Jesus Calling: July 19th
Bring Me all your feelings, even the ones you wish you didn't have. Fear and anxiety still plague you. Feelings per se are not sinful, but they can be temptations to sin. Blazing missiles of fear fly at you day and night; these attacks from the evil one come at you relentlessly. Use your shield of faith to extinguish those flaming arrows. Affirm your trust in Me, regardless of how you feel. If you persist, your feelings will eventually fall in line with your faith.
Do not hide from your fear or pretend it isn't there. Anxiety that you hide in the recesses of your heart will give birth to fear of fear: a monstrous stepchild. Bring your anxieties out in the Light of My Presence, where we can deal with them together. Concentrate on trusting Me, and fearfulness will gradually lose its foothold within you.
Ephesians 6:16 (NLT)
16 In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil.
1st John 1:5-7 (NLT)
Living in the Light
5 This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. 6 So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. 7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.
: Light represents what is good, pure, true, holy, and reliable. Darkness represents what is sinful and evil. The statement "God is light" means that God is perfectly holy and true and that he alone can guide us out of the darkness of sin. Light is also related truth in that light exposes whatever exists, whether it is good or bad. In the dark, good and evil look alike; in the light, they can clearly be distinguished. Just as darkness cannot exist in the presence of light, sin cannot exist in the presence of a holy God. To claim that we belong to God but then go out and live for ourselves is hypocrisy. Christ will expose and judge such deceit.
Additional insight regarding 1st John: 1:6: In this scripture, John is saying that no one can claim to be a Christian and still live in evil and immorality. We can't love God and court sin at the same time.
Additional insight regarding 1st John 1:7: How does Jesus' blood cleanse us from all sin? In Old Testament times, believers symbolically transferred their sins to an animal, which they then sacrificed (see a description of this ceremony in Leviticus 4). The animal died in their place to pay for their sins and allow them to continue living in God's favor. God graciously forgave them because of their faith in him and because they obeyed his commandments concerning the sacrifice. Those sacrifices anticipated the day when Christ would completely remove sin. Real cleansing from sin came with Jesus, "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29: "Look! The Lamd of God who takes away the sin of the world!"). Sin, by its very nature, brings death - this is a fact as certain as the laws of gravity. Jesus did not die for his own sins; he had none. Instead, by a transaction that we may never fully understand, he died for the sins of the world. When we commit our life to Christ and thus identify ourselves with him, his death becomes ours. He has paid the penalty for our sins and his blood has purified us. Just as Christ rose from the grave, we rise to a new life of fellowship with him (Romans 6:4: "For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ as raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.").
Isaiah 12:2 (NLT)
2 See, God has come to save me.
I will trust in him and not be afraid.
The Lord God is my strength and my song;
he has given me victory.”
: This chapter of Isaiah is a hymn of praise - another graphic description of the people's joy when Jesus Christ comes to reign over the earth. Even now we need to express our gratitude to God, thanking him, praising him, and telling others about him. From the depths of our gratitude, we must praise him. And we should share the Good News with others.
