A testimony to the saving grace of Jesus Christ. He is no respecter of a person's lineage, level of education, social status, financial status or anything else with which this world defines an individual. The Bible says that ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is pardon for ALL in the blood of Jesus Christ and ALL are given the privilege of sons & daughters of the Most High God. Through Jesus we are heirs to all the promises in the living Bible.
But Moses protested, "If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' they won't believe me. They will ask, 'Which god are you talking about? What is his name?' Then what should I tell them?"
God replied, " I AM THE ONE WHO ALWAYS IS. Just tell them, 'I AM has sent me to you.' " God also said, " Tell them, 'The LORD, the God of your ancestors - the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob - has sent me to you.' This will be my name forever; it has always been my name, and it will be used throughout generations. - Exodus 3:13-15
I AM??? Yes, indeed His name is the Great "I AM!" For HE IS my strength, my provider, my sustainer, my healer, my comforter, my teacher, my counselor, my leader, my defender, my protector,my friend, my creator,my Abba (Father)! He is my strength when I am weak; in him is my courage when I am afraid; he is my counselor in my confusion and indecision; he is my strong tower, the cave that I hide in. He is the one who broke addictions and set me free; created in me a new person. Indeed, this will be his name - the Great I AM!. It has always been his name, and it will be used throughout generations... The Great I AM to my children!
Commit your anxieties and your burdens upon Jesus Christ.Your future is secure in his hands!Yahweh, He is the Great I AM! My all in all !!God bless you!!!
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth. - Psalms 121:1-2
About three weeks ago, the LORD did something for me, he resurrected something that was dead and forgotten. At work, I have a staff who is of tremendous help to me and others. A young man who has proven himself invaluable with his work ethics and helpful nature. As we work for a government employer, it is important that staff are certified in their employment titles by taking and passing civil service exams. If not, they run the risk of layoffs. This young man had taken multiple civil service exams, but being that he was lower down in the rank, had not been called by any government agencies as they had not gotten down to his list number.
Finally, in November 2014 he was called for an interview by a different agency than ours. I reached out to our Human Resources department for assistance with transferring the young man's title from the other agency to ours in case he was picked up by that agency. There is such an agreement between agencies so that critical staff may continue to work for their current employer and minimize disruption of service. It is also important that there are employment slots for the position/title being interviewed. I came to find out that just recently our agency instituted the title the young man was going to be interviewed for by the other agency.
On the day of the interview the other agency had called six individuals for interview for two vacancies; off the six, my staff was fifth on the list. Alas, that agency after interviewing the first four candidates decided to hire from them and did not interview my staff member. He was sent off without an interview. It was a great disappointment for him and I. Our agency could not do anything unless he was interviewed and picked up off the list for the transfer to take place. I instructed my staff to call the other agency and let them know of his predicament, but he was not able to get through to the person in charge of the interviews, so left a voice mail. He never received a response back.
I continued to keep my staff's matter in prayer - that God would take care of it for me and him. He needed the civil service certification to prevent being laid off from work and I needed him as he had proven himself indispensable to our daily operations.
In February 2015, approximately three months after my staff had been called for an interview that never happened, one day, I walked into my office and was checking through my emails. [My staff's November 2014 interview was not on my mind, nor his. It was dead and gone. The young man was already preparing for other civil service exams.] There was an email from the Human Resources department, and I couldn't believe my eyes at what I was reading. The other agency that did not even interview my staff had decided to pick him off the list and transfer his title to our agency. I called the young man to my office, shut the door and asked him to read the email that HR had sent to me. His jaws dropped in total disbelief at what he was reading. It was impossible! But that day my God showed again that he is the one who makes the impossible possible and the possible a reality! The Bible says that upon hearing the news of Lazarus' illness, Jesus did not hurry back to his side. He returned to Lazarus' sisters three days following Lazarus' death and burial. Why? For God time is immaterial, circumstances are immaterial, process is immaterial. He resurrected a Lazarus who had died and in whom's lifeless body decay had set in. To Martha, one of Lazarus' sisters, Jesus said, "Believe and you shall see God's glory!" - John 11 I testified to him about Jesus Christ and how I had been praying for him. Together we said a prayer of thanks to my God. I pray this will be a new beginning for this young man. I pray that the seed fell on good ground and will return a thousand fold for the glory of this God!
1 On the holy mountain stands the city founded by the LORD.
2 He loves the city of Jerusalem more than any other city in Israel.
3 O city of God, what glorious things are said of you!
4 I will record Egypt and Babylon among those who know me- also Philistia and Tyre, and even distant Ethiopia. They have all become citizens of Jerusalem!
5 And it will be said of Jerusalem, "Everyone has become a citizen here." And the Most High will personally bless this city.
6 When the LORD registers the nations, he will say, "This one has become a citizen of Jerusalem."
7 At all the festivals, the people will sing, "The source of my life is in Jerusalem!"
Thinking back to what I had read in the book of Matthew, chapter 1, which lists Jesus' earthly father Joseph's genealogy and verses 4-6 of this Psalm, Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre and Ethiopia - these were all pagan nations that contributed to some of the most painful history in Israel's existence. Yet God promised to count them all as citizens of Jerusalem!!!
The God of the Old Testament and the Savior of the New Testament, - he is the same yesterday, today and forever! A God who loves his creation, man created in his own image, that his own breathe gave the first life in the garden of Eden. Sir Francis Thomson, a poet, a drug addict, wrote of this God and his pursuit of the sinner's heart in his poem - The hound of heaven! He will pursue you to the ends of the world to have you in his arms again. Will you stop running from him and give him a chance?
Three quarters of chapter 4 of the Gospel according to John is about a nameless woman, known only as the Samaritan woman and her encounter with Jesus Christ. Samaritans were hated by the Jews, thought of as second class, considered to be beneath a Jew to associate with. From this class of people was this woman with even more pitiful place in society. She was married five times and divorced; she was presently living in sin with a man to whom she was not married. She was at the public well to get water at noontime, a time of day when no other women were around. She comes across as a lonely figure as she had no companions with her when she had the encounter with Christ. (In Genesis 24:11-13, we see typically women went to the well to draw water in the evening and usually in groups.)
The amazing thing is that the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, Adonai himself, the awesome creator described in the book of Revelations chapter one (and other sections of the Bible, in the book of Daniel, Isaiah, and Ezekiel) during his discourse with this nameless woman, did not blame her for the predicament she was in her life. He did not blame or throw accusations at her for her past mistakes, but offered her the gift of life. Jesus, the savior of humanity, told her, "If you only knew the gift God has for you and who I am, you would ask me and I would give you living water." John 4:16. He said to her that this water he offered "... takes away thirst altogether. It becomes a perpetual spring within them, giving them eternal life."
Next, upon being confronted with the truth about her life, she realized that she was not standing in front of an ordinary man, rather a prophet of sorts. Her next question I think gives insight in to her personal state - she had been on a personal quest ! Having been a failure in life with five failed marriages to show for trailing her, her present condition no better than the past, she wanted to know if Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim was the right place to worship God. "Sir," the woman said, "you must be a prophet. So tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim, where our ancestors worshiped?" John 4:19-20.It may be that she had prayed, prayed long and hard, for her "lot in life" to improve, but didn't know why God had not answered her prayers.
During the time of Christ, Jerusalem was the holy city for the Jews and Mount Gerizim for the Samaritans. Based on her present state in life she may have thought that her prayers had gone unanswered because her place of worshiping God was not right! To her question, Jesus answered, "Believe me, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father here or in Jerusalem. You Samaritans know so little about the one you worship, while we Jews know all about him, for salvation comes through the Jews. But the time is coming and is already here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship him that way. For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth." John 4:21-24. Christ seemed to be telling her that she needn't run helter skelter seeking God, rather for the true seeker of God he was right beside them. God was right beside her where she stood!
Regardless that she was a Samaritan and her lot in life not any better, she knew of the Messiah, the one called Christ. She knew he was coming. She had an expectation that he will have answers for her questions when he came. For this faith, Jesus revealed himself to her, "I am the Messiah!" John 4:26. As we continue to read this story, we see that many accepted Jesus as the Messiah through the testimony of this nameless Samaritan woman. A nameless woman, with no position in society, led many from her village to Christ!
This is who Jesus Christ my Lord is. He accepts those who lack acceptance in society. He engages the society's marginal lives, those considered useless, to bring himself glory! Apostle Paul wrote, "Instead, God deliberately chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose those who are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important, so that no one can ever boast in the presence of God. God alone made it possible for you to be in Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made Christ to be wisdom itself. He is the one who made us acceptable to God. He made us pure and holy and he gave himself to purchase our freedom." 1 Corinthians 1:27-30. Don't ever give up hope. Jesus Christ, the savior of humanity, stands right besides you, calling out to you to have the living water that will take away the thirst in your soul. May God bless you!
In the book of John (ch 4:43-54), we read about a government official from the city of Capernaum, who upon hearing that Jesus was in the nearby town of Cana, went over to visit him for he had heard that Jesus could heal and his son needed a healing. The Bible says the son was "very sick." When he found Jesus, he begged him to go with him to Capernaum as his son was "about to die."
Jesus' answer was not one of sympathy, as we would typically see in other instances in the Bible. Jesus asked, "Must I do miraculous sign and wonders before you people will believe in me?" This must have had to do with his experience with the Pharisees and other Israelites that we read of in preceding chapters and the other gospels, for the Pharisees always asked Jesus for a sign from heaven even after they had witnessed the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the leper healed, and the dead brought back to life. People who knew of Jesus' upbringing as a carpenter's son found it hard to swallow all that Jesus said and did (refer to John 6:41-42). And that's probably why Jesus said, "A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own country." (John 4:43). The dialogue continues between Jesus and the official. The official pleads with Jesus, "Lord, please come now before my little boy dies." And Jesus' response was sort of dismissive, "Go back home. Your son will live!" (John 4:50). Next, what is remarkable is the official's reaction.
We read, "And the man believed Jesus' word and started home." Absolute faith in what Jesus had said! He was not shackled with disbelief as some others who found it hard that the carpenter's son would proclaim such fantastic statements (John 6:41-42). He was not shackled with pride that a lowly Jew would not pay more respect to an official and accompany him immediately. Rather there was absolute faith on part of the official in what Jesus told him and there was an action of faith, for he started to walk home to his son. On the way back, he was met by some of his servants who gave him the news that his son was alive and well. He asked them when the boy had begun to feel better and they replied, "Yesterday afternoon at one o'clock his fever suddenly disappeared!" The official/father realized it was the same time that Jesus had told him, "Your son will live." (John 4:51-54)
There are times when our prayers don't bear the result we want, in the way we want. But I would encourage you to have faith in God who is sovereign. Which means he has total and absolute power over all your circumstances and he will cause what is good for you to happen in your life. The official could have gotten mad at Jesus' response to him. He could have thrown it all away, and the life of his son, by reacting in anger. But his faith and the resulting action brought a healing to his son and salvation to his entire family! (John 4:53)
Just musing... Life is a journey, full of experiences, some good, some bad, and some out right painful. There are friendships gained and some lost. Loved by some and hated by others. And some who just don't care. Who we are is a result of many who have "lent a hand" on the way. Parents, siblings, spouses, children, friends and total strangers. There were many who stood alongside during the peaks of life, some who stood by in the valleys, and other times, all alone, totally desolate. By definition "Lend a hand" does not seem to have any permanence in it. "Lend" by definition is to allow to be borrowed for a time.
Yet there has been one who has been a constant by my side. Never letting go. Christ, my savior, saw me through some of the darkest times of my life. Patient was he when I did not know him. Merciful was he when I had fallen. Gave me hope when the road ahead looked bleak. Strengthened me when I thought I couldn't take it any more. Gave me rest when sleep deserted me. The Atheist would say, it is the human nature to rise above one's circumstances, the survival instinct. I know me and it ain't I !
