Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":
Have you ever been frustrated, stymied, perplexed, every way you turn? As far as you can see, everybody is turned against you, and it even seems that God is against you?
Welcome to the Savior’s “Club”!
Yes, He has a select number who are privileged to be “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), “partakers of His holiness” (Heb. 12:10), who have tasted of His sufferings. They have an important part to fill in the closing hours of the “great controversy between Christ and Satan.”
They can appreciate the pain and bewilderment that Jesus suffered as His 3-1/2 years of ministry drew to a close and everything began to close in against Him. The leaders of Israel (still the one true church in the world up until the end of the 490 years of Daniel’s chapter 9 prophecy, 34 A. D.), were in process of rejecting Him. Soon they would condemn Him completely. His Eleven disciples were quarrelling about who would be greatest in the new kingdom (laughable if it were not so painfully tragic); one was secretly a traitor already; people whom He had saved from ruin, whom He had healed from mortal illness, would soon yell to Pilate, “Crucify Him!”
It was comparatively easy for Him to endure this hellish hatred of the leaders of His own Israel; but now it seems that even God is against Him for on His cross He cries out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
That deep conviction of God-forsakenness had never been felt to the full by any person in the world’s 4000 years of history; it’s a story that has health and healing built into it; just learning what happened can be life-giving to your soul. That “learning” is what Jesus meant when He promised, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all unto Me” (John 12:32).
The story as Jesus tells it is in Psalms 22 and 69—worth a weekend of your intensive reading. Chapter 22:1 is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Chapter 69 begins, “Save Me, O God! For the waters have come up to My neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing; ... Those who hate Me without a cause are more than the hairs of My head ...”
He experienced all this for you; now read it verse by verse until your soul can grasp the “width, and length and depth, and height” of the love displayed there. It “passes knowledge” but you can absorb it (cf. Eph. 3:14-19).
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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