Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
“For you have been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast from the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall. .”
Isaiah 25:4
Some years back, I read an interview with an arrogant NFL player in a sports magazine. In it, he made a statement that especially struck me. The hefty football player boasted, “There’s not a man on earth who can tell me what to do.”
That was not true. The fact was, he was being told what to do every time he stopped at a red light. He was being told what to do every time he paid taxes, whether at the end of each tax year or whenever he bought something at the store. He was even being told what to do every time he put on his clothes because the styles he chose to wear were dictated by the society around him. And when he is old, as he surely is by now, he may become so feeble that he is told everything that he can and cannot do. In fact, many formerly proud people grow so feeble and helpless that others have to do everything for them.
All of us are being told what to do, every day of our lives. Somebody in a place of influence or authority has already decided many things for us before we even get out of bed in the morning. That is the normal course of life on this earth, and there is not a single one of us that is above that control or influence.
The good life is the life that is led by a good spirit. It is the life that is being guided through this world by the Spirit of God. Happiness is being controlled by Jesus; it is being under the authority of a man under his authority, being told what to do by someone who knows God and loves you as He loves you. It is pure joy and peace to have over us someone controlled by God. I was blessed to have such a man in my young life in God, and in such a life, there is great peace; that is, if we have the faith to rest in it.
Men anointed by God can provide for God’s children a resting place in this spiritual desert called earth. God is “a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat” (Isa. 25:4), and so is the man who is like him. Have you given anyone some relief from the burdens of this world lately?