July 28, 2016
MY FRIENDS, IT’S NOT OVER UNTIL OUR LAST SEASON IS COMPLETE
Jacob “had power over the Angel, and prevailed.” Hosea 12:4. (KJV) “humiliation, repentance, and self-surrender,” this sinful, erring mortal went face to face with the all-knowing all-powerful omnipresence and prevailed” “For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” Gen 32:30 (KJV) The wrestling match of the century. God vs. man, the Great I Am against a mere mortal, places this event in the pages of the historical narrative in God’s Word as one of the greatest of all time. A metaphor of our struggles we will encounter right before Christ second coming.
Because each day our problems move up in a designated weight class, and the closer we get to eliminating self completely the main event always gets more and more dramatic, trials more precise, problems, situations, circumstances, the injustice of life, a disobedient child, a drunkard husband, and the list goes on.
So now it’s personal and I have placed each of us in the ring with God as our opponent. So how do we win like Jacob in the middle of our struggles
each day? As we read the narrative of Jacob and the many seasons of his life, we must realize as God’s children, we can never settle for “a form of godliness while denying the true power of God.”
Like the uncircumcised Philistine Goliath, who went into the ring with a man after God’s on heart with only a sword, a spear and a javelin, David was prepared to endure through his faith until God gave Him the victory. So we must never focus our attention on the timing only our will to endure. Remember Jacob fought all night. 2 Peter 3:9 (KJV) tells us “The Lord……is patient with you [and I], not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
“In other words we must forsake all others” and if we will focus on the struggle and where God has brought us from and where He is leading our footsteps, we will also be able to say I have been in the presence of God, “and my life is preserved.” But it is not over until the last season is complete and God says to us personally “Well done, good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” Matt. 25:21 (KJV)
My friends, we must always remember God is preparing us for greater fights against the enemy. A fight we are probably unprepared to handle right now. For there will come a time in our life, such has not been since the beginning of the world until this time….” Matt 24:21-22 And “All who desire the blessing of God, as did Jacob must stay focused on victory through Christ.
And as Jacob, we will lay hold onto God’s promises while allowing God’s Spirit to guide us in all truth and understanding in God’s word until our season is complete. “There is so little exercise of true faith and so little of the weight of truth resting upon many professed believers because they are sluggish in spiritual things.
They are unwilling to make exertions, to deny self, to agonize before God, to pray long and earnestly for the blessing, and therefore they do not obtain it. That faith which will live through the time of trouble must be daily in exercise now. Those who do not make strong efforts now to exercise persevering faith, will be wholly unprepared to exercise that faith which will enable them to stand in the day of trouble.” (E.G. White Story of redemption)
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