Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
When I was in school, it seemed they ran a “fire drill” at least once a year. A long, loud, kind of scary bell would sound and we knew it was either a real fire, or, more likely, just another drill. We were formed into lines, ushered down the halls, and out the doors we went. Of course, the point was practice….so we would be prepared for a real fire.
Drills are preparations for real threats. They are “trials”. They test and prepare our readiness, give us opportunity to try on the emotions and actions we would experience in a genuine crisis. We need them and should even “count it pure joy” because they’re necessary for our growth and maturity [James 1]. And trials are graduated; that is they get harder, kind of like math tests, they seem even to build on one another. Abraham’s life was like that; just consider the different trials he endured leading to the sacrifice of Isaac.
Life in the world has always been full of real dangers, threats, crises, and disasters, though some of us have been spared from much of them. Yet now, it seems, we’ve got a tough drill to face; one which can really test our mettle. Uncertainty, limitation, perplexity, discomfort, maybe illness and genuine lack, altogether pack the power to raise our emotional temperature and really threaten our trust. Some people are unfazed but plenty of others are moved toward the edges of their capacity to cope.
It’s time to discover our resources; first of all, to remember our Father’s providence in every past drill that He sent us. Even when there was a real fire, He somehow got you out the door. You learned something on the other side of the threat; you were changed. He was there.
This word, “All things work together for good to them that love God and are the called according to His purpose”, is deeply apprehended by people whom the Lord has taken through serious troubles. “Suffering produces perseverance, (and) perseverance, character…”
We were born for this, and we were born again for this. Our life here is simply a preparation for eternity. Trials are preparation for eternity because they perfect our faith and form the character of Christ in us. Don’t be surprised when they escalate; the goal is for us to graduate. Anxiety and panic are not for us, but for the faithless. We just need to tell each other that God will pull us through, and will shortly take us Home. We know the drill. We can pass through…
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Yeshua (Jesus) said He is the “bread of life”. It was His body that was broken on our behalf as the substitutionary sacrifice for our sins. Notice that He never once called us to be the “bread of life”! He is the ONLY “Bread of Life” – the true bread who came down from Heaven which anyone may eat and not die. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is His flesh, given for the life of the world.
For years, when I visited my father-in-law’s home in Jerusalem on the Sabbath, we would break bread and bless the bread with the traditional blessing – “Baruch Ata Adonai Eleheynu Melech HaOlam Ha-Motzi Lechem Min Ha’aretz” – which translated means,”Blessed are You Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has given us bread from the earth”. After the blessing, my father-in-law would take salt and sprinkle the challah bread as he broke and passed it to everyone at the table.
One day a passerby saw a homeless man on the roadside. He stopped for a moment to hand him some loose change and casually said “God bless you, my friend”.
“I thank God,” said the homeless man, “I am never unhappy.”
Here in Israel we have an interesting geographical phenomenon – there are two landlocked seas. One is alive and one is dead. The sea full of life is the Kinneret, better known as the Sea of Galilee. The dead sea is…….you guessed it, the Dead Sea. Now the Kinneret is constantly emptying as it flows through the Jordan River valley…. into the Dead Sea. But the Dead Sea does not empty its water at all. Instead, the Dead Sea is continually shrinking, because the intense heat at this lowest place on Earth actually evaporates more water than is flowing in. Do you see a parable here?
One of my passions is studying history, especially the American Civil War. Here is an amusing story about General Stonewall Jackson’s famous Valley Campaign. During the war, Jackson’s army found itself on one side of a river when it needed to be on the other.
We tend to focus on the part of that scripture where God does the blessing — but why did He bless Him? The answer lies in the passage! The Lord told Abraham: “I will bless you — and you shall be a blessing.” Abraham was blessed so that he could be a blessing!
In the Olivet discourse recorded in Matthew 24, Yeshua prophesied that “… nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” The word “nation” in Greek is the word “ethnos”, from which we get the English word “ethnic”. All of this polarization and ethnic warfare which the media feed upon and incite is the work of the enemy as he stirs up the sinful nature of men.