Word for the Day March 19
By: Evang. Cascille Hammack
"That
I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death...I
count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth
unto those things which are before, I press on toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."
Phil. 3:10-14
We are living epistles bringing forth to men the knowledge of God.
There is no standing still with the Lord, we are to press on for a fuller power of the Spirit and press for the prize ahead.
The journey with the Lord is onward and upward, never stagnant and still.
Abraham came out from Ur of the
Chaldees. We can never enter the new place of blessing God has for us until we come out from the old place.
We must leave our old lives behind and put on the new life God gives us in Christ Jesus, which is an onward and upward march.
When Saul of Tarsus first met Jesus on the road to Damascus, he asked, "Lord, what would you have me to
do?" He desired only to do the will of God and in this place of intimacy he found the place of power and
deep crucifixion. He kept his eyes on the prize ahead, always pressing forward in what God was doing.
If you feel you are weak today, know that the Lord delights in showing His power in your weakness. It
is in the places where we feel powerless that God can show forth His glory and His resurrection power. Paul pleaded
with Jesus to take a thorn from his flesh in 2 Cor. 12:8, but the Lord replied, "My grace is sufficient for you,
for My power is made perfect in weakness." Paul then said, "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about
my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." In verse 10 Paul went on to explain, "That is why,
for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am
weak, then I am strong." This is opposite of the thinking of the world and the flesh as all life in the spirit
is opposite of that thinking. We must ignore the lies of the world and live by the living Word of God, always walking
in the Spirit and not after the flesh. We must stay on the road of the upward call in Christ Jesus, never forgetting
we are living epistles written to the world. We are vessels filled with the resurrection power of Jesus, if we
hold onto the Word of life and giver of life, Jesus and never give up.