Manna in the Morning

Understanding is so important. Here’s a good example: A college student took his girlfriend to her very first football game. After the game, he asked her how she liked it.

“I really didn’t understand the game at all,” she said, “and there was one thing that I especially did not understand: why would these otherwise intelligent men try to kill each other for 25 cents?”

Her confused boyfriend asked, “25 cents? What are you talking about?”

“All they were doing the whole game through,” the girlfriend explained, “was screaming at each other to GET THE QUARTERBACK, GET THE QUARTERBACK!”

To be sure understanding the terms of a game that we are not familiar with can present its own confusion. But, I think there is a greater challenge: trying to understand why God loves me... trying to understand that the Creator of the Universe wants to have a relationship with me... trying to understand why so many people have turned away from the God who loves them so much. A great theologian was once ask about the greatest theological truth he had ever discovered... to which he replied, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so!”

One of the great promises of Scripture is when Jesus gave the Great Commission to His followers and closed it with the words, “And lo, I am with you always to the end of the age.” In another place He said, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” What a great blessing it is to know that we do not have to travel life’s highway alone. Someone has written:

It takes a lot of courage to put things in God’s hands. To give ourselves completely, our lives, our hopes, our plans; To follow where He leads us, and make His will our own. But all it takes is foolishness to go the way alone.

You do not have to travel alone today. Claim God’s presence and He will walk with you every step of the way. Remember the hymn: "Footprints of Jesus that make the pathway glow; We will follow the steps of Jesus where’er they go.”

Will Thompson’s hymn is a positive statement about one’s relationship to Jesus Christ and how that relationship impacts all of life. The first verse of his hymn is,:

Jesus is all the world to me,
My life, my joy, my all;
He is my strength from day to day,
Without Him I would fall.
When I am sad to Him I go,
No other one can cheer me so...He’s my Friend.

The truth expressed in Thompson’s hymn is that when we know Jesus in a personal way... He brings meaning and purpose to everything about our lives. Can you say with Will Thompson that Jesus is all the world to you? Can you say that He is “your life, your joy, your all?” I encourage you to cultivate your relationship with Jesus Christ so that you can sing, “Beautiful life with such a Friend; Beautiful life that has no end; eternal life, eternal joy... He’s my Friend.”

Will Thompson’s hymn is a positive statement about one’s relationship to Jesus Christ and how that relationship impacts all of life. The first verse of his hymn is:

One of the great promises of Scripture is when Jesus gave the Great Commission to His followers and closed it with the words, “And lo, I am with you always to the end of the age.” In another place He said, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” What a great blessing it is to know that we do not have to travel life’s highway alone. Someone has written:

“It takes a lot of courage to put things in God’s hands. To give ourselves completely, our lives, our hopes, our plans; To follow where He leads us, and make His will our own. But all it takes is foolishness to go the way alone.”

You do not have to travel alone today. Claim God’s presence and He will walk with you every step of the way. Remember the hymn: Footprints of Jesus that make the pathway glow; We will follow the steps of Jesus where’er they go.”

Billy Strayhorn shares an old story, about a little boy who cried out in the night. "Daddy, I'm scared!" Half awake Daddy said, "Don't be afraid, Daddy's right across the hall." There was a brief pause and the little boy called out, "I'm still scared." So Daddy pulled out the big guns, "You don't have to be afraid, God is with you. God loves you." The pause was longer but the little boy called out again, "I don't care about God, Daddy; I want someone with skin on!"

God knew we needed that assurance of someone with skin on. So God wrapped all the glory of heaven into the flesh and blood of Jesus and stepped into this world as the Good Shepherd just to show us how much we are loved. The first chapter of John’s Gospel states that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Message translation reads, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved in to the neighborhood.” (John 1:11) Our God is not detached and unconcerned. Neither is He capricious or unapproachable. Our God is Holy, yet involved. He is absolutely Righteous and also full of Grace. On top of all that we have Jesus promise, “I will never leave you nor forsake you!”

One of the most beautiful revelations that God has given us of Himself is wrapped up in the name “Immanuel.” What makes this so important is that it is one of the most powerful ways that God expresses His desire to be close to us. So many think of God as “detached.” God is over there, and we are over here. But that is a sad mistake to make because Immanuel declares that “God is with us.” He is around us. He covers us. Through Christ He is within us. We need to grasp the wonderful truth that God desires a close, intimate relationship with us. He longs for us, our companionship, our fellowship. He longs for our love. There is passage of Scripture deep within the heart of one of the saddest books in the Bible, the Book of Lamentations, that expresses our response to God’s yearning for us. It’s a breath of fresh air surrounded by pain and suffering at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians centuries before Christ. It’s found in the third chapter verses 22-24. Here is what Jeremiah says, “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” God wants to walk with you today...let Him be your travel companion.