MATTIE'S CHRISTIAN PAGES

February 4, 2001
Thelma Elaine Rudstrom

 

Raising Up Once Again

God’s grace is sufficient for all our needs, every time, no matter what comes our way we will still stand up and say: “We are more than conquerors through Christ who loves us” You are in my prayers to our Father

The Lord is the strength of our lives.  He is our dwelling place for us to live and abide IN Him and move and have our being IN Him.  Here is where we find rest for our souls.  How needful we are of Him.  And how great our God is.  He is Almighty God – our sufficiency.  He is the Source of everything, and we can depend on Him for all our needs to be supplied.  The word that is so needful in every adverse situation, I find, is:  “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you”.  Our relationship with Him is of utmost importance and to seek for communion IN Him, and receiving the rest that He has provided for us is essential.  His word gives us strength and wholeness.  “I rejoice at Thy Word, as one that findeth great spoil.” Psalm 110:162.

When I write His word to share with others I experience His resurrection life in me.  And it is our desire that those that receive of His word will receive the strength of His resurrected life as they receive His word with gladness and Joy, for the joy of the Lord is our strength.  To acknowledge HIM in all our ways (not to acknowledge the devil in his ways), but to acknowledge the Lord in ALL our ways and to not lean upon our own understanding, we have this promise: “He will direct All our paths.”  By this I understand we are to realize that God is in control of everything.  He created everything, including the waster to destroy.  We surely cannot lean to our own understanding of this.  But, in His time, His Spirit will reveal all truths to us concerning this truth and how it has a purpose in fulfilling the Spirit’s working within us to purge us from all dead works to serve a living God.  We are not to be ignorant of the devil’s devises.  We are to resist him every time. However, we are not to center our thoughts on the adversary but to keep a single eye on the Lord at ALL times and know that He is always in control of all things.

The word of God verifies in many scriptures that He is in control of all things; that He created the negative forces is truth in the natural as well as in the spiritual realm.  It seems logical then, that He evidently needed the negative force to create us in His image, too.  Knowing God’s love for us as we do, it is pure logic to understand that God does not create anything for our harm.  “He created us for His good pleasure”.  He did not subject us to vanity for our harm.  He has a sovereign plan and purpose for having  subjecting us to vanity.  We will know this secret too, when we are able to bear it.   God will reveal it to us when we are ready to receive it.  You will find this scripture in Isaiah 54:16, “Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy.”  The rest of the chapter through chapter 55 show us His grace and our victory.  All of Isaiah, chapters 54 and 55 are good to read in view of God’s purposes. The ultimate victory is revealed throughout but the climax is in chapter 55, verses 10 – 13:

The adversities, as hard as they are, do cause us to seek our heavenly Father’s face with all our heart.  Our relationship with Him is of utmost value to our receiving His rest in every situation.  The end result for all chastening from the Lord is:  If we are exercised thereby, we will find that, truly, all things work for our good, and it was all in His purpose and plan to perfect us INTO His image.  We really do not need to fight the devil off.  Remember Joseph told his brothers that what they did was evil and they meant to harm him but God, all the time, meant it for Joseph’s good and also for his family’s good.

This I know: The devil was created by God and is only God’s tool to bring about God’s purpose so the works of God will be manifest in the earth.  However, we do need to resist the devil.  This is part of the renewing of our mind to cast down every high imagination that exalts its self above the knowledge of God and we then bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.  Let Christ and His word within arise and His enemies be scattered.  This is God’s word to purify us.  His resurrected LIFE is at work in us.  Where His LIFE is, where His word is in us, the adversary that brought us death is destroyed.  And what God has begun in us He will also finish.  You can depend on it.  It is His word.  And His resurrection LIFE in us will perfect us; complete His work in us to perfection; to holiness IN His image.  I received the following letter from Ray Prinzing, yesterday and it is such a comfort to read the simple way he writes it.  I quote it for you:

“Together we give thanks to the Lord for His grace sufficient for all of our days and happenings, so that we can say, “All is well.”  True, pressures ebb and flow like the tides of the sea, but He controls them all, and says to the waves “thus far, and no farther”.  Thus, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.  And yes, even more so, sufficient unto the day is HIS GRACE to bring us through to be “more than conquerors through Him that loves us”.  Praise God!  And what convincing ways the Lord uses to remind us all that truly “ALL THINGS do work together for good to them that love God, and are called according to His purpose”.  He is Lord, and we would acknowledge Him in all the events of our day”

“And it is no wonder Paul wrote that all creation is on tiptoe to see the sons of God come forth—a people with answers for the day.  We do have a hope within, the anchor of the soul, thank God for that.  All any of us can do is look to Christ Himself.  All earth ministries are incomplete, but the Christ is TRUTH, and He is our LIFE.” (Unquote)

“He sent forth His word and healed them.”  This is His word.  It is His word that heals us and “makes us every wit whole”.  And in intercession for others we can “Send forth His word to heal them” and speak His word that they be made whole.