Easter

 Last year around Easter I was going through a really hard time. I had sunk into despair and unbelief, because the things I was trusting God for I could not see. And although we are meant to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor 5:7) sometimes as humans we walk more by sight than faith.

 In this time I went to church, and although I felt far from God He reminded me of Isa 53:3 (ESV) "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" And it was as if God said that He is not some far off God who does not understand my pain and my grief, instead He himself went through the greatest pain upon the cross. As Heb 4:15 (ESV) says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses"; this means that God understands pain; He understands sorrows and He understands our weakness because He too experienced this on the cross.

But not only does God understand our pain, He actually took our burdens upon Himself. T.A. Webb said that 'a burden shared is a burned halved'. But with Jesus not only do we have the privilege of sharing our burdens, we can give it to Him for Him to carry. Isa 53:4 (NKJV) "Surely He has borne our griefs. And carried our sorrows". Through Jesus there is healing, there is hope and we can give Him our burdens and our sorrows knowing He understands and that He carries them.

Another thing that amazes me is that at the cross when Jesus died all seemed without hope. I mean can you imagine following a leader for three years, thinking He will deliver you and then suddenly He is condemned to a cross, which meant he is cursed. But because Jesus rose again, the night of the cross is a symbol of hope for all Christians- it means our sins are forgiven- HALLELUJAH!!! This for me is such a strong reminder that God can do the same for us turn our hopeless situations around for His glory.

So this Easter I want to encourage us to come to Him, to give Him our burdens, whatever they may be- whether doubt, despair, sorrow, heart-ache or pain and know He has carried it. And when we do this He is able to transform our darkest night into the brightest day; just as He turned Good Friday into Easter morning.

May God bless you

May the LORD keep you in His loving hands

May He make His face shine upon you with Easter joy

And give you peace in knowing He understands

Bitter water made better

When I was a kid we liked tongue-twisters, one of which is “Betty bought a bit of butter, and the bit of butter was bitter so Betty bought another bit of butter to make the bitter butter better”.

Recently God has been speaking to me about slavery and bondage. Isa 52:11 (NLT) says “Go now, leave your bonds and slavery. Put Babylon behind you, with everything it represents, for it is unclean to you. You are the LORD's holy people. Purify yourselves, you who carry home the vessels of the LORD.” As I read this, I felt God speak and say to me I need to leave my bonds and my slavery behind. I am not a slave in terms of the how the Israelites were in the Old Testament. But I still have things which bind me, we all do such as: fear of rejection, mistrust, fear of loneliness, unforgiveness, shattered dreams, fear of what other think of us, brokenness from our past etc. In Exodus we see that although the Israelites were set free from Egypt, their thinking was towards Egypt and still thinking like a slave.

Romans 8:14-15 “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by who we cry, "Abba! Father!" Here we see Paul contrasting the slave to the son. The slave reacts out of a place of fear and does things because he has to; while a son is free and responds out of a place of love and wants to do the Father’s will. The slave is worried about lack, and may mistrust the master; a son does not worry about lack and trusts his father’s heart. Do you think like a slave or like a son?

In Exodus 15:23-27 the Israelites found bitter water; God shows Moses a wooden stick to use to make the bitter water sweet. In this passage God is revealed as the Healer. He is also the one that can take our bitterness (difficult upbringing, fear of rejection, our loneliness etc.) and make it sweet through the wood of the cross. So let’s bring Him our hurts, pain and all that causes us to be bitter and allow Him to transform us to make our hearts sweet again. And sometimes we need a person (like Moses) to help us in the process of healing.

“Holy Spirit, speak to us; remind us that we are sons. Transform our thinking, so that we will not be bound in slavery but live freely as sons.” Listen to this song

My prophetic painting:
From chains to sweet freedom

May God bless you in the knowledge that you are a son

May He keep you from bitterness

May He make His face shine upon you in the transformation

And give you peace as He makes your bitter water better