OUR LORD WHO TEACHES US

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.       -  Luke 24 verse 13

In this exquisite story about the Lord Jesus meeting with some followers after His resurrection, the two men are described as foolish because they had not been able to put together the words of scripture and the recent events they were lamenting about.

Jesus personally explained the purpose of the scriptures and how they referred to Him, the Messiah. Jesus taught them the mysteries hidden in plain sight for all eternity to bring these two men out of foolishness and into the understanding unto salvation.

Amen.

THE LORD OUR CONFIDANTE

The Lord listens to our cries and hears our sorrows. 

He concerns himself with our troubles and when we pour out our hearts to Him, He remembers  our frailties . As the scriptures say, Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.  - Psalm 62 verse 8

Amen.

 OUR LORD SHINES THE WAY

My Lord, you shine the way

By your righteousness and your life

We who sat in darkness saw a great light

   Halelluyah: Thy light has come

    Halelluyah: Thy will be done

Amen

OUR LORD IS A CONQUERER

The LORD says to my Lord: "Sit at My right hand Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”

The LORD will stretch out Your strong scepter from Zion, saying, “Rule in the midst of Your enemies." 

                                - Psalm 110 verse 1 - 2

The Lord Jesus, gave up His life unto death and He was killed by the Roman authorities in the same way they would kill a violent criminal.

In such ignominious circumstances, even a keen observer could be excused for considering the whole mission of Jesus to be a massive defeat.

His loyal disciples went back to fishing  as they accessed that the cause they had recently given their lives to had abruptly ended.

What was not understood, was that the dismal failure of the promised kingdom of God was disguising a spectacular victory in the spiritual realm. 

Jesus, instead of defeat, amassed a gigantic reversal when He made a public spectacle of the powers of darkness as He conquered them in their own domain. He rose from the dead in a blinding light show bringing forth the people who He had released from darkness as first fruits of His resurection.

He was crowned as the victorious conquering monarch of heaven and earth where He was seated at the right hand of God. From this lofty throne, Jesus's strong authority was set over His kingdom in the midst of His enemies. In other words, He would successfully rule His kingdom even though it started out in the earthly terrain alongside the kingdom  of darkness that was hostile to it.

Jesus conquered death and hades and shone forth in victory. He, by His wonderful grace, made us inherit His victory which made us more than conquerors as defined in the great chapter 8 of the book of Romans verse 37.  But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. 

Amen.

THE LORD WHO DOES ALL THINGS WELL

They were utterly astonished, saying, “He has done all things well; He makes even the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”  - Mark 7 verse 37

Jesus, while ministering to the people, orchestrated the gatherings and the healings that occurred in a way that exuded goodness and competence.

When the Lord God made the universe and all that was in it, He saw that it was good.  At the primordial construction of creation, God did all things well. When Jesus was working in human form among people, His nature of doing all things well continued with him.

Our Lord does all things well.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO REJOICES OVER US

The Lord paid a high price for those who would voluntarily give their lives to Him.

For those of us who repent and turn to him with contrite hearts, He embraces us and meticulously works to extricate us from the entanglements of our sins. 

Each one that He has, He rejoices over with singing and shouts of joy.

The Lord your God is in your midst, A victorious warrior. He will rejoice over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.   -  Zephania 3 verse 17

Praise God who treasures those of His who trust in Him.

Amen.

THE LORD OUR JUDGE

The Lord our God has perfect knowledge and His judgements are fully informed and are fully just.

From heaven you pronounced judgment, and the land feared and was quiet—when you, God, rose up to judge to save all the afflicted of the land.

                                  - Psalm 76 verse 8 - 9

Our God is the ultimate judge over all things over all time.

Praise and honor to His name forever.

Amen.

OUR LORD IS OUR REST

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”         - Mathew 11 verse 28 - 30

A gift that  the Lord gives us is the gift of rest. Whereas spirits can search to and fro seeking rest and not finding it, we who are children God are given inner rest so that we can be refreshed and revived.

We are granted rest for our spirits so that we can be renewed daily in our pursuit of our Lord and His kingdom.

Praise our God.

Amen.

 THE LORD'S  EVERLASTING ARMS

What a fellowship, what a joy divine,

 Leaning on the Everlasting Arms!

What a blessedness, what a peace is mine,

 Leaning on the Everlasting Arms!

      Leaning, leaning,

      Safe and secure from all alarms;

      Leaning, leaning,

      Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.

O how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way,

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms!

O how bright the path grows from day to day,

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms!

What have I to dread, what have I to fear,

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms!

I have peace complete with my Lord so near,

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms!

 THE LORD'S WONDERFUL NAME

I will praise the name of Him who died

Now lives forever

Jesus lives forever

He shines brighter than the sun

He shines forever

Jesus shines forever

Chorus:

We call upon His wonderful name; JESUS !

We call upon His mighty name; JESUS !

THE LORD OUR MAKER AND OUR FATHER

God is our maker in that He made the  bodies of our progenitor out of clay and He made the human soul. It was into this construction that God breathed that made Adam a living being.

Whereas God made us all in our corporeal and soulish selves, our spirits come from Him and He is thus the Father of our spirits.

As the bible says; Moreover,  we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live!     - Hebrews 12 verse 9

Before we are born again, with our spirit selves dead in sin, we are not able to approach God as Father because we are only alive in body and soul which is the "made" part of us. We can only correctly call God, "our maker".

However, when we are born again, our spirits are made alive and now we are able to call God,  "Abba, Father".

As it says in scripture ; The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” - Romans 8 verse 15

We who are believers in Jesus are able to call our God, "Our maker and our Father".

How wonderful He is. 

Amen.

THE LORD OUR GOD DELIGHTS IN US

The LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.

                                -  Psalm 147 verse 11

The Lord sees all those who seek Him with humble hearts and those who are contrite before Him.

He is moved by their gestures and His favor is directed to them with tenderness. 

As His people grow in their knowledge and love for Him, He delights in them and takes pleasure in relating with them.

Let us seek God with sincere and grateful hearts for He delights in us.

Amen.

THE LORD IS OUR SHIELD 

The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.  - Psalm 28 verse 7

For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

                                  - Psalm 84 verse 11

The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.       - Psalm 18 verse 2

Amen.

 MAJOR EARTH SHAKING

A Pacific ocean quake that will  rattle the world. 

OB 44 is in peril.

THE LORD OUR GOD MAKES A WAY

I will bless the Lord 

        Forever

I will praise His name

        Forever

I will give Him thanks 

For He died for me

I will shout for joy

         Forever

I will sing and dance

         Forever

I will give Him thanks

For He made a way for me

THE LORD OUR SANCTIFIER

First, we are led to faith in Jesus and His ability to save us. After we believe, we are born again and  we are filled with the Spirit of God who dwells in our revived spirit.

We are made alive in God who has saved us out of the kingdom of darkness and death.

From that point, an intricate process of bringing our minds and bodies into subjection of our spirits begins.  This process has an aim of causing our minds and bodies to behave more and more like Christ. Ultimately, we are sanctified  and made able to exemplify the perfect nature of our Lord Jesus.

The Lord does this work of sanctification in us and is faithful to complete it.

Amen.

THE LORD OUR HELP IN TIME OF TROUBLE

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.  - Psalm 121 verse 1

There are times in our lives when we are cornered, or ensnared or surrounded or exhausted or injured.

Our own resources are fully expended and we are now without hope in our strength. 

Psalm 46 verse 1: Our God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble. We look to the hills from where our help comes.

Praise God.

Amen.

 JESUS BIDS US SHINE

Jesus bids us shine,

With a clear, pure light,

Like a little candle burning in the night;

In this world of darkness, we must shine,

You in your small corner and I in mine.

Jesus bids us shine, then, for all around,

Many kinds of darkness in the world abound;

Sin and want and sorrow, so we must shine,

You in your small corner and I in mine.

Amen.

OUR LORD IS A SOVEREIGN KING

The God of heaven and earth is a sovereign king and is Lord of all.

His ranking is the highest possible ranking that is  beyond our ability to conceive.

His Kingship is the expression of His absolute authority over all creation and His every interaction with creation is from the perspective of an eternal absolute Monarch.

It is from His Kingship that His mercy and His generosity and His benevolence and His patience and His grace flow from. A king of great authority trades is these characteristics as a hallmark of their kingship. 

An insecure and limited king would never be lavishly generous or gracious or patient. In fact, such a king would showcase impatience, miserlyness and graceslessness to exert authority through intimidation.

Our Lord and God, in His limitless assuredness and wisdom, moves gracefully in His sovereign Kingship seeking to include as many as possible in the responsibility of rulership.

Our Lord seeks to bring believers in Jesus into a place of responsibility over tasks and routines and jurisdictions in His kingdom.

Our sovereign King calls us into a shared role with Him in the care of matters of His awesome kingdom of light. 

“and He has made us {to be} a kingdom, priests to His God and Father--to Him {be} the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

                                -  Revelation 1 verse 6

Amen.

THE LORD WHO PAID THE PRICE

Let us always think of our Lord and God as the one who undertook the horror of death on a cross to  pay the price for the salvation of we who were yet sinners. 

The great God of heaven, surrendered His vast power and estate to give His life unto death for the benefit of people who were scoffing at him and who cried out for His crucifixion. 

This is the excellency of Jesus.  He faced the reality of surrendering Himself to the Roman military machine where He would be brutally executed like a criminal. The bible says that He set His face as flint and would not stray from the path He set himself on even though at any time, He had the power to call the whole thing off.

He saw it through to the point where He gave up His Spirit and died which resulted in the salvation of the children of Israel who believed and then the salvation of all the rest of us around the world who were enabled to believe that the Jewish Messiah was the salvation for the rest of us as well.

Praise our Lord who paid the price.

Amen.

THE LORD OUR GOD IS LOVE

1 John 4:8, : "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."

This very succinct biblical description of God's essence gives us a beautiful window into the nature of God. This is because the bible also gives us a succinct definition of what love is.

1 Corinthians 13 : Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Amen.

OUR LORD AND GOD IS WISE

In wisdom, God created the universe and everything in it.

In wisdom, God designed the plan of salvation for mankind. 

In wisdom, God enacted the plan of salvation and the story of Abraham initiated the foretelling of the Saviour Jesus and His sacrifice as the Son of God for the salvation of the human race.

In wisdom, God guides each one of His chosen ones into the knowledge of the truth where they can believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus for their salvation.

In wisdom, God sets His followers on the path He has provided for them. 

In wisdom, God is building His kingdom in righteousness.

In wisdom, God will judge the living and the dead when all things will be brought to account at the time of the end.

Amen.

THE LORD OUR GOD IS WONDERFUL

The God of all creation is unimaginably powerful and resourceful.

He operates in superlative excellence and precision. The engineering behind the structure of the physical universe and the biological spheres beggars understanding. 

It is commonly said in academic halls that the phenomena in our universe arrived at its current state by happenstance but this is an obvious misunderstanding of the  nature of phenomena and the nature of happenstance.

The universe and all that is in it was made by God and therefore,  every mind-numbing and mind-blowing form and  feature of this universe are attributable to Him.  Any fair observation of the world around us would have to fill the observer with awe and fear of the author of all things.

The salient question is now this: What are we humans to do with the understanding that God exists and is in fact supremely powerful and awesome?

Being sentient entities, we should compare our sentience to the sentience of the creator.  We should try understand the universe and the workings of it structures. The scriptures say, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of kings to find it out". - Proverbs 25 verse 2

In doing our comparison between God and us, we should come to the realization that we have fallen short of the glory of God. We should realise that God is perfect and that we humans have morally lapsed and discover that this is in fact why we are separate from God. 

In other words, we become aware that the universe was made by a brilliant and perfect person but we are also perplexed because we have no direct contact with this person who seems to be hidden from us.

It is here where we discover that God is truly wonderful. We come to the realization that we are separate from God because we, as a race, have rebelled against Him and have tried to set ourselves on a course of self-rulership. 

A cursory look at the nature of the world that we have created for ourselves should inform us that we have not been successful in this enterprise and that without God, we are deteriorating rapidly into a hellish realm of rulership of brute force by some humans over others.

By the sacrifice of His only begotten Son, Jesus, God made a way for us to gain connection to Him again. He has paid the price to restore us out of our rebellion to Him and then has made a way for us to be joined to His family and then made us co-heirs with His Son Jesus Christ in the enterprise of reclaiming as many people as possible into a reconnection with God. 

This is our wonderful God. He wonderfully made us and then He wonderfully saved us and we will see Him with our own eyes and we will behold His wonder and glory.

Amen.

THE LORD OUR GOD IS GOOD

A rich young ruler approached Jesus and asked Him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  - Luke 18 verse 18

Jesus replied thusly, "Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone."

                                        - Luke 18 verse 19

Jesus responded to the use of the honorific, "good", by declaring that it is a title that can only be ascribed to God and yet this man was ascribing it to Jesus even though he did not know that Jesus was God.

Had the young man believed that Jesus was the eternal God, would he not have listened to the wisdom of Jesus to sell all that he had, give it to the poor to lay up treasure in heaven and then follow Jesus?

The lesson from this short narrative is that we should believe that Jesus is God and in doing so, believe that He is good and that we should then surrender all we have to Jesus so that we are under the kingship of the great God who is good. Out of His goodness, we are not only given eternal life but we are given life and life more abundantly.

To get to the place of eternal abundant life in God, we must do what that young man could not. We must believe in the divinity of Jesus. We must believe in His power to save us from our sin and we must trust that He has the power to store our treasure in heaven and we must follow Him.

Amen.

THE LORD IS OUR DELIVERER

The Lord our God has undertaken to extricate us from the kingdom of darkness that we were conscripted into when we, as a race, rebelled against God.

The Lord, in His vast wisdom and understanding, structured a process of practical and legal positions  so as to fulfill the requirements of delivering His people out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

The initialization of these positions was to get His Son Jesus to be born on the earth incognito. While the kingdom of darkness was prepared to stop any redemptive action by God, the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was a widely celebrated fulfillment of prophetic scripture which evading the attempts by the kingdom of darkness to snuff out the beginning of the ministry of Jesus.

Jesus then grew up and gained stature and wisdom and was able to directly resist the kingdom of darkness. He was tempted by the devil and He deflected the attempts by countering the temptations with scriptures.

He then began to directly confront the kingdom of darkness by healing the sick and casting out demons. After Jesus had set the example of kingdom authority for us, He gave His life up to the cross so that He could die for us. 

The critical juncture in the redemption story had to be carried out without the kingdom of darkness realizing that the death of Jesus was going to be His glorious vindication and victory.

The scripture in fact says : "the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory"

                              -  1 Corinthians 2 verse 8

It was here at  the crucifixion of Jesus that the redemption story was brought into sharp focus.

Jesus suffered agony on top of agony and ultimately died on the cross in a way that appeared to be an abject  failure but was in fact, a triumph when His death became the propitiation for the sins of mankind. The goal of providing the legal framework for redemption of the human race was accomplished right under the oversight of the rulers of that age. 

He paid the extremely costly price to deliver us out of darkness and to usher us into His kingdom all the while avoiding detection of how the redemption was going to play out.

He delivered us out of condemnation and into His righteous kingdom by His great wisdom and perfect nature.

Praise His Holy name forever.

Amen.

THE LORD IS BLESSED FOREVER

Yes I will bless the Lord

With all my heart

For He is worthy to be praised

He shines brighter, brighter than the sun,

He is worthy to be praised.  (  X 3 )

OUR LORD OF FAITHFULNESS

In human terms, faithfulness seems like an ordinary human trait that some people exhibit and some don't. Faithfulness, however, is a profound function of spiritual significance.

We sometimes take faithfulness to mean marital faithfulness which connotes the idea that a faithful  spousal partner is one who does not stray from the relationship.

We also sometimes take faithfulness to mean that a person steadily and reliably attends to a requirement or need voluntarily. An example would be when person faithfully attends to their elderly neighbour's yard without obligation or prompting to do so.

Those two common uses of the term faithfulness can be joined to derive an accurate definition of the term. Faithfulness is a singular self-imposed duty to a voluntary commitment that ensures its sustenance  and its ultimate fulfillment and completion.

In the bible, our Lord Jesus is described as faithful  to His Father. "but Christ was faithful as a Son over His house—whose house we are, if we hold firmly to our confidence and the boast of our hope."   -  Hebrews 3 verse 6.

Our lord is described as faithful to us. "He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.” Psalm 91 verse 4.

Our Lord is also faithful in His priestly ministry. "Therefore He (Jesus) had to be made like His brothers in every respect, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because He Himself has suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted"                                                                         - Hebrews 2 verse 17 - 18.

Our Lord's faithfulness is compounded because his faithfulness is eternal and it is backed up by the wisdom and power that only God has.

Praise his Holy name.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO GIVES LIFE

In the beginning, God made Adam and Adam became a living being when God breathed into him. This is described in Genesis 12 verse 7 as: "Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."

Adam was a living being and in that state, chose to try run his life separate from God. It was this condition of rebellion against God that separated Adam and the whole successive human race from the life of God. We were equipped with minds and bodies that could operate in the coporeal realm but our spirits, which are the only parts of ourselves that could connect  with God, died.

God, in all His wisdom, began working on the gargantuan project of reconstituting the human race as creatures with living spirits again.

This task was four thousand years in the making. During that time, major portions of human history played out. Empires rose and fell, peoples were enslaved and freed, generations came and went and when finally everything was ready, a baby was born in an obscure village in an animal barn. 

That baby boy was the nexus of all of earth history and was the full preoccupation of heaven for all of existence.

That little boy carried the hope of all creation that we who were dead, could one day be made alive in spirit again and  rejoin our creator who loved us and who moved heaven and earth to redeem us from the thick darkness we were lost in.

Jesus, born in humble circumstance, lived to be the perfect sinless man. Exactly opposite from Adam, Jesus was perfectly obedient to God. Unlike Adam, Jesus could not be enticed by any scheme of darkness to compromise a single article of God's law. 

Having lived a perfect life of obedience to God's word and commands, He nevertheless gave His life up for crucifixion to take the punishment that Adam (and we who were born into His line) deserved. 

At His death, Jesus entered the strongholds of  hell but this cosmological injustice of placing a perfect man into the punishment of hell could not be contained by the flimsy  chains of hell and the crackling eye-searing light of His righteous glory shone forth and the denizens of hell suffered a shattering blow that left them burned and deformed.

The power of the resurrection of Jesus left hell permanently crippled and in disarray and in abject subjugation to the authority of Jesus Christ.

In this verse from John 10 verse 10, Jesus summarized all of world history

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

Whereas the kingdom of darkness stole and killed and destroyed God's own people from Him, Jesus came to earth and by  His death,  redeemed us and gave us life and life that was even more abundant than what was alloted to us under Adam. 

Praise the holy name of Jesus. 

Amen

THE LORD WHO BLESSES

The Lord is gracious like a father who loves His children.

He blesses His children in wisdom such that they can be helped towards maturity in God.

He know what we have need of and provides without us even needing to ask.

Blessed is the Lord our father who blesses us.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO FINDS US

The Lord Jesus, our great saviour, equated Himself to a good shepherd. He described his followers as His sheep. He says that as a shepherd of a hundred sheep, He would leave the ninety-nine so that He could search for and find the one who was lost.

In this parable, Jesus is saying that He will never leave us or forsake us. He is declaring that He will conduct a fullscale search for any of His who are lost.

The Lord is faithful to those who trust in Him. He will leave no one who is His behind.

Amen.