Former U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt is famous for the phrase, “walk softly, and carry a big stick”. It’s that idea of unarguable authority, and conveys the message that it would be in the opposing party’s best interest to rethink their own intentions before proceeding further.
Which is something I see clearly in Judah’s good King Hezekiah and his encounter with the big political enemy of his day, Assyria. It’s important to note that, in the middle of a longstanding family history of spiritual genocide, Hezekiah opts to follow God instead. This decision, however, doesn’t exclude him (and his people) from the problems of the day, one of the biggest being the bully, King Sennacherib. Continue reading “Big Stick Faith”
The story of the Old Testament prophet, Jonah, is an intriguing one, and is not without a mild undercurrent of a Providential sense of humor. Not to poke fun at Jonah’s dire straits, but he did, after all, open himself wide to at least some form of discipline. Interestingly, as the story unfolds, Jonah never denies that he worships the God of the Hebrew people; he just persistently argues with Him, at least concerning God’s intended task for His wayward prophet. I have to wonder what brought the man to this extreme—maybe someone from Nineveh had harmed his family somehow, causing a hatred so intense that it created a prejudice toward the whole town (along the lines of the comment about Jesus: “can anything good come out of Nazareth”.) Maybe Jonah considered God to be unjust in His patient treatment of anyone “not Jewish”. 
INSPIRATION with an ATTITUDE 