Forever Home in the Eternal Family of God

Daily Encouragement for the Family of God by Kenton Cheek

23 March 2025

Reading From Luke 1:57-80

“And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
    for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
to give his people the knowledge of salvation
    through the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God,
    by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
    and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

—Luke 1:76-79

     Salvation has always been found in belief, repentance, confession, and acceptance of what Yahweh has done for us.  As the Apostle Paul wrote, it is by faith from first to last.  In every age, men and women are held accountable for what revelation they have received from Him. The Old Testament saints looked forward in time to the coming of the Lord Jesus and those of us living after the atonement look backward in history for our redemption, but praise the Lord He is alive and well today, interceding for us at the right hand of the Father and we can call upon Him for grace and mercy in the here and now.  Jesus is our rising sun who has come and will come to us from heaven in glory.

     Zechariah’s Song is a beautiful prophecy of his son John preparing the way for the Messiah.  In it, he speaks of the Deliverer and His purposes, “to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.”  At the time of the births of these cousins John and Jesus, the Jews were oppressed by the Romans and when they looked at the more than three hundred messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, they emphasized that He would be a great military leader who would rescue them from their political problems. 

     But we know from the life of Jesus that His first advent brought deeper deliverance that any military or political strategist could ever come up with.  The Messiah came to spiritually liberate us from all of our enemies.  If we choose the path of peace that He laid out for us, we will be inspired by His love to forgive those who persecute us and to actually love our enemies.  This gives us a greater, deeper victory over opposition than any physical weapon could ever render.  The Kingdom of God is the most powerful kingdom in the universe, but to understand it, we must pray for a spiritual perspective that only comes by seeking wisdom from the Holy Spirit of the Living God. One day our faith will be made sight and Jesus will come in glory and victory, bringing the consummation of all things promised.

“Lord, thank You so much for the victory that You provided from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross of Calvary to the empty Garden Tomb.  The world doesn’t understand Your ways for they are spiritually discerned.  Reveal Your will to me and my brothers and sisters.  Shine the light of Your truth to show us the way forward in the power of Your love.  Increase our faith and knowledge of You.  We want to know You more and be known by You through healthy, balanced, life-giving relationship with You.  In the loving and merciful Name of Jesus Christ I pray these things, Amen.”

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

—I Corinthians 1:18

This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord
    so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

—I Corinthians 2:13-16