Rick Nier...Woo!

Trust Me. That was the message God gave us. Trust Me. Anything else, God?  *Crickets I mean, God I am trusting you. I took this first step in faith. It wasn't easy. Perhaps you would like to expound further upon what you want me to do, to learn, to experience? Nope. Just. Trust. Me. I'm learning that asking to have more faith or trust in God is akin to asking for more patience. There's only one way to get it, and it's going to take time. So while I am waiting, I have been reading about Moses and the Israelites in the book of Exodus. I knew this would give me both good and bad examples of how to learn to trust in God. The Bad Example: The Israelites In Exodus 19, we learn that their trek from Egypt to Mount Sinai had taken ' exactly two months .' Have you ever considered some of the timeline of the Israelites and their transition from Egypt to the Promised Land? Yeah, we're familiar with the fact that it ended up taking 40 years, due to thei...

One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock far into the wilderness and came to Sinai, the mountain of God. ~Exodus 3:1 I have already acknowledged that it is I who must seek out God , no matter His purpose or His timing. Moses is a great example of this. He may not have intended to seek out God, but he found himself at the mountain of God. And that's when God started to move. God appears in the form of a bush that burned but didn't burn up. This intrigued Moses, and why not? But check out what happens next; When the Lord saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush, “Moses! Moses!” ~Exodus 3:4 Do you see what's happening here? First, one had to go 'far into the wilderness' to get to the mountain of God. Too often we miss this and assume God can be accessed right around the corner. And while God is everywhere, I believe He wants us to make more effort to be whe...

I would like some on-the-job training. This, of course, requires a job, which I don't currently have . It wouldn't even have to be that difficult. Hire me as your youth pastor. Show me the youth room. Introduce me to a few teens. I'll take it from there.  And if God has some more lessons to teach me, He could certainly feel free to do so. Train me up while I am on the job. This makes sense to me, because then I would be providing for my family once again, our future would be more certain (certainly more than it is right now) and I could be passing along those lessons to any who would listen (or read, like you fine people!). Why couldn't God do that? Maybe because He isn't as concerned with how my family will be taken care of as I am. Sounds scandalous, right? Did this guy just try to say he cares more than God? Actually....no, that's not what I am saying.  What I am saying is that I am more concerned. To be concerned means to worry. It means to have anxie...

In the book of Genesis, we find Jacob leaving the land God promised his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac. Seems kind of an odd thing to do until you realize that Jacob is kind of the sleazeball of this family. Cheating his brother out of blessing and birthright has left Jacob with a sudden need to change zip codes.  On his way out of town, he builds an altar to God, worships Him there and prays about his return to the Promised Land. Little did he know it would be 20 years before he ever saw this place again.  Sleazeball though he was, Jacob understood God had a calling on his life. But what if, during the transition, Jacob had sat around and done nothing? What if he decided to simply wait until God handed him the next step?  By reading several chapters, we can see that he would have missed out on having several kids, several kids which would become the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel, which is what God changed Jacob's name to when he returned t...