OUR LORD WHO SUSTAINS

To those who trust in God and live depending upon Him as they go about doing the Lord's business, He pledges to sustain us and uphold us by providing all we need in terms of our daily bread,  protection and guidance.

The following verses illustrate this unique arrangement where the children of God are sustained by their God when they cast their cares upon Him.

Behold, God is my helper; The Lord is the sustainer of my soul.  

                                   - Psalm 54 verse 4

Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

                                    - Isaiah 46 verse 4

Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.

                                     - Psalm 55 verse 22

These verses of personal sustainance by the Lord are especially robust when understood against this passage in the book of Hebrews;

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

                                    -  Hebrews 1 verse 3

Here, the Lord Jesus,  whose kingdom we serve, is the effulgent glory of Almighty God and is His exact representation and He, by His mighty word, sustains all things.

The Lord Jesus our saviour upholds all things in existence by His word and so we who trust Him can rest in the knowledge that he can thus certainly sustain us. 

Bless His holy name.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO TEACHES US

All this I have spoken while still with you.  But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.  -  John 14 verse 25 - 26.

This remarkable verse reveals a dynamic that gives us an advantage as believers as we live in the midst of the enemies of God.

Jesus revealed that the Holy Spirit would be sent to us in His name and He, the Holy Spirit, would do two things:

 a)  He would teach us all things which means He would bring to us information and understanding of things we did not have prior knowledge of.

b) He would remind us of (or bring to mind) things we had already been taught but would normally have trouble recalling.

With this access to knowledge, the Lord enables us to function in His Kingdom as able ministers who are equipped with spiritual knowledge and understanding. We can then operate with discernment and effectiveness in the Kingdom of God.

Bless the Lord our God who teaches us.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO SEES US

In the book of Genesis chapter 16, the story of Abram, Sarai and Hagar is told.

Sarai, Abram's wife, had offered Hagar, her maid, to Abram to be a surrogate mother so that he could have a son because she herself could not bear children.

When Hagar conceived, she felt elevated in the household and showed contempt for Sarai. 

Sarai, already on an emotional knife-edge because of the delicate arrangement she brokered, was angered towards Hagar and treated her harshly. 

Hagar, in the face of Sarai's wrath, fled the homestead and was now stranded in the wilderness unable to go forward into the inhospitable wasteland  and unwilling to turn back. 

While there,  she encountered the Angel of the Lord ( who is the pre-incarnate Jesus ) and  verse 7 to 8 records the discussion between them.

And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai. And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands.

Hagar was deeply moved by the visitation of the Lord and she gave God a name that encapsulates one of the most profound  responses to God's presence ever captured. She named God , "El Roi" which means, the God who sees me. 

Genesis 16 verse 13 goes thus: 

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

Hagar, having despaired under harsh conditions to the point that she tried to escape but having no where to escape to, had reached an existential impasse and in her desperation,  felt like a disposable nobody.

It was here, at a jump off point into the abyss, that the Lord met with her and comforted her and counseled her. 

She was suddenly aware of a God who knew her past, her present condition and her future. A God who made her relevant and valuable. The abrupt realization that she was in the sights of the eternal God brought her to the place of exclaiming, "You are the God who sees me".

Bless the Lord.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO IS ETERNAL

But You, O Lord, abide forever, And Your name to all generations.

                          - Psalm 102 verse 12.

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth Does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable.   

                             - Isaiah 40 verse 28. 

Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. 

                                  - Psalm 90 verse 2

And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation.                

                                     - Hebrews 5 verse 9

These are but a few of the many scriptural references to the externality of God.  The Lord is from everlasting to everlasting and has no beginning and no end.

Our God did not create Himself because He has always existed. 

Other world views that try to evade the existence of an eternal creator, always present an absurdly paradoxical origin story where a non-existing entity creates itself out of nothing.

There is no way to avoid this infinite recursion problem without a sentient, personal and eternal God who is unambiguously represented this way  by our Lord and God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Bless our Lord who is the Alpha and the Omega.

Amen.

Scripture Source: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/God,-The-Eternal

OUR LORD WHO LOVES US

The Lord our God treasures each one of His people. He nurtures us and teaches us. He routes our lives through trials and tests so that we can gain inner strength of the Spirit and gain confidence as citizens of His Kingdom.

The Lord has designed for each one of us a tailored plan to sanctify and refine us so that we inexorable drop the ways of the flesh and pick up the ways of the  Spirit and become perfected in the life and example of Jesus our Lord.

In 1 John 3 verse 1, the love that God has for us is described as "great" and that it is "lavished" on us  where lavished  means applied generously and extravegantly. The passage goes like this:

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!

And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

God's love for us translates into His extensive knowledge of us as well as His graceful provision for us including the costly provision of salvation through the death of our Lord Jesus on a cross.

Bless the Lord forever.

Amen.

OUR LORD RAISED HIMSELF FROM DEATH

To raise a dead person back to life is a difficult thing . In fact, it is considered a full-strength miracle to be able to raise someone from the dead.

When a person is dead, in order to come back to life, they would be at the mercy of a living person who has some faculties available to restore that person's life. A dead person is by definition incapable of doing anything let alone raising Himself from the Grave.

However, in the book of John chapter 10 verse 18 in the case of our Lord Jesus, He declared that He had the capability of raising Himself from death. 

No one takes it [His Life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.

Here, Jesus is emphasizing that His death was in His control and His ressurection was also in His control.

This is a clear illustration of Jesus' singular status and authority. Rather than be incapacitated by death, He was of a kind who could be present and fully able to bring Himself back to life.

Three days after His death on the cross to pay for our sins, Jesus raised Himself from death and showed the world that He was truly able to do what He said.

That is how awesome and wondrous Jesus is.

Bless His name always.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO HEARS US

Psalm 116 verse 1 - 2 says this about God hearing our prayers:

I love the Lord, because He hears My voice and my supplications.

Because He has inclined His ear to me, Therefore I shall call upon Him as long as I live.

In some translations, the Lord is pictured as stooping to hear our prayers but either way, God is actively listening for our prayers.

John the apostle wrote in 1 John 5 verse 14 - 15, 

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

This scriptural reference  further reinforces for us the certainty that the Lord hears our prayers and responds to us.

Bless the Lord who hears us.

Amen.