“ And Saul was consenting unto his death. On that day a severe persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the land of Judea and Samaria.”
“That day” referred to here is the stoning of Stephen. After Stephen’s death, the persecution of Christians really picked up. But something good came out of this persecution. People, who had been converted on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2-3, and after, were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Until that point all of the action of the church had taken place in Jerusalem, but now the witness was spreading. This fulfilled what Jesus told His disciples in Acts 1:8: “But you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost part of the earth.” I’m sure that when Jesus gave them tha charge that they did not know how it would be carried out. Here is what I really want us to see in this text: Persecution did not kill the church, rather it scattered it and began a movement that would be worldwide in a few short years. Let’s go back and look at something that happened as Stephen was stoned. They laid their robes at the feet of a man named Saul. Then we are told that he was “consenting unto (Stephen’s) death.” Who would have thought that in a short time this persecutor of the church would be a part of it and be one on the main characters in carrying out Acts 1:8? God does, indeed, work in mysterious ways. If we planned it out, it would not be like this. We would appoint committees and discuss being “witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost part of the earth” to death. We would ask, “Exactly what did Jesus mean and how can we plan this thing out to everybody’s satisfaction?” This is not how God did it. He used the stoning of Stephen as the catalyst for scattering his church beyond Jerusalem, then, on the Damascus Road, converted Saul and turned him into “the Apostle Paul.” In order for the gospel to reach“the uttermost part of the earth” Gentiles would have to be converted. Again, if we had planned it out, we would have appointed committees, asked for resumes of good Gentile Christians, discussed it to death and come up with someone to witness to the Gentiles. This is not what God did. He found the meanest Jew that He could find, converted him on the Damascus Road, and sent him to witness to the Gentiles. Paul’s witness and the witness of Peter and other apostles enabled the gospel message to reach all the way to Rome and beyond, thus carrying out Jesus’ command. What lessons can we derive from this? First, we can understand that bad things that happen to us can turn out to be used of God for great purposes. Who knows but what some suffering that you have encountered has blessed someone else’s life in ways that you could not have planned out. Second, we can understand that when the Lord gives a command He means it, and He will see that it is carried out. If we didn’t send missionaries into the world, God would see that some were sent anyway. Perhaps, until the stoning of Stephen and the ensuing persecution, converted Jews were reluctant to leave Jerusalem. God had different plans and scattered them to other places. Third, God might want you to “scatter” from where you are in your life today and go and do what He wants you to do. (I’m not necessarily referring to location as much as I am referring to lifestyle.) At least give it some consideration. Bro. Joe
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“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. 8. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing.”
When Paul wrote 2 timothy, he was coming to the end of his life. He knew that he would shortly be martyred for his faith in Jesus. He was not afraid as he faced the possibility of his own death. He had written to the Philippians that “to die is gain.” Paul knew that when he left this earth he would go to a better place and he would be with the Lord. What we have in these two verses is not Paul’s regret about his ensuing death, but an estimate of his life. He described his life as a “good fight.” It was not a fight using men’s weapons, rather it was a fight for what is right, for the Lord and for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul fought to help people find true liberty in Christ. He fought the devil. He warned in Ephesians 4:12 from his own experience what this fight would entail for us: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” The weapons that Paul used in this “good fight” were prayer and the word of God. We cannot take on the fight against the “principalities and powers” in our own strength for we need Jesus to fend for us. Paul wrote that he had “kept the faith.” Paul’s fight had been a good fight because he had faced it with faith in Jesus Christ. He had kept it in faith in the work of the Holy Spirit in his life, in the power of the gospel and in the final victory of Christ’s kingdom. He had kept It in the faith in the rightness of his cause to take the gospel to Gentiles primarily, but also to Jews. We need to ask ourselves if this is our cause as well. Paul meant that he had remained true to the faith to the end. Many times Paul was threatened, and on at least one occasion was left for dead, but he did not quit. He could have easily said, “I didn’t sign up for this mess. I’m going back to my old life.” Romans, Jews and Greeks argued against what Paul believed, but he did not quit. Because of his great faith, Paul could not quit. This same faith is available to us. Before you give up on living for Jesus in this present time, reevaluate your faith. Is your faith genuine? Before you give up on your church, ask yourself if your faith is genuine or have you just been playing church? These are important questions as we review our own lives. Keeping the faith does not mean that we have to hold onto it. It means that we should remain true to it, no matter what happens and no matter what people are saying. Just as it was in Paul’s day, there is great hostility towards our faith today. If we are greatly concerned about what people are saying about our faith, we will not remain true to it. It means that we will remain true to it no matter what is happening in our lives at any given time. There is a gospel song that says, “The God on the mountain is still God in the valley.” This is forever true and we need to remember it. This was the kind of faith that Paul had and it is the kind of faith that we need to live for Jesus in our generation. When we feel like quitting church, or giving up during hard times, we need to remember all that Paul endured for his faith and in the end could write: “I have kept the faith.” At the end of his life Paul could write: “I have finished my course.” He had done well with the work that the Lord had assigned him on the Damascus Road. His life was finished through hardships, trials, temptations and struggles. But it was finished through great victories for Christ and he could write: “There is henceforth laid up for me a crown of righteousness…” Let it be so for us. Bro. Joe “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, let us run with patience the race that is set before us. 2. Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of grace.”
In order to run the race of life, we need to get rid of the things that will weigh us down, but in order to run the best race we have to run with patience. What does this mean? First, it means that we should run with endurance. A foot racer has to be in good physical shape to run effectively. It is a reminder to us that we have to be in good spiritual shape in order to run effective Christian lives. We must run with faith in Jesus, remembering that He gives us His strength through the Holy Spirit. Of course our faith is strengthened through prayer and Bible study. We are saved by faith, and we are sustained by faith, with prayer and Bible study to strengthen that faith. Second, it means that if we are to run with endurance, we need to run wisely. In order to run the best race, we need to maintain our spiritual energy on a daily basis, and not let the devil rob us of the spiritual energy that we need to run effectively. We should not let Satan sidetrack us with things that do not matter, things that will take our eyes off of Jesus, and off of the life that He wants us to live. Third I want to share some things that can sidetrack us and rob us of spiritual energy: 1. I repeat: Satan wants us to keep from spending time in prayer and in the Bible. These are just two things that we cannot ignore…..period! 2. We get sidetracked by not loving people as we should. We just don’t need to let people “get under our skin.” You know what I mean. Grudges will stunt our Christian growth and keep us from living the best life. Grudges rob us of spiritual endurance. We need to forgive other people. This is not always easy, because some people hurt us badly, but, no matter, we need to forgive. 3. We get sidetracked by not being patient with ourselves. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t take sin seriously. What I mean is that when we have been forgiven, we should accept God’s forgiveness, and move on. It robs us of spiritual endurance when we continue to kick ourselves for sins that have been forgiven and cast out. Just as we forgive other people, we need to forgive ourselves. I find that this is more difficult than forgiving others, but we have to do this in order to maintain our spiritual stamina. I trust that you get the idea of what it means to “run with patience.” Consider your own “race” and run well. Bro. Joe “Sing to the Lord, you saints of His, praise His holy name. 5. For His anger lasts only a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night but rejoicing comes in the morning.”
These verses remind us of what our response should be to God no matter how trying life has become. When things are not going well for us, we have a tendency to blame God. We might not consciously admit this, but in the back of our minds we think that God owes us more than we are getting. Blaming God for hardships will get us nowhere. We live in a fallen world and that is the way life is in a fallen world. Trials and tribulations are part of living, and they can be tests of our faith. The question is what is our response to God when things are tough? These two verses from Psalm 30 will tell us what our response should be – regardless. “Sing to the Lord, you saints of His, praise His holy name.” What God wants from us at all times is to praise Him. Praise was not always easy for David and other psalmists. The psalms are full of complaints to the Lord because of what life was handing them at the time. Yet the psalmists also remind us time after time that we are to praise God. In psalm 35:28 David wrote: “And my tongue shall speak of your righteousness and of your praise all the day long.”If we praise God “all the daylong” we will surely, at some point, praise Him in the midst of trouble. Asaph wrote in psalm 50:15: “And call upon me in the day of trouble; and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify (praise) me.” I looked up “praise” in my Strong’s exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, and I found passage after passage about praising God. The Bible is full of the praises of God. I know that life can be hard, and that some things that happen to us are awfully hard to overcome, but it does us no good to give in to self-pity or grumbling and complaining. What we need to do during these times is to “sing to the Lord…praise His holy name.” You will be a better person for it, and you will feel better about yourself. “His anger lasts only for a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime.” This is a good reminder for us that God is not against us. He might be against the way we are living at a given time, as we are told: “His anger lasts only a moment,” which does mean that He gets angry with us. That anger comes because He knows that we can do better. When you feel God-forsaken, and think that God is not doing anything in your life, remember that you have His favor. We need to be careful with this word “favor.” We can get the idea that when things are not going our way, we have lost God’s favor. Read it again: “But His favor lasts a lifetime…” There are times when we feel God’s favor more than at other times, but God always wants the best for us, and when we forget that fact we stray from what the Lord Jesus wants of us. We do well to remember His favor, especially when we are going through difficult times. “Weeping may endure for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” There are four words that have come to mean a lot to me over the years, and they are: “this, too, shall pass.” That is what David meant when he wrote: “Weeping may endure for a night…” We need to remember that nothing lasts forever. Whatever you are going through right now will come to an end, and at the end of it there will be joy and rejoicing. Sometimes it seems that woes will never end, but they do. What we need to focus on is not the weeping but the joy and rejoicing. The choice as to how we will respond to the “weeping” is really up to us. We can pout and simmer, but that will only prolong the weeping. We just need to remember that when “morning” comes there will be joy and rejoicing. Grab a hold of this truth, and make it a way of life. The right response to the Lord is to praise Him, remember His favor and accept the joy that He sends “in the morning." Bro. Joe (The beginning of every year is filled with expectations. Deuteronomy 10:12-13 presents some good expectations as we begin this year. Read them and take them to heart.)
“And now, Israel, what does the Lord thy God require (expect) of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul. 13. To keep the commandments of the Lord, and His statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?” The Book of Deuteronomy is actually a sermon by Moses as the children of Israel waited to enter the "Promised Land.” It is a summation of Israel’s travels and events from Egypt to that present time. In Deuteronomy, Moses gives some summary statements that serve as advice for God’s people as to how they should live. Deuteronomy 10:12-13 is one of those summary statements. It answers the question as to what basic requirements, or expectations, God had for Israel as they entered Canaan. It is good advice for us as well. The first expectation was “to fear the Lord thy God.” This does not just mean to be afraid of God, but hold Him in deep reverence and awe. One of the problems that Israel faced and that we face today is that, “there is no fear of God before their eyes.” God, as we know Him in Jesus, is not just “the man upstairs.” He is the creator of the universe and the master of all that He created. We would do well to heed Moses' advice. Do you really hold God in awe and reverence? The second expectation was “to walk in all His ways.” Moses wanted Israel to understand, as we are to understand, that there are two ways that we can walk – God’s way or our way. Moses knew from experience that Israel had a penchant for walking in their way as opposed to God’s way. God allows us to choose the way we will walk. If we walk in His way, the way might be rough sometimes, but it will be the rewarding way. If we walk in our way, we will eventually walk into disaster. I know what I’m talking about here, and you probably do too. God wants His people, including those of us who belong to Him through Jesus, to live right, to make right decisions instead of making wrong-headed decisions. I think that the disastrous journey of the prodigal son in Luke 15 is an example of what can happen when we take God’s resources and go our own way. He took a rough route until he came to his senses and sought out his father. The third expectation was “to love Him.” Jesus said that the first commandment is to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” We should love God with all of the fiber of our being. If we will just think of all that He has done for us in Jesus, we should have no problem loving Him. When we love Him, we are returning the great love that He has for us. The fourth expectation was “to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord…” Notice that we are to serve Him from our hearts. Everything that we do that really counts in our lives comes from our hearts. If He has our hearts, we will serve Him wholeheartedly. Our salvation from God begins in our hearts, and everything else in our lives should come from our hearts. We are to serve God with all of our souls. This means that our service should proceed from who and what we are in Him. The “soul” is who and what we are, and it should be defined by our devotion to God/Jesus. We are to serve Him with our minds. When Christ saved us, He did not kill our minds. God wants us to keep our transformed minds on Him, and to think when we serve Him. We should serve Him with “the mind of Christ.” How are you doing in these areas of your life? Do you hold God in deep reverence (fear)? Do you walk in all His ways? Do you really love Him? Do you serve Him from deep within yourself? Think about it. Bro. Joe “And there came there certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people, and having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead. 20. Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city: and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe. 21. And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch.”
What does a football team do after they lose a game? Do they get together in the locker room afterward and declare to never play football again? No! They pick up and go again. They go out the next week and practice even harder. This is sort of like what Paul did after he had been stoned (Had rocks thrown at him in order to kill him. just saying) and left for dead. One would think that Paul would have surmised that this “Christian thing” was just too dangerous. That’s not what he did. He got up and kept going. In fact, they went back to the cities they had preached in and even went to Lystra, where Paul had been stoned. There is a good lesson for us here. We need to learn to “get up and keep going.” When we are going through periods when it seems that nothing will ever go right again, we need to take that as a challenge and go forward instead of quitting. I know that life can hand us some hard blows, but even the hardest of blows cannot keep us down if in our hearts and minds we do not intend to stay down. When I was seventeen-years-old, I quit high school, at the end of the tenth grade, and went into the Navy. Needless to say, I did not feel like a great winner, but something was awakened in me, which eventually proved to be the Lord, and I stopped being a “high school dropout” in my own mind, and started to go forward. It certainly was not “ever onward” from then on, but I recovered from it. Without Jesus it would never have happened, and I would probably be dead now, having drowned in self-pity. The Lord gave me a good swift kick where I needed it, and awakened me to a better life. If we want to get up and go again, we have to believe that the Lord has a purpose for our lives. If I hadn’t discovered that truth in my life, I would have quit. The Lord got hold of me, and in spite of my innate sorriness, led me on. None of us are here by accident, for God has a purpose for everyone. Including you! Bro. Joe “And there came there certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people, and having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing that he had been dead. 20. Howbeit, as the disciples stood around about him, he rose up and came into the city; and the next day he departed with Barnabas for Derbe. 21. And they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch…”
Acts 14:19-21 takes us into the middle of Paul’s first missionary journey. He and Barnabas had just come through a rough time in Lystra, where their adversaries had stoned Paul and left him for dead. Well, that took care of that – right? Well, no it did not. When Paul got up, he and Barnabas continued to do what they had been sent out to do – preach the gospel and start churches. This is where today’s title comes from: “What to Do When the Going Gets Tough.” Those who stoned Paul Probably thought that they taught him a lesson that he would never forget, and that he would stop this preaching about this Jesus. It didn’t happen that way. Paul got up and kept going. Which leads me to some questions for us? What does it take to make us quit in our service to the Lord? I have seen people quit under all kinds of circumstances. I have known people who quit serving the Lord because their feelings were hurt. We are living in a time when our “feelings” are obviously the most important things in the world. It has gotten to the point that we can hardly mention the name of Jesus without offending somebody. Don’t put your feelings ahead of Jesus and your service for Him. I have known people who have quit serving the Lord because they thought the church did not appreciate all of the hard work they had done. These people need to ask themselves what that “hard work” was all about. If it was about making us look good, and having people brag on how hard we have worked, then we can quit. But if it was about serving Jesus, then we cannot quit. The saying today is: “It’s not about us, it’s about Jesus.” If it really is about Jesus, then we will get up and keep going when our feelings get hurt, or when our work seems unappreciated. If we quit, who will do what God wanted us to do? Think about this for a moment. God has saved us, given us gifts of the Holy Spirit, and sent us forward to use those gifts for the purposes for which he called us. This means that God is counting on us to do His work on earth, to be His hands, feet and tongues. If we do not do what God has willed us to do, will it get done? It could because God is not crippled by our quitting, and there are others who can take up the slack. But is that really what we want? Do we want someone else to have to do what God has called us to do? Would it make us happy if God's work went on in spite of us. I joke about how I used to go to my office at the church on Monday, because I knew that if I was preparing a sermon for the next Sunday, then I planned to keep on doing it. Of course, this was not true of every Monday, but there were those Mondays when I felt like quitting. When we feel this way, it is important for us to ask ourselves if anyone stoned us and left us for dead, for even that is not an excuse to quit. There is not a person on this earth who is irreplaceable, but we should not want to be replaced because we quit when the going got tough. Ask yourself why you do what you do in your church and community? Do you do it to hear people brag on you, or to “make a name” for yourself? If those are your reasons for service, then you will quit when the going gets tough, but if you are doing what you do for Jesus and to advance His kingdom, then you will not quit under any circumstances. If you are considering giving up your Sunday School class, your place in the choir, whatever you do, ask yourself if you are quitting, or like Paul, moving on to further service? It’s worth considering. Bro. Joe “Thou therefore endure hardness (hardship) as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”
In first and second Timothy Paul was giving his “son in the ministry-Timothy” some advice about enduring what he had to in order to serve Jesus Christ. Here he told Timothy to “endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” Another biblical word for endurance is perseverance. Both mean to keep on keeping on no matter what. This morning as I was doing my arm workouts, I thought to myself: “How much longer will I have to do this?” Then a little “still small voice” said: “You can quit doing this when you want flabby ‘grandpa arms’.” (Lest I lead you astray about my fitness, I will add – “flabbier than they already are.”) The idea is that there are disciplines that we must maintain if we want to stay fit. Things like lifting weights (Not "pumping iron" by any means.), walking on my treadmill, or riding my stationary bike, are disciplines that I have to maintain if i want to stay fit. These things seem like a hardship, but they are not really when I consider the good that they do for me. Of course, this got me to thinking about other disciplines in my life that are not necessarily hardships, but things that I must maintain if I am to stay spiritually fit. Remember, this is not just about me, but about you as well. There is the discipline of prayer. Every morning when I get up, I go to my place of prayer and pray for the people in my life, for the ill, for missionaries, etc. I don’t mean to be smug about this, but prayer “centers” me before I have to face whatever I have to face during the day. I want to recommend that you have a discipline of prayer as well. If you aren’t a morning person, you can find the time that is best suited for you, but do it. I know that we can pray any time during the day that we want to, but I have found that keeping this prayer vigil each morning is a help to me during the day. By the way, when I finish my prayer time in the morning I do not say “amen,” because I’m not finished praying for the day. Paul reminded us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to “pray without ceasing.” There is the discipline of Bible reading and Bible study. After my prayer time each morning, I read eight chapters from the Bible – two from the New Testament and six from the Old Testament. (The reason for this is that the Old Testament is much longer than the New Testament.) I made a commitment over thirty years ago to be in the process of reading the Bible through all of the time. This usually means in a year, but not necessarily. It is very important that you find time to read the word of God each day, and that you read it systematically. The Bible is not just a book of religious teachings; it is a book about God’s redemption. I strongly urge you to make a commitment to read your Bible every day. Paul gave Timothy, and us, this advice: “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed , rightly dividing the word of truth.” 2 Timothy 2:15' There are other disciplines that I could write about, but I think these two are the most important to us personally as we seek to grow in Christ. I wrote above that these disciplines are not necessarily hardships, like working out flabby arms, but they can seem that way if we aren’t careful. Satan will do anything to keep us from our prayer closets and from the Bible. He trembles when we pray and when we read the Bible. Satan wants us to think that all spiritual disciplines are hardships, and not as pleasant to our senses as some other things that we could do. But listen to the “still small voice” of the Holy Spirit, who will urge you endure in spite of the temptation to surrender the time that you spend in prayer and Bible study. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to live a victorious Christian life without incorporating prayer and Bible reading into your daily routine. Bro. Joe “Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer you in this matter. 17. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. 18 But if not, be it known unto you, O king, that we will not serve your gods, nor worship the golden image which you have set up.
The third chapter of Daniel reveals a trying time for God’s exiled people. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, declared that all people would worship an image of gold that he had set up. Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego refused to bow to this golden image, and were placed into the firey furnace, and eventually were delivered from the furnace. They dared to stand for God instead of bending to idolatry, which would break the first two of the Ten Commandments. We can learn from faith and courage, and why they were true to God. Their courage was due to their devotion to God. Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego were men of God, and were devoted to God alone. They absolutely could not bow to the golden image. The favor of God meant more to them than even the favor of the great king Nebuchadnezzar. Are you devoted to Jesus alone, or do you bow to the “false gods” of our age? Do you bow to greed or popularity instead of standing for the Lord? Do you seek the smile of God or the smile of the world? I pray that my devotion to God will be of this kind. Their courage was due to their obedience to God. The three great Hebrew men obeyed God rather than people. They obeyed the truth of God that they knew in their hearts instead of the falsehood that the world tried to foist on them. They took a step of faith instead of a step of fear. Do you obey God or people? Do you obey what the Bible teaches or what the world tells you is truth? The time in which we live sometimes demands that we obey God. But God has not changed, for He wants our obedience today as He did in the Hebrew children’s day. We need to learn what the apostles knew in Acts 5:29: “We ought to obey God rather than men.” Their courage was due to their consistent faith in God. In other words, they were not “fair-weather friends” of God. They were consistent in their stand. There were no circumstances that would make them bow down to a false image. They had the faith and courage to say “no” to that with which they could not agree. They had the courage to say,“We will not serve your gods.” We need to be consistent as well. We shouldn’t let anything turn us from following Jesus. I have seen some people capitulate even when there was no fear of death. We will see a great difference in our lives, our homes and our churches when we stand for the Lord in the courage of consistency. For example, we will say “no” to the devil when he tries to get us to bow down to hurt feelings, or when he tries to get us into some disagreement with fellow Christians. We will say “no” to those who tell us the tolerance of sin is the supreme Christian virtue in the face of all sorts of ungodliness. We will say “no” to greed, pride, and lust when they try to steer us off course. We will have the courage to be consistent when the world demands inconsistency of us. When Paul feared that Timothy might waver in his faith and courage, he reminded him:" (For) God did not give you a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.” (NIV) Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego practiced this spirit in this text. The day in which we live calls for us to have the faith and courage to stand for the Lord. Bro. Joe “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
“Very present help” has also been translated as “an ever present help.” Both of these translations get to the heart of this wonderful promise of the Lord’s help in our inevitable troubles. The Lord is “very present” and He is “ever present” in the lives of His people. What a wonderful promise and what a wonderful reality. Jesus illustrated this promise in John 14:16-17: “And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever. 17. Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, neither knoweth Him: but you know Him; for He dwells with you and shall be in you.” Jesus was assuring His disciples that when He ascended to the Father, they would not be alone, because the Holy Spirit would be, “very present" in their lives. He is present in our lives at all times, but His presence is especially needed, and felt, in times of trouble. You can be assured that you are never alone. His eyes, which are also “on the sparrow” are truly watching over you. (Luke 12:6-7) Jesus promised His presence in Matthew 28:20b: “Lo I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” As the ages roll, we have the promise of His presence, and of His care. This promise is made in the conclusion of what we call “The Great Commission.” “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the ages.” The Lord saved us to be His witnesses to the world. There is no promise that there will not be trouble in fulfilling this command, but there is a promise that we will not be alone. For He is “a very present help in trouble!!!" Put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. You have His promise that He will be with you in all that you face in life. Believe me, in the last few years I have come to really know the truth of this promise. For example, I have come to know the truth of this promise made to Israel in Deuteronomy 33: 27: “The eternal God is thy refuge; and underneath are the everlasting arms and He shall thrust out the enemy from before you; and shall say destroy them” I have read that this is only a promise to the Jews. You can believe that if you want, but I have experienced those “everlasting arms” under me. You can know that too. as you join David in his declaration in Psalm 16:8-9 “I have set the Lord before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. 9. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices: my flesh also shall rest in hope.” Believe it! Bro. Joe |
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