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Good Tuesday morning dear “Walking with Jesus” friends,
I have 2 questions for us to begin today:
When you and I are on the other side of this Coronavirus experience and WE look back on these months, what will you and I say have been the most significant results of this chaos, in our lives?
When our world is able to say the 2020 Coronavirus is now history, and GOD looks over how our world has handled it, what will GOD say have been the most significant results of this season of global chaos?
Listen to this statement written about 3000 years ago:
“I will praise You, O LORD, with all my heart; before the ‘gods’ I will sing Your praise.
I will bow down toward Your holy temple and I will praise Your name, for Your love and Your faithfulness, for You have exalted above all things Your name and Your word.(Ps. 138:1,2)
So, from what you see, who or what have been ‘exalted above all things’ in this Coronavirus season?
To whom or what have the leaders of nations pointed their people for hope, in these times of worry and fear, an unknown disease, unemployment, closed businesses, stay at home restrictions, collapsing investment values, and widespread death?
Where have the people in your part of the world, turned to find calm, hope, peace, confidence in these times of near panic?
Each day as I prepare “Walking with Jesus”, my hope and my purpose has been to point you to Jesus and God’s Word. So I echo those words of Psalm 138. I bow down before God, today, as I have every day since I first heard that word “Coronavirus”.
I bow before God in adoration of HIM and I declare that God remains in full sovereign authority over all things, as He always has been. My life and yours, are in His hands, and I trust Him. God understands this virus better than anyone ever will. God loves our human race, and longs to see us turn to HIM in worship and trust. I lift up the name of Jesus Christ as the only Savior of the world, and the Word of God as the only reliable Truth. They are my supreme hope in all this…and I look to see who else has been looking there for hope?
Today, we’re walking along the dusty road going north from Jerusalem, heading back to Galilee. We’re walking with John and the disciples, Mary Magdalene and the other women, in the days after that historic Passover/Easter. As we walk, we’re discussing with John what he wrote in John 17. It’s the remarkable prayer of Jesus which John alone records for us. Jesus prayed it, out-loud, with His disciples, only a few hours before His crucifixion. The disciples had learned to pay attention when Jesus was praying, for it was always a ‘defining moment’.
John was an eyewitness and it evidently deeply impacted him. He writes that Jesus prayed to His Father in heaven: “I have revealed You to those whom You gave Me out of the world. For I gave them the words You gave Me and they accepted them.” (John 17:6,8) I wonder if a smile came across John’s face as he reflected on that statement? The miracles of course, were a frequent and powerful way that Jesus revealed God’s glory, God’s love, God’s power to all who saw them. Remember the first one, water turned to wine at a wedding? (John 2) I wonder which is your favorite miracle of Jesus, my friends, and why? And what do see Jesus teaches us about God in each of His miracles?
I can imagine as they walked these friends of Jesus talked often about the miracles. But Jesus had also revealed God as He taught them from the Scriptures and opened their minds to understand His Scriptures. (Luke 24:45) Jesus had taught them privately, He’d taught them as they walked along the roads together, they’d learned as they listened to Jesus teach the crowds and debate with the religious leaders. They had listened intently and each of these men would later travel all around the Roman Empire telling others what they had learned from Jesus. Some, like John and Matthew, would write it down, as led by the Holy Spirit, and we have what they wrote, preserved for us today.
John continues remembering that Jesus prayed: “They knew with certainty that I came from You, and they believed that You sent Me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those You gave me, for they are Yours. All I have is Yours, and all You have is Mine. And glory has come to Me through them.“ (John 17:8-10) Do you remember, my friends, that Jesus had prayed all night before He selected the 12 men (Luke 6:3) whom He invited to travel with Him, leaving their jobs behind, so He could teach them and reveal God to them. Jesus had asked God His Father, which, of all those in the crowds who gathered around Him, were the men God that had chosen?
None of them believed Jesus to be the Son of God immediately. It took them a long time to understand this remarkable truth. In fact, even after His resurrection, some still struggled to understand who Jesus really was and why He had come to earth. But eventually, as Jesus said, the disciples believed with certainty, to the point that they each died a martyrs death defending the truth that Jesus was the Son of God and had come from heaven to earth, sent here by Almighty God.
How powerful it must have been for them to hear Jesus pray for them, and to hear Him declare that glory was coming to God through them! Of course, that would especially be true after Jesus returned to heaven and the Holy Spirit empowered the disciples, and they began to spread the word, telling the story of Jesus and teaching the truth that He had taught them. Think about that a moment friends. How is glory coming to God the Father through you and me, in these Coronavirus days?
As Jesus was speaking to His Father about His friends, the disciples, have you considered that Jesus speaks to God the Father about you and me, my friends? Have you watched parents as they stand at the sidelines or sit in the bleachers of ballgames watching their kids play a sport, or attend a concert watching their kids play an instrument? Have you overheard these parents talking to each other? Good parents talk with delighted honesty and pride as they point out which child is theirs, right? “Over there, that’s my son, and over there, that’s my daughter. Perhaps not Olympic champions or members of a symphony orchestra one day, but I sure am proud of them. They’re my children.”
Now look into heaven with me… Jesus is at the right hand of God the Father, pointing to earth, to you and me with love, as He helps us live our lives with hope, trusting God as we ‘walk with Jesus’, even through this Coronavirus chaos. Can you see it? Please remove from your minds any thought that God the Father and God the Son are looking at you and shaking their heads saying things like “Oh what a loser!”
We are loved by God the Father and God the Son, my friends. The cross proves that! If you’ve trusted Jesus, you are purchased by His blood. You are adopted into God’s family. You are a cherished prince or princess of the King of kings. You are His ambassador to the world where you live (2 Cor. 5:20). And whatever we’ve done or said that is dishonoring to God, Jesus paid for that with His blood, and God is ready to forgive us of it, as soon as we confess it to Him. (1 John 1:9)
Let John reminds us today of one more thing Jesus prayed that evening: “I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, protect them by the power of Your name – the name You gave Me…While I was with them I protected them, and kept them safe by that name You gave Me…My prayer is not that You take them out of the world, but that You protect them from the evil one.” (John 17:11-15)
While the disciples were little aware of it, Jesus had battled Satan on their behalf many times. Do you see Jesus was praying that as He soon will depart from them, He requests Almighty God to continue protecting them from the evil one, Satan. As you know we have an enemy who is invisible to our human eyes, but is very real and very powerful. And as I’ve told you before, Satan is always opposed to God, God’s people and God’s purposes, everywhere in the world. Take courage my friends, just as Jesus prayed for His disciples to be protected by God, so He is praying for us His people today, in the same way! And just as the disciples were able to invoke the name of Jesus and the authority of God’s Word and the power of the blood and resurrection of Jesus in their battles with evil, so we who have trusted Jesus to be our Savior and Lord, have exactly those same authority privileges in our battles with evil today!
Let’s hold on to this powerful truth which Jesus prayed. Almighty God is protecting us by His power. And He is enabling us, empowering us, to live lives that make a significant difference in our world as we combat the affects of evil in our world.
All these weeks, followers of Jesus all around the Coronavirus world have had opportunity to serve those who have needed help, and encourage those who have been frightened. We’ve had opportunity to pray with people, and share the hopeful truths of God’s Word with people. As the evil of fear, worry, greed, anger, deceit, jealousy, pride and manipulation have swept through communities and nations, and as churches where most people go for God’s help in times like these have been closed, God has stationed His warriors, you and me and all Christ followers, in strategic places in almost every country, to be His Ambassadors, for such a time as this!
May I urge you to carefully re-read John 17:1-15 today and claim it as Jesus is praying for YOU, as you stand against evil in your part of the world? Tomorrow we’ll continue with more of this powerful prayer of Jesus. It seems as though Jesus prayed it for us in April 2020, doesn’t it?
Oh Lord Jesus, thank you for John’s record of this powerful prayer that You prayed. Thank you for praying for us even right now, and Lord Jesus, please embolden us to stand against evil in Your name today! Help us to bring YOUR hope into our desperate world today. . .
Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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