Got a Place to Serve?
Thanks to everyone who has signed up to serve this summer at Tower Road! We love providing lunches to our neighbors out there, and we get it all kicked off this coming week!
Haven’t found your spot to serve yet? We definitely have room for you at Celebrate Recovery. There are a dozen different ways to serve during our Friday evening meetings. Plus, you get to see radical life change happening there all the time!
Interested? Just email Janet Crawford and let her know you’d like to lend a hand.
The Top Three Israel Questions
People have asked me a lot of questions about next summer’s Israel trip.. I can’t wait! Here are the top three questions I am getting:
Is this trip restricted to our church, or can anyone go?
I say the more the merrier! Please feel free to invite your friends and family members. I DO NOT recommend taking kids under age 16 or so.
What about the fighting going on over there?
That is life in Israel. When you go, you will notice a lot of the teenagers carrying automatic weapons, because the fighting can break out at any time.
Every time I have gone has been between flare-ups. (I was there once when the rockets were landing and exploding in the Galilee area!)
For now, it has quieted back down, and I think we will be okay… But things can change. We will adapt as necessary. Buy the trip insurance.
Do I have to be vaccinated to go?
Probably. Things are changing rapidly, but by next summer everyone expects there to be some sort of official vaccine policy for international travel. Airlines are beginning to use apps like VeriFly to pre-screen for Covid symptoms and vaccinations before passengers can fly anywhere.
Have you reserved your spot yet? I would love for you to join me in Israel next June to walk where Jesus walked.
Lifegroup Discussion Questions
So, when we arrive at the beginning of Romans 3, Paul’s long-build case is coming to it’s close. His big 67-verse point? God is angry. Very angry. At everyone.
But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
Romans 1:18-20 NLT
We really aren’t comfortable talking about God’s anger, are we? Why do you think that is?
Why should we talk about it? In what instances should we not talk about it?
Let’s just do a quick, honest look at God’s anger.. He is honest and upfront with us about it in His Word, so let’s embrace it and learn about it…
So, God describes himself in this famous, most-repeated passage this way:
Yahweh! The Lord!
Exodus 34:6 NLT
The God of compassion and mercy!
I am slow to anger
and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.
What do we learn about God and his anger in this passage?
Ancient Hebrew is really weird with describing anger. I would hate to be a Bible translator, because they really have a LOT of work to do to make the text understandable to English-speaking Americans.
The English phrase “slow to anger” comes from two Hebrew words. The first word, ‘erek, means “long,” (in distance or time). The second word, ‘appayim, means nostrils. Literally, God says he is long in nostrils.
Um, what?
Yeah, the standard Hebrew way to describe an angry person is to say “their nose burned hot.” For example, when little David’s older brother hears how David is talking about Goliath and the Philistines, he gets angry… he har appayim… He became hot in the nose! (1 Sam 17:28)
How physiologically accurate is this?
So for God to say he is “long in nostrils…?”
So, what actually heats up God’s nose? Read the next few passages and talk about what each of them says about God’s hot nose.
They went off and worshiped other gods and bowed down to them, gods they did not know, gods he had not given them. Therefore the Lord’s anger burned [lit. “his nose burned hot”] against this land, so that he brought on it all the curses written in this book. In anger [‘ap / “nose”] wrath [khemah / “heat”] and in great anger [qetseph / “anger”] the Lord uprooted them from their land and thrust them into another land, as it is now.”
Deuteronomy 29:27-28
Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the Lord, and when he heard them his anger burned hot. Then fire from the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.
Numbers 11:1
For they have rejected the law of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies;
Isaiah 5:24-25
they have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
That is why the Lord’s anger burns against his people, and why he has raised his fist to crush them.
Man, there sure are a lot of things to talk about here… but in the interest of your group’s time, let’s just look at this one last thing:
It is easy to view a person’s anger as something negative… But can a good person get angry sometimes? Why?
I think you can tell a lot about what a person cares about by what they get angry about.
Someone once said that the opposite of love isn’t hate… The opposite of love is apathy.
I love my kids. So when I feel they get slighted, or get done wrong, I get angry. I care deeply about my kids.
Do you really want to be in a relationship with a person who never gets angry? If God never got angry, wouldn’t it show him to be uncaring or disengaged?
Okay. That’s it. Have a great week!