Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Inheritance of the Faithful

UV 740/10,000 The Inheritance of the Faithful “We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.” Hebrews 6 v 12 The Lord desires that His people, His servants are diligent, persevering and patient. He considers the slothful as unfaithful, wicked and unworthy. A slothful person is one who wastes his time, talent and resources or his or her whole life. The Book of Proverbs states, “ The way of the slothful person is as a hedge of thorns but the way of the righteous is made plain.” Whichever direction, he moves, the slothful will get hurt while the Lord removes the obstacles in the path of the righteous. The Lord places a hedge of protection around the diligent and faithful. The Lord will not do things that we are supposed to do on our own but He will facilitate it. The slothful will be ruled while the diligent will rule. The slothful will desire in vain. Diligence is part of a righteous lifestyle. Without faith and patience, we will run out of our inheritance quickly like the prodigal son. An inheritance is meant not just to support consumption or a lavish lifestyle of leisure and luxury but to be re-invested for the Kingdom of the Father. There are ten thousand beautiful life-enabling, character-ennobling and enriching promises of God in Scripture. These are meant as an inheritance for the heirs of Christ. This is the precise reason I have taken 10,000 as the number of uni-verses that I plan to write over the course of the rest of my lifetime. Each of these uni-verses is a “goldmine” verse but I need to claim and make the goldmine mine. Of course, many of these uni-verses are also precepts that teach us patience and faithfulness- a necessary accompaniment as well as a prelude to enter into the “promised land.” Human life is long enough to test the truth of these promises and precepts. The precepts are meant to change our natural sinful conditioning of being spiritually slothful and unfaithful. Obedience to these precepts will ensure that our faith will be authentic and genuine and not just imitation gold. Christ through His faith and patience inherited the promised throne at the right hand of God. We too need to imitate Him in our lives. Without faith and patience, we cannot imitate Him and we cannot inherit the promises of God. When we trust God, we are judging or believing Him to be just and faithful, that He will not let us down in any way. We believe that He will fulfil every one of His gracious promises to us. Meanwhile, we need to be patient in our hope and persevering in our faith. We need to hold onto each promise and cherish it in our hearts. Every day we need to recount and remember the promises that we have received from Scripture and in prophesy. We need to pray, praise and thank the Lord for fulfilling every one of these in our lives long before we actually see, hear or feel the results much like a farmer is hopeful that the seed he planted would turn into a rich harvest in due time. We need to learn to imitate or emulate the faith, hope, patience, perseverance, persistence and endurance displayed by those who have gone before us: Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, Joseph, Daniel, the prophets Isaiah, Elijah and Elisha, the Lord Jesus Himself, the apostles, St Paul and contemporary men and women of God. Prateep V Philip

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