Ephesians 2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
When Joseph was thrown into prison, his life was thought to be over. How could anyone escape an Egyptian prison? But then, in one day, according to God’s perfect timing, he was instantly promoted to reign over all of Egypt with only the Pharoah (“god on earth”) as his Lord. Could there be a transformation more sudden, astounding, and dramatic! So it was for Yeshua (Jesus) as He fulfilled the identity of Mashiach ben Yosef, suffering to death for our sins, but then, on one day, supernaturally resurrected and now seated at the right hand of the Father (God in Heaven). Such an amazing parallel!
Now we need to come fully to this realization: that the moment we came to faith in Yeshua, the Father instantly and supernaturally delivered us from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of the Son He loves. In one moment, we were regenerated as sons and daughters of the Most High and spiritually seated with Him in heavenly places. Even as we remain in our flesh awaiting our incorruptible bodies, our Spirit has been born into a Holy Family and a Royal Priesthood.
So, we are called to be overcomers, to war and to win, and to exercise authority in Yeshua’s name…
…but are you still “in the pit”? Then please take this realization to heart: the resurrection life of Yeshua remains within you, enabling you to endure. And that, too is a kind of victory. As you submit to His discipline in faith, your day will come to exercise greater authority in His Name, just as it did for Joseph. He patiently endured his trial of faith and was raised up, so you also can, through Yeshua’s indwelling Presence, arrive at a new day of release and victory…maybe tomorrow, maybe even today! Amen.
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Recently, I’ve been impressed by the Lord to address the anxieties many are feeling about the future– how to be strong in the face of the intense opposition we’ll be facing as believers. One of the founders of the modern state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion once said, “Courage is a special kind of knowledge, the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared. From this knowledge comes an inner strength that inspires us to push on in the face of great difficulty. What can seem impossible is often possible with courage.”
For a season, I worked in Washington, D.C., for one of America’s largest Christian political organizations. Sometimes I saw how politics could get ugly and, more often than not, how it changed people — not for the better…but usually for the worse!
Have you ever felt uneasy, unsettled or unstable? Or maybe a better question is — who hasn’t? How do we overcome these feelings?
Is that a trend or something? I don’t know what it is but I’ve heard that phrase said quite a bit. We were even walking down the Wal-Mart isle to pick up a few things and my wife showed me a T-shirt with “I have issues” written across the front! I guess the world is coming to the sad reality that we really do have some issues.
It never ceases to amaze me, the way the devil uses our offenses and our “offendedness” to divide and conquer marriages, relationships, churches — even entire nations!
There’s an old adage, “Have the heart of a lion!” Hearing it, we think, “courage”. This recalls a quote I once heard; “Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened”. I doubt there’s a single hero story in which the fearless leader fails to inspire the righteous determination of his army or people. The voice of the captain resounds through the ranks evoking the fierce cry of every warrior ready to face death or worse, for the cause. Courage truly is contagious.
The Hebrew word for “face” is “panim”, (the Hebrew letters, peh-nun-yud-mem), literally “faces”, a plural word. Normally, when we think about God, we focus only upon one of His “faces” at a time. God is “love” – or He is “holy”– or He is “just”— or He’s a God of “wrath”. Yet, of course, ALL these “faces” are His at once; and so the word “panim” accurately reflects the truth of God’s multifaceted being. As we get to know Him better we begin to appreciate the complexity of His nature and the fact that our focus on one “face” is a very limited view, since there’s so much more going on in His amazing “Personality”.