Scrapes and Bruises!
For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Matthew 13:15.

Lord, do I know you as my stumbling stone or my building stone? If I am not properly connected to You, I will surely stumble over You, as Peter did (Matthew 26:31). How often You and your Words have been offensive to me when I wanted to go my own way. I was offended when I wanted to choose certain friends, or other things that my flesh craved. Your Holy Spirt gave me gentle tugs on my heart but I would not listen.

There is only one place for the foundation stone, or the cornerstone. If it is not in its proper place in my life, I will only stumble over it repeatedly. I find that when I do not put You and Your Word first place the result is only pain from my rebellion.

Your cross, Lord, is often offensive to me, just as it was to Peter. I often crave a “glory” religion, a religion of feelings, fame, joy, and happiness but on my own terms. I do not like the “cross” religion, the drudgery, and misery of dealing with people deep in their sins and failures. I do not like saying no to myself. I do not like being put on the cross. Peter wanted a kingdom and position and power. So, do I. He could not bear to see it all go down the drain via the cross. How often he hurt himself stumbling over You!

Yet I read, “Who for the joy… before Him endured the cross. (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus found joy in the cross, while I shun it. Not only that, but via the cross He found victory, sitting at the right hand of Father God. God will not deny me victory or power (that He desires for me), but He says I will get these things only by enduring the cross. So, if I keep bumping up against God, something is wrong with me. If my feet are bruised it is because I am rebelling, not submitting. But if I submit, the joy of the cross will see me through many a dark day. This joy is not the cross itself, but its aftermath, for God always deals with ends-final realities-not shortcuts to them. I look for God’s end, my ‘posterity’ (Psalm 37:37) through my cross today.

Sacrificial Preaching!
Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth. Jeremiah 1:9.

Lord, am I a Christian by indoctrination or revelation? If I am merely parenting truth, that has been dictated to me, woe is me and woe is any congregation or person that listens to me. When Christ met Paul on the Damascus Road, He revealed Himself to his former enemy. Afterward, Paul did not confer with Flesh and Blood, but escaped into the desert to receive further revelation. (Galatians. 1:15-17). Later, when he emerged to preach Christ, it was an incarnational message he preached, not when he learned at the foot of a human teacher.

All divine knowledge is received inwardly. Cristian education has this place, but only to make Christ revelation to me possible. It cannot make that revelation actual. Too many Christians today have taken on the culture of Christ without taking in His person. What is worse, too many spokesmen for Christ in the world are like the disciples before Pentecost-surrounded by Christ, but not invaded by Him. After Pentecost, the disciples did not need to be taught; they only needed the opportunity to release what had been revealed to them. What had formally been meaningless words now became truths that seared their hearts.

If Jesus did not dare to speak from Himself, (John 17:17) how dare I? If Jesus spoke only what was revealed to him by the Father, (John 7:6), how can we possibly preach anything else unless it is revealed to us? What we need in our pulpits are men who talk about God based on firsthand knowledge. God revealers will never lack an audience. I will do what Habakuk did, “Station myself on the watchtower and wait to see what He will say to me”. (Habakuk 2:1). It is what God says to me that becomes a message, people long to hear!

The Spared Self!
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. Gal. 2:20.

I promise with your help not to spare myself, Lord. How loathsome this self-saving is to You is clearly indicated in the words of Jesus to Peter. When Peter said to Him, “Perish the thought, Lord….This (the cross) shall never happen to you! (Matthew 16:22). Jesus turned very forcibly to him and said, “Out of my sight, Satan!” (v 23).

Self-pity is of Satan. I think I can see why, Lord. Self-pity is a wall of defense around the “self” in which the self is defended against anyone-including God. If Jesus had pitied Him-self He would have never gone to the cross. If I pity myself. I will never submit to the lethal principle of God’s will and, therefore, never become the means of life to others.

Self is like Ananias keeping back part of the money he has promised to give to the Lord (Acts 5:1-2). Self is forever telling me to keep back a part of myself. It considers total dedication to God a “waste” (Mark 14:4). In the language of Jesus’ bystanders, begged Him to come down from the cross and save Himself (Mark 15:30).

I must understand that self-pity is not the same as self-preservation. Accepting Jesus as my sin-bearer is self-preservation. Resting when I am tired and need a vacation is also a form of self-preservation.

However, there is no cure for self-pity except in death-spiritual death. And spiritual death comes to one who says yes to God in whatever He wants to do with him. It is impossible to say yes to God and still pity myself. It is my choice to make. When I say yes to Him, He responds with an almighty yes to me, and I rise from the death of crucifixion into newness of life.

Life Between Brackets!
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind…..” Luke 9:27.

Lord, you are teaching me that I must always live my life between brackets. No condition of my life is ever permanent. God brings about every condition; He also ends every one. There is a time and season for every part of our life. (Ecclesiastes 3). If I find myself in sorrow today, God will deliver me tomorrow as I turn to Him. God today blesses with victory, spiritual, and material wealth. But if we become prideful this stops the blessings of God.

Why does God give us changing, altering conditions. God does not want just one-track minds in His Kingdom. (I Timothy 6:17 KJV). Too much wealth leads us to “trust in uncertain riches. Too much sorrow leads us to despair. The combination is just right. The land to which the Israelites were traveling was a “land of hills and valleys”. (Deuteronomy 11:11). There cannot be hills without valleys nor can there be great victories without great battles.

That comforts me, Lord. The distressing situation that nags and embarrasses me today must give way to something better (or at least different). Patience says, “Wait, God will set it right.” The ecstasy of God’s blessings must be received with a sober thought; tomorrow it will be gone.

Now I see what your Word means when it says Moses “endured, as seeing the invisible” (Hebrews 11:27). It is in seeing the invisible One that keep me in perfect balance. I cannot endure seeing my brief, ever changing circumstances. I can endure only by looking to the One who ends those circumstances as He molds us. Lord, my vow is this; I will patiently look to the only constant and realty in my life-God Himself. Then I will understand what the psalmist said: The Lord will perfect (bring to completion) that which concerneth me” (Psalm 138:8 KJV).

Enduring Contradictions!
Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. (I Peter 1:13).

I will promise to learn what Jesus’ experience, the contradictions of sinners against Himself. (Heb. 12:3). So often my best friends become a snare. (Matt. 16:23). Jesus had to suffer the contradictions of Simon Peter against Himself. What harder trial than to have your own most loyal supporter consciously become your worst enemy? But Jesus endured it. (Heb.12:3).

This is where I fail so often. I do not endure. When opposed by a brother, I feel sorry for myself, lash out in anger, or shrug the whole thing off with a moral philosophy, “that’s the way things are”. How much better for me to learn something from the contradiction. Why should I waste a valuable commodity like a contradiction when it has so many educational benefits for me?
To be contradicted means I can shape my brother, as he can shape me. It is a diamond cutting diamond. God does not send me a contradiction to harass me only Satan harasses, God educates.
Father God sends those contradictions because there is something in my character, like a lack of patience that needs His correction. And likewise, my contradictor has a defect that God intends to correct using me.

Lord, teach me how to endure, as Jesus did. Teach me that snares and obstacles, traps and offenses are only a means of re-forming my ministry to what you have called me. If I keep my eye on the goal, as Jesus did, (Heb. 12:1-2), I will endure. Traps and snares never bother the disciple who is steadfastly looking at his Pioneer and Guide. When the “contradicted one” is in me and is in control, He will be able to cut through the forests of contradictions like an experienced woodman’s. He has gone before me. Now He turns to give me what He has- the life of unruffled trust.

Remember the way you BELIEVE is the way you will SPEAK. And the way you speak is the way you will LIVE.

Living as Never Seen Death!
Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:55-57

God ‘s purpose for me as his disciple is that I should never see death. Enoch is a great example of a life lived so dependently on God that not even death could touch him. “By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death.” (Hebrews 11:5). There’s no “dying grace” with Enoch for dying grace is God ‘s final act of charity toward a believer who needs a little extra help in his transition from earth to heaven. I must live so that no dying grace will ever be necessary.

Victory over death does not occur when death lays its hand upon me. It occurs in the continuous stream of life, where death continually shadows me and seeks to frighten me, even though it cannot claim me. I must live as Enoch did, by faith, which continually holds down death. By the time I reach my actual transition, death should be a slain giant dangling at my side. My immortality must be an immediate and continual experience. I must not die and go to heaven, but live and go to heaven. In fact, I must not go to heaven at all, but bring heaven down to earth so that my transition will simply be the continuation of an already heavenly walk.

I must get beyond the point where faith “saves my soul”. Thank God, it does that, but it’s indefinitely more; it creates a way of life in which heaven has already come as not just a distant hope. Some Christians say, “oh if we’re only in heaven”, I can be in heaven, here, and now, by faith. By living, according to God ‘s rules, by letting God visit me personally, by thinking heavenly thoughts, I can be in enwrapped by heaven now; then when the transition comes, it will be just the further opening of everlasting glory!

Remember the way you BELIEVE is the way you will SPEAK. And the way you speak is the way you will LIVE.

Competition with Others!
Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:3).

I must be aware of one of Satan’s subtlest traps-competing with others. Jesus knew nothing of competition; He only knew service. Too often I am like the disciples, striving to see who should be the greatest (Luke 22:24) and forgetting that the greatest of all is he who washes the feet of others.

Competition is really warfare, and the only competitor I have is myself. Competition is Pandora’s box that releases negative feelings toward others. This must be discouraged. But I must encourage negative feelings toward my own pride, laziness, self-will, love of praise, and unwillingness to put myself out for others. I must avoid the trap of comparison, for God’s plan for me is as individual and distinctive as the formulation of a snowflake. A true disciple compares himself with himself and he is able to say, “The Lord has enabled me to grow in that particular discipline.”

Competition is one of Satan’s tactics. The moment God said to him, ‘Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him.” (Job 1:8). Satan was determined to bring down Job. Satan could not stand God’s praise of Job; he wanted it for himself. Whenever I am tempted to pattern my life or behavior after someone else, I must hear Jesus say: “What is that to you? You follow me.” (John 21:22).

Competition ceases the moment I follow Paul’s advice; “Give preference to one another in honor” (Romans 12:10). This kind of striving is for the lowest, not the highest place. Imagine that, striving for the humblest spot! Yet wasn’t this the path chosen by Jesus, who “humbled himself”. Even unto death of the cross? (Philippians 2:5-8). Lord, give me excellent marks in following you!

Remember the way you BELIEVE is the way you will SPEAK. And the way you speak is the way you will LIVE.

YESHUA
Salvation

Many people don’t understand the importance of a name. When people hear your name, what do they think about it? What type of person are you? What have you done to better the lives of others? What’s in the name?

You see, the name Jesus in Hebrew is Yeshua, which means “salvation”. So, when Jesus went to the house of tax collector named Zacharias and said today, “salvation has come to this house” He was making a point because “salvation”, Jesus came to Zachary’s house that day. (Luke 19:9).

The translation also gives us significance verses like surely “God is my salvation”, (Isaiah 12:2) also “the Lord has become my salvation”. (Exodus 25:2). The Hebrew translation of these verses would use the word Yeshua for “salvation”.

We all have a name. Our name identifies us, and for some of us it defines our credibility and even our reputation. But the Scriptures say that only one name can shine light in dark darkness, bring hope to hopelessness, and heal the brokenhearted. His name is Jesus, is our salvation. How would your life change if your identity and reputation was built on the name of Jesus? Can others see Jesus in you?

The Aftermath of Victory!
Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. (Romans 8:37).

I must be careful never to let a victory over Satan become my weakness, his prime targets are not victims, but victors. Paul reminds me of this when he says, “And having done all, to stand, stand”. (Ephesians 6:13). In other words, after a notable victory, be even more on your guard. Satan is the great “spoiler” and he loves to suck the honey out of a sweet victory we have won over him.

Think of Sanballat and Nehemiah. After his threats and harassment failed, Sanballat said to Nehemiah, “Come let us meet together….in the plain of Ono”. (Neh. 6:2). He meant, “Why fight each other any longer? I tried to prevent the walls from going up, but I failed. Now let’s be good sports, forget the past, and plan something harmonious for the future”. Satan never quits when he loses. If Nehemiah has listened to Sanballat, all his previous efforts would have been washed away.

I love the word Nehemiah gave in reply, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down” (Neh. 6:3). When Satan comes to neutralize my victory, I am to ignore his statements, and refuse him. Never must I turn from God’s directive (to build walls for His work) to think about Satan’s suggestions. More then that, I must never gloat over my victory over Satan, for gloating represents an abnormal preoccupation with the victory itself, rather than with the work God has given me to do. The victory is only an incident, a battle in the eternal war, and I must quickly arm myself against the next visit from the evil one. Having done that, I must stand, not nakedly, but “in the strength of His might” (Eph. 6:10), for my all-Conqueror stopped Satan’s darts and crushed his armory forever. Remember there can be no great victories without great battles!