 |
Home | Mission Statement | Video Gallery | Audio Gallery | Photo Gallery | Daily Manna | Testimonies | | Links | Contact us |
 |
Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Ps 37:4 |
 |
| Archived Manna: | |
Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Thursday, January 22, 2026
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :The True Sons of Abraham (Galatians #28) Bible Verse: Galatians 3:6-9 (Daily Prayer Bible) "So also, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” 7 Understand, then, that those who have faith are sons of Abraham. 8The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and foretold the gospel to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” 9 So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith." Message:
In the 1st century A.D. (and at many other times), Jews traced their spiritual status to their biological relationship to Abraham. Abraham was the patriarch of Judaism. Matthew 1 traces Jesus’ lineage to Abraham, because this is the ultimate test of Hebrew identity. One of Matthew’s purposes was to convince the Jews that Jesus was the true king promised to them in Scripture; and such a king had to be descended from David, and thus from Abraham.
One can only imagine the shock, then, when Paul tells the Jews that they are not Abraham’s heirs (and never actually were); they are not his “true sons,” at least, not by dint of their blood relationship to him. Paul has already kicked the legs out from under the law of Moses; now he does the same to the central tenet of Judaism. He has been vehement that Judaism, as a religion, died with Christ; and now, he tells us that Judaism as an ethnicity died as well. Yes, people continued (and still continue) to call themselves Jewish and to practice the religion, but both the ethnic heritage and the religious observance have lost their meaning before God.
Palm Sunday
Paul is hitting right into the core of the Judaizers, who were trying to convince Gentile converts that, to be justified before God, they must be circumcised and follow Jewish laws about diet, purification, etc. Paul not only refutes this, but also teaches the exact opposite. He teaches, in effect, that “We Jews can retain our status as Abraham’s descendants and heirs, but only if we cease to rely on the law of Moses.” A pagan relying on his faith in Christ is now a person who is right before God; a Jew who is relying on the law of Moses is now a person who is condemned.
To us, there is more than a historical or theological message here; for Paul is telling everybody to have the faith of Abraham. What is this faith? First, of course, Abraham believed what God said absolutely, positively, to the point where he was willing to sacrifice his precious son Isaac, his sole heir. And secondly, Abraham believed that doing what God said was the most important thing possible.
Do you or I have this kind of faith? We might or might not have the same degree of faith, but we have the same type of faith. It is a faith that will cause us to do things that we would otherwise consider to be against our self-interest — give away our money, spend time helping someone who needs us and can never possibly repay us, for example — and it is a belief that God is the most important thing in our lives.
Meditation : Prayer : Now to him who by his power within us is able to do far more than we ever dare to ask or imagine — to him be glory in the Church through Jesus Christ for ever and ever, Amen. |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
 |
