Feb 20 2022

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.

In this verse, Jesus is in the synagogue at Capernaum telling the Jews who are questioning His identity that whoever believes in Him has eternal life. He tells them that He is the Messiah and that He offers them salvation. They did not understand His words, but those words ring true to us today. We'll break down this verse to understand it better.

Jesus begins his statement with the words "verily, verily." He was trying to emphasize the truth of His words as well as their importance. If the Jews hadn't been paying attention before, they should lend Him their ears now because this is the crux of His message.

Jesus qualifies His next words by narrowing His audience: "he that believeth on me." He was saying that His words were for those who believe in Him. Not those, like most of His listeners, who question Him in an attempt to prove His words false and catch Him in an error. Believing on Jesus (or in, as we say today) means that we accept His identity as the Messiah. The one sent from the Lord to set people free from their sin.

Those who do believe, Jesus says, have "everlasting life." What does that mean? It begins with being set free from sin once and for all. Each of us, because of the work that Jesus did on the cross, has the ability to reject sin and instead live in freedom. Freedom looks like having a will that is aligned with the Lord's. We have no desire to sin because we know that what the Lord offers is so much better than the fleeting pleasures of things He hates.

Everlasting life does not begin in Heaven; it begins now.

Everlasting life also means that when our physical bodies die, we will be present with God. Although we physically die, our souls will remain part of the Kingdom of the Lord. We will remain forever in His grip and in His love. This is, truly, life everlasting.

Dear Lord, I thank you so much for your kindness and goodness. Thank you for the mercy you show me day after day. I thank you for everlasting life — it never ends and it has set me free. Thank you for your love, Jesus, and for your everlasting grace. In your name, amen.

Feb 19 2022

I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me. :

In this short verse from Psalms, we get a tender reminder of how the Lord sustains us in every circumstance. When David wrote it, he was fleeing from his son Absalom, who was threatening to kill him. If he had a fitful night of sleep, none of us would wonder why. But that was not the case for David. He slept knowing the Lord would sustain him, and indeed the Lord did.

As Christians, each of us is under the watchful eye of the Lord. This does not mean nothing bad will ever happen to us, of course. What it means is that regardless of what happens, we can rest in the Lord and know that He will never leave us. Nothing can happen that is outside of God's will. And because He is good, everything that happens is ultimately an exercise of the Lord's goodness to us. This is a hard truth because the Lord's goodness does not always look like what we'd expect or hope, but, nonetheless, it sustains us in all circumstances.

Sometimes the greatest act of faith is to simply lie down and sleep. When we make the decision to rest even if we don't know how a specific circumstance or event will play out, we're exercising faith in the Lord and confidence that He is good. We're showing that our hope is in God and that such hope is enough for each of us.

When we wake up in the morning, we should thank the Lord for sustaining us throughout the night. These common mercies, as minister and Bible commentator Matthew Henry referred to them, remind us of the Lord's continued faithfulness. When we learn to thank Him for the many little things He does for us, we will begin to see how dependent on Him we already are. And, upon recognizing our great level of dependence on Him, we will be able to trust in His goodness in the big things even to the point of David sleeping after fleeing the son who wanted him dead.

Dear Lord, I thank you for all of the ways that you sustain me. I am dependent on you for much more than I realize, and I want to learn to truly rest in your faithfulness. Thank you for sustaining me every day of my life. Open my eyes to the many ways you already show me mercy. In Jesus' name, amen.


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