Rejoice in the Miracles!

Written by Sheila Schuller Coleman

"Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength! Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name; bring an offering and come before Him! Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness." -1 Chronicles 16:28-29

When the Israelites successfully crossed the Red Sea - safe - delivered - from the oppression of hundreds of years of slavery and captivity at the hand of the Egyptians, God instructed them to celebrate.

Have you ever thought of that?

God instructed them to party! Feast! Celebrate the miracle! And don't just celebrate it once. Celebrate it once a year, forever and ever. That is what the feast of Passover is - a party - a celebration rejoicing and remembering what God did.

Is God Still In The Business of Healing?

"And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people." "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. - Matthew 4:23 & Hebrews 13:8 NIV

In many accounts of the gospels, we see that Jesus physically healed people. As a result of the physical healing, the oppressed, depressed and hopeless were supernaturally cured in more ways than just in their bodies.

The book of Matthew is full of stories of Jesus healing the sick. But does He still do that today? As the scripture says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." There are many skeptics in the world who would say Jesus can’t heal today, but there are millions more who can testify that He does.

The Man Who Was a Dresser of Sycamore Trees

Amos [Ā'mos]—burden-bearer or one with a burden.

1. This prophet of “judgment,”; which is the key word of the book he wrote, was a citizen of Tekoa, west of the Dead Sea (Amos 1:1; 7:8-16; 8:2).

Although he was one of the oldest of the prophets, we know little about Amos save what he himself tells us. He does not appear to have belonged to any rank or influence. The opposite is the case, seeing he styles himself a herdsman (Amos 7:14). 

He was no “professional prophet, speaking for a living.” Amos did not belong to the order of the prophets, nor had he been educated in the school of the prophets. The prophetic office was thrust upon him (Amos 7:14, 15). When the call came he exchanged the life of a shepherd and cultivator of sycamore trees for that of a prophet.

The Year of the Lord’s Favor

Written by Barbara

“Remember me, O Lord, when you show favor to your people, come to my aid when you save them, that I may enjoy the prosperity of your chosen ones, that I may share in the joy of your nation and join your inheritance in giving praise.” (Psalm 106: 4-5)

Jesus said in Luke 4:18-19, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” If you are a believer in the Lord, you have the right to be free from oppression. You have the right to be free from whatever holds you captive. You have the right to see, that which is unseen with eyes of faith. God does not want His children to remain captive to the things of this world. He sent Jesus to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Yoke in the Bible – Definition | Word Study

BIBLE SEO

Definition of Yoke:

• In literal sense, the word ‘Yoke’ means a bar of wood, so constructed as to unite two animals (usually oxen), enabling them to work in the fields, drawing loads, pulling instruments used for farming.
• Figuratively, It is a symbol of
  • Slavery (1 Tim 6:1)
  • Servanthood (Lev 26:13:”I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high.” Also Jer 27:8-12)
  • Submission, Forced Subjection
  • Burden, Load
  • Oppression (Is 9:4)
  • Bondage to Sin (Lam 1:14: “My sins have been bound into a yoke, by his hands, they were woven together…”)

• The Plowman (farmer) binds the yoke upon the neck of the oxen, so that it would not fall off or be shaken off. Yoke bound around the neck of man would cause his strength to diminish, one may waver and fall under the yoke (load).

Activists Warn US Women of Shariah Law Threat

PAUL STRAND, CBN NEWS WASHINGTON SR. CORRESPONDENT 

There’s growing concern that shariah law is creeping into America, with some U.S. judges even citing Islamic law in their rulings.

Activists are now working to shine light on what they call shariah’s war on women.

A vast coalition met in Washington, D.C., Thursday, to warn women of the threat Islamic law would pose to their rights if enacted in the U.S.

How To Be Really Free

Written by Helen Grace Lescheid

How can we pray for you today? 

“Jesus replied, ‘…So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.’” (John 8:34a, 36)

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

How do you feel about the word “surrender”? It’s not a popular word in our culture. We are afraid that if we surrender we’ll be oppressed. Maybe a person in authority has abused us and colored our concept of surrender.

I have a friend who spent three years in a Japanese prison camp. He witnessed cruel beatings and insults on a daily basis.  Even now, many years later, he is afraid to give himself to God. He thinks he’ll lose his freedom.

Celebration and Suffering

There's something odd about seeing someone celebrate over a miracle. On several occasions, I've stumbled upon some people celebrating for whatever reason, and snickered, 'what's happened to them that's worth partying over?' That, of course, is just being grumpy; it seems to come easier with age. But there is a more serious kind of strange feeling over celebrating, a strange feeling that is more relevant to spiritual concerns. Lewis Smedes put the problem this way, when seeing the fuss that was made over miracle healings at his college :

"It was a feeling I could not shake -- not a scholar's argument, more like a mood or maybe an intuition, but in any case a stubborn, uneasy feeling about the fittingness, even the decency, of celebrating far and wide the miraculous healing of a relatively few ailments within a world endemically infected by enormous, intractable, unalleviated suffering. It felt to me like proclaiming that God is alive and well in the world because you survived an airplane crash in which everyone else perished. And proclaiming your personal joy to those who mourned their dead." (*Reformed Journal*, Feb 1989, p.14)

Smedes wasn't trying to be a spoil-sport or a party-pooper by bringing this up. He was trying to remind us that while there are some things to celebrate, our celebration is, at its most, only partial. Suffering intrudes on our joy. What kind of suffering? The kinds that we don't want to have.
loss of jobs
infertility
loss of a loved one
loss of one's ability to do things
poverty
injustice and oppression by governments, armies, economies, or social structures
racism and sexism
the effects of natural disasters
new or renewed illness.

Smedes went on to remind us of some things which we must remember, if not as we celebrate, at least after we do. (You may or may not agree with this, but Smedes sets up the basic context so well that it merits your full consideration.)

(1) Ministries of healing are not the main Christian answer to suffering. At their very best, they eliminate a particular suffering of a particular person. They do not remove all suffering from life, and there are still many others suffering the same suffering that was just healed. The healings are signs "that God is alive, that Christ is Lord, and that suffering is not the last word about human existence" (p.19). But let's not overstate their importance.

(2) Healing from within suffering is as wonderful as healing from suffering. God gives inner strength that compensates for loss, and gives the sufferer resourcefulness to live faithfully and effectively.

(3) The amazing amount of health in this broken world is a greater sign and wonder than an occasional healing from illness. We're so fragile, yet we live, and most of us most of the time live fairly healthfully. We celebrate the healings we get, but what about the healings which, by the grace of God, we don't need, the sufferings that aren't there?

(4) Pray for power encounters between Christ and the devil in the matrix of devilish political systems. As Smedes put it, "Evil empires! Or good empires that bunglers mismanage! Or run-of-the-mill empires that knaves make worse! .... Name your system, and the devil will be there." (p.20) : "I find it strange that governments and societies find it so easy to do things to make the poor poorer and to rob the disadvantaged of what little possibilities they might have. And the churches too often sit still for the creation of such suffering."

Then, Smedes asks for a two-fold change in our way of thinking and doing. The first shift, the same change that churches such as the Vineyard and the COGIC ask for, is to see the world as a battleground of spirits.  The second is a shift away from viewing goodness in life as an entitlement and toward living life as a servant and disciple of Christ. Smedes writes, "If I make the first shift, I am more open to the power of the Spirit to act in response to peoples' suffering. If I make the second shift, I am more open to the power of the Spirit to give me courage to will to suffer when suffering can be redemptive to those who suffer." (p.20) I think Smedes' final observation hits upon what I see as a sore spot with many of the churches that most boast about healings : all too many Christians "expect and celebrate God's triumph over our suffering while we show little readiness to suffer for the people whose suffering never gets healed." (p.21). He's right. Jesus' example is that of putting others first, not ourselves or those we think of as being like us. Jesus spoke endlessly about serving and being a servant, of being a neighbor to others like the Samaritan who cared, of loving others, and most importantly those we find hard to love, with the intensity and single-mindedness with which we love ourselves. Then, He died as a suffering servant, to clear our way to the Kingdom so that even death could not stop us.

"Some of us will not see pain as a gift; some will always accuse God of being unfair for allowing it. But, the fact is, pain and suffering are here among us, and we need to respond in some way. The response Jesus gave was to bear the burdens of those he touched. To live in the world as his body, his emotional incarnation, we must follow his example." Philip Yancey, *Where Is God When It Hurts?*, p.325 (Zondervan; Walker revised Large-print edit., 1996)

What does all this mean? One thing I think is clear : we rejoice too narrowly. We rejoice for our own gain, our own health. But there are examples that point to another way : the songs of the Mothers' Unions in South Africa; the almost constant spiritual singing of the 1950s-60s civil rights movement in the United States; the way that the Bethel New Life folks in Chicago celebrate each small victory for their community. This is rejoicing that is born of other peoples' suffering, taking the signs of relief from suffering as signs that God is mighty busy here on earth, doing a fuller kind of healing.

I suspect that Smedes' strict Calvinist upbringing might have predisposed him to distrust celebration. I think that those personal healings should not just be acknowledged, not just be warmly received, but there really should be flat-out rejoicing. Cut loose, revel in it, praise the Lord 'til you drop! It's the right instinct. Just so long as when we end the immediate rejoicing, we get down to our Christian duty to remember what context the healings take place in -- a hurting, crying, brutal, unhealed world, a world that Christ loved and died to heal. And we then stop and pray that God shows us how to be of service in Jesus' work of bring wholeness where there is suffering.


http://www.spirithome.com/suffering.html