Inheritance

When everyone talks about the birth of Jesus, they give importance to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Yes, she was blessed and because of her walk with God, He chosed her to be the mother of Jesus. When you look into the word of God, people who follow God and live accordingly get visions and prophetic blessings from God. You can see in the New Testament the number of times Joseph, the man who was about to marry Mary, got vision and had communication with Angel of God. So how blessed it was when God chosed a family where both the Man and woman was having close walk with Him. No wonder he chosed Jesus to be born in that family. Be a man or woman of faith and walk with God, and you will see your children being blessed and walk along with you towards the Holy God (Mathew 2)

It is not easy to walk with God. The first opposition you may encounter will be from your own family members. Ask any great man of God and they will tell you how they had to overcome their family to do God’s ministry. Same way when you look into the life of Jesus, He was questioned by his mother when she saw Him having a discussion with the leaders of Jerusalem temple (Luke 2)

The one thing every believer in Christ forgets is about their spiritual blessings. The people in Christ either live a poor life or they go behind the riches. When you accept Christ as your personal Saviour, it is not you who are stepping inside the Kingdom of God, but it is God who guided you to fulfill his calling in you, even when you were in the womb. Through Jesus you are being adopted into the Kingdom and are a child of God. (Ephesians 1)

You cannot know or understand more about God without the wisdom he gives. Once you start walking with God and lead a Holy life, God has promised in Ephesians 1 that you are going to inherit a great power, the same power that was exerted when God raised Christ from dead

A blessed person who is in God will leave worldly things for just being a part of God’s presence. God will protect them and does not allow evil to come upon them (Psalms 84)

When you are called and chosen, you are being treated as his own children as He treated Israel. God prophesied about Israel that He will bring them back to their land, even though He scattered them around because of their sin. God promised that He will bless them and increase them. As the New Israel, the one who are in Christ, when you leave your sinful life and call upon the Lord and walk Holy with Him, God will protect you, provide you with wisdom and power to do signs and wonders to bring Heaven on Earth (Jeremiah 31).

May the Lord guide you and help you to be Holy and know His heart’s desires to inherit all promised blessings and be a model to the world as a testimony.

Light in Darkness

God created Adam and Eve and gave them a beautiful world to live and enjoy. But sin came in the midst of them and the world became sinful, wicked or dark through them. “This is the judgement, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light” – John 3: 19, 20.

From then on, people started living in dark, evil world. While some of them wanted to know God and live a faithful life, lived accordingly, while others enjoyed darkness. From Genesis 5 onwards, we see the life of Noah, how he was different from others around him.

In this world, today, you can see people, who enjoy darkness and sinfulness and live, lusting, insulting and gossiping against other people. Some characteristics of people who live in darkness are mentioned in Galatians 5: 19-21. “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissension, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God”

Today, we see worldly people hunting the ones who go after God. They tell gossips, and try to mock and laugh at their sufferings and persecutions. “With his mouth the godless man would destroy his neighbour, but by knowledge the righteous are delivered” – Proverbs 11:9.

In the midst of all these troubles, in the month of December, you should always remember and get encouraged by the loving God who prophesied about a light in Genesis 3:15 “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel”. God sent that light, Jesus Christ, whose birth is celebrated on this month everywhere.

God loved everyone in this world and for their redemption, made Jesus to be an ultimate sacrifice for their sins, so that they can be free from the darkness and have light upon their life.

There are people who do not know about this light and there are some who knows about Jesus, but have never tried to experience Him. When you experience this light your way of life will be changed into a new direction towards the cross. If you are a worldly person who goes behind lust, sadism, gossip etc, once you experience the light, you will leave every evil in your life, encourage others and live a Holy life, pleasing God.

To have this light, it’s free. Call upon the name of Jesus, ask forgiveness and accept him as your saviour who made you free through his death and resurrection. “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord” – Acts 3: 19.

May this month be a month of this divine light in your life and may you shine and guide others towards this light and enjoy the ultimate salvation and holy life in Jesus name, Amen

Comfort in Resurrection

There are fairy tale messages about faith in God and salvation. Those messages tell us that when we are saved in Jesus Christ, all our problems will be gone and rest of our life will be like heaven. The word of God tells us, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mathew 16:24).

When we are in this world, we have to face troubles, temptations and tribulations. Certain problems come to our lives which are pre-planned by God Himself. In the word we see the life of Job, the suffering he went through, which was allowed by God. When we face these situations, God will sent His Spirit to comfort us and guide us to take the next step in life.

In the book of Ezekiel, we can see Israel’s sin in the first 16 chapters. It explains how the children of God will be taken to captivity. But Ezekiel 17 motivates the people that God is promising them that they will grow. Here it speaks about a plant which God himself plants. The book tells that the plant will produce branches and bear fruits. No matter how bad things are, God is always at work. Ezekiel is motivating the people, no need of having partnership with Egypt to go against Babylon. He tells them to be faithful to God and God is going to defeat the enemies by himself. You can’t fight your battle with the materialism, but by obeying God, God will fight your battle.

To have God with you and to fight your battles, you need to be righteous before God. It is easy to show before the world that you are faithful, but it should be shown before God, who knows your heart. Mathew 7:21 says, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven”. Jesus, the Messiah is the leader of the way to eternal life. Salvation is for the repentant, not for the arrogant. To walk along with God, we need to read the word, delight in it, mediate upon it and live according to it (Psalm 1).

There are certain mysteries which happen when you truly accept Christ as your saviour. The good seed of the gospel sown in the world and sown in the heart produce wonderful effects. The mystery is that we do not know how the spirit of God, by the word makes a change in the heart. The word of God, when received in faith is in the heart a work of grace. The prophets do not live forever, but the word which they preached, is doing its work. God carries on his work insensibly and without noise, but without fail.

The amazing example is the mission and evangelism which is happening around the world. Recently I saw a video where some group of people stopping a man of God and taking the pamphlets from him and tearing it down. What amazes in these incidents are, the men of God are not having a sword, or a gun or any knife. They go with the word of God and these groups are afraid of this word. This itself is the proof that the word of God is so strong. “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). These are the incidents which God show us to increase our faith in Him.

The parable of the growing seed in Mark 4: 26-34, shows us how the Spirit works in us and also how the Spirit work to bring people to salvation. A man scatters seeds on the ground. Whether he sleeps or not, he don’t know how the seed sprouts and grows. Spiritual growth is slow as a plant. Don’t expect a new convert to have fruits of the Spirit altogether. Sower is the one who knows about the love of Christ. But behind the scene God is working to bring the people to him, which we don’t know.

Here in the world, sowing spiritual seeds leads to troubles and persecutions. Apostle Paul finds his comfort in the fact of the resurrection that Christ promised. In 2 Corinthians 5: 1-17, he tells our suffering bodies will soon be exchanged for painless glorified bodies. The difference between a grain of mustard seed and a great tree, is nothing to that between a young convert on earth and a glorified saint in heaven (John 12:24).

If you are a person who has no idea about salvation and Jesus Christ, you cannot please The Holy God who created Heaven and Earth because of your sin. Only remission from sin is shedding of innocent sinless blood. So for helping and saving the world, God came down in human form, took all our sins and died, shed the blood and gave salvation. Now, the salvation is free, but free to all who accepts this Jesus as their personal saviour. You need to have the faith in Jesus to accept him. When you accept Christ, leave worrying about the future, because as I mentioned above, you will experience a mystery which the Spirit of God does in your life. I pray that you who are reading this will experience the presence of the Spirit of God and will be guided towards the love of Christ, to live a faithful, holy life.

The BOOK – Devotions

Daniel stands in God’s word as the man who dared to keep a clean heart and body (Daniel 1:8), and the man therefore whom God chose as a channel for his message to the Gentile nations of the world. Daniel was in the palace at Babylon the same time Ezekiel was toiling in a slave gang.

Daniel has been called the prophet of dreams. God revealed to him his secrets. “During the night the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision” (Daniel 2:19). Daniel, like Ezekiel, looks far into the future. He is quoted most in Revelation. One cannot understand the great signs of Revelation without looking at their meaning in Daniel. Although Daniel was a captive, he rose to be prime minister of Babylon. The wonderful thing is that he always remained true to Jehovah God.

Daniel was the companion of Kings. He was, like Joseph, God’s candle shining in pagan darkness. He was chief statesman in the first empire of the world, chief adviser of a great monarch and a great protector of his own people. God gave him favour and love in the sight of the court official, Ashpenaz. Even proud Nebuchadnezzar seemed to have had real affection for Daniel. Book of Daniel reveals the power of God and his universal sovereignty. God’s power is contrasted with world power.

In Daniel 1, we see God’s power in keeping Daniel and his companions. They were given understanding and wisdom above all the wise men of Babylon.

In Daniel 2, we see the power of God in revealing the dream of Nebuchadnezzar to Daniel. None of the wise men of Babylon could do this.

In Daniel 3, we see the power of God in delivering Daniels three companions from the fiery furnace. This occurred after they had been in Babylon about 20 years, and God was demonstrating in this most dramatic way his power over all the gods of this country.

God’s power is revealed in the deliverance of Daniel from the lion’s den in Chapter 6.

Unlike other prophets, Daniel deals more fully with the Gentile nations than with his own Jewish nation. The other prophets only mention the gentiles as incidental to something concerning Israel. But Daniel gives us the history of the Gentile powers from Babylon to the end.

The prophetic revelations are from Chapter 7 to 12. We see a glimpse of the last days in chapter 11. Description about the great tribulations is also mentioned in Chapter 12.

As we are experiencing lots of signs of the last days which are mentioned in the Bible, it is important to study this book along with the last book in the Bible, Revelation. May the Spirit of God lead and guide you to live a holy life as of Daniel and be prepared to see Christ coming to take his Church.