Tag Archives: infirmities

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Restoration Is a Process

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Joyce meyer

For we do not have a High Priest Who is unable to understand and sympathize and have a shared feeling with our weaknesses and infirmities and liability to the assaults of temptation, but One Who has been tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sinning. —Hebrews 4:15

Jesus understands us when nobody else does. He even understands us when we don’t understand ourselves. He knows “the why behind the what.”

People only see what we do, and they want to know why we are not doing it better or more. Jesus knows why we behave the way we do. He sees and remembers all the emotional wounds and bruises in our past. He knows what we were created for. He knows the temperament that was given to us in our mother’s womb. He understands our weaknesses—every fear, every insecurity, every doubt, all our wrong thinking.

Once we put our faith in Jesus, He begins a process of restoration in our lives that will not be entirely finished until we leave the earth. One by one He restores to us everything Satan has stolen from us. We must aggressively resist the legalistic attitudes that condemn us for not doing enough. Jesus understands us, He loves us unconditionally, and He is committed to working with us through the Holy Spirit—and He does not condemn us while He is at it.

Lord, who You are making me into is so much more important than the doing that others expect from me. Help me to trust Your hand and the shaping You are doing in my life. Amen.

Alistair Begg

Alistair Begg – Called to be Saints

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Alistair Begg

Romans 1:7

We are very apt to regard the apostolic saints as if they were “saints” in a more special manner than the other children of God. All are “saints” whom God has called by His grace and sanctified by His Spirit; but we are apt to look upon the apostles as extraordinary beings, scarcely subject to the same weaknesses and temptations as ourselves.

Yet in doing so we forget this truth, that the nearer a man lives to God, the more intensely has he to mourn over his own evil heart; and the more his Master honors him in His service, the more the evil of the flesh vexes and teases him day by day. The fact is, if we had seen the apostle Paul, we would have thought him remarkably like the rest of the chosen family: And if we had talked with him, we would have said, “We find that his experience and ours are much the same. He is more faithful, more holy, and more deeply taught than we are, but he has the selfsame trials to endure. Actually, in some respects he is more sorely tried than ourselves.”

Do not, then, look upon the ancient saints as being exempt either from infirmities or sins; and do not regard them with that mystic reverence that will almost make us idolaters. Their holiness is attainable even by us. We are “called to be saints” by that same voice that constrained them to their high vocation. It is a Christian’s duty to force his way into the inner circle of saintship; and if these saints were superior to us in their attainments, as they certainly were, let us follow them; let us emulate their passion and holiness. We have the same light that they had, the same grace is accessible to us, and why should we rest satisfied until we have equaled them in heavenly character? They lived with Jesus, they lived for Jesus, therefore they grew like Jesus. Let us live by the same Spirit as they did, “looking to Jesus,”1 and our saintship will soon be apparent.

1Hebrews 12:2