What I share with you here is mind-boggling, but true. It is a revelation of our inheritance in Christ. The entire ministry of the Lord Jesus was to bring us into His own exclusive privileges: all He was by right, He died and rose to bring us into, by grace. Where He stood alone by merit, His finished work brought us in by redemption. He wasn’t content to be the Man in the glory, so He gave His life to bring many sons to glory (Heb.2:10)! 

Here are several exclusive privileges that Jesus had which He has graciously shared with us, His brethren:

1. Sonship: Jesus was the only begotten Son of the Father. Now we too have been begotten by the Father: 1Pet.1:3; See also Jas.1:18.

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“For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely: for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this thing was not done in a corner” Acts 26:26

Before The King: Gospel In The Palace

Standing before King Agrippa, Paul made his defence of the Gospel, for the Jews had laid many grievous complaints against him, and now he sought to cut the ground under their accusations on the day of trial. In his defence, Paul described his pre-conversion activities as a Pharisee, his conversion experience, and then his post-conversion activities as a Christian. It was in the middle of all this that Paul made that striking statement which the king himself could not disavow:

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I was out preaching in a small town with two of the brothers and we sat in the hotel room sharing from God’s Word. One of the brothers talked about the necessity of believers to keep their joy springing in these last days, noting that we must cast our cares on God because He cares for us. But then I asked, “What happens when we cast these cares and it seems like they are not going away? What about those times when nothing appears to change and, if anything, it even gets worse? How do we go through these situations as believers?” I’ll share with you what God laid in my heart.

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While we are on the subject of prayer, may I ask what your prayer points are? I ask because I believe you can locate a person by her prayer points. What a person cries about at the throne of grace is an indication of what is important to him. In other words, your prayer points are an accurate indicator of your spiritual state.

Much of the prayers now (especially in the church in Africa) are patently self-centred and widely off the mark. Inept governments and pervasive poverty have combined to make basic needs and survival the focus of unending prayers. God must do for people all that their governments have failed to do for them.

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Most Christians (especially in non-Western countries) will recognize some or all of the following slogans that have become popular in many congregations:

"Somebody shout, Hallelujah!"

"If you are ready for the biggest miracle of your life, let me hear you shout the loudest Hallelujah!"

"If that prophecy is for you, shout an ‘Amen!’ like thunder!"

"You will make it! Somebody say, ‘I will make it!’ ‘I will make it!’"

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Once upon a time, a king of Israel who loved the Lord came to the throne, and noticed that there was work to be done on the temple. The temple had been neglected and dilapidated in Israel's preceding years of idolatry. So as soon as King Jehoash (or Joash) sat enthroned, he treated the temple as a priority project, and handed the project over to those he believed were in the best position to execute it.

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Tell the people of Israel to GO FORWARD! Exod.14:15

This statement was God's command to Moses when he cried to God over the grave danger the Israelite nation was in. They had left Egypt after seeing the mighty and terrible works of the Lord in that land, but Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he would not give up. He pursued them, and "cornered" them: before Israel was the Red Sea, and behind were the armies and chariots of Pharaoh. It seemed like a hopeless situation. The response of the children of Israel was to grumble at Moses and at God; Moses' response was to call upon the God that called him. And God's response was nothing short of revolutionary:

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"And it came to pass after these things that his master's wife cast longing eyes on Joseph, and she said, "Lie with me." 

But he refused and said to his master's wife, "Look, my master does not know what is with me in the house, and he has committed all that he has to my hand. There is no one greater in this house than I, nor has he kept back anything from me but you, because you are his wife. How then can I do THIS GREAT WICKEDNESS, and sin against God?"

So it was, as she spoke to Joseph day by day, that he did not heed her, to lie with her or to be with her.

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Lord, paint upon the eyeballs of my soul the image of Thy Son. – Charles Spurgeon

One day Jesus, gentle, meek, and mild, went to the temple. He had a whip in his hands, and with a violence which the disciples had never seen before, proceeded to overthrow the tables of money changers and flush out thieves from the temple. "Get these out of here!” He thundered. “How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!" (John 2:16, NIV). That was when they remembered from their childhood Sabbath School lessons something written about the Messiah: 

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“As [Jesus] sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard. And she broke the flask and poured it on his head. But there were some who were indignant… and said ‘why was this fragrant oil wasted?’…and they criticized her sharply.” (Mark 14:3-5)

The world has not changed. Every time you pour something costly and precious on Jesus, the immediate reaction is, “To what purpose is this waste?” What the master gladly accepts as a sacrifice, the world calls a waste. As far as the people were concerned, the costly oil was misused. If she wanted to give it all away, why didn’t she use the proceeds from its sale to bless some poor people? In other words, there could have been a better use of the precious oil than “wasting” it on Jesus.

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The Leadership Challenge
Leaders pursue a calling beyond themselves. They solve problems they didn’t create, and bear burdens not theirs. To do this, they must develop and deploy relevant resources. People who are still overwhelmed by personal issues cannot be effective as leaders.

Resourceful leaders hold the key to the final harvest: leaders at every stratum everywhere ready to confront this incredulous generation, and missionaries equipped to face every challenge in “the dark places of the earth” (Psalm 74:20).

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She was born in Sidon with a silver spoon in her mouth, raised a princess and lacked nothing. Her father, a regicide, was both king and high priest, with the powers of life and death over his subjects. Their god was Baal.

As she grew, she loved the benefits of her noble birth. However, she also became increasingly intrigued by the varied rituals she attended with dad in the shady groves of Astarte on the hilltops. In time, she began to participate in the orgies and witchcrafts that formed integral parts of the worship of Baal and the fertility goddess. She enjoyed it, relished it, believed in it and became increasingly persuaded that Baal was the panacea for the world. 

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