✯✶✰☆ Jehovah Uzzi ☆✰✶✯ ✯✶✰☆ The Lord is My Strength ☆✰✶✯ by Diane Stortz ~~ Psalm 28:7 "The Lord is my strength and shield. I trust him, and he helps me." ~~ From 1 Samuel 17. "Israel's soldiers shivered in their boots. Across the valley in front of them camped the army of the Philistines. And one of the Philistine soldiers, Goliath, looked like a giant--he was more than nine feet tall! He wore heavy armor and carried a big spear. "Send someone out to fight me!" Goliath yelled to the Israelites, every day for forty days. "Come on!" The Israelites trembled. No one wanted to fight Goliath. Then David, the son of Jesse, came into the Israelite camp with supplies for his brothers. While he was there, he saw and heard Goliath. "Send someone out to fight me!" Goliath yelled again. "That giant is defying the army of God!" David said. "Who is going to fight him?" But none of the soldiers--not even King Saul--wanted to fight Goliath. "I will fight Goliath," David told the king. "How can you do that?" the king asked. "You're just a boy." "I have fought with lions and bears to save my father's sheep," David said. "And God will help me fight this giant." "Wear my armor, then," the king told David. David put on the king's armor, but he took it off again. "I can't wear this," he said. "I'm not used to it." Instead, he chose five smooth stones from a nearby brook and put them in his shepherd's pouch. Then, with his sling in his hand, David walked toward Goliath. "What?" yelled Goliath, "A boy is coming to fight me?" "I have come against you in the name of the Lord, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have challenged and insulted!" David yelled back. "Today everyone will know there is a God in Israel and that He saves--but not with swords and spears! The battle is the Lord's!" David put a stone in his sling and twirled the sling as he ran towards Goliath. The stone flew out of the sling and hit Goliath in the forehead. Down he went, falling on his face! The army of the Philistines turned and ran away. The Israel's army gave a big shout and chased after them as they ran. ~~ Being strong isn't just about muscles. It's also about being brave and doing the right thing, even when that's hard. One of God's name is The Lord My Strength. Sometimes God gives us a job we think we can't do--it seems too hard for us. Sometimes we are tired or sick and feel weak, but God is always strong. God gives us the power we need. He is our strength every day. Philippians 4:13 says, 'I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.'"
The kids who are 15 and older are receiving a series of letters on Judges! This month is Jair's story. For kids who are 13-16 and attend the same project, one teen is receiving the names of God series and the other teen is receiving the Judges series.
Hello Friend! Jair is our next Judge, and like Tola before him, he is only mentioned in a few verses in Judges 10.
Stuart Chase writes, "Tola faithfully laboured for 23 years to restore order to a nation plagued by chaos. Like all the judges, he died and was buried. But he had done a great work and had evidently left Israel in a time of prosperity. Enter Jair: “After him arose Jair the Gileadite, who judged Israel twenty-two years. And he had thirty sons who rode on thirty donkeys, and they had thirty cities, called Havvoth-jair to this day, which are in the land of Gilead. And Jair died and was buried in Kamon” (vv. 3–5). Like Tola, biographical detail of Jair is sketchy. We know that he was a Gileadite, which means that he hailed from the east of Jordan, where two-and-a-half tribes had asked Moses for land before crossing into the Promised Land... Jair judged Israel for 22 years, and the only other thing we know about him was that his thirty sons rode on thirty donkeys and ruled thirty cities in Gilead. Jair then died and was buried in Kamon. While we know little about the 22-year reign of Jair, the reference to thirty sons who rode thirty donkeys and ruled thirty cities suggests a time of great prosperity. It took some wealth to not only sire thirty sons but to provide each of those sons with a donkey and a city. Furthermore, there is no reference at all to Jair needing to save Israel from enemies. It seems that Jair reaped the benefits of the order that Tola had restored. Sadly, it appears that he did very little—or perhaps that what he did was insufficiently influential—to prepare Israel for what would come. The nation’s prosperity served as a perfect opportunity to guard against idolatry. Sadly, the opportunity was not seized: “The people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines. And they forsook the LORD and did not serve him” (v. 6). Times of peace and prosperity in our lives are God-given opportunities to take stock and to guard against temptations that will lead us into idolatry... Sadly, if Jair’s story is anything to go by, it seems that Israel took the season of prosperity to fatten itself rather than to guard against future idolatry. At no other time in the period of the judges was there opportunity to enrich oneself more than right here, and it appears that that is what Israel chose to do. And while they lived in comfort for a few decades, their prosperity did not guarantee protection from idolatry. Indeed, before long, “the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD” (v. 6)... God’s grace is available to help you overcome temptation!"
Happy Writing!
