Judges!

Yes! I am in the book of Judges! I started reading it today during studay hall at pep. It was good! I only read the first three chapters but I really learned about God and his love!

So what is happening is God tells Judah to fight the Canaanites and they do, and he hands the ladn over to them just as he promised. Alright, I don't want to tell you every little thing because you should read it yourself (hint hint ;D) but what I wanted to share with you is all through the first few chapters (and more, but I haven't gotten too far yet).

If you ever read Judges, you will notice that over and over again, the Israelites ditched Jesus completley and go to worship idols!

Judges 2:12-13 says, "They quit following the LORD, the God of their ancestors who had brought them out of Egypt. They began to worship the gods of the people who lived around them, and that made the LORD angry. The Israelites quit following the LORD and worshiped Baal and Ashtoreth."

That is just one example of them leaving god for some idols. So God punishes them for their sin, and then they Israelites come crying back to God and since he loves them SO much, he helps them.

Verse 18 of chapter 2 says, "When their enemies hurt them, the Israelites cried for help. So the LORD felt sorry for them and sent judges to save them from their enemies. The LORD was with those judges all their lives."

Here, God is showing us that he loves and and will be with us no matter how much we mess up. The thing that really got to me was how many times Israel sinned and turned away from God, and then how quick God was to accept them back when they ran back.
God loves us more than I could ever try to explain, or anyone. He will always forgive us, not matter what we have done or how often we do it. Sure, we will have to accept consequences when we sin, but you have to understand that God punishes us for our good.
How else are we suppose to learn that sinning is wrong?

Anyways, this was really scattered and I don't even think I said it right, but just read Judges and any other part of the Bible that you can, and you will see how many times God's people just totally forget about how great he is, and worship someone else, and also how many times God forgives them. It's really really fantastic!