"For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak." (John 12:49 KJV)
"Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We left God's paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all." (Isaiah 53:4-6 NLT)
To be perfectly honest, I fail at loving as I should, more than I care to admit. It's almost like a planned failure, time and time again; even though I set out each day for success and victory, my desire to be that man with patience and a loving heart, somehow gets turned into something else, something that I seem to not be able to control.
Then again, maybe that's just me; so, I settle upon the fact that I am flawed and lacking what it takes to be that man I had hoped to be; making my focus on the One who set me free! Flawed or not, Jesus loves me! Do you know why I know that, and how I can be so confident? Because He knows me better than I can even know myself! He sees me for that which I will be, once all of this life is over! Something I really can't even imagine of myself, He sees me complete and perfect, through His great love for me.
As I was reading this verse this morning, I was reminded of that night when I came home from the hospital, and how I felt so crushed, I just fell upon the floor in my office, and I cried out, "Why God! Why!" After about a half-hour of weeping, I felt an enormous peace. Not because everything was fixed and back to normal, because I realized right then and there, things were not going to be back to normal.
But, because I remembered how Jesus suffered and died, I was overcome with peace knowing that it was all going to work out somehow, someway, because God loves us so much, more than we could ever know! I actually was able to crawl into bed and get a few hours of sleep.
When I woke up that morning, I grabbed my small Bible, and actually felt as though I had a mission, as I headed towards that hospital. That is about as good as I can relate to what Jesus is saying in this verse, because He is trying to express how His authority to speak is really not His own, but the Father that sent Him, He is the one that put Him on this earth, commanding what to say and to speak!
You know, it's pretty easy to say something that people can hear, but they will hear it in their own understanding; but to speak out something is altogether different, because you articulate what is being said, by actually living it out. 'Lord, please help me to articulate what you say! Please'...
"Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been gowning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." (Romans 8:18-22 NLT)
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