RAISE UP THE STANDARD!
"To Him Who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious Presence without fault and with great joy - to the Only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen." (Jude 24)
Morning Devotion: Feasting in His Presence - Read John 15:1-4
Good Morning, Beloved Saint! You may have not been expecting today's email, but once we've experienced that place of deep communion with God, we find that nothing else can satisfy, nothing else compares, nothing else is as desirable as being in fellowship with our First Love (Psalm 34:8; Revelation 2:4); and we never want it to end. We've just walked with the Lord these past forty days and He has confirmed to us, throughout this journey, the depths He will go to show us how much He loves us and we have fallen more deeply in love with Him. Our Lord wants us to know Him; to know that He is all that we need, and to know the value and importance of becoming one with Him as He, Himself, is with the Father. This "abiding" relationship is the key to our successfully walking out the new life that we have found in Christ Jesus at the moment of salvation. His life has been deposited in us and we now have the divine privilege of sharing this new life with Him, but we also have the great responsibility to abide, daily, in Christ. May we never miss a day to spend time with Him in His Word and prayer.
"Remain in Me, and I will remain in you."
(John 15:4a)
When we began our forty day Crucified journey, the path was laid out for us to walk through the seven self-descriptions of Christ, the seven-fold Spirit of God, and the seven-fold attributes of Perfect Praise, as we feasted with Him at His banqueting table each day. Unfortunately, our forty day journey only lasted six weeks (how quickly the time went by!); how fortunate it is, however, that we find ourselves at the beginning of the Most Holy Week and have an even greater opportunity to now join with Jesus during the most critical week of His earthly ministry. There is still so much He wants us to know and He is inviting us to tarry a little while longer with Him. This is the week that changed human history. This is the week that transformed our own personal lives for all eternity. This is the week that our Lord was not only crucified, but glorified!
"Now is the Son of Man glorified
and God is glorified in Him."
(John 13:31)
When Jesus was making the final preparations to go to the cross to complete the mission God had sent Him to do He did not call it "crucified," instead He called it "Glorified!" (reference John 13:1). Jesus knew the pain and suffering that He would have to endure for the sins of mankind as well as the separation from the Father that He would have to bear, but He did not allow Himself to dwell on the difficult circumstances in front of Him, rather He focused on the joy that would be the result of this great trial. "...who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:2b). His suffering brought (and bought) us salvation. Jesus was not a victim, He is a Victor! The cross was not a tragedy, it is a triumph! "It is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it" (John 11:4b).
"I am the True Vine."
(John 15:1a)
If there is one message the Lord wanted to get across before He left the earth, it was this: remain in Him. This picture that Jesus provides us of the vine and the branches is similar to that of the Head and the Body. The living relationship we have with Him is totally dependent upon us being connected to Him. The life we live is not our own; we must remain in Him for His life in us to continue to grow. A part from Christ we have no life in us. He is the Vine who provides all the power and strength we need to walk this Christian life productively and powerfully. Abiding in Christ is not as automatic as it may seem; just like any other relationship that is important to us, we must nurture and cultivate it for it to produce the deep intimacy we want to achieve. Learning to depend on the Lord is a discipline that must be learned, and sometimes it is discipline the Lord uses to grow us to a place of deeper dependence upon Him.
"...My Father is the Gardener.
He cuts off every branch that bears no fruit,
while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes
so that it will be even more fruitful."
(John 15:1b-2)
Branches do not produce life on their own. They cannot bear fruit apart from the vine, therefore it is vital that they remain connected to the vine. Our connection to the Lord is necessary to living a productive and fruitful Christian life. The life blood of Christ runs through us through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He helps us to remain connected to the Lord through prayer and the Word, and also convicts us and leads us to confess any known sin that might hinder our connection to Him. Just as a tree that is meant to bear fruit must be pruned to become more fruitful, we also will experience pruning ("cleaning") in our life. The Lord will remove anything in the life of His Body that is extracting strength and keeping it from being fruitful and productive. He cuts off anything that might breed disease and cause His body to become sick and weak, and He removes any dead weight that is draining the body of life. The results of His pruning in our life will result in a more productive and fruitful life that will bring health to the body and glory to God! The process may be painful, but the results are worth the pain. "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it" (Hebrews 12:11). May we never fail to abide in the Lord, and trust that He will never fail us when the pruning begins!
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REVOLUTIONIZE THE WORLD!
"Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' says the LORD Almighty." (Zechariah 4:6)
Afternoon Devotion: Filled with His Power - Read Matthew 21:18-19
Jesus had entered the city of Jerusalem for the final week of His earthly ministry. On Sunday He received a hero's welcome and allowed their praises to declare to the people that He is indeed the Son of God and the King of Israel. On His way back to the city on Monday He continued His teaching with His disciples as He took notice of a fig tree which had no fruit. "Early in the morning, as He was on His way back to the city, He was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, He went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves" (v. 18-19a). The tree was alive, but it produced no fruit. It offered nothing of what it was created to do. Instead of giving the tree life, and allowing it to yield fruit, Jesus cursed the tree for taking up necessary space and took its' life away. "May you never bear fruit again!" (v.19b).
"The Lord will judge His people.
It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
(Hebrews 10:30b, 31)
Jesus is our Vine who gives us life and allows us to produce fruit. We have learned that He will take whatever measures necessary to make sure we bear His fruit; in quantity and quality! As Jesus, stood outside the city of Jerusalem, He used the fig tree to illustrate the judgment that would come to those who wasted His goodness and refused to produce the fruit of a godly life. He had already turned the tables in the temple for allowing the place where His glory was to dwell to become a marketplace for sin (reference Matthew 21:12-13). The privileges they had been given were being used to profit themselves, instead of glorifying God. The Lord will not allow us to waste the precious life He has given us, or let us rob others of that life He desires for them to have. We are His temple, the place where His glory dwells, but we must be holy for His presence to dwell there.
"Be holy, because I am holy."
(Leviticus 11:444, 45)
Our Lord knows that holiness can only come from Him. We have no other way of achieving the holy life than to receive it from Him. Jesus went to the cross because it is only through forgiveness that we can become a holy man! We cannot mandate holiness - it can only come from God; nor can we expect people to bear fruit that is good and holy if they aren't connected to God. That is why it is essential, as believers, that we abide daily in the Lord, so we can produce fruit that will be readily available to feed a spiritually hungry world. "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance" (Matthew 3:8).
The Spirit of Holy Reverence for the Father has been given to us to live a life of holiness in godly fear. As we learn to abide in Him more deeply a loving reference for the Lord will develop and we will grow to accept His discipline and pruning, and learn to trust Him more and more. "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline" (Proverbs 1:7). The world sees the cross as foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the wisdom and power of God (reference 1 Corinthians 1:18, 24). May we trust Him for the work He wants to do in us and the fruit He desires to produce in us and submit to His pruning so He can accomplish His work in us. May we allow Him to transform us into a holy vessel through which He can be glorified!
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RESTORE PRAISE!
"Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever, Amen!" (Revelation 7:12)
Evening Devotion: Focused on His Praise - Read John 17:1-5
As we continue our journey with the Lord we realize that we must depend more and more upon His strength and not ours. When we received His gift of salvation by faith we exchanged our weakness for His strength and He deposited His Holy Spirit of power within us so we could remain connected to Him and experience communion with Him daily. Throughout the Scriptures there are many prayers of faithful saints and warriors who depended whole-heartedly on God for their strength as they faced the trials and difficulties of the world while bringing glory to God. As we come to the end of our day, and welcome this extraordinary week before us, let us praise God for the flow of strength He pours into our lives and recognize that it is in weakness that we find our greatest strength (reference 2 Corinthians 12:10). May we remain connected to Him - He is all the strength we need!
Today we will join the Lord as He prays to the Father in John 17:
"Father, the time has come.
Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You.
For You granted Him authority over all people
that He might give eternal life to all those You have given Him.
Now this is eternal life: that they may know You,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.
I have brought You glory on earth by completing the work You gave me to do.
And now, Father, glorify Me in Your presence with the glory
I had with You before the world began."
(John 17:1-5)
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Heavenly Father,
"O my Strength, I sing praise to You;
You, O God, are my fortress, my loving God."
(Psalm 59:17)
Thank You for every opportunity You give
me to spend this time with You.
I'm so grateful for these divine appointments
where I can learn to depend more fully on You.
Give me strength in my weakness as
I face Your pruning shears and trust that
You are not giving me more than I can possibly bear.
May the words I speak, be only yours, and the service
I do be in Your strength, so that in all things Your name
may be praised through Jesus Christ our Lord.
May You receive all the glory and the power
for ever and ever.
(1 Peter 4:11)
In Jesus' Name. Amen.
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The entire CRUCIFIED journey will be available
online in a few days. To access the first 10 days of this journey
go to www.trumpetandtorch.org and
click on the Year of Jubilee seal on the home page.
When the Jubilee page opens up simply go to the
calendar to your right and scroll down to
March/April and click on CRUCIFIED.
Click on the CRUCIFIED image in the center of
your screen to access the pdf and download
and print out the journey.
Additional prayer and fasting journeys are available
online at www.trumpetandtorch.org
under the "HOW TO FAST" button at the
top of the website home page.
If this is your first time participating in a 40-day fast
it is recommended that you begin with
"EAT at the Table of the King"
This journey can be downloaded and printed out
under the How To Fast button
or accessed online in the Temple at LOGIN.
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