Daily devotion

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!

No More Lazy Grace!

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For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. Romans 12:3

Do you battle with fear sometimes? I definitely do! I love God’s promises in

The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear? Psalm 27:1

But there are times when I just wish that God would deal with my fear by His grace. But just like Adam and Eve’s failure in the garden we have all been bungling things up when we believe God is going to work things out by grace, without our participation. What we are calling grace; God may call simple laziness. The issue is not God’s lack of grace; but our lack of action. Yes, of course God is sovereign, almighty and all knowing; but for His own purposes He designed us not to be. I often pray for God to remove my fears; but Jesus said, “Do not let your heart be troubled…” In other words He put me in the driver’s seat and contrary to the song it’s me -not Jesus- who has to take the wheel!

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1 NIV

So when I asked myself, “How did Jesus deal with fear?”  I remembered the cross. There in humiliation and pain He endured. His confidence was not based on some heroic stoicism, but in the confidence that despite his abandonment and suffering, there was a joy that lay ahead. At the sixth hour, as His strength reached its end and His vision grew dark but He chose to believe in something He could not see – our salvation and forgiveness. So in those moments when I am afraid, I will remember that He was afraid too.  But three days later, on a morning He could not see from the cross, the stone rolled away and He rose and sorrow and mourning flew away!

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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!