OUR GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE.

DAILY DEVOTION.

DAY THIRTY FIVE.

LUKE 9:23.  Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me".

Being a disciple of Jesus is not about us, not about what we want, but about us losing our lives, or our own desires to follow Jesus. in our verse today we see the sequence of events that need to take place in our lives in order to follow Jesus, Firstly we must have a desire to follow Him, is that your hearts desire? if it is then we must be willing to deny ourselves, to lay our lives down, this can be the hardest thing to do, and we will come back to this one. Then we need to take up our cross, the cross speaks of the work that Jesus accomplished for us through His death on the cross and that we can only fulfill what Jesus has called us to do because we have been crucified with Him and it is now His life in us, this is a daily thing that we must do because each day has its own challenges and and each day we are called to walk in the will of God for our lives, it is as we do this that we can follow Jesus, knowing that He will lead us every day in His purpose. So what is our garden of Gethsemane? If we look at the life of Jesus we can get an understanding of this from Him. Jesus knew, even from a very early age, what He had come for. At twelve in the temple He said to His parents, "Did you not Know that I must be about My Father's business?" During His ministry He spoke many times of His death and suffering and resurrection. He was fully aware of what He had to go through for you and I. On the night of His betrayal He went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, He knew that this was the night that He would be betrayed even before it happened and that He faced certain death the next day on the cross, this was the fulfillment of what He had come for. In Luke 22:42 we see the prayer that Jesus prayed in the garden, "Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will but Your will be done" We see in the next verses the agony that Jesus went through as He struggled with what He knew He was about to face, yet He knew what was about to happen and what must happen. We obviously will never have to face what Jesus had to face that night, yet we will face our own Gethsemane experience every day, everyday we have to decide whether we are going to do the will of the Father or to do our own thing, Jesus said in Luke 9:24 that if we desire to save our own life will ultimately lose it it is only as we lose our life that we can have the life of Jesus. We all face on a daily basis the struggle between the flesh and the spirit, our flesh cries out to have its own way, Paul shows us this in Romans 7:13-25. As he said the things he did not want to do he did and the things that he wanted to do, he didn't do them, but he knew that it was only through Jesus that he could be set free from the life in the flesh. Paul summed up the importance of knowing the power of the work of the cross in our lives in Galatians 2:20 when he said that he had been crucified with Christ, the knowledge that his old life was dead, when Jesus hung on that cross we were in Him, as it says in Romans 6, the old man has been crucified, Paul goes on to say in the Galatians verse even though he has been crucified he still lives, he now has a new life, and that new life is now in Christ, it is the life of Christ in him that gives him life and that it is by faith that he knows that. It is vitally important that we also know this. This is such an important key in the process of self denial, knowing that the old man has been crucified, that there is no life there, pursuing our own desires and our own will can only lead to death. Once we truly come to the point where we can deny our selves, lay down our will we can then take up our cross. Taking up our cross is knowing that we can walk in the life that Jesus has given us because of what He did on the cross for us, our cross represents the fact that we are totally dead to ourselves. When we look at the life of Jesus and what He came to do we realize that the cross was the ultimate will of the Father for Him, so it is with us, taking up our cross will bring us into the will of the Father, it will allow us to then follow Jesus. To follow Jesus on a daily basis, as our verse says, is to live our lives as His disciples, as ones who desire to bring Him glory, to be lights in a darkened world and to reflect the glory of God, through the love of God, to those around us, and to live a life that pleases the Father, even when others are not around to see what we are doing because ultimately what we do in secret will be brought out into the light. So my prayer for each and every one of us is that we get the revelation of what it is to deny ourselves, to lay our lives down through what Jesus did on the cross for us, to be able able to pick up our cross, knowing that it is not I who lives but Christ who lives in me, and the life that I now live, I live by faith in Him, and because I am in Him I can now follow Him and walk in His will for my life. AMEN.  

KNOWING THE THOUGHTS OF GOD.

DAILY DEVOTION.

DAY THIRTY FOUR.

JEREMIAH 29:11.    For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

So can we know the thoughts of God? This verse says that His thoughts are thoughts of peace, He doesn't think evil thoughts about us but that His thoughts are directly linked to our future and to give us hope. So if we compare this verse with Isaiah 55:8-9 "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are My ways your ways," says the Lord "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thought higher than your thoughts". So do these verses in Isaiah mean that we cannot know the thoughts that God has towards us? I have heard many Christians express that thought, that we can never really know the thoughts and ways of God based on these verses out of Isaiah. So let us take a closer look at the context of these two verses. Isaiah 55:6-7 Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near, Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteousness man this thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him, and to our God, and He will abundantly pardon. We see here that the call of God in these verses is for the man who is walking away from God to abandon his ways and his thoughts and to come back to God and to call on Him and that God will have mercy on him and forgive him, it is a call to come back to the ways and thoughts of God. Verses 10-13 show us the result of returning back to God, coming back to His word and His ways, we will know the peace and joy of God, His word will not return back to Him but as we submit our lives to Him it will accomplish the things in our lives that it was sent to do. So we see from this passage in Isaiah that we can know the thoughts and ways of God and that He wants us to know these things so that we can walk in His word and in His purpose for our lives. In Psalm 119:11 David said, "Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against You" in verse 105 he said, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path". God's thoughts and His plans for us are weaved into His word, apart from His word we cannot know the thoughts that God has towards us. In James 1:21-25 James says that we are abandon sin, we are to receive the word of God with humility as it is the word that will save our souls and that we are to do what the word of God says about us because if we don't then we deceive ourselves, and he goes on to say that the man who sees what the word says and then does it will walk in the blessings of God. Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 shows us that while we walk in this flesh body we do not war in the flesh, it is not a fleshly battle that we are involved in but a spiritual one and our weapons are not carnal or fleshly, but spiritual and that in God they are mighty to pulling down the strongholds that Satan wants to establish in our minds through our thinking, this is why we must take every thought captive and bring our thoughts into obedience to what the word of God says, in other words abandoning our thoughts for God's thoughts. In Romans 12:1-2 it says that we are to offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices, in other words dead to ourselves and alive to God, and that we are not to live our lives conformed to the world but that our we are to be transformed as our minds or thoughts are renewed to the word of God so that we can walk in His ways, in His good, acceptable and perfect will. So can we know the thoughts and ways of God? Yes of course we can, and it is actually imperative that we do know His thoughts and His ways, so that we can live the lives that Jesus died on the cross to give us. AMEN. 

LIVING WORTHY.

DAILY DEVOTION.

DAY THIRTY THREE.

EPHESIANS 4:1. I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. 

In the verses prior to this Paul had been praying for the church at Ephesus that they would have the revelation of the power of the love of God, that they would know what it was to know the fullness of God's love irrespective of what situation they were in. He went on to say that as they did this that God would be able to do things way beyond what they could even ask or think and that He would be glorified. In this verse Paul is pleading with them that they would walk worthy of their calling, that their conduct and behavior would reflect the love of God, that they would continue to walk in the Spirit. The concept of walking worthy there speaks of the responsibility that we have to be aware of what Christ has done in our lives through the work of the cross, it is not walking in our own worth, it is not reliant on how we see ourselves but how God sees us in Christ, God sees us as His sons, accepted in the Beloved, accepted in Christ because of what He did on the cross. It is so important that we understand that when Jesus went to the cross He paid the full debt for us, there is nothing that we can do to earn God's love, we can't add to the worth that Christ has placed in our lives through His love. To often Christians think that we somehow have to prove our worth, to show that we are worthy of God's love, no you can't do that. It says in Romans 5:8 that God demonstrated His love towards us that while were still sinners Christ died for us. He knew you before the foundation of the world, God knew what you would do  before you even thought of it and He still loved you and placed your destiny in Christ. You were in Him when He went to the cross. It says in Ephesians 2:10 That we are His workmanship in Christ, created for the good works that God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We are His workmanship created in Christ, we are who we are in Christ because of what Christ did on the cross and because of who He is in us, we are being transformed into His image, from glory to glory through the Spirit of the Lord. The good works are walking in His holiness, walking in such a way that we bring glory to God, fulfilling His purpose and desire for our lives. It is in this, as we walk in this that we will walk worthy of the calling that God has on our lives, that our lives will bring glory to God and we will reflect the love of Christ to those around us. AMEN. 

THE OLD MAN CRUCIFIED.

DAILY DEVOTION.

DAY THIRTY TWO.

ROMANS 6:6.  Knowing this, that your old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.
This is such an important verse for us as Christians, the revelation of this verse and what Christ has done for us on the cross will transform our lives and help give us victory over the power of sin in our lives. When Jesus went to the cross and died for our sin through His broken body and shed blood He not only opened the door for our sins to be forgiven but He rendered the sin nature powerless. As it says in 2 Corinthians 5:21 He became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him, we are no longer dead spiritually, cut off from God but we are now new creations in Christ, there is now a new man living on the inside, your spirit is now been born again or rejuvenated, brought back into relationship with your Heavenly Father and as it says in 2 Peter 1:4 we are now partakers of God's divine nature, His Spirit lives in our spirit, God has removed the heart of stone and given us a heart of flesh. So how does this help us in our daily walk? How does this help us in dealing with sin and the flesh? As Paul said in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified in Christ, it is no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave His life for me." Through the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, which lives in us we now have the ability to surrender our lives to Him, we have the authority within us, not within our own flesh, but in the power of the Spirit, to know that sin no longer has any power over us and we can walk free from it, yielding our lives to Christ as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable. We now know, when temptation comes our way, we can boldly say no to it, we can stand in the righteousness of Christ and say with all assurance, "I am free from the power of this, The cross of Jesus has set me free and given me authority over every work of the flesh and every temptation that the enemy will try to bring against me". As Paul said in Galatians 2:20, it is by faith that we are in Christ, we are seated in Him, this is our spiritual position, our place of authority, we are seated in Heavenly places in Christ, far above all power and dominion and authority that would try to come against us. The old man was a slave to sin, under the power of satan with no real power to resist the pull of the world and its temptations, as hard as we could try to in the flesh we would ultimately walk in rebellion to God and fall into sin. Praise God for the cross of Christ and what it has done in our lives, Let us all be like Paul and say, as he did in Galatians 6:14, "God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" My prayer is that we would all get a greater revelation of the power of the cross in our lives, it is only through the power of the cross, what Jesus did on that cross for us, that we can truly know the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, that we can truly know that we don't have to live in the strength of our own lives, but that we can know that it is Christ in us, the hope of glory, that gives us the power to live victorious lives. AMEN.   

AUTHORITY OF THE BELIEVER.

DAILY DEVOTION.

DAY THIRTY TWO.

MATTHEW 28:18-20.   And Jesus came and spoke to them saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."Amen.
Jesus here is now commissioning His disciples to go out into the world to take the gospel to all nations and to make disciples. He tells them that He now has all authority both in heaven and on earth and it is in this authority that they are to go, He is giving them His authority, the right to go out in His name to share the gospel. When He tells them to baptise people in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit He is referring to the complete authority that is found in the Godhead. So on what basis was Jesus able to do this? in Colossians 2:14-15 we see that through His death on the cross He totally deals with the issue of sin and takes back the authority that was handed to Satan by Adam at the fall, Satan now legally has no authority over your life and mine, as Paul said in Colossians 1:13 "He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love." In John 17:15-16 Jesus is praying for the disciples and He asks that the Father would not remove them from the world but that He would protect them from Satan because as He was not part of the world, neither are they. We are no longer part of this world system and Jesus has given us His authority or delegated power to live as His disciples through the Holy Spirit. So how do we receive that power? Firstly we must be born again, the disciples were born again in John 20:22 when Jesus breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit" at that point He imparted Spiritual life back to them, the Spiritual life that Adam lost when he sinned. We are all born dead in sin as a result, spiritually cut off from God,when we are born again the Jesus breathes on us and imparts His Spirit into our spirit and we receive that Spiritual life back again. In Acts 1:4-8 Jesus here commands his disciples not to leave Jerusalem until they have received the promise of the Father, until they are baptised in the Holy Spirit. He tells them that at that time they will receive the power to be His witnesses as they go out into the world. The word power there is "Dynamis" in the Greek and means the ability or abundance of power, also implies the ability to work miracles. It is through the Baptism of the Holy Spirit that we receive the ability to walk in the authority that Jesus gives us. We see in the life of Jesus Himself that He walked and ministered out the power of the Holy Spirit, at His baptism the Holy Spirit came on His life and we see that when He came out of the wilderness after the forty days in Luke 4:14 it says that He returned in the power of the Holy Spirit. If the ministry of Jesus was dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit how much more is ours? If we want to know and walk in the authority and the power that Jesus has given us through His death and resurrection our desire must be to know the fullness of the Spirit. Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 said that when he was among them he was determined to preach nothing but Christ and Him crucified, He did so in much fear and trembling, realizing the importance and responsibility that he had not to rely on his own wisdom or power but that he had to preach in the power of the Holy Spirit so that their faith would not be in mans wisdom but in the power of God, Sadly today too many Christians do not know or understand the power and authority that we have in Christ, not in our own wisdom or our own ability, but in Him, through what Jesus did for us at the cross. It is time for the Church to rise up and begin to walk in the authority and the power that Jesus has given us, to take the Gospel into the world with the demonstrations of power of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Gospel of Christ and Him crucified. AMEN.   

HIS WORKMANSHIP.

DAILY DEVOTION

DAY THIRTY ONE.

EPHESIANS 2:10.   For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
My question today is this; What are we here for, what is our purpose? This verse shows us that God has done a work in us, we are now His workmanship in Christ, 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us that we are now new creations in Christ, There is now a new man living on the inside, God has removed the old dead spirit and given us a new heart, and He has put His Spirit within us. So what is the purpose of that? Yes it is to bring us back into relationship with God as our heavenly Father, but it is for more. The rest of Ephesians 2:10 says that we are in Christ for good works, the works that God has prepared for us, even before we were saved and born again. In Christ we now have a new destiny, a new hope, Jeremiah 29:11 says that Gods thoughts are towards us, thoughts of peace and not for evil but to give us a hope and a future. God is continually thinking about you and the plans He has for your life, David said in Psalm 139:17-18 "How precious are you thoughts to me O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; When I awake, I am still with You" This such a powerful concept, that you and I are never out of the mind of God. He is continually wanting to reveal to us on a daily basis His plans and purpose for us. Jesus said in John 15:5 that He is the vine and that we are the branches, that apart from Him we can do nothing. He is our very life source, what happens if you separate a branch from the vine? it will surely die. We must continue to abide in Christ, in His word, in His love, in His Spirit because if we don't we will die and not achieve what He has created us for. As Christians, as ones who have been purchased at an amazing cost, through the blood of Jesus through His death and resurrection, we now have a huge responsibility to serve God, to fulfill what He has called us into. In Ephesians 4:1 Paul says that we are to walk worthy of the calling with which we were called, He goes as far as to say that he beseeches us to do this, there is a real urgency in what Paul is saying here. To walk worthy here comes out of the knowledge and the understanding of what Christ has done in us, it does not come out of our sense of self worth, but the realization that it is Christ in us, His life in us, as Paul said in Galatians 2:20, That it is no longer him who lives, he has been crucified with Christ, and the life that he now lives he lives by faith in Christ, Paul's faith was in the fact that his life was now in Christ because Christ had been prepared to give His life for him. This is such an important point to realize, that we can only have the life of Christ in us because of the fact that Jesus was prepared to lay His life down for us and go to the cross. You might say at this point; "But you don't know my past, you don't know what I have done, how could God want to use me?" Well again Paul's life gives us an answer to this. We are all aware of the life of Paul, as Saul he was a Pharisee, a teacher of the law and a staunch opponent to the Gospel, to the point he went out and persecuted Christians and was present at the stoning of Stephen, yet in Philippians 3:12-14 he is able to write that he was aware that he had not yet attained perfection but that he must press on, that he would take a hold of what Christ had called him to do, he would not look back, he would forget the self effort and mistakes of the past and continue to press forward to the high calling that was on his life in Christ, realizing that the prize was in that calling, in his fulfillment of what God had called him to do. If we doubt that God has a purpose or a calling on our lives let us come back to the original verse, We are His workmanship in Christ Jesus, it is not about us, but it is all about Christ in us and what he wants to do in us and through us. AMEN

THE MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION.

DAILY DEVOTION.

DAY THIRTY.

2 CORINTHIANS 5:18-21. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation to us. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christs behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God in Him.

We have been reconciled back to God through Jesus Christ, it was through His cross and what was done on that cross and by no other means, as it says in Colossians 1:20 And by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. So we now have peace with God, we are no longer at enmity with God, no longer cut off from His grace, because it was only by His grace that we were saved. We cannot earn God's grace it is a free gift. So now that we have received this gift and been reconciled to God through Christ, what is our responsibility. These verses show us very clearly that we have a part to play in God's plan of redemption, think for a moment about your own salvation, how did you hear the gospel? was it through someone sharing the gospel with you one on one or were you invited to a church meeting where you heard the gospel? The truth of the matter is, no one will hear the gospel unless someone takes the time to share it with them, whether that be one on one or in a church meeting. Yes God is reconciling the world to Himself through Christ and His death on the cross, but 2 Corinthians 5:18 says that God has given us the ministry of reconciliation. It is through us that God will share the gospel, verse 19 says that God has given us the word of reconciliation. The Body of Christ, which is made up of all born again believers, is the means by which God will spread the good news of the gospel. Jesus said in Matthew 28:18-20 that He had been given all authority in heaven and on earth and He told His disciples to go out into all the world in that authority and preach the gospel and to make disciples. There is no plan "B" if the church does not do its job the gospel won't be preached. I said earlier that the grace of God was a free gift, that we cannot earn it. In Matthew 10 starting at verse 5 Jesus sends out the twelve disciples to preach the gospel, in verse 8 Jesus tells them to "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give" The grace of God is not ours to keep, it has been given to us and it is our responsibility to share that message with others, as it says in 2 Corinthians 5:14 it is the love of God that compels us. If we are truly living in the love of God and motivated by the love of God we will have a burden within our hearts to see the lost saved.
So what is the gospel that we are meant to be preaching? What is this word of reconciliation that is so important? Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:2 "For I determined to know nothing among you but Christ and Him crucified" His words were not based on human wisdom, he preached with fear and trembling knowing the great responsibility he had to preach only the gospel because he knew that the power of God would be demonstrated as he preached that word, as it says the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to those who believe, the power of God is demonstrated every time someone repents and comes to Christ, true repentance and salvation can only come as a response to the preaching of the gospel of the cross. Paul said in Galatians 6:14 "God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" It is only through the power of the cross that we can see people delivered from the power of the world and all its attractions and deception. In Mark 16:20 it says that the disciples went out and preached Christ everywhere and God worked with, and confirmed the word that they preached with great signs and wonders. The truth is, God will only confirm His word with signs and wonders, if we think that we can preach another gospel and God will honour that word and we will see the signs and wonders that have been promised we deceive our selves. In Galatians 1:8 it warns us that if anyone comes preaching another gospel other than the gospel of the cross of Christ they will be cursed.
So this is my challenge, what are we doing with this gospel that Jesus has so freely given to us? what are we doing with His grace? and are we truly preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and Him crucified as the answer to the problems of this world and the sin that plagues mankind? We all know that Jesus is coming back for His bride, a victorious church without spot and wrinkle, and church that is boldly preaching the true gospel and establishing God's kingdom in their world. Let us be the ones that Jesus comes back for, the ones that says of "Well done My good and faithful servant"  AMEN.