Skip to main content

 As followers of Jesus Christ wait for His return, His Second Coming, we can sometimes, maybe often, feel kind of like the Israelites as they traveled through the wilderness. Sadly, the wonder of the daily provision of the Lord wore thin, and the relentlessness of the wilderness conditions began to cloud their vision of Who God is. Even though He was among them in a tangible way, by a cloud by day and by fire by night.

After just over two years of wandering in the wilderness, most of Israel still refused to believe God, to take Him at His Word. Twelve spies were sent into the Promised Land to “check it out”. They saw strongly walled cities, some members of a Canaanite clan that had overactive pituitary glands and seemed like giants, and 10 of those 12 spies referenced their ability to do what God said they were to do in their own human abilities.

God never asked them to trust in their own strength. He told them to trust Him. Joshua and Caleb were faithful, believing they could do what God has said because God was with them and would go before them. The other 10 spies sowed fear and unbelief into the rest of the nation of Israel and the people trusted in themselves rather than in God. It took 40 more years of wandering for the nation while the unbelief was purged from their ranks.

Followers of Jesus Christ have been given new hearts and a new spirit in which the Holy Spirit has taken up permanent residence to live out in us and through us the Life of Jesus Christ.

In Ephesians 3:20-21, the Apostle Paul writes, “Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen!”

Paul is stating the fact that the very power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is NOW working IN us. It is able to do FAR MORE that we could ever ask or imagine. We are neither abandoned to the relentlessness of daily living nor left without the power to endure and flourish in life. In Romans 8:37 Paul calls us “super-victors” because we are united to God in Jesus Christ and he lives His life in us.

Sometimes the magnitude of the needs we see in the world around us, in our own lives and the responsibilities we carry can weigh so heavily that we seem like “grasshoppers” in our own eyes. Life’s circumstances can loom like giants before us. St. Augustine said, “Beware of despairing about yourself: you are commanded to put your trust in God, and not in yourself.” We need to adjust the focus of our lives. We need eyes like Caleb and Joshua.   

Follower of Jesus Christ, God not merely with you, He is in you, working in you. Bernard of Clairvaux said, “God is willing, able and ready in His mercy and grace to speak into the most mundane areas of life. Jesus came, Jesus is coming again and daily, He is with you coming into all aspects of human living with the Power of His resurrection. Turn your eyes upon Jesus.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 THE FOLLY OF IDOLATRY Martin Luther said that the human heart is an idol factory. The truth is that we were created to know and live by the gracious rule of and in the Presence of God who created us. Our peace, our understanding of meaning and purpose can only be truly grounded in God who created us for that meaning and purpose. The rebellion of Adam and Eve, their decision to do the opposite of what God said would make for life, resulted in spiritual and ultimately physical death. They chose to believe they needed something more than what God had provided. Their doomed attempt to try and live life without reference to God as the ground of meaning and purpose did not make life fuller, but emptied it. They wanted to decide what was good and what was evil without God and the disintegration of human life was the consequence. Rather than living in the Presence of God and by the gracious rule of God all around them, they turned from wholeness to brokenness, from fulfilment to scarc...
Post a Comment
Read more
  TIMING Years ago, I head an old preacher say, “The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.” That statement is an offense to the culture being worshipped world-wide today. There is a lust for the immediate, as a line from an old movie stated, “Immediate gratification takes too long!” We want faster internet, immediate responses to our texts, mobile orders at the ready when we walk into Starbucks. What we want, we demand to have NOW. We are masters at justifying ourselves. “Well, we’re engaged already and we’re going to get married anyway, so what’s wrong with us living together and being sexually intimate now?” God’s timing in human relationship is not arbitrary, it is protective and covering. Sad to say, even some who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ choose to justify their living in sexual sin now, because they promise that they will one day get married. The context where sexual intimacy finds its true meaning and purpose is in the covenant of marriage. ...
Post a Comment
Read more
  WORKING AGAINST ALL HUMANITY 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16 “They fail to please God and WORK AGAINST ALL HUMANITY   as they try to keep us from preaching the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins.” WOW! What a startling statement! St. Paul is making it crystal clear that those who oppose and work to prevent the proclamation of the Gospel are actually “working against ALL HUMANITY.” Why would he write that? It is because the only means of the restoration, reclamation and salvation of humanity is what God has done for all people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the essence of the Gospel: Jesus Christ. To oppose and try to silence the presentation of the Gospel is to work against the reclamation of all humanity. Who would want to work against ALL humanity? Satan is the name by which he is known. He hates ALL humanity because every human being still bears the image of God, albeit that ima...
Post a Comment
Read more