John 21:15-25 More Than These

Yesterday, I read about the first of three pictures of the believer and the responsibilities attached to those pictures:  Fishers of Men and Obeying Him, according to my commentary. 

The second, it says, is the picture of shepherds and the responsibility to love Him, while the third is the picture of disciples and the responsibility to follow Him.

It noted that “Peter and his Lord had already met privately and no doubt taken care of Peter’s sin (Luke 24:34; 1 Cor. 15:5), but since Peter had denied the Lord publicly, it was important that there be a public restoration.  Sin should be dealt with only to the extent that it is known.  Private sins should be confessed in private, public sins in public.”

Three times Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him.  The first time, He added “more than these.”  My commentary said the question probably meant “more than these other disciples love Me.”  After all, Peter had earlier said, “I will even die for You,” and “I will never be offended.”  Perhaps, it says, Peter believed that he loved Jesus more than the other disciples when he originally said it.

Jesus, in talking about sheep, changed the picture from fisherman to shepherds, which my commentary suggests includes not just evangelism but pasturing.  I liked this that I read about it:  “While it is true that the Holy Spirit equips people to serve as shepherds, it is also true that each individual Christian must help to care for the flock … to help protect and perfect the flock.”

My commentary saw the three repeated questions as denoting the importance of something:  “The most important thing the pastor can do is to love Jesus Christ.  If he truly loves Jesus Christ, the pastor will also love His sheep and tenderly care for them … A pastor who loves the flock will serve it faithfully, no matter what the cost.”

The third picture really spoke to me, for it mentioned something I’d overlooked while reading verse 20.  Peter was talking to the risen Christ, and being restored to apostleship and leadership, and Jesus was instructing him.  “Peter turned …”  Peter had, after the first great catch of fish, taken his eyes off the Lord and looked at himself (Depart from me, for I am a sinful man).  He’d taken his eyes off the Lord while walking on water to look at the wind and the waves.  This time, he heard John behind them and looked back.  He asked about John.  Jesus told him that was none of his business.

“The Lord rebuked Peter and reminded him that his job was to follow, not to meddle into the lives of other believers … To be distracted by ourselves, our circumstances, or by other Christians is to disobey the Lord and possibly get detoured out of the will of God.  Keep your eyes of faith on Him and on Him alone,” my commentary said.  “God has His plan for us.  He also has plans for our Christian friends and associates.  How He works in their lives is His business.  Our business is to follow Him as He leads us.”

Father, thank You for these wise and timely words.  Help me to apply them to my life and my relationship with You.  And thanks for showing me that You will take care of others.  Mine is simply to follow.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 21:1-8 The First of Three Pictures of Believers and the Responsibility Attached To It

My commentary sees three pictures of believers in this last chapter and a responsibility attached to each picture.  The first is that we are fishers of men.  The responsibility is that we must OBEY Him.

Jesus had sent word to His disciples that He would meet them in Galilee.  He hadn’t set a definite date or time.  I’m reminded of something Henry Blackaby said in Experiencing God – when you feel you haven’t heard from the Lord, keep doing the last thing He told you to do.

Jesus had called many of His disciples away from the fishing industry into evangelism.  There were qualities of fishermen that were well-suited to their new occupation, my commentary noted:  “They know how to work, they’ve got courage and faith to go out into the deep.  They have much patience and persistence, and they will not quit.  They know how to cooperate with one another, and they are skilled in using the equipment and the boat.”  Those are qualities every Christian could use in getting along with other Christians and in fulfilling the Great Commission.

But He had called them away from fishing, yet Peter said, “I am going out to fish.”  Six others followed him out to fish.  Was he wrong?  If he was, he was a believer leading other believers astray.  We can only say that they caught nothing after fishing all night.  If our responsibility is to obey Him and to keep doing the last thing He told us to do until He issues new instructions, then perhaps they were.  My commentary added, “Pet was sincere and he worked hard, but there were no results.  How like some believers in the service of the Lord.  They sincerely believe that they are doing God’s will, but their labors are in vain.  They are serving without direction from the Lord, so they cannot expect blessing from the Lord.”

It’s interesting that 153 large fish were just feet away from the net and they didn’t know it.  “We are never far from success when we permit Jesus to give the orders, and we are usually closer to success than we realize,” my commentary added.

Father, if I am serving without direction from You, please help me to know it and to humbly seek Your will.  Don’t let my impulsiveness and self-confidence stand in for Your direction upon my life.  Show me regularly what You would have me doing and who You want me to impact for You.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 20:19-31 Unbelief

“Jesus did not rebuke Thomas for his doubts.  He rebuked him for unbelief:  ‘Stop being an unbeliever and believe!’  Doubt is often an intellectual problem we want to believe, but the faith is overwhelmed by problems and questions.  Unbelief is a moral problem:  we simply will not believe.  Doubt says, ‘I cannot believe!  There are too many problems!’  Unbelief says, ‘I will not believe unless you give me the evidence I ask for … Thomas’s testimony did not come from his touching Jesus, but from his seeing Jesus … Thomas reminds us that unbelief robs us of blessings and opportunities.  It may sound sophisticated and intellectual to question what Jesus did, but such questions are usually evidence of hard hearts, not of searching minds,” my commentary said.

Father, thank You for removing my unbelief and my hard heart years ago.  Help me to show others who similarly struggle the way to belief.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 20:10-18 Written In Missouri Yesterday

“Then the followers went back home.”  Mary stayed, crying.  She stayed where she would encounter the risen Christ, without even knowing it!  Her problem:  “They have taken away my Lord.”  She even saw Jesus standing there but did not recognize Him.  Talking to Him like He was a stranger, she asked where Jesus was.  Jesus did one thing in reply.  He called her name.  That was all it took.

Though she hadn’t even recognized Him, He also said, “I am going back to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.”  He affirmed that they were both part of God’s family.

Father, I’m about to go back home as well.  Joseph is to stay where he too can encounter Christ again.  Hamlin has almost taken You away from him, but You’ll never let go.  Call out his name this morning and every morning from that place.  Let him know that You will be with him there as he grows in You and becomes a man after Your own heart.  Soften the heartaches we each will feel with this temporary separation, knowing that if we are in You and You are in us, then we are together.  I love him more than he will ever know – enough to leave him there with You for awhile.  Hold him when I can’t, Father.  Tell him often that I love him.  Hold me, too.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 19:38-20:9 The Burial

It was getting close to sunset on Friday.  In a few hours, Passover Sabbath would begin, and missing the Passover meal was something no Jewish believer desired to do.  My commentary wonders therefore, if Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus didn’t spend a considerable amount of time and resources preparing for Jesus’ death.  After all, if they waited until Jesus had died to do anything, they’d most likely have run out of time.  Pilate had to be petitioned to release the body.  A tomb had to be located and purchased, if already hune out of the rock.  There’d certainly not be time to create a new tomb!  Merchants selling the spices to be used in burial would probably be shutting down early to insure that they made it home before sunset, and likely the great influx of people who’d come to Jerusalem for Passover would have greatly depleted supplies.  They may have even transported the spices and aloes to the tomb in anticipation of Jesus’ death once His crucifixion began.

This allowed them to move quickly when Jesus’ actual death occurred.  Nicodemus waited with the body on the cross while Joseph secured permission from Pilate to remove the body for burial.  They’d selected a tomb nearby, allowing them time for a rushed and somewhat incomplete burial preparation.  But in doing this, both men became ritually unclean for the Passover meal by handling a dead body.  It mattered not the least.  They’d just prepared their Savior for burial and secured His body within the tomb.

They’d thought it out, not caring about the risks.  Their reputations didn’t matter.

My commentary also noted that in the phrase secret disciple describing Joseph, the Greek word for secret “is a perfect passive participle and could be translated ‘having been secreted,’ or ‘have been kept secret.’  In other words, Joseph was God’s secret agent in the Sanhedrin!  From the human standpoint, Joseph kept undercover because he feared the Jews, but from the divine standpoint, he was being protected so he could be available to bury the body of Jesus.”

Father, help me to always be ready to tell people about Your Son.  Thank You for giving me the awesome privilege of teaching youth what You want to show them about their Savior.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 19:17-37 What He Said

“No Roman citizen could be crucified,” my commentary said.  “It was reserved for the lowest kind of criminal, particularly those who promoted insurrection.”  Of course the Jewish leaders had tried to use that as their real excuse for having Jesus killed.  They even told Pilate he was no friend of Caesar’s if he tried to release Jesus!  As much as they hated Roman occupation of their land, they hated Jesus all the more for upsetting their little fiefdom within Roman territory.  They’d come to treasure their traditions, and those traditions trumped even their Messiah!

Pilate could see all of this, and when he wrote out the placard to be placed on the cross, he wrote, “This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”  Oh, how the religious leaders hated that!  Pilate used it intentionally to insult and embarrass them, but God used it as a gospel tract that almost everyone could read in Aramaic, Greek, and Latin.

When Jesus was ready to dismiss His Spirit and die, he cried out, “It is finished!”  My commentary said the Greek word was tetelestai and the tense meant, “It is finished, it stands finished, and it always will be finished!”  In everyday life, it said the world would be used by a servant reporting to his master, “I have completed the work assigned to me.”  “When a priest examined an animal sacrifice and found it faultless, this word would apply … When an artist completed a picture, or a writer a manuscript, he might use it.”  “The death of Jesus on the cross ‘completes the picture’ that God had been painting, the story that He had been writing, for centuries … Perhaps the most meaningful sense was that used by the merchants:  ‘The debt is paid in full!’”

Jesus, thank You for being fully in charge of that situation, for completing Your Father’s assignment, for being the spotless Lamb of God, and for completing the picture of salvation for us.  Thank You most of all for paying my debt in full!

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 19:1-16 The Worst Sinner

Pilate probably despised the Jewish leadership, who were trying to rule the Jewish citizenry with what little power Rome allowed them, despite Roman occupation of the land.  At first, their bringing Jesus to him seemed an inconvenience.  There had been no sedition or rebellion by Jesus and His followers, and Pilate could see this.  Yet this “inconvenient” demanding of a trial by the Jewish leadership on the eve of the Jews’ own high holy day could certainly result in a reprimand from Rome if not handled expeditiously.

My commentary said Pilate first tried sympathy.  Surely when the crowd saw a man barely alive from a scourging, they’d cry, “Enough!!”  But they instead cried, “Crucify Him!!”  Three times, Pilate had announced that he’d found no fault in Jesus.  The Jewish leadership had already run all their traps and knew what their response would be to every excuse Pilate could come up with.  This time, they said, “We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because He said He is the Son of God.”

(I don’t know what they’d have ever done if someone had come along, splitting the sky as Jesus will one day do.  Their very words disallowed the thought of anyone in human form claiming to be divine!)

In fact, Jesus told Pilate that the man who turned Him over to Pilate was guilty of a greater sin.  My commentary said that would have been Caiaphas, the high priest!  “He knew the Scriptures and had been given every opportunity to examine the evidence.  He had willfully closed his eyes and hardened his heart.  He had seen to it that Jesus was not given a fair trial … Caiaphas was a Jew who had a knowledge of Scripture.  Therefore, it was Caiaphas, not Pilate, who had the greater sin.”

Despite all this, the fact remains that Jesus died on the cross for one reason, and it wasn’t because of Caiaphas’ maneuverings.  It was for my sin.  God had a plan to bring me back to Him, and it involved the death of His only Son in my place, to pay the price for my sin.  Caiaphas and Pilate were merely facilitators.

Father, Your mercy and grace and love for me, sinner that I am, are all too astounding.  Thank You for giving up Your wonderful Son in such a hideous way for me.  Help me to understand fully the magnitude of what You’ve done.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 18:15-40 Should Of's

My commentary pointed out how Peter went wrong.  Jesus had arranged that His disciples should go free.  Most of them were fleeing the scene in the Garden.  But Peter was following the crowd.  “Had he gone his way, he would never have denied the Lord.  While we certainly admire his love and courage, we cannot agree with his actions, for he walked right into temptation.  This is what Jesus warned him about in the Garden,” my commentary said.  It pointed out how he gradually moved into the place of temptation and sin, following Psalms 1:1.  “First, Peter walked ‘in the counsel of the ungodly’ when he followed Jesus and went to the high priest’s courtyard.  Peter should have followed the counsel of Jesus and gotten out of there in a hurry!  Then, Peter stood with the enemy by the fire, and before long, he sat with the enemy.  It was now too late, and within a short time, he would deny the Lord three times.”

We think of Peter’s remorse when he heard the cock crow three times, but my commentary said, “The crowing of the cock was assurance to Peter that Jesus was totally in control of the situation, even though He was bound and being harassed by the authorities.  By controlling ONE BIRD, Jesus affirmed His sovereignty …It was also an invitation to repentance … Jesus turned and looked at Peter, and this look of love broke Peter’s heart.  Peter had been a witness of Christ’s sufferings, and by his own denial he added to those sufferings.”

Father, help my boys and me to know when we are walking in the counsel of the ungodly.  Ring alarm bells in our heads and our hearts to get out before it becomes too late to escape temptation.  Don’t allow us to use any excuse to justify our presence where we shouldn’t be.  And thank You for continuing to reveal Your sovereignty over everything going on.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 18:1-14 The Cup We're Drinking From

My commentary said to pay special attention to the symbolism in this chapter. 

The Garden represents obedience.

The Kiss represents treachery.

The Sword represents rebellion.

The Cup represents submission.

The Fire represents denial.

It was the cup that really got me this morning with all that’s going on right now.

Earlier, Jesus had asked His Father that if it were possible, He let that cup (death) pass from Him.  But He wanted God’s will done and not His own.  “The cup represented the suffering He would endure and the separation from the Father that He would experience on the cross … Jesus was able to accept the cup because it was mixed by the Father and given to Him from the Father’s hand.  He did not resist the Father’s will, because He came to do the Father’s will and finish the work the Father gave Him to do … Since the Father had mixed and measured the contents of the cup, Jesus knew He had nothing to fear.  This is a good lesson to us:  we need never fear the cups that the Father hands to us.  To begin with, our Savior has already drunk the cup before us, and we are only following in His steps.  We need never fear what is in the cup because the Father has prepared it for us in love … and the cup He prepares will never contain anything that will harm us.  We may suffer pain and heartbreak, but He will eventually transform that suffering into glory.”

Father God, I’ve felt all this for days now – worrying about the cup before us.  Thank You that Your timing is always perfect, giving me this message when I most needed it.  Help us to bow before Your will and accept what You have ordained.  Thank You for mixing it in love especially for us.  Help us to remember that there is nothing in it to harm us, for You are in charge of it all.  Help us to bow and submit to Your sovereignty, and grow our faith as a result.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 17:13-26 Jesus Praying For Us

Father, how I needed to hear Your Son praying for me and for my boys in this section.  He wants us to have all of His joy.  He knows that the world hates us and that we are now not of this world.  He didn’t pray for You to take us out of the world, but to keep us safe from the Evil One.  He prayed that You’d make us ready for Your service.  He prayed that we could be united.  He said that He’d given us His glory so that we could by one.  He prayed that He wants us to be with Him where He is.  He prayed for us to see His glory.  He also prayed that we would have the same love for You that You have for Your Son.  And He prayed that He will live in us.

I echo that prayer today, Father.  You know our needs.  You love us more than we could ever love ourselves.  Thank You for showing that love every day in so many ways.

John 17:6-12 Protection For Believers Today

“The emphasis in this section is on the safety of the believer,” my commentary said.  And Jesus wasn’t praying only for His disciples around Him – He was praying for us, too!

He first establishes that God gave all believers – past, present, and future – to Christ.  That includes us today.  He point blank said, “I am praying for them,” in verse 9!

Thinking of us, He said, “I am coming to You; I will not stay in the world any longer.  But they are still in the world.  Holy Father, Keep them safe by the power of Your name…”

He even says that He protected His disciples while He was here on earth, and my commentary adds, “If the limited Savior, in a human body, could keep His own while He was on earth, should He not be able to keep them now that He is glorified in heaven?” 

A key thought in this passage is this:  “Our safety depends on the nature of God, not our own character or conduct.”  We are His.  He has known who would become His since the beginning of the world.  “God’s people are the Father’s gift to His Son.  Would the Father present His Son with a gift that would not last?”  Of course not!

Father, thank You so much for Your protection.  You certainly had great timing this morning, as always.  You know how much I feel like I need this right now.  Protect us from Satan’s attacks and from the attacks of those in the world who are not Yours, for they have been on the rampage lately.  Glorify Your name through how You save us from them!

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 17:1-5 The First Part of "the Holy Of Holies of the Gospel Record"

I decided to take Jesus’ magnificent prayer in sections to make sure and get the most out of it.  My commentary calls it “the Holy of Holies of the gospel record” and says that we should approach it “in a spirit of humility and worship.  To think that we are privileged to listen in as God the Son converses with His Father just as He is about to give His life as a ransom for sinners!”

It’s a prayer of an overcomer, not a victim.  He’s about to complete the Work God gave Him to do.  He can take back on the glory He had before leaving Heaven.  The glory God gives Jesus will also come back to glorify God.

Jesus also defines eternal life.  “It is knowing God personally.  Not just knowing about him, but having a personal relationship with Him through faith in Jesus Christ,” my commentary said.  And it would take an eternity to know the infinite God!  Knowing God would also mean knowing Jesus Christ fully, whom God sent.  My commentary said it’s not enough to simply believe in God.  Jesus also showed that people may be devoutly religious and still not know God.  “Eternal life is not something we earn by character or conduct; it is a gift we receive by admitting we are sinners, repenting, and believing on Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone.”

Father, I loved hearing this intimate conversation between Your Son and You.  And I can’t wait to hear more – especially the part where He prayed for me.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 16:16-33 Transformation, Not Substitution

Jesus told His disciples they would soon be sad, but that their sadness would become joy.  He then gave them an example to show them a very important concept:  A woman’s labor pains are transformed into happiness at the birth of the baby.  It is the baby that causes the pain, but it is also the baby that causes the joy.  It’s not a matter of getting rid of what was causing the pain and getting something else to give joy.  They called this substitution.  Instead, Jesus was talking about transformation.

My commentary talked about an unhappy child with a broken toy or seeing a playmate leaving.  In either case, if the parent substitutes a new toy for the broken one or another playmate for the one who left, the child will expect every problem to be solved by substitution.  He’ll expect someone to come to his rescue in every crisis.  He’ll end up being a spoiled child who can’t cope with reality.  “We cannot mature emotionally or spiritually if someone is always replacing our broken toys.”

“In the Christian life, God takes seemingly impossible situations, adds the miracle of His grace, and transforms trial into triumph and sorrow into joy,” my commentary said.  As examples, it listed Joseph being sold by his brothers, Egypt’s persecution of the Israelite slaves (causing them to multiply), David’s pursuit by Saul, and Jesus changing the cross from a symbol of defeat to victory.  “While we are waiting for His return, we must deal with our trials and hurts on the basis of transformation and not substitution if we expect to mature in the Christian life.”

There was one statement that I’m still chewing on – “True prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but overcoming God’s willingness.”

Father, help me to mature in my faith by watching You transform me through the situations in my life that You provide to grow me.  Don’t let me take the immature route and substitute something else for the pain I feel.  Help me to grow through it and see Your hand at work in it for my good.  Show me what I need to understand about “overcoming Your willingness.” 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 16:5-15 I Saw The Elephant This Morning

I’d read this section the other day, but didn’t get time to journal.  Reading it again this morning, I noticed the two-ton elephant in the room that I’d entirely missed before.  In verse 5, Jesus said to His disciples, “But none of you have asked Me, ‘Where are You going?’”

He’d been telling them He was going away, and He’d just said, “Now I am going back to the One who sent Me.”  All this talk about His impending arrest and death had them stupefied, I’m sure, and finally He acknowledged what they wouldn’t – that they weren’t communicating with Him about it.  He used “when I go away” three times in the remainder of this section instead of just answering directly their unasked question.  But He also told them He was sending the Helper – the Advocate or Counselor – the Holy Spirit. 

He also gave them a list of all the things the Holy Spirit would share with them because He wouldn’t have time to do so:
 

1      The truth about sin

2      The truth about being right with God

3      The truth about judgment

4      The truth that sin is not believing in Him

5      The truth that being right with God comes from His going

6      The truth that judgment happened when Satan was judged

The Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth, He said.  Their problem was that their emotions were on overload and this prevented them from being able to absorb all that He was saying.  Yes, they did need the Comforter.  We do, too.  When life overwhelms us as it was doing to them, our Comforter will lead us to know what Satan is trying to blind us to:  that death is not an end, but it does mark the end of our opportunities to accept God’s loving offer of eternal life.  That’s the most important truth we need revealed to us and that we need to share.

Father, help me to talk about the elephant in the room with people You put in my path.  Use my words to help them come to know Your truths and to reveal to them Satan’s lies.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 15:18-16:4 Comfort When We're Hated

Jesus said, in effect, “Get ready!  They hate Me and they’re gonna hate you, too!”  The world is hostile to Him and to all who He has chosen.  Knowing this, He told His disciples that He would send the Helper – the Comforter or Counselor – who is the Holy Spirit, to encourage all of us during persecution and to tell us all of the things that Jesus still wants us to know.

I read a letter to the editor yesterday from a man who continues to take to task any Christian who writes to the editor.  It seems that he believes it is his mission to disavow all Christians who write such letters of their “self-righteousness” in thinking that they could ever “speak for God”.  He is intolerant of what he sees as our intolerance with the world.

Jesus told His disciples here that the world will not be honest about its own sin.  Because He came and performed miracles and told us all about the Father, they have no excuse for their sin.  They are now “sinning against a flood of light … That light revealed their own sin and they did not want to face their sin honestly … They willingly are ignorant,” my commentary says.

And when people are that way, there’s no arguing with them.  They won’t listen.

Father, Satan has blinded the world to Your truth.  I’m so very thankful that You removed my blinders and showed me Your love for me.  Please continue to do that, especially with those I love, and help me to show them how You loved even a sinner like me.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 15:1-7 Branch & Friend

Most of us don’t cultivate grapevines, and I certainly wouldn’t know what I was doing if I tried.  But that was a common thing in Jesus’ time and His disciples would have understood many of the truths He was teaching from this example.  My commentary said there are actually two pictures here – of branches and of friends.  It said, “As branches, we have the privilege of sharing His life, and the responsibility of abiding.  As friends, we have the privilege of knowing His will, and the responsibility of obeying.”

Jesus spoke of us abiding in Him.  My commentary said, “This abiding relationship is natural to the branch and the vine, but it must be cultivated in the Christian life.  It is not automatic.”  We can’t just think that it will happen.  Instead, we are moved to worship, prayer, study of the Word, sacrifice, and service, it says.

As branches, we are pruned by God to maximize our benefit to Him.  “The greatest judgment God could bring to a believer would be to let him along, let him have his own way.  Because God loves us, He prunes us and encourages us to bear more fruit for Hi glory … Your heavenly Father is never nearer to you than when He is pruning you … Sometimes He simply uses the Word to convict and cleanse us … Sometimes He must chasten us.  At the time, it hurts when He removes something precious from us, but as the spiritual crop is produced, we see that the Father knew what He was doing.”

As to the friends picture, I read, “Our friendship to each other and to the Lord is not perfect, but His friendship to us is perfect.”  He wants us to love others, and because we are imperfect, that may seem hard to do with some.  It said, “Christian love is not basically a feeling; it is an act of the will.”

“Our friendship with Christ involves love and obedience.  But it also involves knowledge:  He lets us in on His plans … One of the greatest privileges we have as His frie3nds is that of learning to know God better and getting in on God’s secrets.  Each of us is as close to God as we choose to be.”  Our abiding is a form of our choosing, I think.

Father, I really didn’t know what abiding was all about until I took Experiencing God.  I’m still amazed that You call me Your friend.  I’m so thankful for all You continue to show me and I am humbled by how You’ve chosen to use me to show others more about You.  Help me to endure the pruning.  Show me what You have in mind as a result.  Help me to obey.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 14:15-31 Three More Assurances For Troubled Hearts

Three more assurances to go along with the three I read on Friday!  In addition to the facts that we are going to heaven, we know the Father right now, and that we have the privilege of prayer, we have the Holy Spirit, we enjoy the Father’s love, and we have His gift of peace.

My commentary explained more about the Holy Spirit:

“The Holy Spirit does not work instead of us, or in spite of us, but in us and through us … The Spirit of God had dwelt with the disciples in the person of Jesus Christ.  Now He would dwell in them.”

So how would we treat a new resident of our homes or our lives?  My commentary said, “The way we treat the Holy Spirit is the way we treat the Lord Jesus Christ.  The believer’s body is the temple of the Spirit, so what he or she does with that body affects the indwelling Holy Spirit.  The Spirit wrote the Word of God, and the way we treat the Bible is the way we treat the Spirit of God and the Son of God.”

Our relationship with the Spirit is important.  “As the believer yields to the Father, loves the Word, prays and obeys, there is a deeper relationship with the Father, Son, and Spirit.  Salvation means we are going to Heaven, but submission means that Heaven comes to us!”

As to God’s peace, “the world bases its peace on its resources, while God’s peace depends on relationships … In the world, peace is something you hope for or work for, but to the Christian, peace is God’s wonderful gift, received by faith.  Unsaved people enjoy peace when there is an absence of trouble.  Christians enjoy peace in spite of trials because of the presence of power, the Holy Spirit … The Spirit of God teaches us the Word and guides us (not drags us!) into the truth.  He also reminds us of what He has taught us so that we can depend on God’s Word in the difficult times of life.”

Jesus named two of our great spiritual enemies at the end of this chapter – the world and the devil.  My commentary said, “There is no point in Jesus Christ where the devil can get a foothold.  Since we are in Christ, Satan can get no foothold in the believer’s life unless we PERMIT it.”  How important it is, then, that we stay closely connected with the Holy Spirit so that we will not, by our own wrong choices, permit our enemies to enter our camp!

Father, I may not fully understand all I need to know about the Holy Spirit, but I know that He is a person – my Advocate in this life until Christ comes for me.  Thank You for this incredibly personal gift, and help me not to turn away from Him by sinning.  Keep me ever aware that You placed Him in my life out of Your incredible love, to guide me until I reach home.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford