{"id":3689,"date":"2013-12-21T22:24:47","date_gmt":"2013-12-21T21:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pender.org.uk\/?p=3689"},"modified":"2013-12-21T22:25:27","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T21:25:27","slug":"3689","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2013\/12\/3689\/","title":{"rendered":"I am not I AM"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"bible\">\u201cI know the Lord will bless me now,\u201d Micah said, \u201cbecause I have a Levite serving as my priest.\u201d<br \/>Judges 17:13 NLT<\/p>\n<p>There was a song by Gloria Gaynor which had a really bad attitude in the words. The title was &#8220;I am what I am&#8221; and it was a statement of total selfishness, self-interest and arrogance. It is, however, a fairly good descriptor of general attitudes today, and a clear statement of what I once was.<\/p>\n<p>Micah sounds as if he was like that. What he said in this verse isn&#8217;t so much a statement of faith, but more a statement of his rights: because he had done something then he will get something else.<\/p>\n<p>A line in the song says &#8216;Your life is a sham till you can shout out loud, I am what I am.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Our lives are a sham until we realise just what we are &#8211; not the sanitised, looking in the mirror, not as bad as the guy over there version of what we are, though, the real version, the truth. The truth is that I&#8217;m not a very nice person deep down and I never was before I became a follower of Christ. Even now, the nasty me comes out, the sinner, the angry man. And the thing is that just going to church on a Sunday doesn&#8217;t change it &#8211; that&#8217;s just the same as Micah getting a priest to come and live with him. My life would be a sham if I thought that.<\/p>\n<p>I am what I am, but I can be different, because Jesus, the I AM, can make the difference, not by living with me, but by living in me and through me.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI know the Lord will bless me now,\u201d Micah said, \u201cbecause I have a Levite serving as my priest.\u201dJudges 17:13 NLT There was a song by Gloria Gaynor which had a really bad attitude in the words. The title was &#8220;I am what I am&#8221; and it was a statement of total selfishness, self-interest and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","category-5","description-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sfWaLo-3689","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7173,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2022\/11\/10-life-is-good-and-then-it-gets-longer\/","url_meta":{"origin":3689,"position":0},"title":"10 &#8211; Life is good and then it gets longer","author":"Robert Pender","date":"25\/11\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=\"7174\" img_size=\"full\"][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=\"\"]You may have read in my post Bad Sad Glad that I saw the Oncologist last Friday and that my prognosis was not good. Without chemotherapy, I would only have 2 to 3 months to live, with chemo, I was looking at 12-18 months. The Oncologist thought\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7406,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2023\/06\/22-questions-questions\/","url_meta":{"origin":3689,"position":1},"title":"22 &#8211; Questions, Questions","author":"Robert Pender","date":"01\/06\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"So, did I buy the turbo trainer, or didn't I? Well, the answer to that is easy - it's yes. Yes to both questions!","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7424,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2023\/06\/23-lashings-of-lashes\/","url_meta":{"origin":3689,"position":2},"title":"23 &#8211; Lashings of Lashes","author":"Robert Pender","date":"10\/06\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=\"7426\" img_size=\"full\" alignment=\"center\"][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]There are a lot of things happen when you get chemotherapy, but everyone is different and it all depends on the recipe of drugs which they put into you for your particular cancer. Most people tend to think that hair loss is going to happen, and most\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7440,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2023\/07\/24-the-lucky-phew\/","url_meta":{"origin":3689,"position":3},"title":"24 &#8211; The Lucky Phew!","author":"Robert Pender","date":"25\/07\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=\"7441\" img_size=\"full\" alignment=\"center\"][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I should have written this way back at the start of July, but things got in the way. In my last post I was saying that the CT scan had been delayed and that they had decided to extend my chemo a bit. I'm glad to say\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7158,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2022\/11\/badsadglad\/","url_meta":{"origin":3689,"position":4},"title":"8 &#8211; Bad Sad Glad","author":"Robert Pender","date":"20\/11\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]There is no photo at the top of this post because there isn't one which could cover everything that I am going to say. The three weeks since my last post have been a bit busy with appointments and it has been a whirlwind of emotions and news. There have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7329,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2023\/03\/19-words-mean-everything\/","url_meta":{"origin":3689,"position":5},"title":"19 &#8211; Words Mean Everything","author":"Robert Pender","date":"12\/03\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"If you have been following my blog you will know that in November last year I was diagnosed as having terminal cancer. In episode 8 of this series, I described how the oncologist told me that if I did not get chemotherapy I would have two or three months to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pender.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/words.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pender.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/words.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pender.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/words.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pender.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/words.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pender.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/words.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3689"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3693,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689\/revisions\/3693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}