"A Ready Christ"

    Like all others in a fallen, imperfect world, this day will offer difficulties, problems, perplexities, pains, heartaches, and even heartbreaks.  

    "Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward" (Job 5:7).

    More importantly, like all others, to the trusting sons and daughters of God in Christ, this day offers strength, solutions, answers, grace, comforts, and provision that precede our challenges. In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John refers to the Lord Jesus as "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8).  Our greatest need, salvation from our sins, thus existed in the heart and mind of God before we were created. This establishes the spiritual principle that Divine supply precedes human need, eliciting a confidence of faith in those who realize we live anticipated lives, as it were.  From everlasting, our Heavenly Father has viewed this day in the present tense, thus knowing the trials we will face, and thus preparing the Lord Jesus to serve as the fulfillment of His promise, "My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:19).  The Lord does not have to rummage around in His supply box, as it were, to formulate His provision to our needs.  A prepared and ready Christ rather waits for us in our need, beckoning us to trust the God never caught by surprise.  

     It doesn't seem this way, of course.  In many cases, the Lord's provision does not immediately manifest itself.  A lag time between faith and supply revealed often calls us to the challenge whereby we "walk by faith, not by sight" (II Corinthians 5:7).  God's purposes may call for delays of obvious provision for more reasons than we can begin to number.  No delay ever exists in the fact of His provision, however.  We have in hand, or in heart, the supply of Christ for every need.  Our calling involves the faith that chooses to believe, and the courage, as enabled by the Holy Spirit, to await the open revelation that "the supply of Jesus Christ" for every moment of our eternal existence awaits our trusting hearts (Philippians 1:19).

    Believers live from God's supply of Christ rather than to it.  Appearances may seem to belie.  Truth, however, bestows upon us the promise that our Father has forever known every moment of this day in our lives.  He gave His Son to meet our every need before ever we existed - "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."  Here we rest our hearts in the truth of life as anticipated by God, and in the provision that awaits us as we arrive at our destinations of need and challenge.

"The Lord is my portion, saith my soul.  Therefore will I hope in Him."

(Lamentations 3:24)

"Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgement."

(John 7:24)

Weekly Memory Verse

   The Lord is my strength and song, and is become my salvation.

(Psalm 118:24)