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In Israel lamps were used in everyday life, they didn’t have light switches or gas powered lamps so they used olive oil lamps, at night people lit their lamps and put them in niches in the walls of ancient homes. The lamps did not provide a ton of light, but just enough so that they can see were they are going. Lamps were something that everybody had and everybody used. Our lamp in our faith that lights our way is the bible, it lights our way and we can use it to learn about our creator and stay on the right path and not stumble. God promised David that he would have a decedent on the throne forever, that is Jesus, he lights our way. My visual is a flashlight, everybody has them and uses them, just like lamps.

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In israel the kings were power hungry and did not follow God, ahab was the worst king of israel, the bible says that he did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than all of the kings of israel before him. Ahab married jezebel, the daughter of the king of sidon, she worshipped baal and eventually got ahab to worship baal too. Ahab killed almost all of the Lord’s prophets, except elijah who tries to get the people of israel to worship the Lord, not baal. The people of israel think that baal is bigger than God, so elijah using the power of God tells ahab that it will not rain or dew for the next few years unless elijah commands it. Elijah challenges the prophets of baal to make fire fall down out of heaven and light an altar, elijah pours buckets of water on his altar and when he prayed to God to make fire come down from heaven, it evaporates the water and burns up the altar. The prophets of baal worship and pray to baal all day but nothing happens, elijah mocks them by saying things like “maybe he’s asleep”. My visual is a blindfold, because sometimes power is like a blindfold we want something so badly that we don’t see what is happening around us and the effect it has on other people.

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Israel and Judah sinned against God and He is disappointed and let them get taken into exile by the babylonians and assyrians. In exile and shortly before, the prophets tell the israelites that if they continue to sin that God will punish them harshly. The Israelites continue making bad choices and God sends them into exile. The prophets tell the israelites to stop taking advantage of the poor and to stop worshiping false gods. My visual is a ticket, after you do something that is illegal or is not right you might get stopped by a police officer and get a ticket or go to jail or court or get fined, just like the israelites they did something wrong and then God punished them. God gave the israelites plenty of chances, but the israelites did not listen.

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Israel did not have a king the rest of the world did, and they wanted to be like everyone else in the world. They begged God for a king but God said no, finally God gave them a king, his name was Saul. Saul was a melek, a war king, he was more interested in himself and his ideas and his accomplishments rather than what God values. Saul put his values before God’s values, sometimes we do that in our lives too. David was the second king of Israel, unlike Saul he was a nagid, he put God’s values first and was fair to the people of Israel. I chose a scale because I feel like we really don’t know what we value most, we might say it is God and christian faith, but is it?

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The israelites were slaves in Egypt but God saved them from the Egyptians through Moses. The enslavement of the israelites became part of their story, just like when we go through struggles they become part of our story. The israelites have a book that follows their story its called the bible, some of the books of the bible are about the history of the israelites, told by people who were influenced by God in some way. In our minds there is something just like that, like a journal of our story that writes itself sometimes without us knowing about it, then when someone wants to hear our story it is right there then all of the important time and days and moments of your life are in your head. In my story, my dad died on October 15 2011, it completely changed the course of my life. A book is one way people tell stories, just like we tell our stories to people who want to hear them.

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Conflict and doubt are things that we experience in life, whether it be in a sports team or how a political debate will play out, but we also have conflict and doubt in our faith. It is natural for us to have doubts in our christian faith, we all have certain things that we think seem far fetched or unreal. It is okay to ask questions and search for answers from God, and it is healthy to do so. Even people that are considered saints or on another level of their faith in God like mother Theresa or Philip yancey had doubts or conflict with God. mother Teresa said “When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.” everybody at one point in their lives doubts God and his power. My visual is a life jacket, if you doubt your ability to swim, or the ability of the boat to float. Just like sometimes we doubt God’s ability to protect us.

Names of God

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names in the bible, especially in the old testament, were very important to people. When someone introduced themselves in bible times it was like saying who they were as a person. For example elijah means the Lord is yahweh, adam means a man. Israel means wrestles with God and jacob (israel) literally fought with God. Jesus means to rescue or deliver, and he rescued the world from sin and death. Names in the bible held a lot of weight and influenced the people who were named those names. To me a name tag tells people who the person who is wearing the name tag is or sometimes something about them ethnically.

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God’s new covenant through Jesus brings heaven to our broken world. In Isaiah 6:11a it says that the wolf will live with the lamb, that refers to when Christ comes again and the world becomes perfect there will be no death. in a broken world they be enemies and the lamb would get eaten, but in a perfect world they would be friends. I think that heaven will be almost exactly like earth, but there will be no more war or death or crying and everybody would get along. Heaven will be perfect and we will all praise the Lord forever in the perfectness of heaven. My visual is duct tape, because you can use duct tape to fix certain things or to stick it back together, Jesus is the world’s duct tape, he fixes us and puts us back together.