Through Jesus' Love

Whenever trials arise in our lives, the natural response is to focus on the problem, the issue or the pain.  The supernatural response is to focus on the solution – Jesus Christ.  Not only will He take you through the trial to a better place, He will bring you out of the trial stronger than ever. 

Peter wanted Jesus to avoid the Crucifixion and all the trials associated with it.  Had Jesus done that, we would not have a plan for our salvation.  Jesus rebuked Peter because He knew that the trials of the Crucifixion were necessary.

Actions speak louder than words.  Nowhere is this old adage more applicable than in our living testimony.  No one wants to learn about Jesus unless they have seen Jesus in us.  Our greatest orations will never win a soul without a visible expression in our lives that we are living what we are teaching.

Let those around us see peace, love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control expressed in our lives.  Then they will seek the source of these gifts without us asking, teaching or preaching.

Praise and thanks to the Lord for He will faithfully fulfill His promise to finish every good work in us that He begins.  He will steadfastly stand by us even as we stumble over and over again.  Just as a loving parent who is training a child to ride a bike will pick up their child over and over again until they get it right, God will pick us up time and time again until we get it right.

Of course, we will never get it completely right until we stand before Him in heaven.  Nonetheless, He never forsakes us as we learn to fulfill His purposes for our lives.  Hallelujah!!

We are commanded to love one another as we love ourselves.  How can we be called to that level of love?  Doesn’t God know how impossible that is for us to fulfill that level of love for others?  Of course, He does.  That is precisely why He expressed His perfect love and forgiveness toward us through the life, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus.

When we accept Jesus as our Savior, He indwells in us, giving us the capacity to love as He does.  If we try to relate to others through our own capabilities, our frailties will be exposed.  If we let the power of His Spirit reign in our lives, we are enabled to become vessels of His perfect love and forgiveness.  We are then able to meet the great command to love one another as ourselves.  

We naturally associate the idea of clouds with the idea of storms forming.   If clouds are building up, we think “look out.”  As we grow in Christ we come to realize that when storm clouds 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 cause us to be dependent on Him to provide our protection and our provision.  He provides the perfect pathway through the storms in our lives through our relationship with Jesus Christ.

Life is not a game of “who can achieve the most.”  Life is the process of preparing ourselves for our eternal resting place.

The process is complete when we seek the Father in everything that we do regardless of our circumstances.  The process is complete when we have surrendered all that we are and all that we have to the Father.  The process is complete when we have surrendered all that we will ever be and all that we will ever have to the Father for all eternity.  The process is complete when we rejoice in knowing that we will serve Him and bring glory to Him forever.

When Adam and Eve sinned, they ran and hid from God.  They were ashamed to be in His presence.

God did not leave them.  He was there with them the entire time.  So it is with us.  When we are disobedient, we separate ourselves from God.  He is there, but we are running from Him because of the shame of our sin.

When we turn back toward Our Heavenly Father by recognizing our sin and repenting, we feel ourselves getting back in relationship with Him.  The fact of the matter is that the miraculous cleansing blood of Jesus kept us in God’s presence and grace the entire time.

Found at the core of flesh is sin.  To think otherwise is to be ignorant of the Word of God.  We are firmly bound to sin when we operate outside the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

We can lead good lives by the world’s standards without the Holy Spirit.  We cannot lead Godly lives without the saving grace of Jesus Christ and the filling of the Holy Spirit.  To avoid the terrible possibilities that are awaiting us if we live by our hardened hearts in the flesh, we must repent and fall to the foot of the Cross for our salvation.

Without the Holy Spirit, the teachings of Jesus are very hard to rationalize.  As the world and our nation have moved away from a Christian foundation, corrupt lifestyles have become common place.  And the corruption has become largely overlooked and even deemed acceptable in many cases.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sent a message to magnify the differences between the way of the Truth and the way of the world.  When we begin to see the power and joy in living a lifestyle fashioned from the Beatitudes, we have begun the process of dying to self.

We are born in sin.  There is no possibility of entering heaven without being washed clean by the blood of Jesus Christ.  The only way to be cleansed by the blood of Jesus is by receiving Him as Our Savior and allowing His Spirit to dwell within us.

There is nothing that we can do on our own to earn the necessary righteousness to stand in the presence of Our Heavenly Father.  With our cleansing secured in Christ, we are acceptable to enter into the Holy of Holies and go before the Father.  All the Father will see is the perfection and holiness of His Son.