Heaven’s Relief in the Coming Wrath

 God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted . . . when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. (2 Thessalonians 1:6–8)

There will come a time when the patience of God is over. When God has seen his people suffer for the allotted time, and the appointed number of martyrs is complete (Revelation 6:11), then a just and holy vengeance will come from heaven. 

Notice that God’s vengeance on those who have afflicted his people is experienced by us as “relief.” “God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted.” In other words, the judgment on “those who afflict” us is a form of grace toward us.

Perhaps the most remarkable picture of judgment as grace is the picture of Babylon’s destruction in Revelation 18. At her destruction, a great voice from heaven cries, “Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her!” (Revelation 18:20). Then a great multitude is heard saying, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just; for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and has avenged on her the blood of his servants” (Revelation 19:1–2). 

When God’s patience has run its long-suffering course, and this age is over, and judgment comes on the enemies of God’s people, the saints will not disapprove of God’s justice.

This means that the final destruction of the unrepentant will not be experienced as a misery for God’s people. 

The unwillingness of others to repent will not hold the affections of the saints hostage. Hell will not be able to blackmail heaven into misery. God’s judgment will be approved, and the saints will experience the vindication of truth as a great grace.

SATAN IS UNDER OUR FEET!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

SUNDAY JUNE 30, 2024.

SUBJECT : SATAN IS UNDER OUR FEET!

Memory verse: "And raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2 vs 6.)

READ: Ephesians 1 vs 17 - 23:

1:17: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him,

1:18: the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the Saints,

1:19: and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power

1:20: which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,

1:21: far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.

1:22: And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church,

1:23 which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

INTIMATION:

In the first three chapters of the apostle Paul's epistle to the church in Ephesus, he enumerated the consummation of Christ's substitutionary work regarding Satan and his cohorts—the demons. His heart intent is that we will come to the full knowledge of what we are in Christ.

From the passage we read today, we observed that he prayed that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may grant us the spirit of wisdom and revelation of insight into mysteries and secrets in the deep and intimate knowledge of Him, by having the eyes of our heart flooded with light, so that we can know and understand the hope to which He has called us, and how rich is His glorious inheritance in the believers.

He clearly stated that, it is the working of God's spiritual might which He wrought in the Christ when He raised Him up from the among dead, and that same Spirit is still at work within us. The heart can hardly take it in that the same Might, the same Resurrection Power that wrought in the dead body of Jesus is ours today. That same Spirit that embodied the power is indwelling us today, and with the same power.

In Ephesians 2 vs 4 - 6, the Scripture says:- 

"But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." You must always keep in mind that we were raised together with Him, and He made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places; so representatively, we are seated on the throne with Christ.

He has been given all authority, that authority belongs to His body—the church—for its benefit. He conquered all the forces of darkness and left them paralyzed and broken before He arose from the dead. It is as though we had accomplished the mighty work, because It is reckoned to our credit.

Notice carefully the twenty-second and twenty-third verses: "And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all." We are the fullness of Him (John 1 vs 16). We are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power (Colossians 2 vs 10). He is not only our fullness, but we are His fullness also. The word, "fullness" comes from a Greek word that is almost untranslatable: "pleroma," which means "completeness," "perfectness," or any other synonym that suggests fullness. 

Adam had sold us out in his sin of high treason. Jesus redeemed us, defeated our enemy and put him beneath our feet—the church (His body), and we are the church. Consequently, all these malignant, wicked influences are beneath our feet. We have been made masters of them all. He did not defeat them for Himself, but for us. He did not fight that battle for His glory, but for our good. 

This knowledge should become as common to us, and as usable as the multiplication table. And when this is done Believers will spend less or no time glorying the devil, instead of using the time time to glorify Jesus Christ for His triumph over Satan and his cohorts. It was for this reason that the apostle Paul thanked God in Second Corinthians 2 vs 14, for His triumph over Satan for us; "Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ...."

When our hearts take it in, and our minds become fruitful with this mighty unveiling of what we are in Christ today, we hardly will give the devil any room to minister his usual lies to us because, by God's grace, we have embraced the truth of what we are in Christ.

That is the Hallelujah chorus of the new creation, and it never becomes real until we begin to confess it, begin to tell to the world what we are in Christ.

The Bible in Hebrews 9 vs 12, says, “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” Yes He obtained Eternal Redemption for us. Not just a redemption for the hour in which it was done, but that Satan is as much defeated now as he was when Christ arose from the dead; that he is as much a subject to the Name of Jesus as he was when Jesus conquered him.

Prayer: Abba Father, I thank You for what You wrought for me in redemption in Christ Jesus. Thank You for the triumph You have given me in Christ over Satan. Help me to comprehend fully the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of my inheritance in Christ and His love for me, in Jesus' Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

The Powerful Root of Practical Love

 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. (1 John 3:14)

So, love is the evidence that we are born again — that we are Christians, that we are saved.

Sometimes the Bible makes our holiness and our love for people the condition of our final salvation. In other words, if we are not holy and not loving, we will not be saved at the judgment day (e.g., Hebrews 12:14; Galatians 5:21; 1 Corinthians 6:10). This doesn’t mean that acts of love are how we get right with God. No, the Bible is clear again and again as Ephesians 2:8–9 says, “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.” No, when the Bible says that we are saved by faith but that we must love people in order to finally be saved, it means that faith in God’s promises must be so real that the love it produces proves the reality of the faith. 

So, love for others is a condition of future grace in the sense that it confirms that the primary condition, faith, is genuine. We could call love for others a secondary condition, which confirms the authenticity of the primary and essential condition of faith which alone unites us to Christ, and receives his power.

Faith perceives the glory of God in the promises of future grace and embraces all that the promises reveal of what God is for us in Jesus. That spiritual sight of God’s glory, and our delight in it, is the self-authenticating evidence that God has called us to be a beneficiary of his grace. This evidence frees us to bank on God’s promise as our own. And this banking on the promise empowers us to love. Which in turn confirms that our faith is real. 

The world is desperate for a faith that combines two things: awestruck sight of unshakable divine Truth, and utterly practical, round-the-clock power to make a liberating difference in life. That’s what I want too. Which is why I am a Christian. 

There is a great God of grace who magnifies his own infinite beauty and self-sufficiency by fulfilling promises to helpless people who trust him. And there is a power that comes from prizing this God that leaves no nook or cranny of life untouched. It empowers us to love in the most practical ways.

REINSTATED TO ABUNDANCE!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

SATURDAY JUNE 29, 2024.

SUBJECT : REINSTATED TO ABUNDANCE!

Memory verse: "You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; For You have created all things, and for Your pleasure they are and were created" (Revelation 4 vs 11).

READ: Psalm 50 vs 10 - 12; First Timothy 6 vs 17:

Psalm 50:10: For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.

50:11: I know all the birds of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are Mine.

50:12: If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world is Mine, and all its fullness.

First Timothy 6:17: Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us all things to enjoy.

INTIMATION:i

God created all things, and therefore, owns all things. He created all things for His pleasure, and as well as ours. God is not in want of anything because He is sufficient in all things. God created all things including us. He made us special by creating us in His image and likeness. And we are made sufficient in God's own sufficiency (Second Corinthians 3 vs 5).  

In the beginning God placed everything that man could use and enjoy in the Garden. God saw to it that Adam lacked nothing, as he was created in His own image and after His likeness, leaving nothing to be desired by him. God gave Adam dominion over everything. Adam was the master of the kingdom given to him, and was empowered to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it. God only placed Himself above Adam as his master.

God's Will of abundance for mankind was supreme until that fatal day Adam committed high treason against God by doubting God's integrity, and believing God's permanent enemy—Satan. According to the Scriptures, the woman was deceived but the man was not (First Timothy 2 vs 14), meaning that Adam knew what he did, and the implications of what he did. He tried shifting the blame on the woman when God enquired of him concerning his did (Genesis 3 vs 12).

When Adam partook of the deadly tree, he died, not physically but spiritually. Spiritual deadness is the nature of Satan. That nature consequently overtook Adam's once righteous spirit, and he became one with Satan. Every phase of Adam's life came under the curse of his new god, Satan. He was driven from the Garden; abundance was no longer his to enjoy. He had to toil and sweat in order to survive. His beautiful life was overrun by thorns and thistles both in the physical and in the spiritual world.

The Lordship of God provided only good. Poverty and lack came only after Adam changed god and began to operate under Satan's dominion, the author of poverty.

It is obvious that God desired man to live in abundance, but by Adam's own choice, the lordship of Satan engulfed him in a curse that resulted in poverty and lack. 

God's heart yearns for His people to be free, and through His infinite wisdom, He has continually provided deliverance for man and freedom from the curse of poverty. God, in His infinite mercy that endures forever, sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, for our sake, to pay the supreme price: "Surely He has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace upon Him, And by His stripes we are heeled" (Isaiah 53 vs 4 - 5). 

Through our believe in Christ Jesus, our Sacrificial Savior, He gave us right to become His children (John 1 vs 12). We are reinstated to our original position with Him. His wish is that we shall prosper in all things and be in health, just as your souls prosper (Third John 2). In accordance with His Will for us, in prosperity and sufficiency, He has given us back all things in Christ Jesus to enjoy, Hallelujah!

Prayer: Abba Father, to You be all the glory for the great things You have done. My sufficiency is in You who made heaven and the earth. Thank You for my redemption in Christ Jesus, and upholding me by Your generous spirit, in Jesus' Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

Enduring When Obeying Hurts

 Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross. (Hebrews 12:2)

What faith performs is sometimes unspeakably hard. 

In his book Miracle on the River Kwai, Ernest Gordon tells the true story of a group of POWs working on the Burma Railway during World War II. 

At the end of each day the tools were collected from the work party. On one occasion a Japanese guard shouted that a shovel was missing and demanded to know which man had taken it. He began to rant and rave, working himself up into a paranoid fury and ordered whoever was guilty to step forward. No one moved. “All die! All die!” he shrieked, cocking and aiming his rifle at the prisoners. At that moment one man stepped forward and the guard clubbed him to death with his rifle while he stood silently to attention. When they returned to the camp, the tools were counted again and no shovel was missing.

What can sustain the will to die for others, when you are innocent? Jesus was carried and sustained in his love for us by “the joy that was set before him.” He banked on a glorious future blessing and joy, and that carried and sustained him in love through his suffering. 

Woe to us if we think we should or can be motivated and strengthened for radical, costly obedience by some higher motive than the joy that is set before us. When Jesus called for costly obedience that would require sacrifice in this life, he said in Luke 14:14, “You will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” In other words, be strengthened now in all your losses for Christ’s sake, because of the joy set before you.

Peter said that, when Jesus suffered without retaliating, he was leaving us an example to follow — and that includes Jesus’s confidence in the joy set before him. He handed his cause over to God (1 Peter 2:21) and did not try to settle accounts with retaliation. He banked his hope on the resurrection and all the joys of reunion with his Father and the redemption of his people. So should we.

HE WHO HAS PITY ON THE POOR IS BLESSED!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

FRIDAY JUNE 28, 2024.

SUBJECT: HE WHO HAS PITY ON THE POOR IS BLESSED!

Memory verse: "He who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord, and He will pay back what he has given.” (Proverbs 19 vs 17.)

READ: Psalm 41 vs 1 - 3:

41:1: Blessed is he who considers the poor: the LORD will deliver him in time of trouble.

41:2: The LORD will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed upon the earth: You will not deliver him to the will of his enemies.

41:3: The LORD will strengthen him on his bed of illness: You will sustain him on his sickbed.

INTIMATION:

The Bible often speaks of God’s care for the weak, poor, and needy, and of His blessing on those who share this concern. Providing for the poor is not just a suggestion in the Bible, but a requirement on all humans. The need for believers to care for the poor is a constant theme in the Scripture. But often we do nothing, but caught up in meeting our needs and desires. Perhaps we don’t see enough poverty to remember the needs of the poor. 

God said neglecting the poor is a sin. Helping the poor is a command that may require a change of attitude on our part. 

God wants our generosity to reflect His own giving. Helping the poor is also an active part of religious life. As He has blessed us, we should bless others. God has a special concern for the poor. He insists that those who have material goods should be generous with those who are needy. He who gives to the poor is assured of deliverance, blessing, strength, and mercy from the Lord because he has shown the same to the poor. 

When you show mercy to others, the Lord will show you mercy as well: “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.” (Matthew 5 vs 7.) We should reflect God’s concern for the poor by giving and by helping those less fortunate than ourselves. God counts on believers to provide for the poor, and we should use what God has given us to aid those less fortunate. Look beyond your regular giving and think of ways to help the needy. This will help you show your regard for God (as Creator of all people), His creation should share God’s goodness with others, and draw them to Him. It is a practical and essential way to make faith work in everyday life.

Many times we do nothing, not because we lack compassion, but because we are overwhelmed by the size of the problem and don’t know where to begin. God doesn’t expect you to eliminate poverty, nor does He expect you to neglect your family while providing for others. He does, however, expect that when you see an individual in need, you will reach out with whatever help you can offer. 

Many people conclude that people are poor through some fault of their own. This kind of reasoning makes it easy to close their hearts and hands to the needy. But we are not to invent reasons for ignoring the poor. We are to respond to their needs no matter who or what was responsible for their condition. There is no excuse for ignoring the poor and needy within our reach.

It is everyone’s responsibility to care for those less fortunate. Families should help other family members, and towns are to help their community. We should not only seek out the poor to help them, but should also ensure to make it easy in society for the poor to survive. 

Helping and caring for the poor and less privileged amongst us is a demand placed on us by God, and it is strictly for our own benefit because God has promised to reward us with deliverance, blessing, strength, and mercy. And God is not a man that He can lie and the son of man that He can repent or change His promise. What He says He will do is as sure as day and night.

Prayer: Abba Father, I know Your word is yes and amen. Endue me with the spirit of generosity, especially to the poor and needy in our society, that I may obey You in giving and showing mercy to others and qualify for Your rewards, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

A Hiding Place for the Helpless

 How abundant is your goodness, which you have . . . worked for those who take refuge in you. (Psalm 31:19) 

The experience of future grace often hangs on whether we will take refuge in God, or whether we doubt his care and run for cover to other shelters. 

For those who take refuge in God, the promises of future grace are many and rich. 

None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. (Psalm 34:22) 

He is a shield for all those who take refuge in him. (2 Samuel 22:31) 

Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalm 2:12) 

The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him. (Nahum 1:7) 

We do not earn or merit anything by taking refuge in God. Hiding, because we are weak and need protection, is not a work to commend our self-sufficiency. All it does is show that we regard ourselves as helpless and the hiding place as a place of rescue. 

In all those promises I just quoted, the condition of great blessing from God is that we take refuge in him. That condition is not a meritorious one; it is the condition of desperation and acknowledged weakness and need and trust. 

Desperation does not demand or deserve; it pleads for mercy and looks for grace.