Living life with steps of faith

See Genesis 22:14

Other than the consequence of sin entering the world, how has our world changed as a result of the fruit being eaten from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil"? What knowledge was available to us prior to the Fall? And a much more personal question: When does over-thinking become a sin? (these are rhetorical questions)

So, today I sat down and began reading Genesis from the Message version of the Bible and it has been good for me to do this. As I read, I stop and question, "does it really say that?" and then briefly check the validity of the translation. Most of the time, I am surprised by the accuracy and the manner by which it makes me read Scripture differently, from a fresh perspective. But I did find one translation liberty that caught me off guard, it read: "The very ground is cursed because of you; getting food from the ground Will be as painful as having babies is for your wife; you'll be working in pain all your life long. " I'm not quite sure where the "will be as painful as having babies is for your wife" came from. See Genesis 3:17-19. It is also interesting how much more quickly my eyes glide across the paper and the passages. I read at a much quicker pace, even though I am stopping every few sentences to check the translation aga...

Genesis 2:2-4 (The Message) 2-4 By the seventh day God had finished his work. On the seventh day he rested from all his work. God blessed the seventh day. He made it a Holy Day Because on that day he rested from his work, all the creating God had done. This is the story of how it all started, of Heaven and Earth when they were created. If God the greatest worker rested, why don't we?

"Prosper!" That word, that command, seems so powerful. "Prosper!" The Lord wants and desires for us to prosper. He wants our lives to bear fruit. He wants our lives to be good and to be flavorful, our branches to be heavy with fruit. He desires our best, because we are His best. He is a creator. One who creates wants his or her creation to be beautiful, to be quality, to be the best that it could possibly be, and we are God's creation. His desire is that we might prosper, bear fruit and multiply. I don't very often pick up the Message version of the Bible, but today as I sat down at my computer to pull up Scripture, I felt a bit aimless. I started by looking up Ephesians in the Message version. I needed to stop and listen to the words, not just be able to complete the sentence without thinking or absorbing the tasteful morsels of its meaning. And then I came across a 61 day reading plan on Biblegateway.com. Thus, this is where I began: on day 1 -- Genesis, t...