Healings and Jesus

Jesus' power to heal today is as real as it was when he was physically on earth. Yet we do not often see miraculous healings now. His power and love have not changed - but neither has his purpose. 

He healed men on earth in order to bring them to himself, to cause them to trust and believe in him, and to bring glory to his father. Today he still has those goals - ultimately, to give us God himself. 

In places in the world where He is not yet known, he often heals miraculously, and people are moved to come to him and to believe. But here where he is already known, his goals are often accomplished through our sickness. 

He wants for us something better than healing: to have God himself!


Mark 2:10-11
But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” —he said to the paralytic— “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.”

He must become greater

I just read this in a blog post. It needs to be my life verse too.

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He must become greater; I must become less.

The point of life is not our current circumstances.

The point is not what He is doing in me or in our family.

The point is, and always has been, that He is seen and worshiped for who He is.

The point is that Jesus shines.

How He chooses to accomplish that through me is His prerogative.

He must become greater.

I rest content in that.

http://theblessingofverity.com/2013/12/mostly-sunny-with-a-few-showers/

No grumping

I have no cause for grumping around, or for self-pity!

1) everything that comes to me is from my Father's loving hand. Not from a stern, uncompassionate task-master who cares not about my frame. But from my Father, who has promised that nothing he gives can ever be interpreted to mean that he is not loving me in it. 

Rom.8:35-39, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

2) whatever my Father gives, he has promised to be with me in it.

Matt.28:20, "behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

And he has promised to be my strength in my weakness.

2Cor.12:9-10, "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

3) Heaven, rest, and peace are coming.

Rev.14:13, And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!”

Rev.21:3-5, And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” 

Rejoice!

Great sermons yesterday!
(Check them out at www.grbc.net - 12-1-13 AM and PM)

As children of God through Christ, we can rejoice always! - because everything, everything in our lives comes from the loving and wise hand of the God of the universe, who before time planned out our salvation and redemption.

He has promised to make everything in our lives (if we are his children through Christ) work together like ingredients in a cake, to produce in the end a beautiful product that will be for our very best good.

He has promised to be with us always, and that nothing ever anywhere can separate us from his love in Christ.  He has NOT promised to take away all those things - persecution, trouble, neediness, danger, sickness, things present or things to come - but to make us more than conquerors in them. To have his love upon us in all those things. To cause them to produce our good rather than our harm.

Rejoice! Live boldly!
(and remind me of this when I forget it all in the busyness of the day...)

Rescue the weak and needy

Psalms 82:3-4
“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
 maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
 Rescue the weak and the needy;
 deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

This is one thing Jesus came for - to rescue the weak and needy, and bring them home as God's children:


Hebrews 2:9-10
“But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering."


Romans 9:25-26
 “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved. ’”
 “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God. ’”

Surely if God calls someone to do something (like adoption) - will He not provide both the means to do it, and the ability to care for that child?  When we reach heaven, we will never regret having given ourselves for others in His name.

The place of abundance

Ps.66:10,12,20 - "For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. ...we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance. ... Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!"

This is our hope in trials: that our God will bring us out to a place of abundance!  And that no matter what  our circumstances seem to be, His ears are listening to our cries, and His steadfast love is upon us!

the furnace

Jn.6:13, "So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten."

This is our God. He multiplies little into abundant suffiscience when He is in it.

If you choose the hard path - like Larissa marrying brain-injured Ian, or someone adopting a disabled child - you are choosing for God to increase the heat in the furnace of your life, the means by which our gold is purified of its dross on the way to Heaven.

I know the end is good. I know that having dreams stripped away in order to gain the greater joy of God Himself, is not a loss, not a poor trade. Indeed he is a fool who cannot loose his grasp on all his possessions in order to gain that Pearl of great value instead. Only a fool gains the world at the cost of losing his soul.

My flesh still recoils.  It must be faith alone that willingly chooses the furnace, if God will be glorified in it.