Category: 2016 Daily Blackboards

Philippians 4:19

And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

People of the world feel helpless as the systems of the world go up and down. They turn on the television and they hear, “This war will plunge the world into a recession.” They open the newspapers and they read that “Unemployment is at an all-time high”. They watch the stock market take a drastic drop.

God does not want you to feel helpless because you are not of the world. (John 17:16) You are of God and therefore need not be subject to the world’s systems. Whatever the world’s situation is, fear not because “God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus”.

Notice that Philippians 4:19 says that “God shall supply all your need”. It does not say that God may supply some of your needs. It also says that God will do it “according to His riches”. It is not out of His riches. If a millionaire gives you a hundred dollars, it is out of his riches. But if he gives to you according to his riches, it means that he is lining up his millions for you! The verse says that God does it “according to His riches in glory”. It is not according to the riches of your company or how well the economy is doing. No, it is according to God’s riches in glory!

So how do you stop yourself from feeling helpless in uncertain times? Don’t look at your circumstances or the bad things that are happening in the world because you will get “earth-sick”. Instead, look at the unshakable, eternal Word of God. Your heart will become stable and you will see your God supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus!

Genesis 15:12

Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

In business, a sleeping or silent partners does not work but still take home huge profits. Did you know that in your covenant with God, you are like a silent partner?

When Abraham asked God how he would know for sure that he would inherit the land that God had promised him, God made a covenant with him. (Genesis 15:8-21) But instead of cutting the covenant with Abraham by walking in between the animal pieces with him, God put Abraham into a deep sleep and cut the covenant with Jesus instead. Jesus, the light of the world, appeared as the pillar of fire and cut the covenant with God the Father who appeared as the pillar of cloud. In other words, Jesus took Abraham’s place. He was perfect Man representing Abraham when He cut the covenant with His Father.

By substituting Abraham with Jesus, God was being gracious because if Abraham had done it, he would also have been responsible for keeping the covenant. And Abraham, being a mere man, would fail. But God the Son can never fail! Abraham’s blessings were therefore guaranteed because they did not depend on his performance but Jesus’ performance. Abraham was literally a sleeping partner, a beneficiary of the covenant.

Today, God has also made a covenant with you, called the new covenant. And like Abraham, you are a sleeping partner because the new covenant was also cut between God the Father and God the Son at Calvary. You are simply a beneficiary of the new covenant. You enjoy all its benefits without having to work at keeping it. Jesus, your representative, has already fulfilled all the conditions on your behalf. And because His obedience is perfect and His work is perfectly finished, the covenant blessings for you are guaranteed! There is nothing left for you to do, but everything for you to believe. Don’t try to work for your covenant blessings. Rest in the Son’s finished work and receive them by faith!

Matthew 6:27

Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

Many Christians are familiar with Jesus’ rhetorical question, “Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?” But not many of us actually let it get into our hearts and allow the love of God to free us from our habit of worrying. The truth is, no amount of worrying can lengthen your life or add anything to your physical person. Instead, worrying robs you of sleep, health and many good years. In fact, it is only when you are worry-free that God’s anointing flows freely in you, strengthening, healing, restoring and adding to you.

When you worry, you are actually believing that the devil has the power to make inroads into your life that God cannot protect you from. But when you refuse to worry, you are putting your faith in God. You have more confidence in His love and power working for you than in the devil’s ability to harm you! When you refuse to worry, but choose to rest in the finished work of Christ, you will see the manifestation of your blessing. You will see your miracle!

1 Peter 5:8

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

The devil cannot just walk right up to you and rob you of your health, peace or family. He cannot just come into your life to enforce disease and destruction. If the devil can do that, then he would not have to walk about “seeking whom he may devour”. He would only have to walk straight up to anyone he wants to devour and devour him! But since the Bible says that he goes about seeking whom he may devour, then the truth is that there are people whom he cannot devour.

You see, the devil goes about like a roaring lion trying to stir up fear in people. But the people who are not devourable are those who refuse to be intimidated by his roars because they know that the true Lion of Judah, Jesus Christ (Revelation 5:5), has already come and rendered powerless him who had the power of death. (Hebrews 2:14, NASB) They know that the devil cannot just do anything to them because the Lion of Judah resides in them, and that He is greater than the devil who is in the world. (1 John 4:4)

The Lion of Judah is in you. He has given you rights, privileges, authority and power. He redeemed you with His blood. Therefore, everything about you and your life is redeemed by His blood. Whatever you have covered with the blood of Jesus, God declares, “Protected! Redeemed!” And the devil flees when he sees the blood. And when he flees, he takes with him sicknesses, diseases, pains, sufferings, destruction and loss.

Once the devil knows that you know who you are in Christ and what you have in Him, his days of intimidating you are over, and you are numbered among the undevourable!

Isaiah 53:4

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…

Imagine the dreadful disease leprosy eating a man alive. The poor leper in Matthew 8:2 could stand his suffering no longer, so he came out into the open to look for Jesus. He needed to know if Jesus was willing to heal him. When he saw Jesus, he fell at His feet and said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” (Matthew 8:2) The Son of God looked at the outcast with love in His eyes, reached out His hand, touched him and said, “I am willing; be cleansed.” (Matthew 8:3)

Perhaps you are suffering from some disease or sickness and wondering if God is willing to heal you? You may not be sure if He is willing because just as you have seen people get healed, you have also seen people not get healed. Don’t look to people’s experiences. Look to the cross! As surely as Jesus bore away your sins, He also bore away your diseases!

Here is a solid foundation for believing this truth. In Isaiah 53, the chapter on our Lord’s crucifixion, it says in verse four: “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”. The words “griefs” and “sorrows” here mean “sicknesses” and “pains” in the original Hebrew text. So Isaiah was referring to physical healing. Also look at Matthew 8:16-17: “…they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: ‘He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.'” Matthew quotes Isaiah 53:4, saying that Jesus took our “infirmities” and bore our “sicknesses”. The context here refers to physical healing.

If you will just believe this truth, your days of sickness will be over. You will walk in greater health because the One who has surely borne your sicknesses and carried your pains says to you, “I am willing, be cleansed!”

Mark 5:28-29

For she said, “If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well.” Immediately the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of the affliction

Have you ever heard people say, “I will believe it only when I see it.” Generally, that is the way the world thinks. But God’s ways are not like the ways of the world. The world says, “If I can’t feel it or see it, I cannot believe the miracle is here.” While God says, “If you believe it before you feel it or see it, you will see your miracle.”

Believing first before seeing the evidence of what we are believing for is called faith. Faith is like a spark and Jesus is the dynamite powder.

In the story of the healing of the woman with the issue of blood, there were many people who touched Jesus (Mark 5:31), but nothing happened to them. They didn’t touch Him in faith. But when the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years came to Him and touched Him in faith, He felt power leave His body (Mark 5:30), and it sparked off an explosion of healing in the woman’s body! Hearing about how good, kind and loving Jesus was fired her faith to believe that He could and would heal her. So convinced was she (even when the condition in her body was still evident) that she said, “If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well.” Did she experience her healing first before she believed? No, she believed first in Jesus’ goodness and power, acted in faith and only then felt the healing in her body.

In the same way, God wants you to believe in His goodness and love toward you. He wants you to know how willing He is to act on your behalf to bless you, and how, with Christ, He will freely give you every good thing. (Romans 8:32) He wants you to declare by faith that all is and shall be well with you, and to expect to see just that. And then, no matter how long you have had the problem, no matter how bad the experts say it is, healing and restoration will take place, and you will receive what you are believing for!

2 Corinthians 5:21

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Some Christians believe that they have to work at becoming more righteous. And they kick themselves when they do wrong. They don’t realize that by doing these things, they are not seeking God’s righteousness, but are trying to establish their own righteousness by their law-keeping and right conduct. Righteousness is not about right conduct. It is a gift from God to us through Jesus. And since it is a gift, we cannot earn it by our law-keeping and right conduct. We can only receive it! So how do we receive this gift? We receive it through the cross. God made Jesus “who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”. So today, we are the righteousness of God in Christ. We are as righteous as Jesus is!

Some of us think that in the body of Christ, there are different classes of righteousness, like the seating classes in an airplane. They think that some of us have economy-class righteousness, others have business-class righteousness and a select few have first-class righteousness. That is nonsense! When God gave us Jesus, He became our righteousness. So we have His righteousness. This means that we are 100 per cent righteous in God’s eyes! We have first-class righteousness!

You might say, “I don’t understand. How can I be righteous when I have done wrong?” Think about this: Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us. Jesus knew no sin, did no sin and in Him was no sin. But at the cross, He received our sin and became sin for us. Likewise, we, who were sinners, knew no righteousness, did no righteousness and in us was no righteousness. But at the cross, we received His righteousness and became the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. At the cross, the divine exchange took place. Jesus took our place so that we might take His place. He did not deserve to be made sin, but He was made sin in our place. We did not deserve to be made righteous, but we were made righteous because we received His righteousness. What good news! What amazing grace!

John 10:3

…he calls his own sheep by name…

Do you feel like you are just a face in a crowd or a number in a system? You are identified by your social security number. If you feel depersonalized and dehumanized, that is exactly how the devil wants you to feel – that you do not matter much to anyone, especially to God.

But you do matter to God! He calls you by name. He knows exactly what you are going through and where you are hurting. He sees you and cares for you, just as He cared for the people when He first walked on earth.

He will do for you what He did for the woman in Samaria. The Bible says that “He needed to go through Samaria” to get from Judea to Galilee (John 4:4). Now, any Jew of His day would have taken a different and longer route to avoid going through Samaria because they hated the Samaritans, though the way through Samaria would take much less time. But Jesus deliberately took the shorter, avoided route, just so He could stop by Samaria to speak to the woman who had been searching for something in her life to satisfy her. This woman had had five husbands and the man she was living with currently was not her husband. Clearly, things had not been going right in her life. She was probably looking for answers and fulfillment, and must have felt ashamed about her failed marriages and current lifestyle.

Yet, in spite of all this, she mattered to Jesus! He needed to go to her to minister to her. And indeed, after she met Jesus, the perfect Man, she was transformed. She was no longer ashamed, and went into the city to tell the people about Him (John 4:28-29).

Jesus wants to meet you wherever you are at in life and minister His grace to you. You certainly matter to Him. He came to give you life and life more abundantly (John 10:10). You are not just a face in a crowd or a number. No, He knows you by name and has a personal love for you. And in spite of the mess that you might be in, He wants to meet your every need and make your life beautiful!

Romans 1:16

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes…

Each time you hear the gospel of Christ, you are hearing God’s good news for you. And the Bible tells us that the gospel of Christ – the good news that God wants all men to hear – is the very power of God for your salvation, not just from hell, but also from illnesses, financial lack, harm, and every aspect of your life that needs saving!

You may say, “I’ve heard the gospel of Christ, but it seems like I am one of those whom the power of God has missed.” When you hear the gospel of Christ, do you really believe it? You cannot just understand it in your mind. You must know and believe the good news in your heart, and then you will see that it is the power of God for your salvation.

So what is the good news that God wants you to know in your heart, which will release the power and salvation of God into your situation? “For in it [the good news] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith…” (Romans 1:17) The good news is that you are the righteousness of God in Christ, which you receive from faith to faith. This means that this righteousness comes because you have faith in His blood, not your good behavior, to make you righteous. It is from faith to faith, not faith to works, or works to works. The good news is not preached to show you what is wrong with you. It is preached to show you what is right with you because of Jesus’ work on the cross, in spite of what is wrong with you!

There is nothing left for you to do to earn God’s blessings for your life. You only need to hear and believe the all-encompassing saving power of the gospel of Christ to heal you of diseases, preserve you from danger, bless your finances and bring well-being to your family.

The world may say that the good news is too good to be true. But for those of us who are the righteousness of God in Christ, the good news is so good because it is indeed true!

1 John 1:7

But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

The devil may whisper in your head, “You cannot go into God’s presence because you have not been reading your Bible and serving in your church.” Or he will tell you that it is because of the sin that you have just committed. The devil will always try and make you feel that you are not qualified or clean enough to go near God. But the truth is, regardless of how you feel and what you have done, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

In the original Greek text, the tense for the word “cleanses” denotes a present continuous action. This means that once you are a believer, the blood of Jesus Christ keeps on cleansing you from every sin! So you can rest knowing that you are always forgiven in this continuous “wash cycle” of Jesus’ blood. Because you are continually cleansed, you are always in the light. Of course, you will fail here and there, but you are still in the light because the blood is continuously washing you!

The Bible says that we overcome the devil, the accuser of our brethren, by the blood of the Lamb. (Revelation 12:11) If you have sinned, remind yourself that Jesus’ blood keeps on cleansing you from every sin – 24 hours a day, seven days a week – and move on with God! The devil cannot defeat you when your faith is in the blood that cleanses you continuously.

Some Christians are guilt-ridden because their consciousness of their sins condemns them. Although Jesus’ blood continuously cleanses them, they would rather hold on to their past mistakes and feel bad about them, thinking that they are being humble and holy when they do this. But this is nothing more than self-righteousness. The eternal blood of Jesus Christ offers you eternal redemption and everlasting righteousness. Accept the payment of His blood as the final, perfect and only sacrifice you will ever need!