FAITHFULNESS

“This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope:
It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:21-23

I’ve thought so much about the Lord’s faithfulness lately that I’ve determined to let that part of HIM live in and through me. After all, all ministry – all true ministry – is His. It is He that moves in us to purify us and through us to reach out with love to others.

I’m writing this on Palm Sunday. The first message I ever preached in a church was on Palm Sunday and the title of my sermon was “The Cheers of the Children.” Each year since then, I’ve mentioned the concept of that first one in the current message. In Matthew 21: 1-17, we read the story of Jesus coming to Jerusalem and the crowd that lay their garments and branches from trees down on the path before him and cried out “Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” They were excited because of this healer and miracle worker. But something happened that changed everything. Jesus went into the temple.

When he was in the temple he cast out all the sellers and moneychangers. Uh Oh. That kind of thing was likely to make the religious rulers angry. Then the blind and lame came to Jesus there in the temple and He healed them. Uh Oh again.

Sure enough “When the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple and saying ‘Hosanna to the son of David’, they were sore displeased.”

Wait a minute. When this passage began there were “great multitudes” cheering for Jesus. What happened to them? Why, by the time the religious leaders were made angry, were there only the children left to cheer Jesus on?

If you and I had been part of that crowd on the road to Jerusalem, how would we have responded? Would we have left when He reached the city for fear of being thought a fanatic?
Would we have slipped away from the temple when Jesus began ridding it of the greedy and dishonest merchants? Would we have stepped into the shadows when Jesus started healing people right there in the domain of the religious establishment?

Or would we have become one of the children who praised Him no matter what was happening?

In the book of the prophet Hosea 2:19,20 there is a wonderful promise from God to us. “And I will betroth you unto myself forever. Yes, I will betroth you unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness and in mercies. I will even betroth you unto me in faithfulness…”

Wow, the One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever promised He would make us one with Him in faithfulness. No wonder that His mercies need to be renewed every morning as Jeremiah wrote in the book of Lamentations.
I’m going to take the opportunity of this celebration of Jesus’ triumphant entry into the Holy City to open myself further to the Lord in this area and ask Him to make me more fully one with Him in faithfulness.

Perhaps He will even do that when it comes to writing blogs . Have a wonderful and Holy Week! Have a wonderful and Holy Forever.