Tuesday 27 July 2010

FEASTING ON THE LAMB


The same Passover lamb that was slain and its blood smeared on the doorpost and the lintel in the
Jewish home was the lamb that the people ate for the journey out of Egypt (Ex. 12:11, 46).

Everything the people needed for life that night was provided by the substitutionary lamb. The blood of the lamb covered their sins. The lamb gave his blood to redeem them, and he gave his life for them to eat and be nourished for the journey (Ex. 12:1-14). They lived their redeemed life out of the life of the lamb. They lived in the strength provided by the lamb. The Passover lamb became their nourishment for the journey in the night.

The Christian life is lived on the life of the Lamb of God.
We are never ready to start the journey in the Christian life until we feast upon the lamb God has provided. We go about trying to live the spiritual life in the energy of the flesh. It will not work; it never has worked. Life in the energy of the flesh will die. God puts His life in us, and we must feast upon the Lamb of God to sustain His life in us.

God imparts His life to us and He will live it through us (Rom. 5:10). Jesus said, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life” (John 6:54). We have God’s life by appropriating the Lamb of God (John 6:27). Everything is centered on Jesus Christ. He is all we ever need for this new life in Christ. The only life that pleases God is His life and the life of His Son.

The Christian life is Jesus living His life in you, through you, and as you. It must always be His life flowing through us. “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” It is spiritual appropriation of Christ by faith. “I live, yet not I; Christ lives in me.” “Christ in you is the hope of glory.” “For me, to live is Christ.” Who is the one living? Christ. But whom do you see when you look at Him? You and me. He is in us living His life as us.

Just as Christ let the Father live His life through Him (John 4:34), so we too must allow Him permission to live His life in and through us. We must learn to live out of the resources of His life.
Jesus Christ has entered a vital union with us. His Spirit is joined to our spirit. In the spiritual reality He resides with us. We are vessels, clay pots made available to Him.
Jesus is the Bread of Life, and only He can satisfy the deepest needs of the soul. There is no need that you have that He cannot satisfy. He said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh" (John 6:51).

Jesus died for our sins as the Lamb of God, and in His resurrection life we now have His life. In His righteousness we are now reckoned righteous in the sight of a holy God.
Are you feeding on the Lamb of God? It must be personal. Only you can do it. Jesus is our daily bread and we must feast upon Him everyday. He alone satisfies. You must eat to live.
How do you feed upon the Lamb of God? It means to believe on Jesus and commit your life to Him. By faith you take Jesus into yourself so that He becomes a part of you, and you of Him. To know Jesus Christ is to have eternal life. It is a relationship with a person, the Son of God.

Is Jesus Christ as real to you spiritually as something you can taste? Is He as much a part of you as the food you eat? Are you going to Jesus daily and drawing upon His abundance? He gives His food in abundance. He never stops giving until we stop asking. If we are poor, hungry, weak and tired spiritually it is because we do not go to the Lamb of God and feed upon Him daily. Have you asked Him to supply your every need? He will fill your empty vessel with Himself and His sustenance. He is the all-sufficient Lamb of God.

We eat Him daily by committing ourselves to Him a fresh each day. “Lord Jesus, this day belongs to you. Here is my life, Come live your life in and through me.” What began at conversion when we put our trust in Christ as our Savior continues throughout this life and in eternity.

Eternal life is God’s life, and it is without end because He is without end. We have entered into a life transforming union with Christ. “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in me, and I in him.” We are joined to Jesus and He to us spiritually. We have received His life and we are to keep on receiving it in increasing abundance throughout eternity. God has promised to keep on enlarging our spiritual life until Christ is reproduced in all His fullness in us.

As we feed upon Christ daily we receive strength for living the abundant life. The only way we can live is by feeding upon Him. We draw upon His power and nourishment. “I live by faith in the Son of God” (Gal. 2:20b).

Jesus imparts and sustains the kind of life that will continue forever. You will never exhaust Him in this life or in eternity. We grow spiritually in our living relationship with Christ by feeding upon Him day by day. He will satisfy all your spiritual needs if you will come to Him daily. Go ahead and ask Him, “Lord, give me your spiritual bread that comes down from heaven today.” That is the only way to grow spiritually. Draw from the fullness of His presence moment by moment.

Selah!
Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006

Thursday 8 July 2010

What A Faithful God Have I




"Your mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds." Psalm 36:5


"Trust in the LORD, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness." Psalm 37:3


"I will sing of the mercies of the LORD forever; With my mouth will I make known Your faithfulness to all generations." Psalm 89:1


"Your faithfulness endures to all generations; You established the earth, and it abides." Psalm 119:90


"... Great is Your faithfulness." Lamentations 3:23


"He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it." 1 Thessalonians 5:24


"But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from the evil one." 2 Thessalonians 3:3


"If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself." 2 Timothy 2:13


"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful." Hebrews 10:23



Sunday 4 July 2010

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'RE WAITING ON GOD BY JOYCE MEYER



Have you been praying about a situation in your life and found yourself waiting for a breakthrough? Are you wondering why the answer hasn't come yet? Do you feel as though victory is passing you by?

Sometimes when we pray long and hard about a situation in our life without receiving any answers, we just learn to live with it. We go on about our business, wondering if or when God will send the answer. But God does hear those prayers, and He’s working out the answers even though we may not know all the details. Our situation can change suddenly—quickly without warning!

But one thing is certain: Before God moves suddenly, we will wait. Waiting for answers is a fact of life—nobody gets out of it. So the question is not if we'll wait, but rather how we’ll wait. And I believe how will determine how long.

Two Ways to Wait
All of us will wait passively, or we'll wait expectantly. A passive person hopes something good will happen and is willing to sit around waiting to see if it does. After a short time, he gives up, saying, "That’s it! I've waited and waited and nothing's happened." The passive person has a lot of wishbone but not much backbone!

The expectant person, on the other hand, is hopeful, believing the answer is just around the corner, due to arrive any minute. His belief is not a passive thing. His heart is full of hope, expecting his problem to be solved at any moment. He wakes up every morning expecting to find his answer. He may wait and wait, but suddenly what he’s been waiting for happens.

Expect It to Happen
It’s just like when a woman is pregnant; it's said that she is expecting a baby. She carries inside her the promise of a baby, and even though she can’t see it, she knows it's there. The moment she learns of her pregnancy, she begins to plan for her baby's arrival. She starts collecting items she'll need and busily gets the nursery ready. She actively prepares for the arrival of the baby because she knows the promise will be fulfilled—it's just a matter of time. She is expectant and she'll wait as long as it takes.

We know the word wait means "to expect" or "to look for." But remember, it also means "to serve" — just like a waiter waits on your table at a restaurant. Our act of waiting isn’t supposed to be spent sitting around passively hoping that something will happen sometime soon.

Be Eager with Faith
Once we've asked God to answer a question or solve a problem, we need to be eagerly awaiting His answer. We need to be serving actively, aggressively and expectantly. When our hearts are eager to hear from God, He loves to rush in suddenly with His solution. In many cases this waiting period actually serves as a time of preparation for the answer. If God answered right away, many of us would be ill-prepared to handle His solution.

Sometimes we find ourselves in such horrible messes that it's hard to imagine waiting one more second. But we need to keep waiting on God and trusting Him with a sweet and simple faith. Then, in a way we never could've figured out—God moves suddenly!

Then All of a Sudden...
In the Bible Paul and Silas knew about waiting, and they waited well.
Acts 16 tells the story of how they were attacked by a crowd, beaten and thrown in jail. Verse 24 says the jailer...put them into the inner prison (the dungeon) and fastened their feet in the stocks. He was making sure they couldn't escape. But about midnight, God showed up. Now it would have been nice if He'd come a little earlier, but Paul and Silas didn’t seem to mind—they just decided to start singing and began to worship the Lord. They began to wait on God.
Verses 25 & 26 say, But about midnight, as Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the [other] prisoners were listening to them, suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the very foundations of the prison were shaken; and at once all the doors were opened and everyone's shackles were unfastened. God answered them suddenly!

When people patiently and expectantly wait on God in the midst of horrible circumstances, suddenly God breaks through.

So don't give up! Don’t stop believing! Stay full of hope and expectation. God's power is limitless, and He'll break through for you.