Month: October 2023

These are just simply pointers I highlight from Hebrew 12. While reading the passages:
It’s interesting to know that:

God’s presence surrounds us as a cloud of witness, so we can throw everything that hinders us and sin that so easily entangles us out.
with perseverance the race marked for us to run we can fix our eyes on Jesus; the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.

His (Jesus) words of encouragement:
1) We can endure hardship as discipline, as God treats us as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? Everyone undergoes discipline (whether from our ways or by God). Then you are not legitimate, not the sons and daughters at all.

2) If human fathers discipline us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and Live!

They (Our parents) disciplined us for a little while they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his HOLInESS.

3) no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. So, we can produce a harvest of righteousness and peace, when we have been trained by it.

4) God strengthens our feeble arms and weak knees. He makes level path for our feet, so the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.
5) we have the grace to live in peace with everyone and be holy as our heavenly father is.

6) we can fall short of the grace of God when bitterness or roots of it grows to cause trouble in us that may defile us.

7) Sexually immoral and Godless persons like Esau who for a single meal sold his inheritance exist.

I have come to God, the judge of all, to the spirit of righteousness made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant and to the sprinkled blood that speaks better than the blood of Abel over our lives.

We ought to see to it that we do not refute him/her who speaks. If they do not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven?

Therefore, we receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken, so be thankful and worship God acceptably with Reverence and AWE, for our God is an All-Consuming FIRE.

Relief swept around me reading this chapter. How unchanging God is in his love towards us. Zechariah talks about ‘Talk about a Shepherd who was asked to Shepherd a group of flocks marked for slaughter by an Unknown Shepherd. There were those that bought these flocks marked for slaughter, who slaughtered them and go unpunished’. Those that sell them also say they are RICH! PRAISE THE LORD! So even their own shepherd do not spare them.
God says to the deliverer of the flocks marked for slaughter or to be sold or to be bought that he will no longer have pity on the people of that land. So, this messenger shepherded flocks and in one month he got rid of 3 of the shepherds, who wanted to buy, slaughter and sell the flocks.

But the flocks detested him, and he grew weary of them and said to them ” I will not be your Shepherd. Let the dying die, and the perishing perish. Let those who are left eat one another’s FLESH.
So, I took my staff called favor and brake it, revoking the covenant, I had made with the nations. It is revoked, so the oppressed of the flock who were watching knew IT WAS THE WORD OF THE LORD, GOD.
I said to them, if you think it best, give me my pay, but if not keep it. So, they paid me thirty pieces of silver. THE LORD said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter – the ‘handsome price at which they valued me! So, I took the 30 pieces of silver and threw at them at the potters HOUSE OF THE LORD. Then, I took the second staff called Union, breaking the family bond between Judah and Israel. Take again, the foolish shepherd’s equipment, as the lord will raise up a Shepherd over the land who will not case for the lost, or seek the young or heal the injured, or feed the healthy but will eat the meat of the choice sheep tearing off their hooves. Woe to the worthless shepherd who deserts the FLOCK. John 10: 11 – 13.

Living out scriptures is hard, so with soberness of mind I write as Paul: Food is for the stomach and stomach for food, but God will destroy both. 1 Cor 6:13.

Paul writes as a servant of God who is entrusted in the mysteries of God being reveled to us. we have to be faithful to the lord Jesus. In here, faith is seen as it attributed to a person it becomes faithful. we often attribute faith to things we need to get but rarely to people because for one to work faithfully it requires in integrity. Paul says indeed if I don’t judge myself, my conscience is clear, but it doesn’t make me innocent.

Innocent means free from guilt, bearing no responsibility for wrongful act. Meaning one may be free from guilt because of the stance we take in Christ Jesus, but we may not be clueless. So, I’d like to think of innocent as simple mindedness of a child as result of low knowledge or without motives.
As Christians, we have motives for Christ to preach the gospel, to stand on the side of truth, righteousness and justice. And I guess this is what gives us a clear conscience before God that because we are saved, we can abide in truth.
Paul goes on to say it is God who judges him, so he has to bring to light what is hidden in darkness around him. While he does this, he prays that he as we are not puffed-up followers of Christ because ALL we have received comes from Christ.\

I personally love the interplay of his words here: it says, and I quote “Already you have all you want, and you have become rich! You have begun to reign – and without us!
so, there were a selected group of people who became rich and reigned without Paul. He goes on to say “How I wish that you had really begun to reign, so that we (Paul inclusive) may reign with you!
If you understand you know why this interjector was made. As this column was on NIV was titled “The nature of true apostleship”.