DAVID’S PRAYER WAS ALSO AN AMAZING PROPHECY

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Thank goodness we have the Psalms: how helpful they are in our Christian walk, they explore the full range of human experience in a very personal and practical way. However, one psalm, Psalm 22 stands out because Jesus quotes verse 1 as His last words from the Cross. Why did Jesus take us to this psalm? It is obvious when we read the rest of the psalm, the psalm is a prophecy of what Jesus was experiencing on The Cross at the time He spoke it.

David had no understanding God was using Him to deliver a prophecy that provides incredible detail about what Jesus would experience on The Cross one thousand years later. David was obviously going through a terrible time in his life to have expressed the words he did in this prayer but consider that God gave David the words to pray so that His prayer could be used by Jesus to prove He is who He said He was, the promised Redeemer of not only Israel but the World.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.
Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued; in you, they trusted and were not put to shame.
But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; “He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!… I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death. For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet— I can count all my bones— they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots... ” Psalms 22:1-8

Note how Psalm 22 ends, David understood that regardless of whether God answered his prayer, God is still in control of His universe and this scripture will come to pass:

“As I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow to Me, and every tongue will give praise to God.” Romans 14:11

Moreover, it reveals that King Jesus will rule over the nations from Jerusalem in His soon coming Millennial Kingdom.

“I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation, I will praise you: You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him but has heard when he cried to him. From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will perform before those who fear him. The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD! May your hearts live forever! All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.“ Psalms 22:22-28

“They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.” Revelation 20:4-6

A lot of bad theology inevitably surfaces when we face suffering. When people lose their faith because of suffering, it suggests a weak or nominal faith that didn’t account for or prepare them for evil and suffering. Any faith not based on the truth needs to be lost—the sooner, the better.

Suffering and evil exert a force that either pushes us away from God or pulls us toward Him. But if personal suffering gives sufficient evidence that God doesn’t exist, then surely I shouldn’t wait until I suffer to conclude He’s a myth. If my suffering would one day justify denying God, then I should deny Him now in light of other people’s suffering.

Believing that God exists is not the same as trusting the God who exists. A nominal Christian often discovers in suffering that his faith has been in his church, family, career, or social network, but not Christ. As he faces evil and suffering, he may find his beliefs shaken or even destroyed. But genuine faith—trusting God even when we don’t understand—will be made stronger and purer.

The last three paras have been excerpted from Randy Alcorn’s book “90 Days of God’s Goodness”.

CORONAVIRUS GOD’S WAKE UP CALL

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John Piper has written an excellent book, Coronavirus and Christ. The following is a few excerpts from the book. The audio book is below.

The coronavirus is God’s thunderclap call for all of us to repent and realign our lives with the infinite worth of Christ. The coronavirus is not unique as a call to repentance. In fact, all natural disasters-whether floods, famines, locusts, tsunamis, or diseases-are God’s painful and merciful summons to repent. We see this from the way Jesus responds to disaster in Luke 13:1-5: “There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

God’s message for the world in this coronavirus outbreak. He is calling the world to repentance while there’s still time.
Let’s be more specific. What does repentance mean? The word in the New Testament means a change of heart and mind. Not a superficial change of opinion, but a deep transformation so that we perceive and prize God and Jesus for who they really are. Jesus described the change like this: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. (Matt. 22:37) Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (Matt. 10:37) In other words, the most fundamental change of heart and mind that repentance calls for is to treasure God with all that you are and to treasure Jesus more than all other relations.

What God is doing in the coronavirus is showing us- graphically, painfully-that nothing in this world gives the security and satisfaction that we find in the infinite greatness and worth of Jesus. This global pandemic takes away our freedom of movement, our business activity, and our face-to-face relations. It takes away our security and our comfort. And, in the end, it may take away our lives. 
The reason God exposes us to such losses is to rouse us to rely on Christ. Or to put it another way, the reason he makes calamity the occasion for offering Christ to the world is that the supreme, all-satisfying greatness of Christ shines more brightly when Christ sustains joy in suffering.

This is what it means to repent: to experience a change of heart and mind that treasures God in Christ more than life. 

“Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you” (Psalm 63:3). This was Paul’s faith. It was true in life and death. In life, because Christ is the sweetness of every pleasure, and better than them all. And in death, because “in [God’s] presence there is fullness of joy; at [his] right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

IS TRUMP DRAINING THE SWAMP AS PROMISED?

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Even before Trump’s January 2018 State of the Union Address, his administration had waded into the swamp and begun the cleanup process, fully embracing 64 percent of the agenda items proposed by the conservative Heritage Foundation for changing the way Washington works.

Pulling America out of the Paris Agreement on climate change turned out to be a major public relations victory for the president, sending a warning salvo across the bow of Washington, D.C.’s entrenched climate-change lobby and earning plaudits from his anti-globalist base.

Ending Obama-era regulations on net neutrality was another.

Then proposing and passing a once-in-a-generation tax reform package—over the objections of legislators from both parties—was an important sequel leading to, contrary to some media warnings, higher take-home pay and bonuses for American workers.

Using the provisions of the Congressional Review Act, the administration worked with Congress to eliminate 14 regulations adopted in the waning days of the Obama administration. The president made it clear he intended to wage war on over  regulation and began by lifting Obama’s moratorium on coal leases on federal lands. He then instructed all executive branch agencies to review all new rules, with the goal of eliminating two regulations for every new one. By year’s end, the administration had withdrawn, delayed or made inactive 1500 proposed regulations, saving more than $8 billion in lifetime net regulatory costs, with the promise of increasing savings to $9.8 billion with regulatory cost-cutting in 2018.

Another priority of President Trump’s agenda is the nomination and confirmation of conservative constitutional judges, perhaps best illustrated by the appointments of Justice Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. Trump also appointed and gained confirmation for 12 circuit court of appeals judges before the end of his first year in office. This was the largest number of appellate judges confirmed during the first year of any American president. However, the challenge would become more complicated the following year, as more than 90 of the president’s appointments were blocked in the Senate.

Nominating and confirming strict constitutionals to the federal bench, as the Trump team has repeatedly pointed out, is an important step in reducing bureaucratic entanglements since most federal cases are settled at the appellate level. As many as 8,000 cases are filed before the Supreme Court each year, which is far more than any court can consider. Plenary review with oral arguments by attorneys for both sides is granted in about 80 cases each term, and as many as 100 cases may be disposed of without plenary review. Only one of every 700 cases heard by the appellate courts will find its way to the Supreme Court, so reducing the number of activist judges, eliminating needless bureaucracy and resolving disputes at the earliest possible level is a victory for the rule of law.

And by God’s grace, we will see an increase in this kind of victory in the Supreme Court. I encourage you to read more about this topic in Steve Strang’s Trump Aftershock.

FORMERLY TRANSGENDER WOMEN SHARE REGRETS ABOUT TRANSITIONING DURING TEEN YEARS

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Four brave young women have taken on the bold task of combating our culture’s popular but extremely harmful views surrounding sex and gender identity. Dagny, Chiara, Jesse and Helena are the faces of the newly launched Pique Resilience Project, a movement designed to support individuals who have been victimised by progressive transgender ideology.

Earlier this month, the group launched a YouTube channel devoted to discussions surrounding “gender transition” and the pressure to define one’s sexual identity at a young age.The Pique Resilience Project website explicitly notes that the group is not conservative.

In the first video, posted Feb. 1, the young women, ages 20 to 22, share how they came to identify as men. At one point, three out of the four women were taking male hormone supplements to catalyse their physical “transition” from female to male.

Desiring happiness

Dagny noted that her parents’ encouragement led her to make decisions she would ultimately come to regret.

“I think if I had been made to wait until I was 18, when I was just on the verge of going to college, I would not have started hormones,” she said.

Later in the video, Dagny explained how her transgender identity ultimately stemmed from a desire to feel loved, accepted and happy.

“I think that transitioning both socially and then later medically became this way to inject positive change over my life when at the time I had no control over my life and was super sad,” she said. “But looking back it was probably the most stagnant period of my life so far.” “I made no new friends,” she added. “I was miserable all the time, my grades were dropping, I was self-harming.”

“I think what I saw as positive change was actually the thing that was dragging me down the most in my life at the time,” Dagny said. “So I honestly can’t see any pros to, at least, my experience with transition.”

Jesse shared that her decision to live “as a man” only served to worsen other already existing mental health issues. She looks back on that period in her teens as a “confusing and deluded” time. “I completely regret jumping into it,” she said. “I should have just chilled out.”

Helena added that her decision to transition ultimately came down to intense pressure from others. Whenever she voiced any doubts or raised questions, she was “vehemently shot down.”

Paying the price

Chiara also spoke about the pressure to solidify her transgender identity, and the backlash she faced when she dared to change her mind.

“As soon as you start to maybe move away from a trans identity or start to voice things, they call you a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), or they instantly ostracise you and call you a traitor and fake,” she said. “So it’s very hard to voice doubts and that contributes to not allowing you to voice that or realise that about yourself.”

The group is not against transgenderism so much as it seeks to promote an openness to individuals who no longer identify as trans. But for many in the transgender movement, even that is going too far.

Seeking solidarity

Efforts like the Pique Resilience Project should be welcomed by Christian and conservative groups who oppose radical gender ideology. Though these women may be coming from a different political and moral perspective, their experiences speak to the true consequences of living outside God’s design. They may not be able to see exactly why just yet, but the freedom they experienced after breaking away from a transgender lifestyle is a testament to the goodness and beauty of embracing the law written on every human heart.

As our culture continues to push new and confusing views surrounding sex and gender, we need to be praying for our struggling brothers and sisters, that they may find healing and freedom in living out God’s plan for their lives.

Taken from article by Carly Hoilman in Faithwire

 

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GOD AT WORK IN NORTH KOREA

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Kim Jong-un met with Moon Jae-in for a Peace Summit on April 27 and announced that the 67-year-old Korean conflict is over. “I came here to put an end to the history of confrontation,” Kim Jung-un told Moon in a meeting on the border town of Panmunjom.

What was behind the Korean surprise? Most media outlets were unaware that Christians in South Korea had been fasting and praying for the peace summit. Pastors held an all-night vigil in the city of Paju, south of the North Korean border. And a group of Christian politicians held a fasting and prayer event in the National Assembly buildings in Seoul, according to Yonhap News.

“He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two; He burns the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”  Psalm 42:9-10

God has worked this miracle. It is not the work of any politician. He has heard the prayers of his people on both sides of this conflict—and the prayers of the faithful around the world who felt North Korea’s pain. Continue to pray God will engineer a lasting peace in this part of the world, and open the doors wide for the gospel to flourish in a thirsty land.

North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in shake hands at a historic summit. (YouTube/BBC News)

“There will be no more war on the Korean peninsula, and a new age of peace has begun,” the two leaders said in a joint statement. Kim Jong-un, who has built the fourth largest army in the world—with 1.19 million soldiers—says he will now focus on rebuilding his country’s shattered economy.

North Korea’s persecuted Christians have also been praying for this moment—for years. They have been horribly persecuted. They have been forced to meet secretly. They have been routinely rounded up and sent to labour camps—or just shot on sight—because they did not worship Kim Jong-un as their god. For such a turn around by Kim Jong-un, required a miracle. Our God is a miracle working God, this story should be inspiration to us all to get on our knees and pray.

GOD APPOINTS LEADERS – BRAZIL NOW HAS A DEVOUT CHRISTIAN PRESIDENT

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Victory of Brazil right-winger Jair Bolsonaro latest shock in global politics

The Wall St Journal:  The rise of the right-wing firebrand is the latest shock in global politics as voters turn against the status quo, starting in 2016 with the Brexit vote in the UK and Donald Trump’s election in the US It also likely shifts politics in the world’s fourth largest democracy sharply to the right.

Mr Bolsonaro’s victory was the culmination of deep shifts in Brazilian society over recent decades, including the rise of evangelical Christianity. Mr Bolsonaro himself is a devout Christian baptised in the Jordan River. His middle name in Portuguese is “Messiah.”

Now comprising a third of Brazilians, evangelicals are on track to outnumber Catholics by 2035, according to pollster Datafolha. Bishop Edir Macedo, the billionaire founder of one of Brazil’s biggest evangelical churches who also owns the powerful TV Record network, endorsed Mr Bolsonaro shortly before the vote.

Before the results were known, but with much of the country now behind him, Mr. Bolsonaro said in a radio interview recently that he saw no reason to change or moderate his message. “I’m not going to become the little ‘peace and love’ Jair.” His name Jair means “He enlightens or one giving light”

I sincerely hope he lives up to his name.

AUSTRALIA HAS A NEW PRIME MINISTER APPOINTED BY GOD

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The election of Scott Morrison as Prime Minister of Australia demonstrates clearly that God appoints our leaders and that prayer works.

The former Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull is a godless man. He came to power by being ruthless. God gifted him with intelligence, good looks, and he was born into wealth and privilege. From an early age, he told his peers that he would be Prime Minister, and even made the prediction he would achieve it by the age of 40. As a lawyer, Malcolm achieved wealth and prestige at an early age. His ambition to become Prime Minister at any cost was revealed when he first tried to get pre-selection for a seat in the Labour Government, unsuccessful, he then aggressively sought a seat in the Liberal Party, this time successfully. Finally, he got the top job by undermining the then Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. Is it any wonder then, that he would be, likewise, challenged by another, just as ambitious younger man, Peter Dutton. However, the outcome of the vote for a new leader was a complete surprise to everyone. Peter Dutton who caused the upset did not get the outcome he assumed was “in the bag”. The man of integrity got the job, the man people could trust, Scott Morrison a committed, outspoken Christian, who takes God’s command to love his neighbour as himself seriously, who spoke and voted against gay marriage though he loves the people who voted yes.

Watching Sky News in the lead up to the vote for our new Prime Minister, they interviewed political pundits on both sides of politics. I was blessed to hear the interview with Labour Party spokesperson, Graham “Richo” Richardson. He said, he was a good friend of Scott Morrison despite them being on opposite sides of politics. He told the Sky News interviewers that he was speaking to Scott just before he entered the Party Room for the vote. Graham said that he playfully told Scott that he would pray for the right outcome, and that Scott’s response was, “I have been trying to get you to pray all these years and now you tell me you are going to pray!” Neither of them expected Scott Morrison to emerge from the Party Room as the Prime Minister elect of this nation. God’s hand was clearly in control of the events and the outcome. He appointed Scott Morrison, Prime Minister of Australia. Hallelujah!

 

Scott Morrison has won the Liberal Party leadership.