“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.†John 16:33 (NIV)
Since I do not live in cave, I was aware that yesterday was ten years since Columbine High School had to survive the worse day in U.S. School history. It was good to read that Oprah Winfrey pulled the show she had planned to do on this because she felt that it focused too much on the shooters. It would be too much for me to expect the media to tell the stories of how the city, the school, and people have overcome and found a path to move forward with God’s incredible help!
I hope you will take time today to read John 16. John 14-16 would be really great because Jesus stuffs those three chapters with so much good. I believe that if we read those three chapters every day for just a week – it would be a spiritual volcano! Jesus shows His divinity in these chapters in that He knows and sees how bad it is going to get! Jesus knows that I will need encouragement and reassurance that I can survive where the world is going to spiral down. We haven’t seen the worse yet. It is so important that I stay attached to that vine and see with my spiritual eyes and look through that sludge and horrific scenes that play out before me every day. I must walk by faith not with physical eyes!
The Holy Spirit is here…ready with God’s gifts and blessings. The Spirit is to convict me of my sin so that I may be restored through His mercy. The Spirit also shows me the truth of good and right-ness vs. evil and deception that the enemy pours like slime around the world. It is that voice that speaks God’s authority and hope, reassuring that God’s Kingdom will have NO end! Look for it! Be obedient to work in the Kingdom and build the Kingdom as God directs! HALLELUJAH!
So, then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than as Christ. Colossians 2:6-8 (NIV)
It is a word “rooted†that catches me and brings me to the point where I need to be. Rooted. Sink my life deep into Jesus. Follow His steps so closely that there is no place where He ends and I begin. It is in the roots that I can take the nourishment and water that I need no matter what the world brings. By the power of the Holy Spirit I see what is truth and what is deception so that I live in Christ and He in me. Christ’s principles not the feelings of the flesh are what guide my life. Jesus has overcome the world.
