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Focused on God.

1. Apr 2024 On The Way In Love
“So Jesus explained Himself at length. “I’m telling you this straight. The Son can’t independently do a thing, only what He sees the Father doing. What the Father does, the Son does”” (John 5:19; MSG). Jesus’ ministry on earth was focused on the directive of the Father. Even as a boy, years before He began His ministry, His parents found Him in the temple and He told His parents He was, “about My Father’s business” (Luke 2:49). Jesus spent much time in prayer and in the presence of His Father (Matt 14:23; Mark 1:35) to ensure He was acting precisely according to His Father’s ways and plans. Wow! Do we ever wonder how our lives could be if we were as focused on God?
In 1 Chron 16:11, we are exhorted to continuously seek God and His strength and in Jeremiah 29:13 (NKJV), we read, “You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” If we pursue God with our heart, with all we are, we will discover and walk in all He has for us! The desire of King David’s heart was to, “dwell in the house of the Lord, all the days of my life” (Ps 27:4). This speaks of a wonderful, intimate relationship. In the New Testament, we are directed to, “draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8; NKJV). “Set your minds on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col 3:2; NKJV). As we focus on God, His ways, character, and our relationship with Him, He will supply everything we need in life (Matt 6:33). If we truly make Him our priority, He will use us mightily and we will experience His abundant and fulfilling life (John 10:10b).

The Name of Jesus

29. Mar 2024 On The Way In Love
“The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe” (Prov 18:10; NKJV). In Philippians 2 verse 9, we learn that the name of Jesus is above every other name. There is tremendous power in the name of Jesus and we have been authorized to use that name. Jesus taught His disciples, “Whatever you ask the Father in My name, He will give you” (John 15:16; CSB). In other words, when we pray, we address our prayers to God the Father in the name of Jesus, because Jesus is our mediator. We read again in John 14:13 (NLT), “You can ask for anything in My name and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father.” (See also John 16:24).
When Jesus gave the last commission, He said that it was in His name that believers would see signs accompanying them (Mark 16:17,18). Earlier in His earthly ministry Jesus had sent out 72 disciples to preach and minister, “The seventy-two returned with joy, saying “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name” (Luke 10:17; CSB). In Acts 3:6 the apostles Peter and John healed a lame man outside the temple, commanding him to walk in the name of Jesus. When the apostle Paul was totally exasperated by a girl possessed by a demon that caused her to tell peoples fortunes, he said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And instantly it left her.” (Acts 16:18; NLT) We are also told by the writer of Romans that, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom 10:13; ESV). Use the power and authority of the name of Jesus today!

Yes, God can use you mightily!

27. Mar 2024 On The Way In Love
As Christians we can be in awe of the great men and women in the Bible and wonder how God could ever use us. However, God is no respecter of persons, He shows no partiality (Acts 10:34). We are all His children (1 John 3:2a), saved (Rom 10:9) and filled with the same Holy Spirit power (Acts 1:8) that empowered Jesus to do all He did on the earth (Matt 3:16).
Jesus’ disciples were regular people, just like us. James and John were fishermen (Matt 4:21-22) and Matthew a tax collector (Matt 9:9). When Peter and John were arrested after healing a lame man and preaching about Jesus, the rulers of Israel marveled that they were both, “uneducated and untrained men” (Acts 4:13; NKJV). The apostle Peter went to preach the gospel to a Roman centurion, the centurion fell down in worship before him but Peter lifted him up saying, “I am just a man” (Acts 10:26). Stephen, a deacon in the early church, wasn’t an apostle, but he did signs and wonders (Acts 6:8); when arrested for his faith, he preached a sermon that occupies a whole chapter in the Bible (Acts 7).
Having read about the people above we may still disqualify ourselves because of our past. Well, let’s look at the apostle Paul. He persecuted the early church but God forgave him. Paul became a Christian and God used him to spread the gospel across Asia and into Europe and he also wrote a large portion of our New Testament. We are all regular people but Jesus calls us to go and preach the gospel and said, “signs, wonders and miracles would follow” (Mark 16:15-18) and according to verse 20 they will!

Healing

25. Mar 2024 On The Way In Love
When talking about sickness and healing we need to get one thing straight; God doesn’t send sickness to teach us a lesson, it is the devil that comes to “steal and kill and destroy” but Jesus came “that we may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10; RSV). Sickness is in the world as a result of sin and what is the solution for sin? It is redemption. In Deuteronomy 28 every kind of sickness and disease is listed and called a curse but Galatians 3:13 says we have been redeemed from the curse. How? When Jesus took the 39 stripes on His back and shed His blood on the cross, He provided not only forgiveness of our sin but also our healing, both spiritual and physical (Isa 53:4,5; 1 Peter 2:24). It was a once and for all time sacrifice that did not need repeating (Heb 7:27; 9:26).
A large part of the ministry of Jesus was directed towards healing (Luke 4:18-19) and Jesus healed them all (Matt 4:24; Matt 9:35; Acts 10:38). Not only did Jesus have a healing ministry but He also gave us authority to heal too (Mark 16:18). Healing wasn’t just for the time of Jesus but it is for today also because Jesus is “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb 13:8).
If you have sickness in your body, know that it is God’s will to heal you (Mark 1:40-42). Collect all the healing scriptures you can from the whole of the Bible and speak them over your body and take them like medicine (Prov 4:22), pray the prayer of faith (James 5:15), rebuke the symptoms and keep believing until you see the manifestation. “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them” (Mark 11:24; NKJV).

How do you get born again (saved)?

23. Mar 2024 On The Way In Love
Before we became Christian’s sin in our lives caused us to die spiritually (Rom 6:23; Eph 2:1) and separated us from God (1 John 1:6-7; 2 Cor 14-15). Jesus told a Pharisee called Nicodemus that he needed to be born again spiritually (saved) to have his fellowship with God restored (John 3:1-7). How do you become born again or saved? “That if you will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9; WEB). Well, that’s quite straight forward.
To make Jesus Lord in our lives is to make Him our “master” (MSG) or allow Him control of our lives. Jesus died on the cross and paid the price for our sins so we could be forgiven (Eph 1:7) and saved. The Greek word translated believe in Romans 10:9 above is derived from the Greek word for faith and also means to be fully convinced of Jesus, to adhere to or stick to Him, rely on and trust in Him. This trust is to the extent of our submitting to Christ in obedience to His Lordship in our lives. In many verses in the Bible, it simply says to believe in Jesus and you will be saved (e.g. Acts 16:31). In all cases the Greek word used for believe is the same as described above. We can safely conclude that to be saved we must submit our lives to Jesus in a simple sold-out faith and desire for Him to come into our lives and have His way. The exact words we use are not so critical, God knows our hearts.
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