Blessing

Our Great Hope

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That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, He Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses Matthew 8:17 KJV

Did you know that God is so intimately concerned with our physical needs that He has even counted the number of hairs on our head? We have a great hope that whether in this life or in the next; God will heal every disease, restore all that is broken and renew our youth like the eagles!

Whether sitting in a wheel chair in a nursing home or confined to a bed with a tracheotomy tube in order to breathe, Jesus offers the hope of complete and entire healing as one part of His promise of eternal life. That promise may be overlooked or forgotten by those in perfect health, but God does not forget. The same Jesus who was moved with compassion for lepers, the blind and the lame has promised to wipe every tear from our eyes. He not only has compassion for our aches, pains and disabilities but the Bible tells us that He took all of these onto his shoulders and carried them.

If we continue reading in the chapter of Isaiah that Matthew quotes we see in the very next verse that it is by His stripes that we are healed. God is so very concerned for every one of our pains and infirmities that He allowed a whip to fall across the shoulders of Jesus. As He was wounded again and again we were being healed. Weak arms will be lifted, failing voices will sing again and deaf ears will hear the shepherd’s voice! When the things of earth have passed we will stand strong and eternally young in the presence of our ageless King!

He Took the Cup

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Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you. Luke 22:20 NKJV

As the disciples gathered at the Last Supper, they thought they had come to share a traditional Passover. Everything was put in place just as it had been since the days of Moses. But when they sat down to eat; Jesus began telling them that one of them was a traitor. Imagine sitting down at Thanksgiving dinner and hearing your Dad say, “Praise God, I am thankful for this meal but I know one of you is a murderer!”? In a Passover celebration there were four cups to be drunk. The first cup Jesus took was called sanctification and this He told the disciples to share among each other because He would not drink it again until He drank it in the Kingdom of God. The next two cups were the proclamation cup, and the blessing cup, the later being most likely the one He blessed as the New Covenant in His blood. Last of all was the cup of praise which after they drank they sang a hymn and went out and followed Jesus to the garden. We do not know if Jesus drank any of the cups at the Last Supper. Our cup He blessed and gave to us so when we receive it we must be thankful. But in Gethsemane after He had prayed He took a different cup filled with bitterness and drank, so that ours could be filled with joy and eternal life!

Go Sit On Your Bed!

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“Sit on your bed till your father gets home!” Was one of the most terror filled ways for me to spend an afternoon when I was ten years old. I sometimes wasn’t quite sure what I had done wrong and was even less certain of what punishment lay in store. Though often I deserved whatever spanking awaited me at my dad’s return this is not what God has in mind for our relationship with Him. He is not busy doing important stuff at the office and hoping we were good while he was away.

Instead our heavenly dad stayed home to spend time with us today. He also has planned out in advance a family adventure vacation. He can’t wait to go out with us and help us discover amazing things on our journey. He challenges us to think in new ways and learn to do new stuff. But our becoming a new man (or woman) is not about trying harder, running faster or jumping higher. In fact the new person we are asked to be is not about us at all.

Only Jesus is the true holy and righteous new man. Only He can be in us who He is calling us to be! So don’t worry about sitting on your bed till God gets home. Instead go outside and wait in the driveway because our father’s greatest delight is to come home for us give us the blessings of heaven!