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.

Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart

In the Holy Bible, when you read the book of Exodus, God’s chosen children Israel lived in Egypt along with the Egyptians in peace and joy. But then came a new king in Egypt who made Israel slaves and tortured them, even killed their male child by throwing them into Nile (Exodus 1).

God heard the cry of Israel and He appointed Moses to be their leader to rescue them. Moses went to Pharaoh and pleaded him to let Israelites go to their promised land and worship God. But not only Pharaoh listened to him but also gave the Israelites more work and tortured them more. Then God brought plagues against the nation of Egypt, but the children of Israel were not affected. Pharaoh understood the power of God, but was not willing to obey Him. Every time a plague came, he called Moses and told he will let them go, but once the plague stopped, he will change his mind.

Finally God decided to show his mighty hand against the people of Egypt. So God hardened the heart of Pharaoh. Pharaoh tortured Israelites the most until God send an Angel to kill all the first born male Egyptians, including the house of the king. Pharaoh had a time when he got a chance to let Israel go. But instead of seeing the power of God, he hardened his heart. Finally the time came God hardened Pharaoh’s heart to put him under great destruction, because he rose against God’s children.

Today, we see how the nations are gathered against the country of Israel and have taken decision to wipe Israel from the world map. But still God is fighting for his chosen ones and made a small nation, a powerful one. Still knowing God is with Israel; the nations are hardening their heart and are trying to attack Israel daily. We see the number of rockets which are fired from Gaza to Israel. This is the same thing what happened to Pharaoh, “The Lord hardened their heart”, so to destroy them completely.

God is still guarding his people, the Old Israel, to show the New Israel, the ones who accepted Jesus Christ as their saviour, how He will keep them safe from their enemies. When you follow Christ and live for Him, persecution and opposition will come against you in different ways. You will see God helping you to come out of the troubled situation. But sometimes, persecution comes and your life will get harder. The same God who hardened the heart of Pharaoh is hardening the heart of the ones against you, to clear them up from your path towards your heavenly crown.

“Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put come of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown” Revelation 2: 10.

 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” John 3:16.

Persecution and testing come against the children of God, who confess their sins and accept Christ as their saviour, who died as the punishment for your sins. “

As you confess your sins, accept Christ as your saviour and live a righteous life, May the Lord be with you, whatever opposition may be against you, God is going to destroy them in Jesus name. 

An Advocate – Esther

Even though God’s name is not mentioned in the book of Esther, every page is full of God, who hides Himself behind every word. God has never left His people go in the past and He will never let them go in the future. He followed them in their captivity into Babylon. When the prophets were silent and the Temple closed, God was still standing guard.

Esther is like Joseph and David. God had each on hidden away for His purpose. When the day came, He brought them to the front to work out His plan. God hid Joseph away in a dungeon in Egypt, but when He was ready, He placed him in the position of prime minister of that country. God always has someone in reserve to fulfil His purposes. Sometimes it is a man like Joseph, or Moses. Sometimes it is a woman like Hannah, or Esther or Mary. Recall men in history such as Martin Luther and Billy Graham whom God seems to have prepared and kept for the hour.

King Ahasuerus of the story was Xerxes, the famous Persian monarch (485 – 465 BC). When the king and princes were in the midst of their drunken revelry, the king called for Vashti, the queen, so that he could show off her beauty. Vashti refused. This made the king a laughing stock. To defend himself, he deposed the queen (Esther 1: 12-22).

When Ahasuerus saw Esther, he made her his queen. The little Jewish orphan girl, raised by her cousin Mordecai, was lifted to the Persian throne. Esther’s marriage to Xerxes gave the Jews prestige at this court and made it possible for Nehemiah to rebuild Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:1-8).

In Esther 3 to 5 we read of the ascendancy of a man by the name of Haman. He was a wicked man whose day of triumph was short and whose joy endured but for a moment. When Haman appears in the book of Esther, he had just been exalted to the highest position under the king of Persia (Esther 3:1). The high honour turned his head. He swelled with vanity and was bitterly humiliated when Mordecai, who was sitting at the gate, did not do homage to him as to the king (Esther 3:2). The little fault of Mordecai was magnified into a capital offense. Mordecai, a Jew, could not give divine honour to a man. Haman became so enraged that he wanted to have a wholesale massacre of all the Jews in the kingdom (Esther 3:6). Haman tried to prove to the king that all the Jews were disloyal subjects. He offered to pay the king a bribe of millions of dollars (Esther 3:9). The King signed a royal decree that meant that every Jewish man, woman and child should be killed and all their property should be taken, almost like that happened in Nazi regime. Esther 4: 1-3 saw the fasting and praying and weeping in sack cloth that took place among the Jews. Mordecai made Esther understand her position. “And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14).

There is one thing to do always. Do what is right and leave the rest to God. God prepares people for emergencies. Failure is not sin, faithlessness is. There is a time to act.  We can see how the situation overturned and favoured Jews, how the King was not able to sleep and how Haman was trapped (Esther 6). When King granted Esther’s wish, Haman was hung on the very scaffold he had prepared for Mordecai, and Mordecai was elevated to the place of honor next to the king.

The book of Esther closes with the account of establishing the feast of Purim and lifting Mordecai to the place made vacant by Haman (Esther 10:3). It is a thanks giving day for the chosen people. Although they had forsaken God, He had spared them. Deliverance seems to be the keynote of Jewish history. God has always delivered this nation from danger and servitude. This book of Esther is an important link in a chain of events that tell of re-establishing the Hebrew nation in their own land in preparation of the coming of the Messiah into the world. The Jewish people had escaped extermination. It was God’s purpose that they should be preserved to bring forth the Saviour of the world.

The book opens with a feast of the world’s prince – Ahasuerus and closes with the feast of God’s prince – Mordecai. For a while Haman is exalted, at last, Mordecai. As you read this history, note the upsets in human history and the final triumph of God’s chosen people. Adolf Hitler tried to wipe out Jews from the world, and finally he committed suicide and Jews got their own land. Now Palestine, Iran and the Arab nations are trying to single Israel and destroy it, and we need to wait and see how God is going to destroy its enemies.

As New Israel, the same is applied to the believers. There will be time when opposition comes against you. As Esther and the Jews fasted and prayed, the book teaches us to fast and pray and see how God changes the opposition and favour us miraculously. May God help you to keep faith in him and see his glory in your life.

Messianic Family

Ruth was the great-grand mother of David. This book establishes the lineage of David, the ancestor of Christ. It tells of the beginning of the Messianic family within the Messianic nation into which over thousand years later, the Messiah was to be born.

Ruth was a Moabitess. These people were descendants of Lot. They were pagans, worshiping many gods and goddesses. God, in establishing the family that was to produce the world’s Saviour, chose a beautiful pagan girl, led her to Bethlehem where she met Boaz, her “kinsman redeemer”, a relative of Naomi who first made her a family member and then made her his bride. This is God’s grace.

God adopts gentiles into Christ’s family. Even though Ruth was born a pagan, through Naomi, she learned of true God.

Another truth in this book is about Boaz. Boaz was the son of Rahab, the prostitute found in Jericho (Joshua 2). You can see it in the genealogy of Christ Jesus (Mathew 1:5). So we see that David’s great grandmother was a Moabitess and his great grandfather was half Canaanite. This is found in the bloodline of the Messiah.

God called a nation to be his chosen people. But he proved through this book that through faith; even a gentile can become his chosen one. That is why through Jesus Christ, the believers are called New Israel. Whatever blessings God pronounced to his chosen people in the Old Testament are available to the New Israel who is in Christ Jesus.

May God enable you to stay close with Christ Jesus to claim the blessings and companionship which God gave to the chosen one.