I don’t know about you but I had a delightful Resurrection Day Easter Sunday weekend. Topping the list was seeing a super VIP who was visiting Honey Lake Church dedicate her life to Christ on Easter Sunday.
This beautiful superstar waited until after the service was over and shyly came to me and asked if we could pray together whereby she could invite Jesus to come into her life. So the two of us sat on the stage and prayed together and she acknowledged that Jesus was the Son of God who died for her sins, then she asked for forgiveness for those sins, and finally she asked that Jesus would take over her life, and she vowed to follow Him and not the world as best she knew how.
Her name is Lauren and she is one of my twin granddaughters.
I was thinking about the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on the cross over 2000 years ago this morning and how happy it must have made Him to know that what He had to endure via the cross made it possible for lovely little Lauren to spend eternity with Him in paradise. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when He watched her pray to Him. I know that He was widely smiling, the angels were singing, and folks were celebrating on streets made of pure gold.
After Lauren prayed I gave her a big hug and looked at her huge smile and dabbed away at the tears of joy that had formed in my eyes. I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit sitting beside us and it filled me with His love, joy, and the peace that surpasses all understanding as described in the Bible.
Lately satanic attack has raged against me and I’ve experienced discouragement and battle fatigue. I’ve been fighting to unite Christians in America and indeed all over the world in order to renew our collective faith in God. I believe that if we will unite and humble ourselves, pray, ask for forgiveness, and repent, then God will hear from heaven, forgive us our sins, and heal our troubled land.
With all that has happened, lately, I’ve been wondering if those dark forces that don’t want to see revival and a Great Awakening might just overwhelm me and crush the Renewal of America movement before it can even get started. God’s timing is perfect however, and at just the right time He intervened to let me know that some things are worth the suffering required of those who wish to serve God.
My thoughts wandered this morning to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and the loneliness that He must have felt as He fervently prayed and asked for strength to endure the pain and anguish that was going to begin momentarily. I cringed at knowing that the disciples could not stay awake and pray with Him, and that one of them betrayed Him. I lamented that one of His favorite disciples and good friends denied even knowing Him three times before the sun came up the next day. I thought of the beatings, the scourging, the crown of thorns, the cross, the humiliation, the physical pain and anguish of becoming sin and having God turn His back on Him.
As I pondered all of this today I visualized the lovely smile of my gorgeous granddaughter as she prayed to receive Christ and thereby secured her place in heaven forever and I understood.
I understood why Christ did it and I got an inkling of how He could know joy at a time of great tribulation, (Hebrews 12:2 – Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross . . . )
If Christ would have faltered, none of us would have ever seen heaven. I think we need to take pause and reflect upon that. The human side of Jesus did not look forward to the battle that He would have to fight; in fact He prayed so hard that He actually sweated blood. He dreaded going through it. He implored the Father that if there was any way possible to “remove this cup from Him” to do so, but nonetheless God’s will and not His be done.
Jesus stayed the course in spite of His fears and dread of what was coming. He suffered but . . .
He’s smiling now.
If you are undergoing satanic attack while trying to accomplish something for the Lord, remember Hebrews 12:2 – Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross . . . Many big smiles await you on the other side.
Our troubles are too insignificant to even mention compared to those suffered by Christ. In fact whining, blaming, or making excuses is just sin; I’ve told myself to put on the full armor of God, put my head down and keep it there, and focus my eye on the prize.
I’ll rest if I must, but I won’t quit! I encourage you to remember always:
Illegitimi non carborundum.
1Cor. 9:24
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
April 21, 2014 – Click here to listen