Through Jesus' Love

The joy of the Lord is evident in His children.  It does not matter what their circumstances are or where they find themselves.  They reflect the awesome Spirit of their Savior.

They can be laden with the heaviest of burdens, yet they will reflect the joy of their Master who dwells within them.  They can be suffering the deepest of human pains, yet they will celebrate their shared love with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit without concern about their circumstances.  The joy of the Lord is their strength.

There is absolutely nothing that we can undertake for God that will not become a burden to us if we do not include God in the process.  We simply are not able to endure without His sustaining grace.  The sense of responsibility will ultimately crush us.

If we try to produce results for God without His favor, we are doomed to failure and perhaps even bitterness.  If we put our faith in Him and give Him every trial and every ounce of fatigue, He will work through us.  We will not carry the burden because we will only be the vessel that He uses.  In accordance with His promises, our burdens will be cast upon the Lord.

God abhors sin.  He can never allow sin into His kingdom.  

In order for Our Heavenly Father to have His children join Him for all eternity in heaven, it was necessary for Him to provide a way for all the sins of His children to be wiped away.  He so loved His children that He provided His own Son as the sacrifice required to atone for the sins of His children.  

The gates of heaven are now open to all of God’s children because Jesus, in obedience to the Father, went to the Cross for the sins of all men to be washed away.  The only way to receive the eternal gift from God is to reject sin for all eternity.  The only way to reject sin for all eternity is by accepting the One who took on all of our sins on the Cross.  

The only source of eternal life is through the Lord Jesus Christ.  We must trade our old sin-filled lives for the life of Christ within us to be able to live forever with Our Heavenly Father who loves us so dearly.  

Through the power of the resurrection, we that have accepted Jesus as our Savior, are able to let go of our old lives and let God rule in our new lives.  It is not because we are better people.  It is because we are completely new men and women in Christ.

We have been taken over by the Spirit of Jesus Christ.  He has taken residence in our bodies in the form of His Holy Spirit.  God has put His holiness into us – never to be separated, sealed for all eternity. 

When we accepted the crucified Christ as our Savior, we accepted the crucifixion of our old selves.  This allowed the One without sin to come and dwell within us. 

With the One without sin dwelling within us, sin is no longer tolerable.  Jesus, who submits Himself totally to the Father, cannot dwell in a place of sin.  Therefore, there is no place in our lives for the carnal man to rule.  Sin must be put to death.  

Our old sin-filled selves must be denied as we repent of our sins.   We will not and cannot cleanse ourselves by the strength of our old selves, but we can and will repent and be victorious over sin by the strength of our precious Savior within us. 

When we accept Jesus as our Savior, our lives are changed forever.  As we embrace our Savior and submit to His will in our lives, we naturally desire to see the lives of those close to us changed forever.  Most of us go through a stage where we think that we are responsible for initiating the spiritual change in the lives of our friends and family members.

At some point, there is an important distinction that we need to come to understand.  We are simply the vessels of Christ’s love.  We do not do the work of bringing others to the Lord.  We, instead, allow Jesus Christ to work through us to perform His redeeming miracles.  We allow others to be able to receive a Savior that they have never seen because they have witnessed His love through our living testimony.

What a wonderful transformation we experience when the Holy Spirit opens our minds to receive and understand things that made no sense to us before or had no value to us in our old ways of thinking.  In the blink of an eye, our blinders are removed.  

Without even understanding the process, we begin to assimilate truths that had been unavailable to us before.  Just as suddenly, we are able to share the truths with those who have been prepared to receive them. 

Through His death on the Cross, Jesus Christ absorbed everything abhorrent to Him.  He absorbed it and washed it away for all eternity.  

Through the sacrifice of His Son, Our Heavenly Father no longer sees our sins when He sees us.  He only sees the perfection of His Son who is in us.

The Crucifixion was not some tragedy in history.  This was an event planned by God because He loved us.  He loved us so much that He allowed His Son to be sacrificed in order to open the gates of heaven to us for all eternity.  

No matter what times we are going through, no matter in what circumstances that we find ourselves, if these times bring evil upon us, they are of Satan.  Do not faint or lose faith.  Through the suffering of Jesus Christ and ultimately through His death and resurrection, we can have victory over Satan and his attacks.  

On His Cross, Jesus secured victory over Satan and all of his evil for all eternity.  As a result of His sacrificial work on the behalf of all mankind, every person now has an open invitation to come before the Throne of God at anytime.  Whatever Satan has wrought upon us, we can take before the Father and ask that it be taken away in the name of the Eternal Victor, Jesus Christ.

Jesus calls us that know Him at different times and in different places throughout our lives.  But at some point in time during our walk with Him, we all end up at the foot of the Cross.  

When we reach our place at the foot of the Cross, we are called to surrender all that we have and all that we are.  Then we are moved to give up all that we will ever have and all that we will ever be.  This is necessary so that He may complete His work in us.  

When Abraham proved to God that he was ready to lead God’s people by sacrificing his son Isaac, God released His kingdom to Abraham.  When prove to God we are ready to give up our world, He will release the fullness of His kingdom to us.