MY FRIENDS, CAN WE DRINK FROM THE SAME CUP CHRIST DRUNK FROM?

Sep 12, 2016

MY FRIENDS, CAN WE DRINK FROM THE SAME CUP CHRIST DRUNK FROM?

The mother of James and John “asked Christ to grant that her two sons may sit, one on the left and the other on the right next to Him in His kingdom. Jesus answers “you know not what you ask, are they ready to drink of the same cup I shall drink of.” The cup Christ spoke of was a “figurative expression of His suffering” as He traveled down the, Via Dolarosa or “the sorrowful way” to Calvary. Then He said to the brothers “you will suffer as I suffer.” Matt. 20:21:23 (KJV)

And friends, are we prepared to drink from that same cup, because one day ”every heart [that seek God’s kingdom] will be tested, [and] every character developed as we “plead for patience to endure and grace to overcome” as our heavenly Father measures and weighs every trial before He permits it to come upon the believer………But “If the soul is overborne, the person overpowered, this can never be charged to God, as failing to give strength in grace.

But the one tempted was not vigilant and prayerful and did not appropriate by faith the provisions God had abundantly in store for him. [Remember my friends] Christ never failed a believer in his [or her] hour of combat. [So] The believer must claim the promise and meet the foe in the name of the Lord, and [they] will not know anything like failure.” (E.G. White, Trials)

My friends it’s now personal because though our faith and endurance we as God’s children must get “to that place in our walk with God when we can “plead for patience to endure and grace to overcome” because there is a war being fought daily even as we sleep over what we should or shouldn’t believe in and how committed we are to that belief.

Remember “Christ would never fail a believer in our hour of combat for the Lord’s promise is…. [I] who go with you, will not leave, nor forsake you.” Deut. 31:6 (NKJV) Millions of martyrs or witnesses for Christ died for a cause that started with what Christ meant to them personally. So our “patience to endure and our grace to overcome” must become a feeling from within a feeling that takes us to the very presence of God.

And personally, what being in the very presence of God means as we carry our cross down the Via Dolorosa, or our own personal path of sorrow where we can say as Christ, “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. [But you and I personally can demonstrate [our] love toward the one who gave it all for [our] salvation,] and died for us.” Rom 5:7-8 (KJV)

Even, “through the valley of the shadow of death, [we] will fear no evil if that is where Christ leads.” And my friends we can say that with no reservation because we are ready to “drink from that cup” because our Father which art in heaven “measured and weigh” every trial in every situation and circumstances of our life and He knew how much we could bear. So through our faith we must “be vigilant and prayerful at all times.”

Which then gives us the “patience to endure and grace to overcome” until the Lord Himself descends from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ rises first. Then [all who] are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall [throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity] be with the Lord.” 1 Thess. 4:16-17 (NKJV)