Daily Archives: March 31, 2015

Suffering Complaints

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Are you suffering under a burden that threatens to drive you to the dust?  Has your heart become calloused, so that you will not call out to God for the sake of the things that oppress you?  Have you allowed yourself to blame the One who made you?  Have you come to believe that you are righteous in blaming God for your trouble?

Jesus did no such thing!  Faultless, blameless, and full of love for his Father, the Lord was beaten beyond recognition.  Yet he did not blaspheme the will of God.

He endured his Holy Father’s will, because he knew his God can do no wrong.  And he considered even the greatest of torment as if it should not be compared to the Glory that awaited him.  How is it that we cannot even sustain the sufferings of the common cold without complaint?

The Holy Bible uses a very curious word to describe the testing of the Holy Lord Jesus, “crushed”.  Have you been so treated?  And that for no apparent cause?  Are you without sin?  Don’t we deserve to be crushed?

10 “But the LORD was pleased
            To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
            If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
            He will see His offspring,
            He will prolong His days,
            And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.” (Isaiah 53)

For our sake, and his love for God, he was sustained through it all.  For the sake of his Father’s love for man, he endured the most vicious possible death.  For your sake Christ was purified of all possible pride.  Stripped of his Glory and Majesty, humbled to the likeness of an animal, Jesus became the sacrifice for our sins.

He did not complain.  He did not beg for mercy.  He did not resist the ungodly hands.  He did not strive to evade the whip.  He offered the tender portion of his hands to the nails.  He forgave sins as he hung toward death!  And all of this with the most resolute heart!

And then horror came to visit him; his Loving Father turned his face, as his son became a curse for hanging on a tree.  As it is written in the law of the Most High God, “for he that is hanged is accursed of God”.

Still he did not all allow sin to encompass him.  He endured the will of his Holy Father.  Shall we do any less? 

Consider the tiny burden we bear.  Even if we suffered as Christ Jesus, we deserve the beating. 

As we consider these things, so we become more like him.  As we consider these things, we reach to the victorious one for the strength which sustains. 

Do you want strength to overcome your intolerable need to complain?  You will find that strength in Jesus the Christ of God.

Amen!

By His Grace

In the Shelter of his Wing

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I wake up before dawn and look out my window at a light dusting of snow.  Out pops a little bird, hopping about in the snowflakes.

Then I wonder, “Where have you slept little one?  Did you sleep among the reeds in the ditch?  Did you forsake the tree limb for the shelter of the reeds?

You would have not perched yourself too deeply within them.  You would have slept in a place where two hops allowed your wings to spread.  You would be no food for the predator.”

And then I wonder.  Where did I sleep?  I slept peacefully under the outstretched wing of the Most High God.  I woke to His Glorious covering.  Lacking fear, I woke only to stretch my bones, and then to pray; even as the little bird sings his song of joy.

Is this how Jesus slept in the boat while the storm raged around him?  Is this how Daniel slept with the Lions, for the weariness of their bodies?  Is this how the Apostle Peter slept so soundly in the jail amidst the soldiers?  Is this how the Prophet Elijah slept alongside the Kerith Ravine, knowing the wings of a bird would feed him in the morning?

Oh how desire rages within this servant to instill these things in my fellow man!  Will you please consider the power of God to sustain your tired soul.  His name is Christ Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man.

By His Grace