When they were short of bread, the disciples seemed to forget about Jesus feeding the multitudes of five and four thousand.
Mark 8:18,19 . . . . do ye not remember? When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up. They say unto him, Twelve.
Are we like them? The Lord has done so much for us, but when the next crisis arises we react in fear instead of faith.
We need to reflect on all the mountains He has moved in our lives, the answered prayers, His peace and the sense of His presence. We need to remember when He blessed us for no apparent reason. We can't forget how He saved us.
If God can do these great things, there is nothing in your life that He cannot handle. God is calling us to radical, total faith in Him: to lay aside our "what ifs" and our "hows". He is calling us to trust him for every need in our life.
In every event of creation and in the history of the Nation of Israel was a plan centered around One called The Lamb of God.
Heaven's Lamb was prepared for the world through the miracle of the virgin birth. The plan of the ages was accomplished through His death, burial, and resurrection. His horrible and brutal death was presented as the perfect offering for sin.
1 Peter 3:18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.
Thank God for His power to transform the lost sinner into a redeemed saint of God.
One day every knee will bow before The Lamb of God, and every tongue will confess Him as King.
The Lamb of God presented himself for you. Have you presented yourself to Him?
There seems to be a movement afoot today that would take down the cross and undermine the necessity of blood atonement for sins. Try as they might, men can never take away the need for the cross. What the world calls foolish is called powerful and necessary by The Lord.
1 Corinthians 1:18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
Man may try to sanitize the Gospel to make it more appealig to a lost world, but when the blood of Jesus and His agony on the cross is stripped away from the Gospel message, there is no Gospel left. There is no power to save one sinner from an eternal Hell.
What can wash away my sin, nothing but the blood of Jesus.
At the height of David's success, he became a man hunted by his enemies, haunted by death, and hounded by destruction. Every dream, every lofty goal, every hope had been dashed to bits. He had nothing and no one on whom he could lean. He is alone, afraid, and alienated.
Why did God so afflict a "man after His Own heart"? Because He wanted David to learn to lean on Him and not on the props he had constructed in his life.
Psalm 61:2 From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
The all-sufficient God Almighty wants us to learn to lean on Him. He will never fail us, leave us or let us down.
Learning to lean, learning to lean,
I'm learning to lean on Jesus.
Finding more power than I've ever dreamed.
I'm learning to lean on Jesus.
John Stallings
Eventually, the battles of life will end, and we who are saved will go home to Heaven to rest in God's glorious presence. In the meantime, there are enemies to face and battles to fight, but The Lord is with us.
Isaiah 43:2 When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shall not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.
Like a ship that's tossed and driven, battered by an angry sea;
When the storms of life are raging and their fury falls on me.
I wonder what I have done that makes this race so hard to run;
Then I say to my soul, take courage,The Lord will make a way somehow.
The Lord will make a way somehow, when beneath the cross I bow
He will take away each sorrow. Let Him have your burdens now:
When the load bears down so heavy, the weight is shown upon my brow.
There's a sweet relief in knowing, The Lord will make a way somehow.
Thomas A. Dorsey
If you want to abound victoriously in the work of The Lord, you must develop a love for the Word of God. You must feed on it, live by it, and honour it.
1 Corinthians 15:58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of The Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in The Lord.
Weak Christians play around the edges of the spiritual, refusing to put God first in their lives. They are slack on church attendance and tithe when it is convenient. Many of us have been there.
Perhaps your priorities and passions need changing to line up with the will of God. When you submit everything to God, He will make something beautiful of your life. He will give you victory.
Matthew 11:28-30 Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
COME: To come to Jesus means to trust Him. The invitation is open to those who are exhausted and burdened down.
TAKE: This is a deeper experience. When we take His yoke and learn, we find rest, that deeper rest of surrender and obedience.
When we submit to Christ we are yoked to Him. He has the perfect yoke that is tailor-made for our lives and needs. The burden of doing His will is not a heavy one.
LEARN: As we learn more about Him, we find a deeper peace, because we trust Him more. Life is simplified and unified around the Person of Christ.
