Elaine, Week 1

My family has been blessed with a varitey of flowers, each having its own unique color, shape and size. Among the many choices, my favorites have to be the purple and white Petunias. They mean more to me than just any ordinary flower would because they remind me of something very important. That something is a heart rescued from sin by God's grace. Now obviously, I don't mean its shape or its size looks like a heart, but to me the color represents salvation. All humans begin as sinners with dark hearts, but by making the decision to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, a Christian heart becomes a lovely and pure white. Then their faith will truly blossom.

I would like to challenge each person who reads this, definitely including myself, to think about two questions;

1. Has your heart become the lovely, pure white that the Lord wants it to be?


2. Is your walk with God really, truly and genuinely blossoming?

I chose a rather large passage for today's post. Of course, each of the thirteen verses are significant in their own way, but the three I have in bold stand out the most to me.

Hebrews 3:7-19--A Warning against Unbelief

7 So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today if you hear His voice, 8 Do not harden your hearts as you did in the time of the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, 9where your fathers, who tested and tried me for forty years, saw what I did. 10 That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said 'Their hearts are always going astray and they do not know my ways.' 11 So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.'" 12 See to it my brothers, that not one of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that will turn away from the true God. 13 Encourage one another daily, as long as it can be called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's decietfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly until the end the confidence we had in the beginning. 15 As has just been said "Do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion." 16 Who were those that heard, yet rebelled? Were they not those whome Moses led out of Egypt? 17 With whom was he angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? 18 And to whom did God swear that those who disobeyed would never enter his rest? 19 So see: They Could not enter because of their unbelief.

Photo taken by Elaine, Spring 2011