Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":
Suppose a husband and wife are both church members, even “missionaries,” but they can’t be happy together: the first question they usually ask is, What can we do in order to learn to be happy together, to save our marriage from collapsing?
They are both ever so sincere. You meet them both individually, they are the loveliest people on earth, the nicest neighbors you can imagine.
But together they’re in an unending lovers’ quarrel. It’s not what they need to DO but what they need to LEARN and BELIEVE.
Now suppose you are a third party who loves them both as friends and fellow believers in Christ: how can you help them? Granted, of course, you “pray” for them; but you are so helpless in just “praying.”
Then you remember the New Covenant promise the Lord, the God of Abraham, has made to you as a “descendant of Abraham” by faith”: everywhere you go throughout the earth, throughout your whole life, “You shall be a blessing” (read it in the original, Genesis 12:2). That means the Lord intends that you as a third party will be a healing agent to these two quarrelers. (And that introduces you to some deep thinking: do you believe the New Covenant? Yes, you do: you “believe” but then immediately you pray, “Help my unbelief,” Mark 9:24.)
And then you remember what Jesus promised on that “last day ... of the Feast” of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, when He “stood and cried out, ...’If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me, and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37, 38). A parallel promise to the one in Genesis 12!
The Lord is perfectly capable of healing this troubled marriage; He longs to do so. Now, when your soul is deeply humbled before Him, your prayer enables Him to do what otherwise He is not able to do: yes, His omnipotence is hindered by our heart-unbelief and self-sufficiency. Now, broken-hearted, humbled but repentant sinners have a tremendous, special advantage: they are the ones who have been “grant[ed] to sit with [Him] on [His] throne” because they are “overcom[ing]” (Rev. 3:21). You can’t get closer to Him than that!
And around the world there are “144,000” who are overcoming.
P. S. Let’s not get hung up on a literal or symbolic number.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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