The Place of Marah – Bitterness – there is a stick!

Healing from the poison of bitterness…

Read with me, if you will, these passages of Scripture:

Ex 15:23 And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah.

24 And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?

25 And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them,

Some have said, that the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed, the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed.

Here, we read the account of the bitter waters made sweet, after God showed them a tree, and told them to cast it into the bitter waters, and the bitter waters became sweet.

Ever been broken, battered, shattered, and poisoned by betrayal: bitter?

I have. Seems to whom much is given, much is required, and true ministry comes out of a pure heart. Satan knows this, and it seems that when the call upon an persons life is large, so are the betrayals and heartbreaks that cause one to know Jesus in the depths of His suffering: His love goes deeper than our deepest pain.

Have you been betrayed?

Jesus knows and understands.

When you cry out to God, He will show you a tree, that we all must find at some point in our life: The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The cross: God’s way of uniting suffering with love.

Georgia Harkness.

Here, where God the Son, laid His own life upon the alter, we call the cross, we discover the divine exchange. He took our pain, our sin, our shame, our punishment, and somehow, supernaturally, as we look upon this tree, and that cross get’s thrown into the bitter waters of our pain and lives, the bitter waters become sweet.

We see this illustration again in the book of Numbers, where a plague had broken in upon the people, and they were dying.

Nu 21:8 And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.

Nu 21:9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

There is healing and purification through the cross of Jesus Christ.

Again, when we look upon the cross of Jesus, with the eye of faith, we find healing. It is this account that we see the medical symbol derived, a serpent on a pole symbolizing healing…

All heaven is interested in the cross of Christ, all hell is terribly afraid of it, while men are the only beings who more or less ignore its meaning.

Oswald Chambers.

Today, I want to pray for you, out of my own need. I have come out of a deep dark season in my life, where their have been many times in the past years places where I despaired of even life itself. Deep betrayals, brokeness, and helplessness, as circumstances in my life, threatened to literally choke the life of God from me.

Yet, I have found the cross of Jesus. An exchange has been made. My pain, for His victory. My sorrow, for His joy. The death of my dreams, for the resurrection power of the living Christ.

Truly, it is a divine exchange. It is a miracle, wrought once again, in a human heart, in this case, mine.

Question: How has He set you free from your bitterness…? it would be good to hear your testimony!

Let’s pray:

‘Father, even now my heart feels like hamburger, as I walk forward faithfully to what you have called me to do, emerging from circumstances that have been humanly impossible without your grace, strength, and you revelation to look upon a tree, the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ. Now Father, reveal this tree to those reading this tonight. Do what only you can do, throw that tree into the waters of their bitterness, and make their lives sweet, as you bring again, life out of death, in the mighty and matchless power and name of my Lord Jesus, I pray, Amen!’

 https://chrisaomministries.com/2016/08/06/the-purpose-of-this-blog/

 

The Place of Marah – Bitterness

Healing from the poison of bitterness…

Ex 15:23 And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah.
24 And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?
25 And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them,

Some have said, that the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed, the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed.

Here, we read the account of the bitter waters made sweet, after God showed them a tree, and told them to cast it into the bitter waters, and the bitter waters became sweet.

Ever been broken, battered, shattered, and poisoned by betrayal: bitter?

I have. Seems to whom much is given, much is required, and true ministry comes out of a pure heart. Satan knows this, and it seems that when the call upon an persons life is large, so are the betrayals and heartbreaks that cause one to know Jesus in the depths of His suffering: His love goes deeper than our deepest pain.

Have you been betrayed? Jesus knows and understands.

When you cry out to God, He will show you a tree, that we all must find at some point in our life: The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The cross: God’s way of uniting suffering with love.
Georgia Harkness.

Here, where God the Son, laid His own life upon the alter, we call the cross, we discover the divine exchange. He took our pain, our sin, our shame, our punishment, and somehow, supernaturally, as we look upon this tree, and that cross get’s thrown into the bitter waters of our pain and lives, the bitter waters become sweet.

We see this illustration again in the book of Numbers, where a plague had broken in upon the people, and they were dying.

Nu 21:8 And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.
Nu 21:9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

There is healing and purification through the cross of Jesus Christ.

Again, when we look upon the cross of Jesus, with the eye of faith, we find healing. It is this account that we see the medical symbol derived, a serpent on a pole symbolizing healing…

All heaven is interested in the cross of Christ, all hell is terribly afraid of it, while men are the only beings who more or less ignore its meaning.
Oswald Chambers.

Today, I want to pray for you, out of my own need. I have come out of a deep dark season in my life, where their have been many times in the past years places where I despaired of even life itself. Deep betrayals, brokeness, and helplessness, as circumstances in my life, threatened to literally choke the life of God from me.

Yet, I have found the cross of Jesus. An exchange has been made. My pain, for His victory. My sorrow, for His joy. The death of my dreams, for the resurrection power of the living Christ.

Truly, it is a divine exchange. It is a miracle, wrought once again, in a human heart, in this case, mine.

Question: How has He set you free from your bitterness…? it would be good to hear your testimony!

Let’s pray:
‘Father, even now my heart feels like hamburger, as I walk forward faithfully to what you have called me to do, emerging from circumstances that have been humanly impossible without your grace, strength, and you revelation to look upon a tree, the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ. Now Father, reveal this tree to those reading this tonight. Do what only you can do, throw that tree into the waters of their bitterness, and make their lives sweet, as you bring again, life out of death, in the mighty and matchless power and name of my Lord Jesus, I pray, Amen!’

 

Love Loud Today!

Light Illuminates, Darkness blinds
1 John 2:9 He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.
10 He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him.
11 But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes.

Love is like light, it brightens this dark world with hope, faith, and joy.

I remember when I was 21, working aboard a sailboat. We had sailed from Key West, Florida, and were now in Madiera, Portugal. The relationships on the boat had deteriorated to the point, that there had been open talk of murdering one another.

Dark, dark days. In this state of mind, I received a day off, and went ashore to explore. Madeira is a bee hive of commerce, and the open markets watching people haggle and hustle were a wonder to behold. Stopped at several places: A private club up on a mountainside, where a ladies bridge club was meeting, seemed they had seven people and needed a fourth to complete their second table, so I sat in for a couple of hands. These ladies questioned me about Canada, and were very educated, and began breathing life into my tired soul. It had been a tough couple of months crossing the Atlantic, and the tension aboard the boat was tangible to the point, where something had to give, or something was going to snap. After a couple of hours of pleasant fellowship with them, I decided to climb to the top of the mountain there, and off I went, following the criss-cross cobblestone streets, higher, and higher, until I finally left the city, and found countryside.

Misty, mysterious paths, that led higher. I still remember how I towered above the Portuguese, at my 6’1” height, and how, as I saw these pale, hard working people scurrying fearfully between shops, with cruel shop keepers, and often security guards with machine guns, watching, that I vowed that I would never become like them. They reminded me of caged pets, running on a treadmill, but going nowhere.

Open sky, and open ocean were to be my lot in life…or so I thought…

The cobblestone path I followed, cut through the back yards of some small houses, and in one back yard, a little girl, a toddler was playing. She saw me, pointed, and giggled, and then laughed out loud at the appearance of the strange giant in her world.

She loved me!

When she did, something broke in me.

All my worry, stress, fear, anger, hatred and rage against the crew, left in an instant, and suddenly I felt unburdened, and free to live again. Simply from a loving gesture from a toddler!

Love is like light. It dispels darkness. That little babies love blasted away my darkness and negativity in an instant.

Psalm 119:130

The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.

Obviously, my footloose and fancy free days have long gone, although I still love to travel, and meet new people in new cultures and languages, as a parent with children, the big ‘R’, has found its place in me (Responsibility!)

In Rwanda, after much prayer, I had a similar experience, many, many years later. I had been invited to speak there by a friend of mine, Parfait Karakazi, and I found myself in the same state of mind I had been in so many years before working on the boat. I had just lost eleven thousand dollars on an unpaid construction contract, and faced about twenty five thousand dollars of unpaid bills on my desk. Tension in my company was high, and I needed to either bust a move, and make something happen, or we were going to lose the company. In the midst of this madness, now, I heard Holy Spirit speak to me: ‘Go to Rwanda!’. To make a long story short, a client paid for my trip, and off I went.

Before getting there, I was scared, having heard about the genocide there, and the reality of what I was about to do, really settled in. So, instead of climbing a physical mountain, I climbed another mountain, the mountain of prayer. I began to pray in other tongues, and determined that I would pray in tongues, and listen to the audio Bible on my headphones, the entire 27 hour plane ride to Kigali, Rwanda. In the midst of this, a verse of Scripture erupted into my heart, and suddenly, I was no longer the beleaguered businessman, but an instrument of God’s love, with a message for an entire nation!

Mt 4:16 The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.

Suddenly, all my years of Bible school and study came alive in a moment, as I entered into the reason I was created.

Hatred, murder, genocide, are works of darkness. The people of Rwanda, were so broken, shattered, and uninstructed in the Word of God, that they sat, hopelessly, and helplessly in darkness, the whole region was covered by the shadow of death. (With 1.1 million people slaughtered in genocide, only 15 years previous to my 2009 trip, the shadow of death still loomed over the land in many ways)

Yet, the gospel, is the love of God, and is always good news.

God is love, and He is healing a nation….

Ps 119:130 The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.

I suddenly saw that the people of Rwanda were incapable of ‘getting up and getting on with it’, without the help of heaven.

They sat…

Yet, we are called as Christians, to walk by faith, and to stand against the obstacles of life, in faith.

Faith works by love, and love is light….

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God….

Suddenly, I began to gently weep, as the love of God for the people of Rwanda, began to flow through me. I knew that God was about to do something spectacular, but had no idea what or how….

Mt 10:40 He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.

John 1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

God, my heavenly Father, was about to adopt some children, a whole nation of them, if they would receive Him!

And the rest is history. So, after my all night flight and prayer vigil, I was given the opportunity to speak on the local radio station, and I am told that 100,000 Rwandese heard my message of Jesus love.

For 45 mins after I spoke, the telephone lines were jammed with people calling in for prayer.

Many, many people received Jesus that day, and now we have many Bible schools in Rwanda, teaching the love and power of God.

Love is light and life…Love loud today!

You have no idea the depths of darkness, pain, and suffering people are in around you, the difference your simple love and joy are making…

Let’s pray:
‘Father, You love. It is Your very nature. Love Loud through me today! Flow through me with joy, laughter, life, peace, and Your unstoppable power today! Make today count in light of eternity, may I make a difference in someone’s life today, in Your name I pray Lord Jesus, Amen!’