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Isaiah 8:21 NIV

And they shall pass through it The land, as the Targum and Kimchi supply it; that is, the land of Judea, as Aben Ezra interprets it. Here begins an account of the punishment that should be inflicted on the Jews, for their neglect of the prophecies of the Old Testament, and their rejection of the Messiah:  hardly bestead and hungry ; put to the greatest difficulty to get food to eat, and famishing for want of it; which some understand of the time when Sennacherib's army was before Jerusalem, as Aben Ezra; but it seems better, with others, to refer it to the times of Zedekiah, when there was a sore famine, (  Jeremiah 52:6  ) though best of all to the besieging of Jerusalem, by the Romans, and the times preceding it, (  Matthew 24:7   Matthew 24:21   Matthew 24:22  ) and it may also be applied to the famine of hearing the word before that, when the Gospel, the kingdom of heaven, was taken from them, for their contempt of it:  and it shall come t...

Security

Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe. Proverbs 29:25 NIV https://bible.com/bible/111/pro.29.25.NIV

Total Surrender

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Our Lord replies to this statement of Peter by saying that this surrender is “for My sake and the gospel’s” (10:29). It was not for the purpose of what the disciples themselves would get out of it. Beware of surrender that is motivated by personal benefits that may result. For example, “I’m going to give myself to God because I want to be delivered from sin, because I want to be made holy.” Being delivered from sin and being made holy are the result of being right with God, but surrender resulting from this kind of thinking is certainly not the true nature of Christianity.  Our motive for surrender should not be for any personal gain at all. We have become so self-centered that we go to God only for something from Him, and not for God Himself. It is like saying, “No, Lord, I don’t want you; I want myself. But I do want You to clean me and fill me with Your Holy Spirit. I want to be on display in Your showcase so I can say, ‘This is what God has done for me.’” Gaining hea...

The Piercing Question

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Peter’s response to this piercing question is considerably different from the bold defiance he exhibited only a few days before when he declared, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” (Matthew 26:35; also see verses 33–34). Our natural individuality, or our natural self, boldly speaks out and declares its feelings. But the true love within our inner spiritual self can be discovered only by experiencing the hurt of this question of Jesus Christ. Peter loved Jesus in the way any natural man loves a good person. Yet that is nothing but emotional love. It may reach deeply into our natural self, but it never penetrates to the spirit of a person. True love never simply declares itself. Jesus said, “Whoever confesses Me before men [that is, confesses his love by everything he does, not merely by his words], him the Son of Man also will confess before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8). Unless we are experiencing the hurt of facing every deception about ourselves, we hav...

What does it mean to anger a GOD of mercy?

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To anger a person who is not easily angered, you have to commit a grievous crime against him or those he loves, and that doesn’t necessarily mean he will react to your foul deed. It only means he has reached a point of anger, thank GOD we have level-headed people in the world, who can forgive us for our mistakes and teach us how to improve.  Man is not known to be easy-going, history shows acts of violence to one another that would turn your stomach, we are all capable of acts of violence against each other and it’s not something new to us, as I said history has shown us. But to anger GOD, what does that mean, a GOD of mercy, compassion, understanding and everlasting sovereignty. How do we do that,  Well this post is not how to, but why we shouldn’t. Matthew 18:6-7 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their ...

The Compelling Majesty Of His Power

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Paul said that he was overpowered, subdued, and held as in a vise by “the love of Christ.” Very few of us really know what it means to be held in the grip of the love of God. We tend so often to be controlled simply by our own experience. The one thing that gripped and held Paul, to the exclusion of everything else, was the love of God. “The love of Christ compels us . . . .” When you hear that coming from the life of a man or woman it is unmistakable. You will know that the Spirit of God is completely unhindered in that person’s life. When we are born again by the Spirit of God, our testimony is based solely on what God has done for us, and rightly so. But that will change and be removed forever once you “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you . . .” (Acts 1:8). Only then will you begin to realize what Jesus meant when He went on to say, “. . . you shall be witnesses to Me . . . .” Not witnesses to what Jesus can do—that is basic and understood—but “wit...