Christian Living

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Reclaimed From the Tomb of Dead Hopes

Have you ever absent-mindedly deleted a valuable item when cleaning out your e-mail inbox? You feel a momentary rush of panic before realizing that while the item appears to have been terminated forever, it's still available in the trash if you want to fish it out and restore it back to the land of the living in your inbox.

Has the devil ever ruined any of your hopes and dreams? Has a problem gotten so bad that he has convinced you that there's no way God can fix it, and His plans and purposes for your life have effectively been terminated? The devil has the power to hinder God's people and cause plenty of havoc, but he has no power to create anything and he has no power to take away the eternal life Jesus has given you.

Some people pray to St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. But it's an even better idea to pray directly to Jesus, Who was Himself raised up from death by the Power of the Holy Ghost. When Jesus died, he looked like he'd been run through a paper shredder, to put it bluntly. Even before Jesus was crucified, He had been severely beaten with a leaded whip by sadistic Roman soldiers. And the one who dealt those horrible blows to Christ was, most likely, a massive hulk of a man who enjoyed his work. Even if Jesus could have survived all He went through, His poor body was so torn it was beyond nature's power to heal. He was marred more than any other man who'd ever lived before (Isaiah 52:14).

The devil probably sneered and thought Jesus' body would end up thrown in the Gehenna garbage dump like the remains of common criminals condemned to the cross. Surely the enemy was counting on that to happen because Jesus had walked upon the earth as a materially poor man. Only the rich could afford fine tombs.

Mercifully, Jesus' body found a resting place in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, who got Pilate's permission to rescue it before further abuses could be heaped upon it. But this act of kindness was small comfort to Jesus' disciples, who felt that all their hopes and dreams for the Kingdom of God had just been forever trashed.

Old sluefoot could take Jesus out of action for a while, but he could not destroy Jesus permanently. On the third day Christ re-emerged from that tomb of dead hopes, and the faith and joy of the disciples was rekindled by the Flame of the Holy Spirit.

We need to seek God for His resurrection power to bring back to life those visions in our lives which seem to have died because of the hindrance of the enemy. May the good Lord help us to see things from an eternal perspective, not just a temporal one. May He blow new life into our flagging spirits. May He recharge us with a fresh anointing to "hope against hope", that once again we might dare believe that He is able to do the impossible (Rom.4:18-21).

I do not subscribe to the Private Messenger Service. I can be contacted at:
[email protected] http://www.kingdomageministry.com

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