All of us go to church. We read from the Bible, we sing the hymns and listen closely the sermons. Some of us even testify to only a few things. But don’t we need to do more than that? How many from among us has talked about the blood of Jesus? Ask a layman and even some of the people going regularly to the church. You are bound to hear “Blood? What blood?” Are you talking about the blood that fell down from Jesus when He was hurt so badly by the Jews and the Roman soldiers? What’s so important about that? Why the hue and cry about this blood? It only shows how ignorant some of our church folks are when asked about the blood of Jesus. When we look deeper into the Bible, we clearly see many people talking about the blood of Jesus. Take Isaiah 53:16.... “All we like sheep have gone astray...and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” Here Isaiah is referring only to Jesus when he says “laid on Him.” Isaiah was only saying that our iniquities were paid for by Him (Jesus). Again take John 1:29. Here John the Baptist sees Jesus walking up to Him and says “Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Here John was telling everyone that Jesus was the lamb of God who would one day be killed for the sins of the world. One of the known things about Man was that he was considered always a rebel. All of us were marked as sinners after what Adam did in the Garden of Eden by his disobedience to God’s Word. We were all turned away from God. But God in Ephesians 2:13 comes to our rescue. It says “But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been made near by the blood of Jesus.” While we were far away before, we are now redeemed by the blood of Jesus. As a result of the blood of Jesus, reconciliation took place. God is not mad at us anymore. We are no more His enemies, praise God. So we need to recognize the meaning of the blood of Jesus. How does it operate in our daily lives? When we do not understand the blood, we will only have a religious view of things. We will never have the conviction that His blood indeed is our only helper. We will never be able to assess the value. Our … [Read more...]
God and Love
God’s love is more tasteful than any other thing on this earth. “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth-For your love is more delightful than wine” (Song of Songs 1:2). Yes, God’s love is sweeter than the wine. If you wish to taste the love of God, you have to experience it. We can describe it, extensively with the help of number of sentences, depending upon our command on the language. But it is very difficult to exhibit it with our deeds. Only, God can have the capacity to show us such type holy love. His love is “Agape”, that means it has no ending. God is so kind enough that He loved us first of all, there after, we started to love Him. He is loving us before our birth itself, that is since that stage,i.e while we are in our mother’s womb itself, in the form of embryo and also loves us at the time of accidents, during diseases and troubles. Especially, he is protecting us always from bad thoughts, i.e. from the devil. In the “Song of Songs”, Solomon described very clearly about a sinner who in the beginning didn’t know about God’s love, but finally he realized the true love. The same incident can be applied to our present day life, like this manner. Here the love (sinner) is man and the Lover is God. Man is enjoying and experiencing the sins (actually man is under the false impression and mistaking them as happy things) like the following habits: Taking alcohol, gambling, adultery, telling lies, corruption, selfishness, jealousy, unkindness, etc. Man is living and behaving carelessly and is not willing to hear the word of God, even though, He is standing near the door of our heart and knocking it. "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). This is the ideal time, search for the savior (our living God) and if you miss this opportunity, you may not get again this chance. Be loyal to God and keep your burdens on Him and solely depend on God. Leave away the sinful life and lead a holy life, which is the true happy life. Those who are … [Read more...]
