The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”[1]
Sometimes
my morning time with God produces a specific lesson that grips my heart with
appreciation for the leading of the Holy Spirit in answer to some need or
problem I have been facing. I imagine that I am not the only one who faces such
things, so I trust that sharing those daily lessons will be of help and
encouragement to someone else who is seeking to live by faith in Jesus Christ.
Other
times, my morning with God leaves me with a more generalized experience of how
God consistently opens up his word to us so that we leave our time in his word
with the reminder of how faithfully he leads us to know the mind of Christ for
his church.[2]
I
know what it is like to face a Scripture passage and wonder what in the world
the Spirit could possibly get through to me, and come to the end of that
morning time with a wondering smile on my face as the Spirit taught me things I
hadn’t noticed before, and reminded me of things I already knew. This too must
have some application to others who face discouraging thoughts about learning
from the word of God.
When
we understand that this is about the ability of the Holy Spirit to do his work
of teaching and reminding,[3] we
suddenly face a passage with hope and expectation that God has something for us
that we can’t see at the moment. While our sight cannot pick out any hint of
what God might teach us, faith rises up to enter into the quarry of God’s word
with confidence in the Holy Spirit’s work of leading us to a greater experience
of the mind of Christ.
This
morning I returned to Revelation 6 after taking a few weeks to explore other
Scriptures. I quickly remembered that I had been meditating on the fourth seal,
and wondering what it would look like to see people killed with sword, famine,
pestilence, and wild beasts.[4] While
the world tries to solve every problem so that there is no sense of God’s
judgment against sin, God tells his church that we will see these kinds of
tragedies all through the last hour of the end times.
While
there are times that meditating on the word feels more like the Holy Spirit is
focusing on his ministry of teaching, this morning was one of those times when
he focused more on his ministry of reminding. He left me with a fresh
experience of his teaching ministry driving home something I had already
learned, and a fresh appreciation for how consistently and faithfully God will
get through to me if I humbly show up to discover what is on his heart for me
and his people.
The
conclusion was simple: when facing any of the things described in this fourth
seal, or reading stories from around the world that fit what is described, don’t
forget that the work of Jesus Christ through his church is to go out “conquering, and to conquer.”[5]
The Church’s work is not to stop Death and Hades from doing what they have been
authorized to do. The work of the Church is to proclaim the gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ so that souls in bondage to the evil one experience the victory and
deliverance that come only through faith in the Son of God who loved us, and
gave himself for us.
This
means that the news stories, or the up-close-and-personal experiences of these
tragedies, are not to sidetrack us into trying to make the world a better
place. They are to remind us that people are dying all around us, and we must
save as many people as we can into a better kingdom. There is a better place
for all those who receive the Lord Jesus Christ, but it is never going to be in
this world.
The
twofold blessing of this morning time with God is that I felt the conviction to
focus my heart on being “more than
conquerors through him who loved us.”[6]
And I felt the gentle reminder of the Spirit that he will teach me something
fresh and edifying tomorrow morning as surely as he did once again today. His
mercies are new every morning. Why not start the day opening our hearts to see
them by faith.
© 2014 Monte Vigh ~
Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise
noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible,
English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)
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