A Thought for the
Day – 087 – Be of Good Cheer
Proverbs 11-24-31 – People are reward conscious; but there is a
price on every reward. Those who seek good; are pleasing to the LORD; they will
flourish and find favor. Those who seek evil; are not pleasing to the LORD; they
will not prosper and find trouble.
Comments
and challenges
A
day in the life of any person can be a life changing event, it seems that my
mind this morning is focused of a day back in 1975, May 21st to be
exact; I was thirty-five and my life was a mess. My wife at the time was fed up
with my life as a husband and father, she had good reason; since I was a drunk
and I was abusive to everyone I ran into, including
family.
Many
know my testimony of coming to faith; to clarify, that would be; coming to faith
in God through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ for my sin. A good passage
of scripture to reveal this sacrifice is found in the first chapter of the
Gospel of John, verses 29-34. Simply put; if you are alive today and reading
this devotional, you are a sinner and member of the world. “Behold! The LAMB”
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world.
The
mind of all humans cannot comprehend the impact of such wonderful news as this.
The truth is that ALL reject this wonderful offering of forgiveness, until the
Holy Spirit of God disrupts their life style. Literally God the Holy Spirit had
been chasing me for several years, placing believers of Jesus Christ in my life
and daily convicting me of sin, righteous and judgment. The same chase that is
going on in YOUR life if you are NOT delivered from the sin of the world; I know
that God is chasing you and so do you; Notice John
16:5-15.
With
my family gone, my desire was to commit suicide, so with a moment in time I
opened a window on the third floor of a building I worked in and proceeded to
jump out. In my mind as I built up the courage to jump, the LORD prompted me
that I had never given Him a chance to prove His love for ME. At least twice He
got my attention that moment in time. “Behold, Jesse… I AM the LAMB of God, I
have already forgiven you of your sin. Romans 5:8. God was telling me personally
that He loved me.
“Okay,
LORD can you get me a bible and I will follow you!” I closed the window and went
back to work. Almost immediately the phone rang. Myrtle, a local insurance
adjudicator called again for additional information on an accident claim we were
working on. She picked up on a change in my outward expression. “Jesse, what is
going on with you, you’ve changed in your behavior from when we talked
earlier”.
“I
was studded” how could this be I thought? I was confronted with telling a lie,
or to tell the truth? Well Myrtle, I was just going to kill myself by jumping
out the window in the empty room next to this one, but God has changed my mind,
He said He did not want me to do that but to give Him chance to prove His love
for me. I asked Him to get me a Bible”.
Her
immediate response was; “Oh Jesse, my father is a Gideon and distributes Bibles
to hundreds of places, just this morning he stopped by my office and placed a
whole case of Bibles at the foot of my desk. Come on over and get one”. My ears
heard those words and my heart burned with thoughts of belief and unbelief.
Myrtle and I had never talked about God I only knew her by the phone and had
never met her. Yet God had placed her in my life for this right moment in time.
We met later in the day and she gave me a Gideon Bible, I used it for several
years. I met Myrtle’s father who took me under his wing until he went to be with
the LORD the following year.
If
you are a member of the “sin of the world” you are not alone but it is the power
of this world that keeps you from seeing the kingdom of heaven and prevents you
from the love of God that overcomes the grip that this world has on you. Before
Jesus willingly sacrificed His Life for the sin of the world, He explained to
His disciples who at this point in their life were still in the sin of the
world. For them He said; “be of “good cheer”. What? Why should they be cheerful,
He was leaving them and going away? Don’t be foolish today and let God go away
from you this moment.
I
leave you with the last two verses of John 16; “indeed the hour is coming, yes,
has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own and will leave Me
alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. These things I
have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace in this world. In the world
you will have tribulation; but be of GOOD CHEER I have overcome the
world!”
You
see, when Myrtle recalled me that morning I had received the PEACE to live apart
from the sin of the world through Jesus Christ and Myrtle being a believer in
Jesus herself recognized the voice of one filled with the PEACE of God and the
Good Cheer of being in Christ. Romans 5:1-5 – Please have yourself a Godly day
today, if God is not in your day it will just be another day of sin in the world
and unrest.
Hebrews 9:28 - so Christ
was offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for Him shall He
appear a second time without sin unto salvation. Jesse
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