I am so excited to be back with you after my long hiatus. God has been good and faithful and has done some great things in my heart and life during my break and I’m ready to resume our journey with the Lord together.
Life is hard, I know, and the world seems to be getting crazier, darker, and more unstable than ever, but I hope to encourage you to keep focused on Jesus. He is our compass, our light, our peace, our truth, our hope.
He is our solid foundation.
When all else is shaky, we can walk surefootedly, and we can stand unwaveringly in our faith and trust of the God who loves us.
The enemy would have us get sidetracked, even in things that seem good, but none of it means a thing if our focus does not continue to be this:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Mark 12:30
This is the crux of our journey.
Everything we do hinges on God’s love – understanding and receiving it more and more as we grow in our relationship with Him, and loving Him back more today than we did the day before.
God’s love is where all true treasure lies.
From His love all good things flow. With it we have the power to forgive, the confidence to pray, the strength to serve, the courage to do whatever He calls us to do. And that’s when an enriched life begins.
As that love between us and God grows, nothing will be able to move us. No surprise diagnosis, no financial upset, no personal attack, no shocking headline, nothing.
Walking with Jesus we can endure anything, and endure it with a peace and joy that can only come from Him.
During my break each one of you (followers on the website and on the Facebook page) have been prayed for individually, by name. Let me tell you, it was an absolute joy to do that. I hope the Lord blessed you through it as much as He did me.
Please feel free to ask for prayer anytime. You are all on my heart and I love you all very much.
If you follow God Treasure through email, please consider liking the Facebook page where I post scripture and music and other things I may not necessarily post on the regular website.
And if you follow only through Facebook, since FB has a quirky policy of not getting the all the posts to all the followers, please consider signing up on the website – Godtreasure.net – to receive the blogs by email so you don’t miss any. I promise, I won’t send you anything else! And the more you like the posts on FB, the more likely you are to get the posts. And don’t forget to share!
“The Lord bless you
and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”
“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. On the contrary:
‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. (Proverbs 25:21-22)’
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Romans 12:9-21
The term “to heap burning coals on someone’s head,” is not, as it might seem at first glance, an act of vengeance. It’s actually an act of kindness. People needed to keep their home’s fire burning during the night to cook food in the morning. If it died out, they would go to a neighbor and ask for live coals to relight their fire. The neighbor would have to get out of bed and give some of their own fire’s coals. The coals would be heaped into a container on the person’s head to carry home.
This is love. We are to go our of our way to bless our enemies even when it’s an inconvenience, even if we don’t feel like it, and even when it causes us a degree of suffering. In this way we introduce our enemies to the love of Christ, and bring the kingdom of heaven to their door. It is, after all, God’s loving kindness that brings us all to repentance.
“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.
If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.” Romans 12:4-8
If you knew me very well you might think it funny that I have a strong desire to encourage people. I don’t feel encouraged a lot of the time. I feel a lot of other things like exhausted, frustrated, distressed and sometimes depressed.
But through all that haze of human struggle God has given me a gift of encouragement. That, to me, is amazing.
God delights to show Himself strong where we are weak.
And because it’s very obviously not my nature, but God’s, He gets all the glory.
Once the Holy Spirit placed that gift in my heart, it was up to me to yield myself to Him and allow Him to shine that light of encouragement through me. And yet sometimes all I have to do is walk through a check-out line.
I was doing just that once years ago when I was a fairly new believer. The store was crazy busy, all the lines were long, and I stood in one of them holding my new pair of shoes.
I finally…finally…finally reached the front of the line, and the poor cashier looked frazzled. Her head was down, finishing up from the last customer. As she looked up and into my eyes, she stopped, smiled, chuckled a bit and said, “I felt better when I saw your face.”
Now, it was not me and it certainly was not my face, per se. There were plenty of other perfectly nice faces that had gone through that line, and there was nothing about mine in particular that would comfort this overworked girl, except that it was the face of someone who was in love with Jesus and had been given the gift of encouragement.
It was the Holy Spirit, graciously and mercifully using that gift to shine His light of comfort from one of His children to, quite possibly, another.
That’s what spiritual gifts are for: the building up of the Body.
“Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and He distributes them to each one, just as He determines.” 1 Corinthians 12:7-11
So, lest any of us think we have no spiritual gifts, God’s Word tells us that if we are part of the body of Christ – if He is our Lord – then the Spirit has given each of us at least one gift for the benefit of the body. It’s not to keep for ourselves and it’s not to hide, but to share.
The Church is weakened when all its members are not fully using their God-given gifts for the benefit of one another.
One issue is that many times talents and gifts are misunderstood, and human talents are being used rather than spiritual gifts. Gifts of the Spirit are being minimized in favor of works of the flesh; pride is trumping humility and submissiveness to the Spirit of God. And when that happens, the church becomes nothing more than a sing-a-long, but not true praise; nothing more than an inspirational teaching, though not Spirit-inspired; nothing more than a religious duty, but not actual worship. And we all suffer for it.
Human talents rely on our own personal knowledge, practice, understanding, strength and power.
Spiritual gifts are given and used strictly by the power of the Holy Spirit and our yieldedness to Him.
God can give gifts to complement the talents He’s given us, but His gifts still work solely in the power of the Spirit.
Gifts are given to us, not because of who we are, but in spite of it.
The Church needs our gifts. We are each a brick in the Church of God with Christ as its Cornerstone. Remove just one and though the foundation stands, the building falters.
If you don’t know what your gift or gifts are, I encourage you to pray and ask the Lord to show you. There are some tools that, with prayer, can help you find your spiritual gifts. This is one: http://www.spiritualgiftstest.com/
And once you find your gift(s), ask the Lord to show you how He would have you use it for the building up of the body. Beside our personal relationship with Christ, being used by the Lord and fulfilling His plan for us is perhaps the most rewarding blessing on this earth.
And may I add – let’s encourage each other in our gifts and allow ourselves to be built up by one another. We need each other right now, and we need the gifts God’s given to all of us. There may be darker days coming for believers than we’ve seen in recent headlines and we need every spiritual gift to prepare and empower us and spur us on to victory.
“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” 1 Thessalonians 5:11
It takes a very humble and very willing servant of Yeshua, the Everlasting God, to put one foot in front of the other and walk the road high enough to pray in agreement with these words. For the sake of these souls – both the lost whom Christ loved and died for as well as for us, and for those who would be their next victims, I pray we would each examine our hearts and be willing to walk that high road, following closely behind our Savior.
“Above His head they placed the written charge against Him: “THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS” Matthew 27:37
This was the charge. They had pointedly asked Him “Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”
He couldn’t deny it.
They immediately surrounded Him and spit on Him. They punched Him with their fists and slapped Him. They mocked Him saying “Prophesy to us, Messiah. Who hit you?”
It had begun.
Meanwhile, Peter had fallen fast and hard. After he denied ever knowing Jesus for the third time, a rooster crowed, just like Christ predicted. Jesus was close enough to look into Peter’s eyes, “And he (Peter) went outside and wept bitterly.” Matthew 26:75
Judas, too, was seized with remorse, and went back to the chief priests and the elders who had paid him money to betray his Friend saying, “I have sinned, for I have betrayed innocent blood.” Matthew 27:4
But they didn’t care, and they didn’t forgive his sin.
The crowd was asking for Barabbas, a notorious insurrectionist and murderer — charges worthy of crucifixion — to be released and for Jesus to take his place.
Why would they want a known murderer back out on the streets, and a man who just a week prior they had celebrated calling Him “Son of David!”?
The murderer hadn’t personally betrayed them, but Jesus had.
Jesus had come into Jerusalem — their beloved city, the city of God — riding on a donkey, a sign of peace. They thought He was their messiah, their savior, their king…and now He was arrested and at the mercy of the leaders.
He didn’t look at all like a savior or a king. He had lied to them, and they were angry.
They shouted “Crucify Him!”
But when Pilate pressed them, they answered “His blood is on us and on our children!” Matthew 27:25
Cat-O’-Nine-Tails
And so it would be. But in His mercy, that was God’s plan all along.
By now Jesus’s face and head would be swollen and dripping with blood, teeth knocked to the ground.
They ordered Him to be scourged.
Prior to crucifixion, Romans routinely used a cat-o’-nine-tails — a whip fixed with small pieces of metal or bone at the end. He would be whipped up to forty times.
His flesh was torn from the bone, exposing organs, tendons, nerves. Blood flowed profusely. His body began to shake with shock, and then it started to shut down.
Then soldiers dragged Him back inside the court room. They took off His clothes and put a scarlet robe on Him and gave Him a staff. Someone ripped a branch off a thorny bush and twisted it into a crown and shoved it on his head, spikes stabbing His flesh. They spit on Him again, grabbed the staff and hit Him in the head over and over. They took the robe and put His clothes back on.The pain was excruciating, but there was still the road to Golgotha.
A crossbeam weighing a hundred pounds was heaved onto his mangled, screaming back. He struggled and stumbled under the weight of it, and Simon from Cyrene was pulled from the crowd to carry His cross.
Some prisoners were only tied to their crosses. Nailing was left for those who were seen as especially heinous.
His clothes were taken and He was laid on the ground while large nails were driven through flesh and bone, sending burning pain up through His arms and legs. He was heaved up onto the main beam, and a sign naming His charge was nailed to the top:
THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS.
Through all of it every word He spoke was full of grace and mercy and compassion and forgiveness.
Even through the magnitude of His torture, none of it matched the pain of the sin — from the garden where sin began to the end of time – that was heaped upon Him. Every vile murder, every sickening rape, every twisted abuse, every act of adultery… Peter’s and Judas’s betrayal. Yours and mine. Every sin was laid on Him.
And He bore it all with love.
Once our sin was paid for, it was up to us to choose whether or not to accept that payment.
Judas chose to confess his sin to the wrong men. No one has authority to forgive sin but God though the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ. Confession to anyone else is futile. In his overwhelming guilt, he hung himself.
Peter would face Christ and his sin would be forgiven, his guilt and shame forever taken away.
Jesus once asked His friends, “Who do you say I am?” Matthew 16:15
He asks every one of us that same question. People who lived near Jesus believed all kinds of things about Him, but only one thing was true: He really was the King of the Jews, and of anyone who would call on His Name. But His kingdom wasn’t an earthly one. They wanted to make Him king, but He wasn’t just king, savior, messiah, He was King, Savior, Messiah! His kingdom was a spiritual one. He was King of all kings, with all power and authority, for all time and eternity. He was and is more than they could have ever imagined.
My friend, if you don’t already know it, Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, and that includes you. He died for your sins so you don’t have to. So you can be free of the weight and the guilt and shame. So you can live in peace and know you have a home waiting in heaven.
God loves you. It’s why He sent His Son to the cross. Confess your sin to Him today, and He promises to forgive you, for “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other Name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:12
Perhaps you’re angry at God. Maybe you’ve accused Him of some wrongdoing, like the crowd had. Their expectations drove them into sin, but they would have a chance to confess and be forgiven, too. Soon they would see that everything Jesus claimed to be was true, because the story was just beginning…
