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The Hope of Glory

Colossians 1:27
To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

God has chosen to reveal to us the riches that are available to us through His Son, Jesus Christ.  The fullness of all of God’s riches are complete in Jesus.  This was a mystery to men for thousands of years.  The hope of glory for those living in earlier times was reliant on the offerings of their high priests.    

Yet we live in a time when the hope of our glory has been fully disclosed to us.  Our hope is in the form of Our Savior who comes in dwells within us.  He is our high priest.  We need no other.  

With His indwelling, we take on the role of priests ourselves.  It becomes our duty to share the hope that is within us.  The blessed hope and assurance that is Jesus Christ is too precious not to share.  We should joyously share that which naturally flows from us without end.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the Blessed Hope and Assurance that is Your Son, Jesus.  We praise You for revealing to us the riches that are available through Your Son, our ever present high priest.  Help us Lord to faithfully share the hope of glory that is within us. 

Seeing the Triumph

Luke 18:34
But they understood none of these things.

In the Gospel of Luke, we read how the apostles were told in advance about all the suffering that their Master was about to endure.  They were told the details concerning His coming crucifixion and they were told about His glorious rising from the grave on the third day.  Yet they understood none of these things.

The apostles did not understand because they could only see failure in Jesus’ destiny.  They could only feel the heartbreak of losing their teacher.  They could only visualize their promised King.  They could not visualize their suffering Savior.  They could not see that God considered it all a tremendous triumph.  They could not see that they would soon show the world the way, the truth and the life that Jesus had come to show them.

The most difficult thing about understanding the purpose that God has for our lives is that we are quick to seek God’s blessings, but we are slow to realize that God is in sovereign control.   We are baffled by our trials.  We allow them to hold off our calling in Christ, because we only see ourselves in our trials and we do not see Almighty God who is working out all things for His purposes. 

We will move forward in our calling when we look forward to each day without fear or worry.  We will become who God calls us to be when we are in communion with Him and recognize the He is taking us into His purposes.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You that You have a perfect plan for our lives.  We bless the name of Jesus Christ, who made it possible for us to fulfill the plans that You have set aside for us.  We pray, Lord, that You will open our eyes so that we may see past the sorrows in our lives.  We pray that You will open our hearts in communion with You so that we may see the triumph that You have planned for us.  May we live our lives without fear, knowing that we are in Your hands, living according to Your purposes.  May it all be for Your glory, the glory of Jesus and the glory of the Holy Spirit.

His Grace is Always Sufficient

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.

The apostle Paul was told by Jesus that Jesus’ strength was sufficient for all of Paul’s needs.  Jesus emphasized to Paul that His power was made perfect in Paul’s weakness.  Paul recognized this truth and leaned upon it through all of his trials.  He became the most prolific writer in the bible and led the way of evangelizing the gentile world to Christianity.

When we come to recognize that there is nothing in us that is worthy without Jesus Christ, we open the way for His perfecting work in our lives.  We humble ourselves to build on our relationship with the One who seeks to perfect us.  Through it all, in spite of our weaknesses, the evidence of His presence in our lives becomes visible for all to see.  We must be ever mindful that it is not about the work that we do.  It is about the relationship we have with Jesus and the atmosphere produced by that relationship.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the grace that You pour into our lives through Your Son, Jesus.  We seek the power of Your grace in our lives.  We ask forgiveness for the times that we by-pass Your grace in order to operate out of our own perceived strength.  We pray that Holy Spirit will aid us in leaning on You for all of our needs and guiding us in all that we do.  May Your strength be perfected in our weakness. 

Preparing for the Wedding Feast

Revelation 21:2
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

As we grew up in this world, most of us were taught to set goals and to develop step-by-step plans to reach our goals.  For most of us, attaining the goals that we set for ourselves has become what life is all about.

In God’s supernatural world, things are totally different.  Goals are not set for this world, because God did not create this world to be about our accomplishments.  God created this world to prepare us for the eternal life that we will spend in heaven for all eternity.  Everything we go through here on earth is part of the process that God puts us through or allows us to go through in order to prepare us for life in new Jerusalem.

We go up to new Jerusalem, not to fulfill our own purposes, but to fulfill the purposes that Almighty God has for us.  We are being prepared to go to a place where all things are new.  There will be no trouble or tumult.  The new Jerusalem is the church of God in its new and perfect state.  It is a holy church without blemish and we will be there fully prepared for our place at the wedding feast of the Lamb.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for preparing a place for us at the wedding feast of the Lamb.  We praise You and worship You for providing a way for us to be made acceptable to take our place at this great banquet.  Father, open our eyes that we may see Your perspective of what our lives are meant to be.  We pray that you show us how to set aside all that this world offers in exchange for the eternal life that we will spend with You for all eternity.


Focusing on the Solution

2 Corinthians 4:7
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

Whenever the trials arise in our lives, the natural response is for us to focus on the problems or the pain they cause.  In doing so, we are taken down a path of looking to our own capabilities to resolve the difficulties of our circumstances.  In many cases, we are woefully incapable of handling or resolving our issues alone.  Often times our efforts even make matters worse. 

As children of God, we have an alternative available to us which is completely different and produces dramatically different results.  When we choose to respond in our spirit instead of in our flesh, we focus on the solution, Jesus Christ, instead of our problems.  We avail ourselves to a supernatural solution.  We avail ourselves to the power and grace of the One who sees the beginning and the end.  We surrender ourselves to His will and plan for our lives.  We bring honor and glory to Almighty God as we allow Him to work in our lives for our good.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the will and plan that You have for our lives.  We rejoice in knowing that You delight in using Your power to work out all of the things in our lives that trouble us.  We praise You for using each of our trials to shape us into the unique individuals that You created each of us to be.  May all the honor and glory be Yours, Father, as we turn to Your Son for all of our needs.


Living a Life that Speaks to Others

1 John 3:18
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

There is an old adage that states that actions speaker louder than words.  Nowhere is the old adage more applicable than in our living testimony.  No one wants to learn about Jesus from us if they have not seen Jesus in our lives.

Our greatest orations will never win a soul without a visible expression in our lives that we are living what we are preaching and teaching.  Let those around us see the gifts of the Holy Spirit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  When others see these things, they will seek the source.  We will not have to say a word to entice them.

Jesus understood human nature completely.  Thus He labored constantly among the people, showing them His perfect love and forgiveness.  His living testimony drew people to the message that He had come to deliver.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank You for providing Your Son as a living example of the way, the truth and the life that You intend for us to accept and to proclaim.  Blessed is the name of Jesus who surrendered all so that we may be drawn to Him, receive Him as Our Savior and allow His presence to flow through us to the world around us.  We pray that our lives will become living testimonies of the One who dwells within us.

Under His Scrutiny

James 1:4
And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

As parents, we stood by the side of our children as they learned to ride a bike.  We picked them up and consoled them each time they fell.  We brought attention to the errors of their ways and reminded them of the the right ways to ride.  We went out with them time and again, rejoicing in each moment of progress, until they had mastered the skill of riding.

Thank the Lord for His salvation promise to complete every good work that He starts in us.  He will let nothing in our lives escape His attention.  He will steadfastly stand by us even as we stumble over and over.  He will pick us up as many times as we fall, even though He knows that we will never get it completely right on this earth.  He will continue to show us the error in our ways and point out the path that He has set aside for us.  He will continue to pick us up until that glorious day when we stand before Him in the image of His Son and He welcomes us into heaven as good and faithful servants.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, blessed be the name of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior.  Thank You for His steadfast work in our lives.  We pray that we will be quick to see the error in our ways and be even quicker to respond to Your correction.  May we completely surrender our lives to the perfect ways of Your Son.  As we rise and fall in our frailty, may we rejoice in knowing that Your presence is always with us and You will not leave us before Your perfecting work is done.  

With Perfect Love and Forgiveness

Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

We are commanded to love one another as we love ourselves.  How can we be commanded to take on such an impossible task?  Does God not know how incapable our hearts are to fulfill this commandment?

Of course He does.  That is why He gave us His Son, Jesus, to be Our Savior.  Jesus is the expression of the perfect love and forgiveness of Our Heavenly Father.  When we receive Jesus as Our Savior, we receive the capacity to love as God does.  Through our salvation, we are able to free ourselves from our judgmental natures and our cynical hearts.  We are able to free ourselves from demanding of others what they cannot give.  We are able to free ourselves from every disillusioned thought that our deceitful heart contrives against others.  

So, are we able to love one another as we love ourselves?  Of course we are.  When we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives, we are able love one another with perfect love and forgiveness just as The Father loves us. 

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for revealing the wickedness in our hearts.  We thank You for providing Your Son, Jesus, so that we have a way to overcome our selfish natures.  We praise You for giving us the capability to share Your perfect love and forgiveness with the world around us.  We pray that the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit will aid us and strengthen us to love others just as You love us.

He Cometh with Clouds

Revelation 1:7
Behold, he cometh with clouds;

It is quite natural to associate the idea of clouds with storm clouds.  When storm clouds are building we are likely to think, “look out.”  

As we grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ, we come to realize when storm clouds begin to build in our lives, we need to think, “look up.”  Just as God used the clouds to guide the Israelites to the promised land, He can use the storm clouds in our lives to turn our focus to Him for guidance.  Through this process, He teaches us dependence on Him for providing the pathway through the storms of our lives.  Paradoxically, without the storm clouds we would have little faith.

The perfect pathway through the storms of life lies in our relationship with Jesus.  When our clouds become the darkest, we can always look up and turn to Jesus for He is the light of the world.  “He cometh with clouds.”

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for providing the Light of the World when darkness surrounds us.  We praise You for the faith that You build in us as Jesus carries us and comforts us through our trials.  We pray that we may learn from the trials that we pass through so that we may comfort others who pass the same way.

Each Precious Moment

Matthew 6:45
Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd.

The directive was clear to the disciples.  “Get in the boat.  Go to the other side of the lake.  Wait on Me.”  So off they went, obedient to the directive given them.  They probably assumed this would be a relatively easy trip.  Little did they know that their journey would be difficult.  In fact, their journey was described as painful for the wind was strongly against them.  But in the midst of their struggles, Jesus showed up and the winds ceased.  Once again their were reminded of the power and ever presence of the Lord in their lives.  Once again God received the glory. 

This passage reminds us that life is not about achievements, not even achievements in the areas that God is leading us.  We may have the feeling that God is leading us to a particular end.  He is, but not how we are thinking about it.  The goal of getting to a particular end is simply a by product of the process that God is taking us through.  With God, the process is the end.

All the headwinds that we encounter in life are part of the process of preparing us for our eternal place with the Father.  The process is complete when we seek the will of the Father in every circumstance in our lives.  His purpose is that we call on Him and His power in each moment that we live, regardless of the end that we may be working toward.  It is each precious moment and not the end result that is important to God.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for being ever present with us during the chaos of our lives.  We thank You that we can call on You every single moment of our lives to be our strength when the headwinds of life come against us.  We pray that You teach us how to live every moment of our lives aware of the sanctifying process that You are taking us through.  May our relationships with You mature beyond our expectations as we experience the fullness of Jesus Christ in our lives.  May we savor each moment, knowing that it brings glory to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.