KEY SCRIPTURE: John 16:33 “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. “
Hopelessness is the most miserable state one can find himself or herself.
Hopelessness would shut up every sense of desire to win.
Hope in God excites every organ, every tissue, and cell, this sets the whole body on the path of recovery or departure from defeat. God’s solution for all humanity is placed in Jesus. Therefore, our hope is placed in Him. Acts 4:12 ” Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”
Our hope must be in Jesus. If our hope is not in Jesus, we have no hope.
Our hope in Him must be constant. We must not give up hope when we face severe adversity (Rom 12:12). “Rejoice and exalt in hope: be steadfast and patient in suffering and tribulation, be constant in prayer.”
God’s ways are much higher and very different from the ways of the world. Our hearts should sing with joy when we face adversity. The word ‘excite’ means to leap for joy. We should be patient and steadfast in suffering and tribulation because we have not given up hope. We should pray continually with constant hope because we have absolute faith that God will answer those prayers.
We see that we must pray with constant hope. Having hope means we are still holding on to the lifeline. Hope looks up to God with an assurance that the end has not come and that help is on the way. Faith takes hold of that help hope anticipates. This gives a beautiful blend of hope and faith.
Christians can and should have hope for the future regardless of worldly conditions. We do not deserve this hope. We have not earned this hope. Our loving Father has given us supernatural hope by His grace. (2 Thessalonians 3:16 AMP) “God our father who loved us and gave us everlasting consolation and encouragement and well-founded hope through (His) grace (unmerited favour)”. In the days of adversity, if you would turn your mind from what’s happening unto the Lord, He would give you everlasting consolation and encouragement, and well-founded hope. Dear Christian, your hope has a solid foundation, even Jesus, who has conquered for us.
CONFESSION
My hope is in the Lord Jesus, He is the strength of my confidence that cannot fail. I am of good cheer because He has overcome the world. In His name, I have also overcome.
THOUGHT: NEVER FEEL HOPELESS BECAUSE JESUS OUR HOPE IS THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE
FURTHER STUDIES:
Psalms 31:24 “Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD.”
Psalms 33:18, 22 “Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy; Let thy mercy, O LORD, be upon us, according as we hope in thee”.
SAMUEL SOMUAH ASANTE 
Private post
JOSEPH & BENJAMIN and the ONE Body in Christ
Part One
“And it came to pass, when they had eaten up the corn which they had brought out of Egypt, their father said unto them, Go again, buy us a little food”
Genesis 43:2
Joseph and Benjamin
The Manifold Workings of God
There was a famine in the land. The famine was for a purpose. It was to end the separation of Jacob and his sons from Joseph (whom Jacob thought was dead). Joseph was in one place and they were in another. Jacob was content to stay where they were as long as they had provision. God’s purpose was to bring them to their/our Joseph (a type and shadow of the Christ who is to come), the source of all Life.
This place of independence was not God’s ultimate design. God is moving in this hour to end our dependence upon other things. He seeks a unified local body where the flow of His Life and Love is the evidence of His wonder. We get our sermons and teachings so that we can sustain our way of living isolated from His Body in the vicinity where we live. We want provision to maintain our independence free from the exhortation of those who live and know us. We segregate ourselves by claiming one teacher, denomination, and doctrines that suit our lifestyle; God calls such things as carnal, void of the power, and wonder of the true unity of the Spirit.
“for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one?”
1 Corinthians 3:3-5
Do we not hear that same carnal spirit and see its devastating effect upon HIS CHURCH in our land. “I am of the Pentecostal, the Baptist, the great teacher, the prophet, and so on in our day? Can we not feel the longing of the Spirit of Grace to make us ONE in the pure motive to see Christ exalted and the love of HIM which welds us in the fire of His purifying glory?
While men and women labor to build some building, ministry, or organization for themselves in the name of God… God is only interested in a living expression called the ONE Body of Christ. Jesus prayed and agonized in the garden…
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one…”
John 17:20-22
The Unity that Jesus prayed for is NOT for some future event in heaven; it is here on the earth, amid the unbelieving world for the intent that the world may believe God the Father has sent His Son, Jesus Christ!…! We send out our missionaries, we strive in our programs, our technological outreaches, our buildings, and our ministries to win the world through our human endeavors, but God has another means far above our ways; it is the simple manifestation of His Love unifying those who are His into ONE vibrant, living Body free from the selfish energies of men.
We hold on to our “teachers” and our “ministers” while living in independence from the Body of Christ around us. Not only is this a meager existence, but it also prevents the real edification that is to be ours by the local gathering and functioning of the Body of Christ.
This isolation keeps us from participating in the things of our Father with each other; from developing the very ministry that HE has called us unto; and from realizing that my relationship with my brother is paramount to the seeing of His Face.
God in His great wisdom must bring calamity
to end this segregated existence.
He must bring a reconciliation to Joseph and His brothers. Whether it is by a great famine or a terrible persecution it must be at all costs for the prayer of the Son to be fully fulfilled; for the prayer of the Son is merely the echo of the Father. Jesus died for this unity and for it to be consummated in those who are His they must also die to all that is of self to apprehend all that is of the risen Christ!
The Manifold Workings of God
~ Jacob’s Portion ~
“And Judah spake unto him, saying,
The man did solemnly protest unto us, saying,
Ye shall not see my face, except your brother be with you”
Genesis 43:3
For Jacob’s part, he must sacrifice the object of his greatest love. For his independence to die he had to give up that which was most dear to him. The thing that he clung to had to be released to realize God’s full revelation and the discovery of his long-lost son. Benjamin had to be offered up so that he might see his Joseph. We too must forfeit all that we hold dear to apprehend God’s best.
Little did Jacob realize that the Faith of Abraham
must be lived out through each succeeding generation.
Doctrines and teachings can pass without much cost, but real and vital faith must know true sacrifice. Abraham’s experience (of offering up Isaac) would not suffice for Jacob. Jacob must also offer the same sacrifice to know the same God. The famine had to be greater than Jacob’s resistance to hold back, yet in the final relinquishing of his last love, he found that God gave more than he could ever imagine. So too it is with each of us.
The Manifold Workings of God
~ Jacob’s Sons Portion ~
For Jacob’s son’s part they would not see the face of Joseph until they were willing to sacrifice their lives for their brother Benjamin (Genesis 44:18 – 45:2). Joseph means, “He shall add”. As the early Church revealed the life and power of the risen Christ in their day, we too are standing on the brink of the coming forth of Benjamin, the Son of HIS RIGHT HAND!
This Benjamin will require a people willing to lay down their lives for each other so that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself may openly declare HIS presence in our midst. The sacrifice and faith required for the early church must once again be known by this present generation.
Joseph continued to hide his face from his brothers and to deal with them harshly to bring repentance from the evil they had done to him and his father. In Joseph’s wisdom, we see the brothers coming to the recognition that the evil they had committed was now upon them. They knew that for them to go back to their father without Benjamin would utterly break Jacob’s heart who was still mourning the loss of Joseph of which they were guilty.
Judah cried out in agony at the situation they were in:
“God has found out the guilt of your servants…”
Genesis 44:16
Joseph continued to press the issue at hand declaring that he would only take from them the one in whose sack the cup was found; knowing full well it would be Benjamin. At this discovery, Judah knowing the anguish that such a thing would bring to his father could no longer bear the sorrow they collectively had already brought about upon Jacob in how they had dealt with Joseph and offered himself in Benjamin’s stead.
“Now therefore, as soon as I come to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us, then, as his life is bound up in the boy’s life, as soon as he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die, and your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant our father with sorrow to Sheol. For your servant became a pledge of safety for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father all my life. Now therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my lord, and let the boy go back with his brothers. For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the evil that would find my father.”
Genesis 44:30-34
Joseph Revealed
It was at this point that Joseph made himself known.
“Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, “Make everyone go out from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud, so that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph!”
Genesis 45:1-3
If we can but grasp the longing of the Son to make known Himself to His people we would turn from our carnal and sectarian ways. We touch by the very Spirit of grace the Glory of Him filling His Church, His Body with the fulness of Himself. If we could but gaze past the selfishness, the envying, the striving, and the desire for preeminence what His unveiling would bring to all creation we would eagerly receive the love of the Father for one another.
It is a day to repent of living APART from the people of God around us; a time to cease ourselves from a life of subsisting on a provision from somewhere else. The manna that sustained us in the wilderness is not designed to sustain us in the Land of Promise (Joshua 5:12)! Let us lay down our lives so that we might see the face of our beloved brother and Lord. It is for Benjamin that the Son is looking; it is to Benjamin that the five-fold portion is given (Genesis 43:34). It is in loving one another, interacting with one another, and praying for one another that we shall know of this Glory.
“Fulfill ye my joy, that ye be likeminded,
having the same love,
being of one accord, of one mind”
Philippians 2:2
Ω
“Ye know that my wife bare me two sons”*
GENESIS 44:27
“The sons of Rachel;
Joseph and Benjamin”
Brian Troxel
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