation, meaning it’s not in scripture, but it surely occurred. i call it a white space conversation, meaning the dialogue between the letters.

Have you ever noticed the white part of the page of a book, you know, the unprinted area around the letter? That’s called the “white space”, and should never be considered “empty”. You’ve heard the term “read between the lines”? Yea, that’s the white space, and from a scriptural perspective, there are library’s of God’s wisdom and insight hidden there. We should all realize part of possessing sound doctrine is that we can not make sound doctrine from a platform of silence, or what the Bible does NOT say. On the other hand, we can’t ignore the silences because they do help influence the narrative. You might ask, “Well, how do i get at these library’s?” Good question! i read the letters from the page, but in my imagination, there is a world of information in the unnoticed, taken for granted area around the dark letter. To me, existing in the white space are very plausible “unheard conversations” which lead up to the black letters we read. We are not privy to much of the back-room conversations, but they are certainly within our grasp in the white letter. As an example, Luke 24:13-35. Scripture says “They were talking with each other about everything that had happened”. We don’t know exactly what they were saying, nor the tone or emotion, but we do have a clue as to the topic at hand where it says, “… talking about everything that had happened”, which means we’d have to know something of the events prior to the time of their walking to Emmaus. BUT, with a few educated guesses, and some insight into ourselves, we can, probably, come up with a plausible story line as to how they gestured, their attitudes, how they may have sounded, etc, etc. Get the picture?

Looking at scripture, the Lord gives us ideas to grasp the intent of His heart better. Letting the Holy Spirit give us better vision to see into what we read is a lot like going to the eye doctor to get sharper vision. So often in scripture, things are written telling us of a situation which probably has had a conversation that happened at another time, and that unheard conversation is hidden in the white letter space. Do you get the picture? (yes we see) The more we pursue the Lord, the more evident He becomes, and that is the word “pursue” as a “driving thirst” rather than “sitting in casual repose waiting for God to do something”. He gives us better lenses to see and improves our hearing to perceive in a gradual connect-the-dots process which develops character at the same time.

When we go to the optometrist to get an eye exam, typically, they’ll have you sit down in the exam chair and then pull in front of your face a large set of lenses. You’ll be asked to look at a chart on the wall as the examiner starts with a common set of lenses that they’ll change several times, asking if you can see the chart better with lens A or B. Then they’ll change the lenses, and then change them again, each time asking which is better A or B as they get closer to finding the perfect lens variation for you to have excellent vision. This concerning “unheard conversations” is like that.

As another example, imagine the conversation which occurred after Jonah was tossed in the sea. Sure, throwing him overboard saved the ship and all it’s crew, but the sailors were very probably deeply affected at the idea of throwing someone over the side, as is evidenced by Jonah1:12-13, in that Jonah told them to throw him over the side in order to save their lives. They probably stared at him in disbelief as to his suggestion, paused, blinked, slack jawed at the horror of such an idea… then just went back to rowing with all their heart to avoid doing such a terrible thing. The sailors knew, they knew one of the great taboos of working on a ship was you never, ever through someone over the side. It was sure death and they probably didn’t want to held accountable, for another man’s death, in any fashion. When he finally told them he was a Hebrew and was on the run from God, with exasperation in their voices, i imagine they yelled at him, “Oh My Gosh! Are you nuts?! Don’t you know better than to run from Him?! What have you done?!!” i imagine after some deliberation, as seen in vs 14, the sailors finally resolved Jonah was right and called out to God to not lay Jonah’s life to their charge, then threw him over.

On a side note, if Jonah knew he was the problem, why didn’t he throw himself over instead of putting the weight and responsibility of the decision on the sailors?

Anyway, amazingly, after they tossed Jonah over, the sea miraculously calmed and they were all saved. i have imagined a conversation between two sailors after the wind and sea calmed. i see them afterwards, late in the evening, with only a small candle burning for light, two sailors, Kevin and Tommy are awake in their hammocks in silent, deep pondering staring at the overhead, replaying the events of the day. As they remembered and pondered, they could hear the waves washing against the side of the ship, and the sound of timbers slightly creaking to the gentle sway of the sea.

“Hey Kev, you awake?” Tommy says softly to his friend. Kevin replies, “Yea, i’m here.” After a pause Tommy says, “i can’t sleep man. i can still hear the wind howling and the mast nearly breaking, and then (sigh) it all went dead still.” “Me too. i keep seeing that guys face when we threw him over the side.” Tommy, from his haunted thoughts says, “Oh gosh that was terrible. So terrible.” In a moment, Kevin gets to the root of what’s on his mind, “I can’t get him out of my mind. i can’t stop seeing when he hit the water. Ohhhh… and did you see his face when that giant fish suddenly surfaced? Oh man, it seemed to come out of nowhere! i can still the man’s eyes looking back at us as he went into its mouth. We all locked eyes at his last moment.” Dread and trepidacious doom fill their minds as they pause to ponder the moment. Tommy says, “Yea, the eyes, the eyes of Jonah looking back at us from inside… right before it closed its mouth and disappeared. It just rolled it’s big eyes back in that awful head, closed it’s mouth and disappeared below the waves. Just gone.”

Silence follows as they re-envision that terrible moment in the turmoil of their own thoughts. From their place on the ships deck, they watched Jonah hit the water, then surface, gasp for air and start to drift away, up and over the white peaks of the waves. Then a fish of some sort, probably about the size of the ship appeared, opened it’s mouth and sucked him inside like he was just a crumb of bread. And the eyes, the desperate eyes of Jonah looked back at them, his eyes meeting their eyes with them standing on the safety of the ship, the sailors were the last thing he saw before that massive mouth closed, and was taken down to the depths to be alone with God, himself and his thoughts. At the surface, suddenly everything went quiet, as if God was saying, “think about it”, and put an exclamation point on the silence. The wind stopped howling, the sea settled into a gentle roll, and then the crew was left to silence in the wake of a spectacular miracle.

This is significant… the eyes of Jonah looking back at them as they stood on the deck of the ship, were burned into their memory forever. How will they deal with that? How did this one event affect the rest of their lives of those sailors, for surely the eyes of Jonah, God’s deliverance, and the miracle of the storm and sea becoming calm after they did one of the most taboo things to do among sailors, surely it turned everything they thought they knew to mush in their minds? In view of the miraculous events before their eyes, any neutrality towards God completely evaporated. Look at the sequence: miracle, astonishment, revelation, decision, and God had certainly revealed Himself to everyone, so the only thing left was a decision: is He God or not?

Here ends part 1 of Unheard Conversations. Catch the next program for the continuation of the conversation.