Matthew 6:30-34 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today, and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? O you of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, "What shall we eat?" or, "What shall we drink?" or, "What shall we wear?" For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will worry about itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
In Biblical Hebrew, the verb tenses are not like our "past", "present", and "future" – there are only two: "perfect" and "imperfect." The "imperfect" tense is that which is not yet, not done, or not completed. The "perfect" is that which is done, complete, and finished.
The Bible speaks of things that are yet to come in the perfect tense as if they are already completed; (also called the "prophetic past"). God can have a finished work that hasn’t happened yet -- for example, our salvation! In Messiah, we are a finished work that hasn't happened yet. We are becoming what we are already in Him.
Yeshua (Jesus) instructed us to pray "on earth as it is in heaven." Since we (believers) are born from above -- from the finished, perfect work of God, we are already participating in His perfection, though we are still on earth doing His will.
So, reflect on this truth of your already complete perfection in Yeshua. You will look at your problems a little differently -- actually, be less worried about them from this "Heavenly" point of view. You may still be working them out with fear and trembling, yet rest in this simple and amazing fact: in Yeshua, they are already resolved!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]We found an interesting story in an old copy of “Our Daily Bread”: In 1883 in Allentown, New Jersey, a wooden Indian — the kind that was seen in front of cigar stores — was placed on the ballot for Justice of the Peace. The candidate was registered under the fictitious name of Abner Robbins. When the ballots were counted, Abner won over incumbent Sam Davis by 7 votes. A similar thing happened in 1938. The name Boston Curtis appeared on the ballot for Republican Committeeman from Wilton, Washington. Actually, Boston Curtis was a mule. The town’s mayor sponsored the animal to demonstrate that people know very little about the candidates. He proved his point. The mule won!
It never ceases to amaze me how our little girl, Elianna is growing and developing. I remember when she first came into this world, she was so helpless and frail — she couldn’t even move her head without our help. Now, just having turned two, she’s running around and tumbling, jumping, singing and dancing!
Yesterday we wrote about one of the greatest moves of God … the Moravian Revival. When the community was in complete disarray, Count Zinzendorf focused on how they could live together in love despite their differences. He called all the men together for an intense study of the Scriptures to focus on how Christian life in community was portrayed. These studies combined with intense prayer convinced many of the believers that they were called to live together in love and that their disunity and conflict were contrary to the clear calling of Scripture.
During the Catholic inquisitions, as millions of Christians were being killed by the Jesuit Priests for apostasy, throughout Europe, Christians were fleeing. In Bohemia alone, there were an estimated 4,000,000 Christians before the Jesuit inquisition, and ten years later, only 800,000 people remained in Bohemia – all of whom were Catholic. These terrible events prepared the ground for one of the greatest moves of God that have ever been recorded, the Moravian Revival, which lasted for over 100 years. Gustav Warneck, the German Historian of Protestant Missions, testified, “This small church in twenty years called into being more missions than the whole Evangelical Church has done in two centuries.”
Revivals, that is, genuine Divinely ordained seasons of the activity of God among men, have a universally unusual character. Normal activities and behaviors give way to the tangible influence of God’s Holy Spirit, whose inspiration brings a freedom of expression, emotion, conviction, worship, and other variations from normal experience.
In the late 1800s, an awakening in South Africa led by Andrew Murray was a powerful move of God. Studying that revival yields essential insights concerning the events occurring now throughout the United States. As the spirit of God began to move in Cape Town, Murray compared the SA revival with past experiences of revivals in Europe. He decided that the intense “emotionalism” was a false experience of God and charged in to break up the meeting. Stepping out of the church, he encountered his father standing and weeping. His father rebuked Andrew, “How dare you stop something that I have prayed to happen for 30 years!”
I love to study past revivals and in studying them, there are two recurring themes that stand out:
First, that He has often used obscure and unknown individuals to lead revivals, and that even these men whom He used so powerfully never considered themselves to be “special”, but often wanted to stay out of the limelight.