Turn To See

John 20:15-16 “ “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She TURNED and said to him in Aramaic,“Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). “

Is it possible that the thing you are crying over is actually over and you don’t know it yet?

It was so with Mary Magdalene.  She had reached such a high point in her grieving and was so immobilized by it, that she couldn’t even recognize the Man in front of her to be the One who she was crying over. Jesus, the Risen Lord, stood in her sight as the living proof of the invalidity of her grief and yet Mary could not reconcile it with what she was seeing with her eyes. Are our eyes so clouded with tears that we cannot see that our prayers are being answered, are we mourning over unfulfilled promises, when they are in fact, fully-fledged out and asking us “who is it you are looking for?”

We can get so overwhelmed by what we see or know in the natural that it becomes impossible for us to comprehend when the supernatural occurs, even if it has been promised to us by the infallible word of God. Such was what happened with Sarah, that when she considered her body that had lived out its natural purpose and the age of her husband, she laughed at the promise God gave Abraham, that He would surely bless them with a son within the year (Genesis 18:11-12 “Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?”“).

It’s a natural reaction, right? ….Well, should it be?

Mary crying at the grave side, is such an obviously expected behavior, that it should have surprised her when she was asked why she was doing it. I believe that Jesus was calling her attention to how she was perceiving what was happening around her, just as the Lord addressed Sarah’s hidden laughter (Genesis 18: 13-14 “The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son””). You see, we are called to be spiritual beings. But when we try to process things as natural men and women, there is a gap in our understanding which can result in our perceiving things of the spirit incorrectly or partially and emoting to the confusion we see rather than the confirmation that it is  (1 Corinthians 2:14 “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”)

YOU CANNOT SEE THROUGH THE FLESH WHAT CAN ONLY BE SHOWN TO THE SPIRIT

Please look at this image below:

What God speaks to us can look like this if we try to understand it in the natural. Just like an encrypted email can only be opened by the recipient who has the password given to him by the sender because of the confidentiality that he enjoys with him, the heavenly secrets can only  be accessed by the children of God who commune with Him in spirit and in truth. God is Spirit and He made us to be spiritual beings who discern things in our spirit and not in our flesh. He gave us the Holy Spirit to aid us in this endeavor. (John 16:13 “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth,…”) The real question is: Are we sometimes anxious, depressed, angry, fearful, doubtful or weary because we have been trying to reconcile the very real challenges we are going through with the promises of God based on our human interpretation and failing ? If we have, then we need to know that there is a disconnect in our life with the divine, because THE DIVINE CANNOT BE COMPREHENDED AT THE LEVEL OF THE HUMAN; NO MATTER HOW INTELLIGENT THE SAID HUMAN IS.

It is our own fleshly knowledge that veils our hearts. This veil is manifested as the grief in Mary’s heart that she wished for the body of the crucified Jesus while standing in the presence of His resurrected self and it is manifested as the defeat in Sarah’s heart that she dismissed the supernatural blessing as impossible. I wonder if we too are looking into an empty grave while the Lord is calling to us. I wonder if we too are standing behind a DOOR and listening to what God is speaking, instead of  meeting Him face to face (Genesis 18:9-10 “They said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?” And he said, “She is in the tent.” The Lord said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.”) Our spiritual eyes can be opened wide enough to believe God only when we are truly facing Him. It was when Jesus called our her name that Mary TURNED to Him and realized the risen Lord (John 20:Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).”)

2 Corinthians 3:16-18 ”  But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit“

When we turn to the Lord, we are are truly unveiled and guess what: not only is our understanding about spiritual truths clarified but we are freed from disappointments caused by our fleshly interpretations and our very countenance begins to reflect His glory. No more weeping in grief or laughing in disbelief, just boasting in the goodness of God, unveiled in Christ Jesus.

GOD BLESS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Public Spectacle

Colossians 2:15 “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

It’s the hour when the called out priesthood of the Lord of Hosts is once again reminded of the time when God made a public spectacle of His love by giving His Only Son Jesus to die on the cross for us. How often do we remember this when we absently comment on someone’s common mistakes or intentionally launch into a diatribe over the great injustice done by another- that the Lord not only took a stand to cancel every one of our merited condemnations, but has also taken His rightful seat to continue advocating on the behalf of the entire world? (Romans 8:33-34 “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”)

We live in a day and age when it’s possible to make known our views, opinions and judgements on any given topic or person, simply at the touch of a finger. The technology in communication which reinvents itself every nanosecond to supposedly bring people closer together, has endowed mankind with the power to raise an applause for one and an outcry against another, making anything and everything a sensational news item. There are several platforms on which the most mundane mistakes and the most private misdemeanors recieve avalanches of undue attention from across the globe. We, as the church of God, need to make the difference in the way we use these channels, by categorically manifesting the love of God at every given opportunity, because that is exactly what Jesus did- every time a group of people looked down on someone’s misdeeds, Jesus turned up to embrace that very person in full view of everyone (Luke 19:5-7 “And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.””)

What Jesus did in that moment looking up at Zaccheus, was actually directed at the crowds that surrounded Him. Instead of pointing a finger at Zaccheus’ malpractices or demanding a public apology for his unethical means of money-making, Jesus simply made a scene of His reckless love for the sinner-man! He set the perfect example to show that we who are called to be in the business of building each other up in love shouldn’t be tearing each other down (Galatians 5:14-15 “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”)

Christian exhorting is NOT mudslinging a miscreant with an audience watching. It is the private dealing with a sibling, done in utter meekness and under the influence of the Holy Spirit, with a heightened awareness of the ONLY God-desired outcome- to bring home the prodigal (Galatians 6:1 “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”) And for those of us who would persist in unveiling another’s mistakes, the Lord admonishes that we first look into our own closet (John 8:7 “.. “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”) An anonymous writer has rightly said, “for often he who is first to find fault, is the very one who has first transgressed.”

God bless

The Passion behind Compassion

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. “

If there is a quest for the source of the desire for expressing love or the root of the passion behind compassion, it would end at finding Jesus Christ who is the personification of love and who came down to explicitly express the Father’s compassion toward a dying world and the deep seated yearning in Him that none should perish (1 John 4:8-9 “God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”) God Himself is the author of love and the express image of it.  And our capacity to love anyone or the will to be compassionate toward anybody has its genesis in Christ Jesus, who through His Spirit cascades love into our hearts (Romans 5:5 “… because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”)

Compassion is one expression of love just as mercy, grace and empathy might be. Has it ever happened that we’ve tried to show God’s love to some one, comfort someone in their pain, encourage someone is their backsliding, teach someone a spiritual discipline and somehow the action back fired or set in motion completely chaotic events? If we were to honestly check ourselves in that situation, we’d find that we had reached out  because of the enthusiasm of the flesh rather than the urging of the Holy Spirit. When our compassion is led by the prompting of the Holy Spirit within us it won’t have that effect (1 Corinthians 14:33 “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace”). Identifying the driving force or the passion behind our acts of love and kindness to one another is of paramount importance because if we are not careful to direct our actions according to the leading of the Spirit, then we are in the perilous position of switching to default mode- acting to satiate the lusts of our flesh which can have unwanted consequences (Galatians 5:16-17 “ But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do”).

 It is with the very intent of equipping us with the ability to fulfill the greatest commandment- to love God and to love others that Jesus Christ promised us ‘Another Helper’ (John 14:16 “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever”). When not directed by the Spirit, our motivation to show love and offer comfort comes from unconsciously exalting ourselves. We think of ourselves to be in a better position, more enabled or simply wiser than the one we are reaching out to and somehow what is so holy and pure to God as love, comes out as condescension along with a need to be identified or graded for the benevolence. The office of any ministry for God is primarily service. To love someone with God-kind of love requires humility. Only a humble heart that is prepared to serve another can truly love and exhibit the right kind of compassion, without personal goals. God came down from His throne in heaven, was born as an infant much like the rest of us and served His life on a platter to show His love for us (Philippians 2:3-8 “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross“). 

The passion behind our compassion is Christ Jesus, Himself (1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.”)  

Being a Christian is not standing on a pedestal, feeling self sufficient in our own ways and exhorting others who may not have fully climbed up yet, with passionate speeches. Rather it is in the going down and accepting that it is the grace of God alone that uplifts us and desperately depending on the Spirit of God to direct our compassion toward people with solid actions (1 John 3:18 “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”). 

God Bless

God Of All Comfort

Isaiah 66:13 “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; And you will be comforted in Jerusalem.”

When we picture God as God the Father, it is natural to visualize Him in a perfectly paternal way as the Planner, Provider, and Protector. But we are also promised in the Word of God that we will receive a kind of nurturing care in God’s hands that is like that of a mother to her new born. Actually, even more mindful than that is He in His compassion toward us (Isaiah 49:15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”) When we think of the Lord as compassionate we expect the expression of such a compassion to take the form of readily available soothing arms to hold us whenever we are hurting, lonely or in need for such an affection. But today, we are encouraged to have a bigger understanding of the greatness and timelessness of the love and the motherhood of our Abba Father, which is not just about hugs and kisses to make a boo boo go away but it is about the Great I Am using his own body to provide comfort to His people as nursing mother does her child!

The comfort of a mother’s arms paint a picture of a mother holding close to her bosom her child to satisfy every last bit of hunger and thirst that  the child was wailing because of.  Just as a mother cannot biologically turn away from the cry of a child but is compelled to attend to it so urgently because her body responds to that plaintive call even before her mind can process the situation, God cannot and does not miss the sincere cries of His people, instead He hastens to hear us and cannot help but respond in His great love for us (Psalm 66 :19-20 ” But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!”)

Because we so often cry out against our situations and tear up about this thing, that thing or the other in our prayer, we might anticipate that our God who is the prayer answering God would rush toward us like a relay race runner with the answer like a baton which He would pass to into our outstretched waiting hands so that we can grab it and run forward without even looking back. Sometimes we simply want God to quiet our tantrums by handing us the exact missing pieces to fit the puzzle that we scattered all over the place- meet the immediate need with an immediate feed. But then no mother treats her child’s requirement like a drive thru fast-food joint does its customer’s order. A mother takes the time to read her child’s face and knows what her child is really hungering after, even without being told and feeds her child accordingly and certainly not with anything junk if she can help it! So does our Lord. He knows that though we may be famished and all cried out, our prayers don’t need breaded answers, rather a supernatural provision that comes not from the ground up but heaven down, the living Word which when we consume ravenously we would be satiated in a more real way (Deuteronomy 8:3 “And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”)

We are not simply at the receiving end of the maternal care and nurturing at the hands of our God but are called to be an extension cord to whoever needs plugging into His love. The nursing mother comforting her infant with the warmth of her own body is also a divine display of how our God, the Balm of Gilead, intends for His body, the church, each and every one of His own chosen people who have received loving kindness at his hands to be the source of comfort for all the ailing and wailing who are in desperate need of soothing (2 Corinthians 1:3-4 “ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God”).

God Bless

 

 

Off-loading the right cargo

Jonah 1:5 “Then the mariners were afraid; and every man cried out to his god, and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep.”

There are times when God allows a gale to blow over our lives, not to topple us over but to sever some associations that might have climbed aboard and lying dormant somewhere around. The reason is not that they’re wrong associates but that their purposed destination is quite different  to where we are headed and God does not want us to facilitate someone’s disobedience however passive the facilitation may be. 

GOD BLESS 

Boast in Christ Not in Past

2 Corinthians 10:17-18 “ “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.”

We can be boastful without even meaning to. That’s the fact. Humility doesn’t come by accident. It is not the default position of the heart to be humble. If it is our desire to do the will of God, our heart must first, consciously, take the right position- an inclined posture leaning on His works, His testimony, His words of wisdom. Or else, we stand at risk of making a move or speaking a word that can unintentionally be self-serving or self-appraising (Psalm 119:36 ” Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain!”).  When we are constantly watching reruns of the past from which Christ Jesus has rescued us, it ceases to be boasting about God and turns into boasting about ourselves, even with the ‘Hallelujahs’ and the ‘Praise the Lords’. It is like looking at a picture in of you in a roller-coaster and remembering the ride and not the guy that opened the gate and let you out. 

The tendency to pat oneself on the back arises especially when we take a trip down memory lane. Oh those days! We see the great gulf between the ‘Where-I-had-been’ to the ‘Where-I-am-at’, and our heart swells with inadvertent pride. A splendid opportunity to accredit God with the logistics really! (Psalm 40:2 “He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.”) Sometimes, we reminisce about how lengthy the trials had been and how tricky the mazes were out of which God’s righteous right hand has navigated us.When we love telling tales about our own wicked past, we are indulging in a perverse glorying in the suffering or in the ignorance that was part of us in the past. If we are talking about “the bog” more than “the Rock”, we need to know that we are ‘gossiping’, because it is a story about someone that has died to those works (2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”)

Our humility is in the boasting of God’s work that is alive in us, that is producing a new fruit in us everyday, not in the dead works that we have walked out of (Ephesians 2:4-5 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— “). The difference between boasting in Christ and boasting in self is how often we remember what He is doing over and over again in us versus what we did once upon a time.  We are called to count our blessings, His benefits, and not keep the books of the losses before that. When we do this we truly enjoy the rewards of God’s approval- we soar high in His commendation of who we are in Him  (Psalm 103:2-5 “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”)

We need to be careful of what memories we choose to relive and what we choose to keep in their graves. If what God has chosen to forget is something we choose to remember, isn’t that prideful? And He has chosen to remember our past no more for His name’s sake. There is no glory to God in our resurrecting the dusty old bones from the closet (Isaiah 43:25 ““I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”) If we insist on doing it we need to be aware that we are idolizing our ‘has-been’ and actively blocking our visibility of the ‘will-be’ plans of God for us. That is why God asks that we let go of the past and look forward (Isaiah 43:18-19 ““Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”)

Today is a great time to quit looking in the rear-view mirror and get the wipers going on the windshield ahead and put the gear on God’s Drive into our future.

God Bless.

 

 

 

 

 

Gate & Gatekeeper

John 10:2-3 “But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”

When we go through trials in life we are thrown into the midst of chaotic responses that are voiced over us, but it is up to us to regulate the impact of other people’s words on us. This simple story that our Lord Jesus Christ was narrating teaches us that He is ‘The Gate’ of our lives and our hearts (John 10:7 “So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep”) and when we allow someone to speaks over us, we must be able to discern if their words  are entering our lives through  ‘The Door’, that is , whether they are spoken in the name of Jesus Christ and are in agreement with the Word of God Himself (Revelation 19:13 “He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God.”)

On a turbulent flight a passenger, amid the commotion and negative reactions of co-passengers, learns to single out the voice of the flight attendant who gives updates on the flight status, improving weather conditions and instructions to remain safely seated, under the authority of the pilot. Similarly, in order to be able to recognize the true voice of The Shepherd among a cacophony of opinions, advice, curses and false prophesies we encounter in the midst of stormy circumstances, we must seek the guidance of ‘The Helper'(Holy Spirit), who discerns the voice of the Father and speaks under His authority (John 16:13 “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”) We need to be sensitive to the prompting of the Holy Spirit when it comes to receiving spiritual counsel and allow Him to be the gatekeeper that will only permit the voice of the Good Shepherd to enter our lives and lead us.

Another telling sign of authentic godly advice in troubled times is being called by the name with which God would call us- not as in Annie, Judy, Mark or Andrew, but as in “Child of God” (1 John 3:1), “His workmanship” (Ephesians 2:10), “Kings and Priests” (Revelations 5:10), “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession” (1 Peter 2:9). When someone exhorting us is speaking of our trials as consequences for our past actions we must filter it out as ungodly counsel, because the Word of God says that we are not under any condemnation because we are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”)

Therefore, let’s commit ourselves to be like the Berean church that weighed everything they were being taught against the Word of God (Acts 17:11), so that we may be able to recognize the voice of the Shepherd calling us and be led out by Him alone.

God Bless

 

 

Battling the Fear Factor

2 Timothy 1:7 “ For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

It is important to recognize that the source of any chaotic reaction is NOT God. Anything that causes us to fear, become anxious, worry, doubt, get depressed, feel insulted or condemned, be confused does not have its origin in God, who is the Author of Peace (1 Corinthians 14:33 “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.”)

The most cunning enemy of every Christian is a spirit of fear, a shape-shifter which will take any form necessary to try and defeat faith. To resist this ungodly spirit, God gave us the perfect antidote, His Holy Spirit to live inside us, Who, being the perfect embodiment of power, love and a sound mind, shields us from the onslaught of fear. I believe that these three personalities of the Holy Spirit are targeted at the very source of the fear to cut them off  from the root.

Spirit of Power –  Fear caused by external factors (calamity, sickness, debts, loss of a loved one, etc.)  can be battled only by the strength in the inner man, which is given to us in exceedingly great measures through the Holy Spirit, the same that raised  Jesus Christ from the grave to the right hand of the Father God (Ephesians 1:19-20 “and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe,according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places,”).

Spirit of Love – Fear caused by internal factors (guilt, shame, insult, condemnation, judgement) are due to our actions in the past. Even convicted christians sometimes wallow in past sins, fearing some form of punishment.  The word of God promises us that God, who is love, has come to dwell in us in His Spirit and His love that perfects us, gives us status quo with Jesus Christ on the earth (His righteousness is imputed on us through our faith), because of which there’s no reason to fear judgement or condemnation of any kind. (1 John  4:16-18 “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.)

Spirit of a sound mind – Fear caused by unknown factors (doubt, anxiety, worry, fear of death, phobias) are rationalized by the world as psychological disorders. The bible reveals that the unknown enemy operates in the spiritual realm, according to principalities and powers of darkness and is not flesh and blood that can be overcome physically (Ephesians 6:12). So the provision of the Holy Spirit is also given as a spiritual  weapon of warfare, to conquer these unseen powers and makes war-captives of every emotion, fear included, that defies the knowledge of God, making them prisoners to Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:4-5 “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”)

Shall we step out in the power, love and sound mind of the Spirit given to us, walking victoriously over every fear that comes our way.

God Bless.

 

The Omnipresent Great I Am

Exodus 3:13-14 “ Then Moses said to God, “Behold, when I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am”; and He said, “You shall say this to the Israelites, ‘I Am has sent me to you.’”

It had been several generations before when God’s personal touch had been experienced by the Israelites. So there arose a possibility for them to question the authenticity of Moses’ claim of bringing them the message of ‘The God of their fathers’. God chose to answer that doubt with His timeless assurance of being “I am Who I am”.

When much time has passed since our last intimate experience of God’s hand at work in our lives, we often need the reminder that our God is truly the “Great I Am”, that His omnipresence is His very essence. That’s why the psalmist calls Him ‘a very PRESENT help’ (Psalm 46:1 “God is our refuge and strength,  a very present help in trouble”). 

Looking behind, we easily remember that it was God that brought us every triumph in the hour of our need (1 Corinthians 15:57 “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”). Putting our hopes in Him for our future also comes simply with our trust in His being the all- knowing God (Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”). But what’s difficult is, to be aware of God’s presence with us, in the very midst of the turbulent circumstances, as we go through them. So just as God sent Moses as His chosen messenger, to assure the Israelites that were agonised under the Egyptian slavery, He sends His Holy Spirit inside us, who persistently re-acquaints us with the “I Am Who I Am” and causes us to recollect His promises to us (John 14:26 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”)

So let’s sensitize our hearts to the speaking of the Holy’s Spirit, God’s appointed messenger of divine counsel and comfort, who reminds us that the LORD our God is The Covenant Maker, The Promise Keeper & The Great I Am.

God Bless

 

 

 

Rejoice in the Lord !

Colossians 1:11 “strengthened and invigorated with all power, according to His glorious might, to attain every kind of ENDURANCE and PATIENCE with JOY”

It is often that when we are faced with a tough cookie, we want God to stretch out His hand and take away our reproach from us. We pray, asking for His strength to help us turnaround the situation in our favor. But sometimes, the Lord answers us with His might, not to remove our obstacle, but to equip us to endure it with long-suffering and joy (2 Corinthians 12:9 “But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”).

It takes God-sized strength to smile in pain, rejoice in persecution and bless those who curse us, but that is exactly what the Bible prescribes as the mark of a true Christian.(Romans 12:12,14 “constantly rejoicing in hope [because of our confidence in Christ], steadfast and patient in distress, devoted to prayer…Bless those who persecute you [who cause you harm or hardship]; bless and do not curse [them]). Glory to God is not in the endurance of distress and persecution, but in joyfully doing so, because the gladness is the acknowledgement of God’s sovereignty  over the situation, the perfect hope in His salvation. Therefore, He renews our strength so that we can be a testimony to the world around us, even in the climate of adversity.

What does it look like to be strengthened with the might of God to gladly endure and be patient? 

1. Bless God – To be able to praise God and honor Him, even as everything that we may have worked and hoped for is going up in flames, is proof of His strength working in us.(Job 1:21 “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.”)
2. Bless the persecutor – In His faithfulness and love, Jesus Christ reached out to us, sinners, and blessed us abundantly. His Spirit that works in us, must produce a similar response in us toward those that sin against us. (Luke 6:35 “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.)
3. Bless the situation – The power of God moving in us makes us confident in the eternity of God’s goodness and His endless storehouse of heavenly treasures reserved for us, thereby enabling us to celebrate even in the hour of tribulation.(Hebrews 10:34 “…and you joyfully accepted the [unjust] seizure of your belongings and the confiscation of your property, conscious of the fact that you have a better possession and a lasting one [prepared for you in heaven].).

This kind of strength which gears us to be blissful in stressful circumstances, is generated in the close and daily communion with the holder of that strength (Jesus Christ). In our consistent prayer-life, we acquire the knowledge of the potential of the might of Holy Spirit that is at work in us (Ephesians 1:19 “and [so that you will begin to know] what the immeasurable and unlimited and surpassing greatness of His [active, spiritual] power is in us who believe…”), causing us to be bolstered in our spirit even in the season of suffering.

Let’s heed to Apostle Pauls’s exhortation “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4).

God Bless