“So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD.” Hosea 6:3.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
In our last Life Lesson we began considering prevailing prayer. Jesus is your teacher and Lord and as one among you according to the flesh He shows you how to prevail in prayer. And sometimes, as in the Garden of Gethsemane, the prevailing is over your own flesh in opposition to the spirit. And that night as He prevailed until He sweated blood, He told you to pray that you not be put to the test for the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin. Hebrews 12:4.
In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation, being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Hebrews 5:8-10.
Remember, you are not prevailing against Me, I am for you and give you good things as soon as you ask, but here I am talking about pursuing the outcome I want in any situation, getting My Will done on earth as it is in Heaven. YOU ARE WORKING WITH ME TO MOVE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE OBSTACLES TO MY WILL BEING DONE AND PULLING DOWN THE STRONGHOLDS THAT THE DEVIL HAS ERECTED IN VARIOUS PEOPLE, PLACES, AND THINGS.
Prevailing prayer is using your faith with Mine to obtain a miraculous result to which there is opposition from the world, the flesh, and the devil. To do this kind of prayer, which taps into My power by your faith, you must know Me and trust Me, for that is what great faith is all about. When you have a relationship of love and trust with another, faith comes naturally, it is nothing you have to work on when you KNOW the other only acts with your best interests in mind. But it is even beyond that, it is a commitment to one another in a bond of intimate fellowship, a sacred trust that neither ever wants to break. The relationship means more than any worldly gain if it would hinder that relationship.
As a foundation of prevailing prayer, Jesus gave you a template of prayer to follow as His royal priesthood, as His disciples and apostles, that He taught to the first group who became His body, the church, on earth. And in our last Life Lesson we covered the verses that consisted of the protocol and foundations of priestly prayer that brings My Will to earth by moving nations, cities, families, and individuals into My Will so that My Kingdom reigns upon the earth. But today we begin the verses that address relationship with Me which leads to provision, revelation, forgiveness, protection, direction, and expectation. These verses end as you began, with worship.
So, now let us pick up where we left off.
The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the purposes of His heart to all generations. Psalm 33:11.
And we are up to part six to begin the personal part. And six is the number of man, for I conceived all of you, every person, in my heart on the sixth day of creation. I loved you before you were formed spiritually and physically for the time and place you were graced and gifted for as a conception in My heart.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.” Jeremah 1:5.
Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You. Psalm 139:16-18.
I prepared a life of good deeds for you in advance in Christ, everything is ready for you. I spread a table before you in the presence of your enemies. And that is were we now take up our Life Lesson where we left off on prevailing prayer:
- “Give us this day our daily bread.” This addresses many levels: spiritual, physical, eternal, and temporal food for spirit, soul, and body from your good Shepherd and great High Priest. It is time to multiply provisions with Jesus for a hungry world.
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord (Adonai) LORD (Yahavah), “When I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the Words of the LORD. Amos 8:11.
Thus, let us start with the spiritual and end with the physical. This request is about you personally and everyone, from the least to the greatest, knowing Me and the One I sent, Jesus your Lord, the bread come down from Heaven for a man to eat and never die. For knowing Me, the one true God, and the One I sent, Jesus, is eternal life. John 17:3.
Jesus answered them and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.” Therefore they said to Him, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” John 6:26-29.
Faith is your work. The gift of Jesus, Salvation in every situation spiritual and physical, temporal and eternal, is My work. In Him is eternal life.
The crowd who heard Jesus speak these words had just witnessed and partaken in the multiplication of five loaves and two fish to feed well over five thousand people. And they sought Him to fill their temporal needs but His words bought back the memory of what they had heard of the miraculous provision of the Manna, bread falling from Heaven on the dewfall to fill all the needs of their ancestors in a barren wilderness where there was no worldly provision.
So they said to Him, “What then do You do for a sign, so that we may see, and believe You? What work do You perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread out of heaven to eat.’” Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is [i]that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.” Then they said to Him, “Lord, always give us this bread.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” John 6:30-35.
He is your bread that gives you eternal life. His body, the fruit of His death on the tree of the Cross, for you it became not a tree of death but the tree of life for a man to eat and never die.
“Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me. Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.” John 6:45-51.
Adam sinned in the flesh and lost eternal life by pulling out the incorruptible seed of My Word which formed him as eternal in his spirit, soul, and body, and planting and cultivating in his heart the perishable and corruptible seed of a lie that brought eternal death. Lies perish only truth remains. And the only satisfaction to pay the judgment for that murder of eternal life in him and his descendants by passing on the seed of the lie to all his line was to give an eternal life to Me for the one lost. Hence Jesus came down from Heaven and took flesh in the womb of the virgin by the seed of My Word and was born into the earth incorruptible and eternal to offer His eternal life in the flesh for the one you lost. He came as your sin offering and therefore took all your sins into His flesh. He gave His eternal flesh for the life of every person from the beginning to the end of time. And that final earthly day that will open the forever day of Heaven for all is when Jesus returns for the final stage of redemption, changing your earthly bodies to heavenly bodies to match the heavenly bread you receive of His body, now glorified with all sin gone and your judgment paid in full. His body, nailed to the tree of the cross, gone to hell, and raised by Me to newness of life, produced for you justification and emancipation from sin and death. When you eat that bread, which at the Words spoken over it that Jesus spoke is changed by the hovering Holy Spirit to the heavenly substance of His body which is given for you, you are formed anew as His life quickens your mortal body by the Spirit in you as joint heirs of eternal life.
Do you recall that on the day that I raised My Son from the dead and He walked with two of the disciples along the road to Emmaus how they knew Him though I had restrained their eyes from seeing who it was physically when He first joined them on the road? Yes, first He revealed Himself as prophesied in the Words of the Old Testament, the books of Moses, the prophets, and all the Scriptures, and when their hearts were full of that Word of fire they recognized Him in the breaking of the bread. And you have all that plus all the writings of the apostles and those who knew Jesus personally or by divine revelation such as Paul ready for your eyes and ears to devour and you have preserved and delivered to you the Words and the way to partake of the Covenant meal for disciples, the holy communion you share with all believers, by which you participate in the death of Jesus and all its benefits as you eat from the tree of life the very body that is given for your salvation and drink the cup of His blood poured out for the forgiveness of your sins.
It is time for all to know Me from the least to the greatest for you are under the new and restated everlasting Covenant that began with Adam and has come to its true and everlasting terms in Jesus making prior versions obsolete now that Jesus, upon whom all salvation depends, had come and fulfilled all the sacrifices and sin offerings that were holding the believers in eternal life on the credit under the signs and shadows until My grace appeared in Jesus given all new birth and entrance into My heavenly Kingdom spotless, pure, and filled with My Spirit so that all can know Me and participate in Kingdom life even now.
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. Titus 2:11-14.
Do you know this? If not, you do not know Me. Pray that you may all receive the daily bread that comes down from Heaven for a man to eat and never die and as the disciples on the Road to Emmaus that all may know Me and recognize Me from the Spirit breathed Words of the Bible and in the breaking of the bread.
Come, let us return to the LORD. For He has torn Him, but He will heal us; He has wounded Him, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, that we may live before Him. So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the rain, and like the latter (malqosh (מַלְקוֹשׁ): Latter rain, in the spring) and the early (yoreh (יוֹרֶה): Early rain, in the autumn)rain watering the earth.” Hosea 6:1-3.
Come to Me all who are weary and find life burdensome for I have given you your great good Shepherd to lead you to green pastures and healing waters of peace where you will find restoration for your souls. And He will teach you and guide you by His Spirit in you and He will make sure you are well fed. For He stands at your door and knocks and if you hear His voice and open the door of your heart to Him, He will come and dine with you and you with Him. And the meal He brings is Covenant, the bread of life and the cup of eternal salvation.
To know Me and Jesus is to know love for we are One with the Holy Spirit whereby I pour My love into your heart as you attach to My Son like the branch to the vine and together we make new wine. You can only know Me through the One that I sent. And now as I sent Him so He sends you believe in Him and are born again from above to share the knowledge of Him everywhere. Pray that I give you all your daily bread come down from Heaven for a man to eat and never die. But above all pray that all may know Me and the One I sent, Jesus Christ, for that is eternal life. And in that knowledge your life will become fruitful now and forever.
Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. 2 Peter 1:2-4.
I love you. The Manna was supplied from Heaven and was not of an earthly substance. It gave My people perfect health and strength. In the delivery of the Manna around their camp in the wilderness, I was teaching the people that it was not the world that they depended on for the supply they needed but on the Kingdom. To know Me as the LORD who looks ahead and provides for all your needs in Christ Jesus according to My riches in glory. You are not dependent on the world that you should chase after it and leave Me out of your life to get your daily bread, seek first My Kingdom and My way of righteousness and I will prosper and give permanence to the works I have assigned you to do. Once the people reached the promised land and ate of the yield of the earth the Manna ceased but the provision was still from Me. I have prepared paths of righteousness, supplied with all you need for life and godliness, for you in advance. You only need to walk them out with Me and the good Shepherd I have given you.
Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Hebrews 13:20-21.