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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness Gal 5:22 |
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| 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 collecting daily manna), 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. Sunday, February 4, 2018
Today's Passage : Today's Passage: Subjecta:Proclaiming the Good News Bible Verse:Mark 16:14-20 (ESV) "Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs." Message:
This reading from Mark presents one of the most difficult sentences in the Bible. It literally says that people who believe in Christ and have been baptized will be able to cast out demons, speak in new tongues, pick up snakes, and drink poison without ill effect.
Idoubt one in a million present-day Christians completely believes and acts upon the passage. Most controversial are the practices of handling venemous snakes and drinking poison, which is practiced in only about 50 very small rural churches, who often meet in homes or abandoned buildings due to state laws forbidding their actions. Those who do handle snakes are regularly bitten and sometimes die.
So what are we to think? Does this hurt or even shatter our faith in the Bible’s truth? Or is our unwillingness to drink poison and handle snakes a sign that our faith is deficient?
I cannot even pretend to answer questions like this with any authority at all. But this is how I deal with this issue in my own life:
In Luke 10:19-20, Christ said, “I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Eve-Serpent-German
Eve and the Serpent.
I take two things from the Luke passage. First, “do not rejoice at this” means, to me, that I shouldn’t go around intentionally picking up snakes or drinking poison. This is purely personal; I don’t go around telling other people how they should worship. I do not doubt the passage, however; if it is God’s will and I step on a venemous animal and get bitten, it might well be that I would not be affected. I have certainly been stung by insects and it hurt like the devil (if you will excuse the pun).
Where I really take comfort, though, is in the meaning of whether such a sting would “hurt” me. Did it hurt Christ to be crucified? Well, yes and no. He was human and felt enormous physical pain from the crucifixion. But ultimately, it did not hurt him. Much to the contrary, it was part of His entire purpose. He defeated the ultimate pain of death.
This conflict or dichotomy between the pain our bodies inevitably suffer—including the human body of God Himself—and the perfect happiness we will achieve after our bodies die, runs throughout our experience as human beings who have received Christ’s grace. Ultimately, our suffering and death do not have an ill effect upon us; life is, in some respects, a burden we bear in order to reach God. (In other respects, it is a precious gift that we love and cling to.)
So in this respect, drinking poison or being bitten by a venemous animal can no longer hurt us. We cannot escape our human fear of pain and death, and in this sense, perhaps we suffer ill effects and hurt from the dangers of the world. But in the ultimate sense, no snake, no scorpion, nor anything else that harms our bodies can truly hurt us; the worst they can do is bring about our destiny of perfect joy.
Meditation : Prayer : Now all glory to God, who is able to keep me from falling away and will bring me with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault. All glory to him who alone is God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord. All glory, majesty, power, and authority are his before all time, and in the present, and beyond all time,....Amen. |
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