Live Delivered

The devil cannot claim the person the Lord has claimed for Himself.

James 4:7 tells us this.  “Submit yourselves therefore to God.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”  There have been times in my life where I have gotten this backwards.  Because I can be stubborn, I have on occasion resisted what God wanted me to be and to submit to what the devil offered me.  What about you?

When the Holy Spirit uses the word “therefore” when speaking to us, He is saying there is a good reason for you to hear and understand what I am about to say.  Therefore, James makes it clear that because of the power of our sin nature, we should submit to God and resist the devil.

The devil is always on the prowl, lurking about to draw away from God those of us who are slow to submit to the Lord. Many believers would like to resist the evil of the world, but they simply do not know that to resist the devil they must resist themselves.

Listen, the devil wants you to get things backwards. The devil wants you to submit to yourself which sounds naturally right and to resist anything what would keep you from having the things you want in life. He wants to confuse you about what it means to submit to God.

If you are a child of God, then you can be certain the devil wants to entice you to submit to yourself. The devil knows he cannot be successful with his enticements when he goes up against someone fully submitted to God. Therefore, you should be quick to submit to God in everything you are.

Don’t believe that you are fighting to resist the devil only; your fight is to resist that part of you that can be drawn to the ways of the devil.  To resist you must submit. Submission is more than simply hearing and doing what God tells you to do at the moment.  Submission is saying to yourself you will look to be guided by the Lord in all that you are.

To submit means you wake up every day with a heart that is purposed to search diligently for more ways to submit to the Lord’s way while you resist having your own way. To submit to God is to say yes to all you know He wants of you and to be ready to say yes to all that you know He would like of you.

The devil would like you to believe you have many choices in life that you can make on your own because God gave you the ability to reason and to discern and to understand. Indeed, we have all this. Therefore, we must be even more willing to submit to the Lord the very things He has given to us so that we do not fall to our own ways.

Our submission will keep us looking toward and never away from the perfect way of God. Christ gives us but one choice about all things – that being to live for Him in submission to Him and guided by Him.  The devil cannot stand before the man who stands for God.

A man who submits finds the way to resist.  This man learns that the real issues of life are not the things concerning the world but whether that man sees life’s issues through the heart of the Lord. When we do not submit to the Lord, we may fall to the temptation to choose wrong over right.  We may fall to the temptation to choose selfishness over selflessness.  We may fall to the temptation of living in pride over living humbly.

If we do not submit to the Lord, we do not have what it takes to resist the devil. When we do not submit, we are like sheep without a shepherd. God’s promise today is as good as it was 2000 years ago and forever.  Submit to God and He will lay claim to you.  The devil cannot claim that which God claims for Himself.

The devil wants you to try to resist him without submission to the Lord.  But you must know that to submit to the Lord means you are strengthened to resist the devil. Do not let him fool you on this. If you learn to submit to the Lord, you will get to see the devil run from you and all that you know and love.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

When you rob yourself of the things others want to steal from you, things will go your way even if you don’t get your way.

Philippians 2:5 says, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.”

Two young boys wanted a pony for Christmas.  On Christmas morning they went downstairs and found only a bunch of hay and manure under the Christmas tree.  The older boy cried “look at this mess, Christmas is ruined.”

The younger boy ran to the barn and came back with a shovel and started cleaning up the mess.  He said, “with all this manure around, there must be a pony here someplace.”  How is it that two people could have such different responses to the same thing?

Their thinking was different and because their thinking was different, they developed different attitudes that guided how they lived. The older boy thought about what he wanted but the younger boy thought about what he could find. 

Jesus didn’t think it was robbery for Him to be stripped of His place beside God and to come to earth to live as a mere man.  In a way, Jesus robbed Himself of His rightful place so that He could find some valuable things here on earth. He knew that with God in control, things would be ok even if they didn’t seem to go His way.

In much that way, the younger boy robbed himself of his disappointment.  He knew that happiness and joy cannot live where disappointment dwells.  So, he chose to think about what he could find more than about what he did not get.  In a way he was saying to himself “things will be ok even if I don’t get my way.”

Unfortunately, many of us today are like the older boy. We focus on reacting to who is robbing us of the things that are ours. Perhaps we should consider it a blessing sometimes when we don’t get all the things we want.  Having all that we desire would likely lead us to being selfish. Selfish people are not our favorite people.

So, we are encouraged today to let this mind that was in Christ be in each of us.  And although we are encouraged to want the whole mind of Christ, the Word today is talking about a specific mind and way of thinking that Christ demonstrated toward His life. What mind is this you ask?

Well, it is the mind to know this is who I am, but I want to live the way God wants me to live. Jesus knew that people could not take from Him what was not theirs to take.  People could not rob Him of what could not be stolen. People could not take from Him anything He treasured more than what He wanted to give them.

So, today why don’t you start a life of having this mind of Christ for yourself.  Learn to rob yourself of the things that others would want to take from you.  Rob yourself of the thinking that you have a rightful place anyplace but in the presence of the Lord.

Rob yourself of the thinking that you have a right to anything but the thing that God gives you.  Rob yourself of the need to be accepted by anyone or anything save that God accepts you.

When you learn to let this mind to be in you as it is in Christ, you will develop an attitude of being like Christ. Your attitude is the way you react and respond to the things that happen with and around you daily.  Your attitude will ultimately influence how you live and the behaviors you demonstrate and more importantly the way you are received in the world.  Attitude is a choice.  It is not set in stone.  Rob yourself of the thinking that will keep you from having the mind of Christ, and the heart of Christ and the attitude of Christ.

Much of the good in life is found in how you think about what life is doing to you. You cannot have a pony without having some hay and some manure.  If you react to the mess in your life in a way that is a mess, life will likely always be a mess for you.

Your life follows your thinking.  Your life may be a mess not because of what is happening to you but because of the way you think about what is happening around you and the attitude by which you choose to respond to life.

Start robbing yourself of your way of thinking.  With the Lord, things will be ok, even if you do not get your way.  Let this too be your mind.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Don’t be so stuck in your ways that you miss the target of living the Way of the Lord

We don’t learn because we won’t change.

Luke 22:67: “If You are the Christ, tell us.”

I’m sure some of you have heard the saying “you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” There are many instances in the Word where Jesus says this or something similar to this. Typically, He directs this comment at people whom He know will never believe what He says.

In some ways I think of people like this as those who itch to know something they can deny so they can believe more strongly what they want to believe. People like this don’t really look to direct their belief toward what is the truth; they look to make the truth contrary to what they believe.

In their minds, the thing that is contrary cannot be the thing that is true.  I know this will make no sense to us, but it is the case today more often than not.  We reject the truth because people make it contrary to the thing they want to believe.

Jesus responded to their request by saying “If I tell you, you will by no means believe.”  Yea, this sounds a lot like saying, if I tell you, you won’t believe.  Instead of rejecting what we believe because it is contrary to the truth, we want to stay the same as we are, so we reject what is contrary to who we are.

Jesus knows that those of us like this are just itching for an opportunity to prove what we believe more than to accept what we should believe.  He won’t give us the chance to do this with His Word.

One of the reasons we don’t have a closer relationship with the Lord is because we won’t give up a close relationship with what we believe now and with who we are now.  We cannot fit the Lord into our beliefs; we must change our beliefs to fit with who the Lord is.

And if we do not have a closer relationship with the Lord because we won’t change, could it be that we don’t have closer relationships with others because we don’t change?  I think so.  Some of us are so resistant to being told the truth that we will say we are fine with being who we are just as we are.

This is just another way of rejecting what should be for your life so you can hang onto what should change about your life. Jesus knew this about the people in His time and He knew that we would be this way today, so He specifically tells us we won’t believe.

So, what will you do now?  Ask yourself, what things do I want to believe and to be and to do that keep me from growing in the way the Lord wants me to grow?  What things do I hang onto that keep me from falling into the freedom to be something greater?

Jeremiah 10:24 says, “O Lord, correct me, but with justice; Not in Your anger, lest you bring me to nothing.” Don’t be so set in your ways that you are stuck in ways that are not of the Lord. We can work really hard at staying the same, as many of us do.  Or we can make staying the same really hard for us because we accept the truths the Lord shares with us daily.

Lord, correct me when I am wrong.  Lord temper me when I am right.  And Lord, even correct me when I am right and lead me gently in your Truth always.  Don’t fight to stay the same; fight to be careful to change so you can stay with the Lord.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

The Lord does not want us to fear Him. Perhaps more than that, He is fearful we may not know Him like we should.

Proverbs 1:7 says “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

I have often wondered why there is no little instruction book for life.  Some of us would say that would be the Bible.  But I don’t think so.  If you want to assemble a new bicycle, you must follow the assembly instructions. We don’t have anything like that for life.

Perhaps we don’t have an instruction book for life because what we need more is knowledge and wisdom to guide the decisions we make in life.  Unlike a bicycle which can be assembled over and again following the same instructions, life is dynamic. There is no instruction manual to follow for the dynamic things we face daily.

So, I went to looking for the Lord to give me once and for all, the instructions I needed to learn how to live a faithful life that He would be happy with. As I looked into my thoughts, it came to me that I should consider what it is about my life that I feared the most.  I wondered what fear had to do with anything.

The Lord made me see that to have the knowledge I wanted for my life; I needed to deal effectively with the fears I had that kept me from the things I wanted.

The Lord helped me to understand how to have fear but never to be afraid of fear. I believe this is the same for us all.  If you want to know the Lord, you must learn to fear not knowing the Lord.

I know this may sound crazy, but the fear the Lord speaks of is the type of fear that brings us to love. It is the type of fear that causes us to seek what we are afraid to seek. It is the type of fear that causes us to be fearful but never to be afraid of being fearful.

The Lord does not permit us to fear to keep us under control; He permits us to fear so that we can be free from the control of fear.  We fear so that we can be brought to a place of understanding about Him. And understanding leads us to knowledge.  And knowledge leads us to see the Lord as He really is.

The fear of the Lord is a fear that leads to curiosity.  Curiosity then leads to search and respect.  Respect leads to Love.  Love leads us to learn how to live wisely.  This Love is what helps us to live our lives the way the Lord wants us to live just as if He gave us a step-by-step instruction book.

The Lord permits us all to be challenged by a fear that does not make us fearful.  It instead causes us to draw closer to Him so that we are wiser and more knowledgeable about Him and about life.

Ecclesiastes 12:13 says this: “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all.” This is not fearing what God can do to us; it is fearing what you do not know about God. The Lord does not want you to be afraid of Him. Perhaps He is afraid you do not know Him like you should.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

When we learn to hear the Lord, we will hold our opinions while we stand firmly on His positions.

What do you think?  Does the Lord talk much?  Yes, He does.  He never stops talking to us.  But His talking much is not what you think. Even though the Lord is all knowing, He speaks to us with just a few words.  He doesn’t need to say much because He says only what needs to be said.

The Lord doesn’t need to talk much because He shares His position more than His opinion.  He doesn’t gossip. We should understand this, and we should be careful to hear Him when He offers His position on a thing.

There was a time when Jesus was transfigured before Peter, James and John.  Scripture says while all this was happening, Peter told the Lord, he and the others could build Him a tabernacle. Peter had an opinion about what they were seeing and what they should do.

While he was saying this, scripture says a voice was heard from heaven telling them, “This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.  Hear Him.” Matthew 17:5. There is a lot of stuff going on today and times are hard. Some of us are attempting to change or to transform many things that cannot be changed. And many of us wonder what we should say or do.

When we do not hear a voice from heaven telling us what we should think, we get anxious about what is happening. Just like Peter, John and James, in our anxiety and in our righteousness we become restless. When we are restless about what we don’t understand, we want to share our opinions about how we believe everyone should act.

It is difficult to Hear the Lord when we are anxious to share our opinion about what we think. When the Lord commands us to hear Him, He is saying listen to Me before you ask others to listen to you.  He is saying hold your opinion until you know My position.  Hear Me.  He wants us to share His position more than He wants others to share our opinion.

Gossip is more than simply sharing something about others that is not for us to share.  Gossip is sharing an opinion about a person or thing designed to reflect poorly on that person or thing.  The Lord does not want us to gossip about the things that we face.

Listen to Him and you will find His position to be clear.  Learn to establish your position more than your opinion.  When you do this, you will find you are less likely to speak ill about a person who has simply done what you have been blessed not to do so far.

When we hear Him, it is then that we should speak of what we have heard. But anxiety, frustration and our sense of righteousness often causes us to stop and settle on what we believe should be happening. We want people to know that God is among us, and He sees all that is going on.

That is true.  But God does not use a person’s sin to make that person look bad or to make someone else look good. God has a position on the things we do but we have opinions about the things we do.  Let’s learn to quiet ourselves and to hear Him.

Sometimes, when we want to be heard, our opinions are more harmful than helpful to others.  The Lord does not need our help with what He wants to say and to do. He wants us to “Hear Him.”  Just become we can see no heavenly action, we should not be concerned if the Lord is still among us.  He is always with us.

We should be concerned if we are still with Him.  We should be concerned that we hear Him more.  When we hear Him”, we are able to be used by Him in ways of His choice and not our own.

Proverbs 17:27-28 says, “He who has knowledge spares his words, and a man of understanding is of a calm spirit.  Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace, and when he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive.” Learn to hold your opinion about the sins of the world until you have learned to Hear Him. 

Our opinions will not be of any value and our witness will not be effective when we sound and act just like the people we speak of who may have stumbled. When God says to “Hear Him” He means we should be transfigured by what we hear from Him.

Learn to quiet your talk and hold your opinion so that you can Hear Him. When you do this your walk will be reflective of His talk and of His position.  Hear Him!

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

One of the reasons we don’t understand God is because we do not choose to live under His authorityy

I wrote the following message in 1992.  I am sharing it now because I want you to see the power of a never changing Word of God.  The message was right for 1992, and it is right for today.  Amazing!

“If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority.  John 7:17.”  Do we really desire as people to do the Will of God?  Have you ever asked yourself that question?  The world is filled with strife and contention.  Even among Christians and other people of God, there is dissension and contention. 

Why?  Because people do not sincerely desire to do God’s will.  Oh, we say we do, but our hearts are far from it.  We do just as the Jews of old did – they took Moses’s laws and decided which if any they would live by. We take the Word of God and treat it as if it is only a law or guideline for some situations in life.

The Word of God is not simply a law. It is the essence of God Himself, the Spirit of God, written out so that it is available to everyone – even nonbelievers.  We disbelieve God’s law because we never accept Him as an authority over our lives.  We do not readily see the authoritative connection we have to Him.  But Jesus says if you desire to do His will, then you shall know the Word of God and the authority of God over you.  God is the same for all people and all races. 

If we desire to do His will, He will reveal this to us and there will be peace within each of us.  You don’t have to wait for your neighbor to learn to accept this.  You do it first because it is what God requires of you individually not us collectively.  Get to know His authority over your life and you will be filled with peace unsurpassed.  PTL Who gives us peace with ourselves that we may be peace to others.

That was 1992.  So what about today?

Today we are very much like the people of old. They had one fundamental problem, and we have that problem today.  We say we want to do the Will of God, but we do not understand or accept that to do His Will we must be subject to His Will.

Back then the people questioned Jesus’ teaching, and they questioned its truth.  Today we do not readily accept the Truth of God’s Word especially when we believe it does not line up with how we view things. Jesus said then and He says now, if anyone really wants to do His will, they will be able to discern the Truth of His Word.

To be subject to His will we must place ourselves under His authority and under His Lordship.  When we learn to live under His authority, we learn to grow up and never to use His Word to justify what we want to say or to do.  God has a position on marriage.  We cannot know His position clearly unless we clearly place ourselves under His authority to do His will.

Let’s not question the Truth of the Word.  Let’s search for the Truth in the Word.  Let’s not say we want to do His will.  Let’s place ourselves under His authority so that we can more easily hear what He has to say to us.

In John 7:10-16 the people were confused at Jesus’s teaching and at who Jesus was. In John 7:17 Jesus tells them you cannot make sense of the Word; you cannot rightly discern what the Word is saying, and you cannot understand the Word unless you first have the desire to do God’s will.

The reason many of us never understand the Word of God is because we do not first have a desire to live under the authority of God to do His Will.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Your desires are the things you want. Your will is the action you will take to have what you want.

Your desires and your will. That is my message today.

If you want more blessings in your life, it is important to understand the relationship between your desires and your will.  This is your talk and your walk.  Our desires are simply the things we want for our lives. Our wills then are degree of commitment we have that will lead us to act out our desires.

We have many examples in the Word that can help us see how to deal with our wills. Perhaps the best example is found in Jesus when He taught the disciples how to pray in Matthew 6:10.  In that prayer, Jesus tells us to say, “Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

In this prayer Jesus is showing us that our desires should be that the will of God should be done everywhere on earth.  That is what we should all want.  Our wills then would take this desire a step further to make sure we do all that we can do to be a part of the will of God being fulfilled here on earth.

Jesus gets at our desires and our wills and our talk and our walk. Many of us have heard of or we may even say ourselves that God gives us free will.  There is no scripture that I know of specifically that speaks to us having something called free will.  I suppose what we mean is that we have the ability to choose to do what things we do, even those things we know that expressly come at us from the Lord.

We choose to say yes Lord, or we do not.  We choose to submit, or we do not. Our desires may be there, but our wills may not carry us through.  The Lord will not twist our arms and make us do anything.  He will always wait patiently on us to choose to do what He asks. He will also wait for us to do the things we know He wants us to do because we know His nature.

The Lord wants us to know Him well enough so that we can know the desires He has for us. He wants us to match our own desires for ourselves with His desires for us. He wants our talk for us to match His talk of us.

Then He wants us to love Him enough so that we can discipline ourselves and our will to allow His will to rule in our lives.  He wants us to choose to act in ways that allow His actions for our lives to take priority over the actions we would otherwise take for ourselves.  He wants our walk for ourselves to be submissive to His walk for us.

In the book of Psalms, we have many examples where our desires are aligned with God’s desires for us.  Psalm 139:24 says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart.  Try me and know my anxieties.  And see if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Search me and try me are statements of our desires and of our talk. We hope that our desires and our talk will match His desires and the talk He has for us.  But desires and talk are not enough.  We must be willing to walk.  We must be willing to submit our wills to the actions and plans God wants to take.

Our wills are of no real eternal value to us unless we are willing to submit to the walk God will lay out for us.  If in our desires God finds anything wicked or harmful to us lurking within us, we must be willing to free ourselves from ourselves so that we walk the path He will direct us to take.

God does in fact give us the freedom to choose to be free of the desires and wills we would have for ourselves and to accept the desires and will He has for us.  If you want your talk and your walk to align with the talk and the walk He has planned for you, ask the Lord to help you free yourself from yourself.

Perhaps trading your will for His will for you is the best expression of your free will.  Free will frees you from the bondage you are held to when you live by your will alone. 

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Smarter choices come more easily when you are wise enough to wait for understanding.

The wise and the understanding. That is my message today.

In the book of Daniel, chapter 2:20-21, Daniel praises God by saying, “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever.  For wisdom and might are His.  And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.”

Daniel singles out the fact that God does something specific for the wise and for the understanding.  He gives them wisdom and He gives them knowledge. It seems a bit unusual that someone who is already wise and understanding would be given even more.  But that’s exactly what God does.

What makes us wise and understanding is our ability to listen to someone greater than ourselves and to listen to things higher than the things we think of.  Perhaps Daniel is saying, God wants us to first listen to Him and next to listen to people who listen to Him.

If you are only going to listen to yourself, you better make sure you are wise and understanding or you may be listening to foolishness.  And if you are going to listen to others, you better make sure they listen to the One who can make them wise and understanding or you may be listening to the ignorant.

To whom much is given, God gives more.  He does this with those who are the wise and the understanding. So, how do we find these wise and understanding people?  Well, don’t look at what they do, look at who they are. The wise and the understanding are states of being.  They are known for being different, which is the reason the things they do are better than the things we do.

Listening to someone smarter than you are is one of the key attributes of those of us who are wise and understanding.  The wise and the understanding will listen to God more than you and I will listen to Him. Why is this so? Well, it’s because more of us live foolishly with what we know, and we are ignorant of the things we should know.  We lack wisdom and we lack knowledge.

We see our lives primarily consisting of the things we do and not the persons we are. The wise and the understanding are known for their persons; the foolish and the ignorant are known for what they do. The wise and the understanding are listeners for the Lord; they want to hear and to understand.  The foolish and the ignorant are listeners of themselves; they want to be heard and to be understood by others.

Both wisdom and knowledge are needed for the specific moment in time that you are in today.  Wisdom is knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do and knowledge is having the awareness of something that you ought not to be aware of yet.

Wisdom and knowledge are more about knowing and understanding yourself better, so that you know and understand other things more. Many of us live failing to realize the things God has reserved for us because we do not live as wise and understanding people.  Just like a parent doesn’t raise a child to be a failure in life, God did not create us to leave us to be failures.

But Daniel made it clear that God does not give His wisdom and knowledge to those of us who are foolish and without understanding. Before David became king of Israel, king Saul tried to kill him because of hatred and jealously. At times, David did not know what to do because he did not know what the next situation with Saul would bring.  But in 1 Samuel 18:14 the bible says, “David behaved wisely in all his ways, and the Lord was with him.”

David may not have known what to do but he knew that he should behave in a way that would not make the situation worse.  He behaved in a way that glorified God and so the glory of God’s goodness was reflected on him.  He was not foolish, as he understood himself so he knew what he could expect from Saul.  David had wisdom and knowledge because he was wise and understanding.

You may be in situations today where you do not know what to do.  You may be praying for an answer to something that is vexing you. Until your answer comes, learn to live wisely and with understanding.  Watch your behavior and wait for the Lord to move before moving and doing anything of your own thinking.

The bible says if you ask the Lord for wisdom He will give it to you.  But now you know that if you live wisely and with understanding, you position yourself to have His gift of wisdom and knowledge more easily.

A wise and understanding person will not make things more difficult while waiting for the knowledge of what to do. Smarter choices come more easily when we are wise enough to wait for understanding. Being wise and understanding will help you make better choices about the things you do, and it will keep you from being foolish and ignorant.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Because Jesus did not stay dead, believers in Him will not stay dead either.

Mark 16:44-45 says this about Jesus’ death.  “Pilate marveled that He was already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him if He had been dead for some time.  So, when he found out from the centurion, He granted the body to Joseph.”

Now, Jesus had been on the cross for just around six hours so this quick death was puzzling to Pilate. To be sure of his death, Pilate asked the Roman Centurion charged with carrying out the crucifixion to confirm that Jesus was dead.  Pilate was saying to himself “dead so soon.  They thought He was a king.”

What Pilate and the Jews who wanted Jesus dead didn’t realize is that Jesus would not stay dead.  They thought His death would be the end of His life just as it was for any other person before Him.  They soon learned how wrong they were. Because on the third day after His death, Jesus got up and walked out of the grave.

Jesus did not stay dead. Why not?  Because nothing that is dead can do the work of something that must be done in life. Jesus had to do the work of Life for you and me, so death could not keep Him from that work.

The Jewish leaders at the time wanted to keep the people discouraged and dependent on the leaders for what hope they could have. They wanted to put a stop to the idea of independence from the law and direct access to God that Jesus was bringing to ordinary people. They claimed He had to be stopped because He was misleading the people to believe in something other than the Jewish laws.

His crucifixion, however, was not the final nail in His life.  His death was the final nail in the door that God had opened so that all who believes in Jesus can always walk through to eternal life.  His death was the final nail needed to keep something open more than to keep something closed.  The Jewish leaders thought that killing Jesus would solve all their problems.  The only problem with this thinking is that Jesus did not stay dead.

In Isaiah 42, God tells us of His plan for Jesus.  He refers to Jesus as His Servant whom He upholds and as His Elect One in whom His soul delights.  He says He has put His Spirit upon Jesus.  And He says Jesus will bring forth justice to the gentiles.  Jesus did not stay dead because He had the eternal work of life to do for us.

The religious leaders of the time got things wrong about Jesus and life just as we do today. They attempted to break what could not be broken and they attempted to fix what they could not fix.

By killing Him they thought they would:

• Silence Him.  They did not realize that Jesus would come to life in the hearts and minds and voices of every believer and that the rocks would cry out in praise of Him.  The voice of One became the voice of a multitude that could not be counted.

• Discredit Him.  They wanted to prove Him to be an imposter and not a Savior.  Instead, they ignited praise and honor in the hearts of every believer, proving Him to be even more than they thought.

• Punish Him.  They wanted to judge Him harshly to set an example for others.  Instead, they misjudged Him badly and brought eternal punishment upon themselves.

• Stop Him.  They wanted to end His influence with the people.  Instead, they sealed forever His love for the people and their love for Him.

• Kill Him.  They thought killing Him would mean the people would no longer have anything to hope for in Him.  But He didn’t stay dead.  He walked out of the grave and into the hearts of every believer.

Because He did not stay dead, God had the sacrifice He required for all people to be forgiven for their sins. Jesus did not stay dead.  And when we believe in Him, we do not stay dead.  Because He did not stay dead, we can have what the devil has always tried to keep us from having – eternal life.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

The Grace of the Lord is always there to heal our hurts or to carry us through the things that hurt.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul asked the Lord three times to remove an infirmity he had. The Lord’s response to Paul is captured in 2 Corinthians 12:9. It says, “And He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”  Paul’s response to this was to boast in his weaknesses so that the Power of God could be alive in Him.

We commonly accept that grace is the unmerited favor or kindness of God poured out on us. So, what did the Lord mean by saying His grace was sufficient for Paul?  Was His grace sufficient to heal Paul? Or was His grace sufficient to sustain Paul in the event he was not healed?

Grace is indeed the unmerited favor of the Lord. But it doesn’t mean we get to live free of something that challenges our lives as much as it means we are freed to live abundantly with our challenges.  Read the account of this in 2 Corinthians for yourself.  It is not clear whether the Lord healed Paul or not.  Most of us believe Paul was not healed.

But whether healed or not, the Lord wants us to understand the sufficiency and the power of His grace. Grace is grace whether the Lord gives us what we ask in prayer or whether He chooses not to give us what we ask.  Paul was actually sick from being sick with his infirmity. Jesus used the healing power of His grace to heal the sickness Paul had caused by having this infirmity that he wanted to be removed.

I believe the Lord wants to do the same thing with us. Sometimes, the Lord will not give us exactly what we request in prayer.  But He will always give us something better than what we ask.  His grace is sufficient for us either way.  When we are sick of being challenged, grace will carry us through.

The grace of God is one of the primary ways the Lord is able to help us build up our faith in Him.  The unmerited kindness of the Lord causes us to be thankful to Him in the good times and in the bad times.

When we are pressed down by the challenges we face, the grace of the Lord keeps us from feeling like we are overcome by our troubles.  Grace may not remove our troubles, but it keeps us from allowing our troubles to make us become sick as we long for the goodness of life.

When we are anxious about the things we cannot control, the grace of the Lord helps us to learn never to lose control of ourselves as we live in Him.

When we are hurt or attacked by someone or something, the grace of the Lord helps us to find the good that is hidden in evil that is directed towards.  Grace helps us to stand strong against evil with the good that is only found in the Lord.

When we lack little, grace keeps us from becoming proud of having much.  And when we have much, grace keeps us humble enough to know that there are many who have nothing at all.

Grace keeps us from falling into the belief that we are better than others.  It keeps us from having the attitude that sometimes others must get what they deserve so they will learn to change their ways.  Indeed, grace may cause some of us to change our ways, but to many it will help us to change our perspectives about the Power of God.

So then, does the power of God rest on us in our strengths or in our weaknesses?  In both.  If the Lord gives us all that we want always, grace can help us learn to appreciate the Love of God.  If the Lord never gives us the things that we ask, the grace of the Lord can help us appreciate the power of God to carry us through our challenges.

Learn to recognize the grace of the Lord in your life.  It is sufficient for all that you encounter each day. The Grace of the Lord is always with us to heal us or to see us through what challenges us.