Cosmos

Proverbs 13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire is fulfilled, it is a tree of life.

This is a word of healing and restoration for those who lost hope in hoping, who lost all expectations to hope. You could have been so disappointed that you have difficulty in raising your hopes up and your imagination to run free. It can be a disappointment of any kind, whether is it a person, a fight, a relationship, controlling parents, school results, an unresolved issue, a jilted date, broken promises, unrequited love, health issues, a broken gadget or just this world in general, as long you are still experiencing the pain of dissapointment and the fear to expect better things in life, this word is for you.

I have myself been wrecked by disappointments many times enough to be inspired to write this post for others who may be in the same boat. By grace through faith, God is so good to turn our giants into bread that energizes us instead of putting us down, so hopefully this post will be bread for many. I pray that this word would edify and bless you richly as Holy Spirit minister His healing power in you, soaking up all the bitter residue in your heart, and overflow your vessel with His death-defying love.

Firstly, the love of God is not dictated by your circumstances, so neither should you judge His love by your circumstances. Good days, bad days, God loves you just the same and He promises to make all things work together for good.

Any hint of condemnation such as, ‘this is your punishment from God or you are unworthy of good things’ - all of that are nothing but lies - lies to deceive you into thinking God doesn’t care or love you anymore. That’s the agenda of the devil, to put you at war with God because he knows even if he can never defeat God, he can still have a go at His children. But remember the devil is an impotent serpant, a toothless lion and a defeated loser.

God is for you and will always be for you and He will always protect you and love you with an everlasting love. He believe that you are worth it, you deserve every good thing and He would like to remove that thorn of disappointment from your heart, fill your mind with peace and gladness, so that you will be more at ease to hope again, without anxieties or fear.
It pleases God so much, for you to hope freely.

Give that thorn to God today and let Him overwhelm you with His love to extinguish all fear which the devil had tried to smear on you. Don’t fear the future because Jesus will be with you. Even when you encounter disappointments in the future, just remember that you are still loved and better days are awaiting for you. Our fears are prison walls that keep us in, to keep us out from liberty and joy. They are barriers that we think are protecting us which in fact, is holding us captive.

If you are able to recgonize by now that no matter what you do, you can’t undo what’s broken nor purify by what’s contaminated, don’t be dismayed, you are in fact on the right track for something even better! You are on track for Jesus’s saving grace that requires none of your self-maontainece, and only Jesus alone to make all things new in your life. Being saved in Jesus’s definition, would be restful receiving that needs no striving, the performance is His alone, and His duty to be your Savior whose goodness is translated as I-AM.

Even if all you have left are bitter memories and a bleeding heart, you can still give them to Jesus, He desires so much to take care of them so that you can finally be at peace. Anything broken and buried in dirt, God wants them, because all He wants is you, just the way you are even if it means handling with dirt, Jesus is no stranger to shame and pain; He was literally broken and humiliated in public for our sake.

Give your pain to Jesus, and free your heart to receive fresh joy from heaven. His love will turn bottomless sorrow into radical joy, just as how He turns tasteless water into sweetest wine. Give your broken trust to Jesus, to have His in exchange. The cross is about the exchange of trust - exchanging your broken trust and dashed hopes, in exchange for Jesus as your trust and hope.

Jesus is your unfailing Hope who will not falter even when your trust falters, He remains steadfast even when troubles overwhelm you, He is the Rock you can rely on for your rescue, He carries you on His strong shoulders and He will never let you go. You can rely on Jesus whenever and wherever. Even when you are faithless, He remains faithful.

Good news is, you don’t have to rely on your broken trust to hope for good things. That will be way too demanding and tiring. God loves you too much to dehumanize you into a faith-producing-machine, it is His burden to impart freely for you to partake, because Faith is a gift, not your salary. Faith isn’t produced, faith is received. Likewise, Hope isn’t produced by our merits, Hope is given by the Holy Spirit which is like a Jesus-tree that flourishes effortlessly (Tree of Life) on its own, so why are we wearing ourselves out?

We have nothing to add to Jesus’s faith, as He is the author and finisher of faith, we rest in Jesus’s faith for faith to work out. How liberating, how refreshing that is! You don’t have to strive for more faith or more confidence, you just have to enter into the rest of Jesus’s unwavering faith. Our trust may have loopholes here and there, but Jesus’s faith is perfect and devil-proof. The devil can no longer accuse of your faith, if it is Jesus’s faith, the God Almighty having the final say.

Hope that puts you at ease beloved, to surrender all your thorns to Jesus and to hope freely. You are accepted into the Beloved and the Beloved’s faith. Amen :)

Even the will to receive Christ comes by Grace, which compelled Man to give up one’s will in making things right.

Man’s will is never good enough to do good, only through Jesus’s perfect will (Grace), the reborn nature of ‘No longer I who live but Christ who lives in me’ that we are enabled to do good.

What we need more is not instructions or obligations, but grace and more grace to have our minds renewed about how futile Man’s efforts are, that only by resting in Gods grace (Christ) we are able to maximize the good in our performance through His.

[  How sin activated by the enforced obligation unto the Law ]

Romans 7:8 (AMP)

But sin, finding opportunity in the commandment [to express itself], got a hold on me and aroused and stimulated all kinds of forbidden desires (lust, covetousness). For without the Law sin is dead [the sense of it is inactive and a lifeless thing].

[  How Jesus abolished legalism to set us free from the bondage of sin  ]

v4,6 

Likewise, my brethren, you have undergone death as to the Law through the [crucified] body of Christ, so that now you may belong to Another, to Him Who was raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.

6 But now we are discharged from the Law and have terminated all intercourse with it, having died to what once restrained and held us captive. So now we serve not under [obedience to] the old code of written regulations, but [under obedience to the promptings] of the Spirit in newness [of life].

[  How Grace is revealed as God’s will for us through His Son Jesus  ]

John 5:30 (AMP)
I am able to do nothing from Myself [independently, of My own accord—but only as I am taught by God and as I get His orders]. Even as I hear, I judge [I decide as I am bidden to decide. As the voice comes to Me, so I give a decision], and My judgment is right (just, righteous), because I do not seek or consult My own will [I have no desire to do what is pleasing to Myself, My own aim, My own purpose] but only the will and pleasure of the Father Who sent Me.

[  And Jesus IS the complete expression of Grace, as God’s will for us to abide in  ]

John 1:17 (AMP)
For while the Law was given through Moses, grace (unearned, undeserved favor and spiritual blessing) and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Col 1:15 (AMP)
[Now] He is the exact likeness of the unseen God [the visible representation of the invisible]; He is the Firstborn of all creation

John 14:6 (AMP)
Jesus said to him, I am the Way and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except by (through) Me.


Grace is the way, truth, and life; our new will as part of our new nature as we are born again in Christ. Jesus’s obedience is our only obedience, amen! :)

The Gospel is the Good News that is suppose to make YOU feel good about yourself by knowing how God is so well-pleased with you because He sees no blemish in you! You should be feeling so good about yourself because you have been freely forgiven and accepted for who you are!

If the Gospel that you have been hearing or interpeting does not make you feel good about yourself towards God, then thats not the true Gospel that Jesus came to reveal in His Father’s will.

The need to prove something to God, is the need to earn something from Him.
Proving how righteous or charitable you are to God, is an indirect way of striving your affirmation from Him, when He has already fully expressed His unconditional acceptance of you through the sacrifice of His Son, God saw His worth in us even when we see ourselves unworthy. God doesn’t need your good deeds to make you Holy, because unlike the world, you don’t have to earn your qualification to be holy or righteous, God gives you His status to us freely! Our God is so good that He qualifies us at His own expense, and not of ours.

The need to earn something from God is self-condemnation (the ministry of the law is the ministry of condemnation) but His own Word says, there is no condemnation in Christ! Either you are condemning yourself as not good enough to accept His Finished Work, or you are condemning His Finished Work.

What happens if it gets far too hard..and you feel like letting go your own life, because you have tried everything you could to endure living, you have used every ounce of your strength just to keep breathing, you try to wrap your mind around things yet you still can’t get an answer…what do you do?
Let go of your own life?
No, don’t give up. Giving up seems like the easier way out, but giving up your own life means you are giving up all the wonderful things that God had prepared for you..
But you can’t see those wonderful things yet..that’s why you feel like giving up.
Stay on, hang on…there are wonderful days ahead you can enjoy and you WILL see them if you could give yourself another chance.
You just need…another chance.
And God has many many chances for you to use, even to waste..because He will never give up on you. He cares so much about whatever that you are concern about, He cares about those stuff..because it matters to you, it matters to Him too.
And God knows how to get you out. Don’t trust the darkness to find your way, God is your light, your torch and He will show you the way out.
All you need is Grace and Grace is unmerited and unearned chances. Give yourself another chance, take up God’s Grace, let Him provide for you, let Him lead you.

The only thing you need to give up is your self-efforts of self-perservation, the only thing you need to give up is your self-effortd of trying to make things better, of hanging on by yourself, by your own strength. No, precious one, who says you have to do it on your own?
The world said so? And look at what the world has done to themselves with their own efforts, excluding God from the picture because they believe their self-efforts are adequate. But no, you and I,and God knows the truth, our self-efforts are futile.

What would really work for us is God’s Grace, His infalliable performance based on what He has promised. And God promises to always give us a chance,
He promises not to leave us nor abandon us,
He promise to give us a brand new life, not just any kind of life, but HIS life, His beautiful life, to live on earth as it is in heaven.
He promises to work EVERYTHING out for good, even your mistakes, He will iron it out for you because you are His child, and nothing can ever change His mind about you or His promises.

Give Grace a chance, give God a chance, let His Grace overwhelm you, let God help you, let God submit Himself to you and help you in unimaginable ways, then you will realize you can surrender your self-efforts wholeheartedly, and you will find just how free you are.

The sacrifice of Christ was fulfilled not for God’s benefit (we owe Him nothing and He owes nothing from us) but for our benefit, we needed an evidence or proof of God’s enduring and unconditional love; so God sacrificed Himself in the transfiguration of His Son, Jesus, Savior. God is well pleased with what Jesus did, not because He was thristy for blood, but because He knew that after the sacrificial work of Jesus was accomplished once and for all eternity, His people will no longer have to work for His forgiveness or blessings, because through Christ they will know they are already forgiven and already blessed; their minds just need to be renewed and their inner man (spirit) reborn to awaken to the reality of their established union with God through Christ.

Man had such an evil conscience of their wrongdoings and self-fulfillment, thanks to the Tree of Knowledge, because we knew what we did was wrong and deserving to be punished, so we had failed to see why would God still love us and forgive us (just like Adam hiding in bushes), thus Man had reasoned over the centuries, why we would need God if He doesn’t accept us; we got so lost in our self-righteousness or self-pity, we eventually landed ourselves in our self-destruction.

Without the Grace of God (Jesus), Man would not know the unconditional love of God and the misrepresentation of God’s harsh judgement or lukewarm attitude towards us or even the condemning perception of ourselves, is the reason we succumb to the snare of sin; we rely on the flesh instead of God.

God obviously had to do something, He had to save us from the vicious cycle of self-condemnation and sin, He had to transfer His power and righteousness back to us. Jesus came to restore God’s power and salvation in us, for we are His crafted vessels, made in His image, that had been emptied and broken by sin.

Jesus came to our world with that mission in mind, to not only demostrate how we can live by grace through faith, but also to give us back the key to God’s salvation and renconcile our right-standing with Him. Our sins, our sinful nature, and the power of sin (condemnation), was buried with Jesus by baptism (to soak/dip/stain with His blood) into death, and when He was resurrected, He broke the power of sin, which is condemnation, because our conscience is now cleansed by Jesus’s blood, our sins and mistakes had been paid for with the life of God, therefore we can have domionion over sin because condemnation has been overruled through the forgiveness (put away) of Jesus’s blood.

The victory of Christ is also the defeat of the devil, the mark of Jesus’s blood over our life and conscience, is the sign to the Accuser of the brethen that he no longer has anything to accuse us of ! By that we know, we can no longer be manipulated by the devil’s accusations or succumb to his sinful plans, because we now have the choice of grace to override the choice of sin; we have the protection and guarrantee of God’s favor, under His grace we have the unmerited warranty to succeed, therefore, we no longer need to sin or rely on our self-efforts to achieve what we want. Jesus had made the devil our footstool and have him crushed under our feet.

As the Man who accepted Christ, also chooses grace over sin. At the same time, Jesus broke the chains of death too, so that we can reign in life through His everlasting life.