Psalm 83:1-4 reads like today's headlines!
1 KEEP NOT silence, O God; hold not Your peace or be still, O God. 2 For, behold, Your enemies are in tumult, and those who hate You have raised their heads. 3 They lay crafty schemes against Your people and consult together against your hidden and precious ones. 4 They have said, Come, and let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be in remembrance no more.
In the next few verses you can see that almost the entire Middle Eastern world has ALWAYS been against Israel and her friends! Nothing has changed! Evil is STILL evil, and still trying to overthrow God and His people! The psalmist is calling on God to deal with them. Verse 16:
16 Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek, inquire for, and insistently require Your Name, O Lord.
And verse 18:
18 That they may know that You, Whose Name alone is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth.
Those two verses are OUR prayer, too! AMEN!
In Luke 4 we see Jesus being tempted for 40 days in the wilderness. He passed the temptation test! Do you remember that Jesus was 100% God and 100% man, but while alive on the earth, He only ever operated as a man? How did He resist the enemy's temptations as a man? Verse 1 is the key:
1 THEN JESUS, full of and controlled by the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led in [by] the [Holy] Spirit.
Then, after the temptation in the wilderness, we see this in verse 14:
14 Then Jesus went back full of and under the power of the [Holy] Spirit into Galilee, and the fame of Him spread through the whole region round about.
The key to the earthly ministry of Jesus of Nazareth was that He was filled with the Holy Spirit, He KNEW the Word of God, and He spent much time in intimate fellowship with God the Father!. That is also the key to OUR earthly ministries! Remember that we are all called to the full time Ministry of Reconciliation! (2 Corinthians 5:18) We, too, need to spend time in daily fellowship with our Heavenly Father. We need to "be being" filled, that is, to stay in a position of continually staying full of the Holy Spirit and power! Then we need to spend time daily in the Word of God. Doing the things that Jesus did to be successful in His earthly ministry will cause US to be successful in ours! THAT will bring Glory to HIS Name, and doing so is our greatest desire! AMEN!
More to come!
1 KEEP NOT silence, O God; hold not Your peace or be still, O God. 2 For, behold, Your enemies are in tumult, and those who hate You have raised their heads. 3 They lay crafty schemes against Your people and consult together against your hidden and precious ones. 4 They have said, Come, and let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be in remembrance no more.
In the next few verses you can see that almost the entire Middle Eastern world has ALWAYS been against Israel and her friends! Nothing has changed! Evil is STILL evil, and still trying to overthrow God and His people! The psalmist is calling on God to deal with them. Verse 16:
16 Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek, inquire for, and insistently require Your Name, O Lord.
And verse 18:
18 That they may know that You, Whose Name alone is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth.
Those two verses are OUR prayer, too! AMEN!
In Luke 4 we see Jesus being tempted for 40 days in the wilderness. He passed the temptation test! Do you remember that Jesus was 100% God and 100% man, but while alive on the earth, He only ever operated as a man? How did He resist the enemy's temptations as a man? Verse 1 is the key:
1 THEN JESUS, full of and controlled by the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led in [by] the [Holy] Spirit.
Then, after the temptation in the wilderness, we see this in verse 14:
14 Then Jesus went back full of and under the power of the [Holy] Spirit into Galilee, and the fame of Him spread through the whole region round about.
The key to the earthly ministry of Jesus of Nazareth was that He was filled with the Holy Spirit, He KNEW the Word of God, and He spent much time in intimate fellowship with God the Father!. That is also the key to OUR earthly ministries! Remember that we are all called to the full time Ministry of Reconciliation! (2 Corinthians 5:18) We, too, need to spend time in daily fellowship with our Heavenly Father. We need to "be being" filled, that is, to stay in a position of continually staying full of the Holy Spirit and power! Then we need to spend time daily in the Word of God. Doing the things that Jesus did to be successful in His earthly ministry will cause US to be successful in ours! THAT will bring Glory to HIS Name, and doing so is our greatest desire! AMEN!
More to come!
Shalom in Him!
