Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 54:7
"For a brief moment I abandoned you,
(Though the Lord had sought Israel as a fervent husband pursues a wife,
she had allowed her relationship to Him to deteriorate and grow cold.
He had let go of her because of her stubborn willfulness,
because of her determination to walk in her own ways,
because of her determination to walk away from Him and His will,
because of her determined and repeated disobedience.
In His mysterious and inscrutable purposes,
the Lord admits He lets go of us, too, at times
because of our willfulness and disobedience,
to teach us, grow us, mature us, deepen our walk with Him,
and that He lifts His protective covering from us for a short time.)
but with deep compassion I will bring you back.
(Although He lets go of His beloved
in the sense of turning His Face away from her disobedience,
He never completely severs His commitment to her or leaves or forsakes her
even when she is rebellious and cold toward Him.
His commitment and compassion for His beloved are forever,
and now He vows to recommit to her, to open His Arms to welcome her back.
Today we are His beloved whom He continues to call back to Himself,
whom He welcomes with an embrace of love and forgiveness.
He promises that when He does permit challenges and hardships to enter our lives,
even when He seems to have abandoned us to our willful ways,
His compassion and concern cause Him
to always pull us back into His circle of protection and care.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,
Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 54:6
"The Lord will call you back
as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—
a wife who married young, only to be rejected," says your God.
(Though the Lord had called His beloved Israel to Himself
when she was young in her history as His people,
He had rejected her because of her offense and her rejection of Him.
Once she finally realized her abandonment by her God,
she felt sorrowful and cast off, realizing her tragic state.
But now, because He sees her in such distress,
her God is calling her back into relationship.
This is also our promise today,
that even when we have been allowed to experience
the results of our coldness toward the Lord,
even when we have felt abandoned by Him,
He also calls us back into deep and intimate relationship with Him
as He sees our distress and great need of Him as our cover and husband.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 54:5
"For your Maker is your Husband—the Lord Almighty is His Name—
(He Who claims Israel as His bride and declares He is her Husband
is the very One Who created this people Israel.
This One Who is Israel's Husband is none other than the Lord God Most High,
the mighty Lord of Hosts Who is Creator
and Who rules over all the hosts of heaven and earth.
And today He has declared that we are His Bride, the very Bride of Christ.)
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer;
(As a bride who has been exiled in disgrace and weakness and without beauty,
Israel now belongs to the Lord as He claims Her as His Own
and declares His redemption of her, redemption from all she had become.
As her nearest relation, her nearest relative,
based on the fact that He Himself created her,
the Lord is now claiming her as belonging to Him,
to redeem her completely from her past and to protect her
from any other claims that might be made over her.
Her Redeemer is none other than Holy God.
Today, we are now redeemed from everything in us that is not of God our Creator.
What great love and freedom from sin Christ extends to us today!)
He is called the God of all the earth."
(Where once before He had been known as the God of Israel,
now He takes His rightful title as God over all the earth.
Now He reveals Himself to us and all the peoples of the earth as God and Lord.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 54:2-3
"Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide,
do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.
For you will spread out to the right and to the left;
(The Lord is speaking to His beloved, to Israel, to Jerusalem,
a people and a place reduced to barrenness
because of the disobedience of God's people.
Now, He is telling this land, this people, that they will be so fertile
and produce so many offspring that they will be unable to hold them all
unless they widen and expand their tent.
As the ages have revealed, Isaiah's prophecy about the Messiah
and Israel's place in God's plan has unveiled the multitudes of Gentile offspring
that the Lord has brought into His Family.
You and I as adopted sons and daughters of God,
as branches grafted into the Vine, are now a part of God's great plan
that He first revealed to His chosen people Israel
and into which He continues to lead them and us together.
At an even more personal and individual level,
this promise also directs us to widen our own tent
because the Lord is assuring us that He Himself
will bring us into such victory and productivity
that we could never have imagined
in the barren and seemingly hopeless situations we may be facing today.
But, in Him, we overcome through our hope in Him and His great love for us.)
your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities."
(Where once Israel had been small and ineffective, defeated and oppressed,
she will now invade and inhabit the very strongholds of her enemies.
Where once we have been beaten and defeated,
the Lord tells us today that we will remove the enemy
from his entrenched position in our lives
and that we will conquer and possess the "land"
where we have been oppressed,
taking what had once seemed weakness in our lives
and using it to take us into a new place of victory in Him.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 54:4
"Do not be afraid; you will not be put to shame.
Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated.
You will forget the shame of your youth
and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood."
(The Lord is speaking to a people who are broken and exiled from their home.
Yet, in Him, they have hope and, even more, they have victory in Him
because He is redeeming them from their defeat and disgrace.
As He brings them into the next new adventure of faith,
He has promised they will have multitudes of offspring,
so many that they will have to enlarge their home,
and this new phase, these new offspring, will be a blessing.
This new thing the Lord is doing will take His people from disgrace to honor,
from barrenness to fertility and productivity.
Today, when we have been in places of discredit, of defeat, of difficulty,
the Lord is also reminding us that He brings us into new places
where all the former hardships will serve to bring us into new victory and influence.
Where once we had seen ourselves and others had seen us as weak,
the Lord makes us honored and seen as an over-comer.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 54:1
"Sing, barren woman, you who never bore a child;
burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor;
because more are the children of the desolate woman
than of her who has a husband," says the Lord.
(Though she has been a barren wife and has been set aside
by the One Who has called her His wife to allow her
to walk out the consequences of her rebellion and disobedience,
the Lord is reminding captive Israel, exiled to Babylon,
that she now has reason to sing for joy..
God is reminding His beloved Israel that her offspring,
the harvest of souls that He will cause to come from her as her progeny,
brought about by her Messiah, will be Israel's "children,"
those through the ages who are saved by Jesus' sacrifice
and adopted into God's Family and that we will be a great multitude.
Here, again, we who are in desperate situations today,
unable to bring forth and walk out
the kind of life and impact that we had hoped for,
or, perhaps, felt we might once have had,
and who feel barren and unproductive,
feeling set aside and of little use in the kingdom,
can be assured that even this season of desolation and seeming unfruitfulness
is, in fact, through His work in us, of great value
as He prepares the kind of outflow and issue from us that He has desired for us.
Here, we are reminded that the Lord
turns even our desolation into a rich harvest.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:12
Therefore I will give Him a portion among the great,
and He will divide the spoils with the strong,
(Not only will Father God give Jesus the Son great reward
through the harvest of souls that Jesus will gather in,
but God declares that Jesus' victory at the cross
is a victory not just over weak and feeble opponents,
but that He has overcome the most powerful of great enemies,
a feat that sets Him among the mightiest leaders
of which the world can boast.
Because Jesus is a model for us, the promise for us today then
is that we, too, are victorious over even the fiercest of life's enemies,
that we, too, will reap the spoil from the fiercest of battles
and from the fiercest of enemies that we may face.)
because He poured out His life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
(The selflessness of Jesus, the willing self-sacrifice of Jesus,
made Him Who knew no sin to voluntarily and freely submit Himself
to be counted along with the most sinful of us
and to take upon Himself the label of the worst sinner.
As Jesus shows us here, even when we pour out of lives in deeply sacrificial ways,
even when we are reckoned as inadequate or defective by others,
the Lord assures us we will reap a reward directly from His Hand.)
For He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
(As Jesus placed Himself in the gap that separated God and man,
as He took our place to pay the penalty of sin,
He interceded for us on the cross, His intervention making it possible
for us to be reconciled once and for all to the Father
and to be heirs along with Christ as we are adopted into the Family of God.
While our own intercession is only a faint shadow of Christ's,
as we lay our lives down before Him and for those around us,
as we put others' interests before our own, as we love others,
we, too, are following His high example of intercession and intervention.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:11
After He has suffered, He will see the light of life and be satisfied;
(After Jesus undergoes His great suffering,
He will live again and He will see the fruit of all that suffering,
His spiritual offspring who have accepted Christ's gift of life in Him.
Upon seeing us, His reward, Who are now redeemed and saved,
He will be satisfied, knowing that His suffering was worthwhile
because of the end result and the end reward.
If this is true of Jesus, it is also true for us,
that the Lord has so designed our own lives today
so that ultimately we will see that whatever suffering we experience
we will also see and understand as being worth it
because of what the Lord was accomplishing
and creating in our lives through the suffering.)
by His (Jesus') knowledge My (God's) righteous servant will justify many,
and He will bear their iniquities.
(Through Jesus' Own knowledge of what He has achieved for mankind,
He knows His sacrifice has achieved redemption for the masses.
Also, through our knowledge and experience of Christ's sacrifice,
we accept the Righteous Servant's work of salvation on our behalf.
Christ fulfills the will of God to perfection,
and He walks with you and me to help and guide us
in walking in God's purposes for our lives,
purposes He set out before the very foundation of the world.
Just as God had a purpose for His Son Jesus, in the same way,
He has purposes for you and me today
that He deeply desires to bless and prosper.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:10b
. . . and though the Lord makes His life an offering for sin,
(The wording in the Hebrew refers to Jesus' life as a trespass offering
which included the idea that sin is a debt owed.
Jesus became the payment of that debt of sin we owed
when He willingly, voluntarily, of His Own volition,
laid down His life as the sin offering.)
He will see His offspring and prolong His days,
(As the Messiah Who has come to bring life,
He lives again, forever, through the prolonged days of eternity,
to see His many offspring, His spiritual descendents.
Through the wonder of this miracle of life out of death,
In His very death, Jesus produces spiritual offspring,
even those of us today who are born into the Kingdom of God
through Jesus' blood sacrifice that bought our salvation,
redeeming us and reconciling us to God the Father
when we could never accomplish that for ourselves.)
and the will of the Lord will prosper in His Hand.
(Walking out His Father's design and good pleasure
on behalf of God's created and beloved mankind,
Jesus' faithfulness and obedience is rewarded
with a rich posterity of descendants who have been redeemed,
a rich inheritance and reward from the Lord.
Reflecting the same promise for us today,
when we lay our lives down before Father God,
He causes us to experience consequences that become our offspring,
He causes us to experience prolonged days in eternity with Him,
and He causes us to prosperously walk out His divine purposes for today.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:10a
Yet it was the Lord's will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer,
(The Messiah's suffering and death did not just happen coincidentally,
or even because of the evil intent of evil men.
It was the very plan of God Himself conceived by God Himself
to provide God Himself through God the Son as a sin sacrifice for us.
The Lord God knew the desperate state we were in,
and He knew the only recourse possible to deliver us.
That is the reason for Jesus' great sacrifice,
and He knew He could trust Jesus with the mission which the Lord gave Him.
When we think about God Himself
planning Jesus' great sacrifice for God's greater purposes,
we can be encouraged today that our suffering
is also part of God's greater plan for us,
and that He has entrusted us with the suffering in our lives
because He knows He can trust us with it.
We can be assured that nothing, absolutely nothing, can happen to us
that the Lord is not capable of using for His greater design.
Just as the Lord's suffering was not without purpose,
so our suffering in this life is not without purpose.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:9b
. . . though He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His Mouth.
(Jesus had every right to protest His treatment
because He had committed no wrong, yet He did not.
Even though He had committed no offense and was guiltless,
still, He was punished as a criminal and alongside the worst of criminals.
Although we often commit all kinds of violence
against ourselves and others, whether in word or deed,
how often do we complain at the merest slight.
Although we often speak lies and deceit
to and about ourselves and others,
how often do we protest against any accusation against us.
The One Who is the One and Only, our role model,
made the choice to allow His reputation to be smeared
without making a defense of Himself.
He Who lived a life so pure that those who wished to support Him,
like Joseph of Arimathea, were unafraid to align themselves with Him
when He could not help Himself even after He had been accused
and had been served the harshest punishment.
So when we are maligned, when we live a truly authentic life, a life of truth,
we can resist defending ourselves.
When we are tempted to hide who we really are and to be deceitful,
we can make the choice to ask the Lord to help us be authentic and pure.
Today, we can ask the Lord to help us live a life of such purity
that others will stand beside us
even when we are humiliated and cannot help ourselves.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:9a
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in His death,
(Even as He was crucified between two guilty lawbreakers,
with the ensuing assumption that He would also be buried with them,
Jesus made His grave with the wicked,
choosing on His Own volition to align Himself
and to place Himself with sinful man,
willingly dying like a common criminal.
Through His choice, He declared to the world
that He had made the decision to make Himself the bearer of sins
even though He Himself had committed no sin.
Yet, He also subtly and, yet, decidedly, declared to the world His innocence
by virtue of the site of His burial, not, in fact, with the criminals.
Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy and respected man,
was willing to take on the responsibility of the corpse
of a man whom he knew to be innocent,
a sign to those of the times that Jesus was, indeed, guiltless.
Unlike Jesus, we today not only resist any association
with the undesirables of the world around us, but we even shun them.
Unlike Joseph of Arimathea, we rarely risk our own reputation
to say to the world that we are willing to extend help
to those who need it and to embrace the moment
to provide what is needed for those who are helpless.
Jesus shows us what it looks like to turn away
from our self-seeking aggrandizement
and to be willing to lay our lives down among those
who are considered ill-favored by society,
and He encourages us to live our lives in such an upright manner
that people will seek us out and support us in ways
that we cannot provide for ourselves
because they see Jesus through us.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:8
By oppression and judgment He was taken away.
(The irony of Jesus' illegal torture and death
was that it was carried out under the auspices of an alleged due process.
Through His arrest and ultimate sentence in kangaroo court proceedings,
He was delivered to a cruel and unjust crucifixion.)
Yet who of His generation protested?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of My people He was punished.
(Even though man's justice was aborted and unlawfully carried out,
no one stood by Him, no one of His disciples or followers advocated for Him
as their friend and teacher and rabbi,
much less acknowledging Him as the Sacrificial Lamb
Who was being slain for the sin of mankind
and fulfilling God's salvation purposes through His death.
If Jesus Himself was wrongly accused and ill-used,
if Jesus Himself was unjustly judged,
if Jesus Himself was deserted by His friends,
if His reputation was sullied, if He suffered pain and hardship,
why would we ever assume we should be spared of challenges and difficulties.
The difference for us, however, when we suffer in this life
is that Jesus remains faithful to us, never leaves us alone or unsupported,
restores all things, even our reputations, to us,
and atones for our wrongful acts and attitudes.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:7b
He was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so He did not open His Mouth.
(Picturing the ultimate fulfillment
of the Old Testament's yearly sacrificial, Passover lamb
that God had commanded of His people
to commemorate their exodus from the land of slavery and oppression,
Jesus became the once-and-for-all, the final, Passover Lamb,
the complete sacrifice that provides the triumphant exodus for us
from the place of slavery to sin and its effects in our lives today,
as well as the ultimate death it promises.
Besides the amazing message of Christ's provision for us,
another lesson for us in this passage
is that the Lord embraced the cross that lay before Him.
Often, when we are "led like a lamb to the slaughter,"
when we find ourselves in difficult situations,
even when those challenges facing us
are due to our own foolish and often sinful choices,
we resist and complain and wonder
how a just and loving God could inflict such punishment on us.
If we follow Christ's example, instead,
we embrace the difficult situation, as well as the pain acompanying it,
knowing that the Lord is doing a mighty work
both in us and through us even in the difficulty.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:7a
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His Mouth;
(Jesus allowed Himself to be stricken and afflicted,
treatment that ultimately ended in His death.
No power on earth or in the heavens could have overcome Him
had He not chosen to receive all the fury that wickedness spewed out on Him.
He chose to submit Himself to the harsh and deadly treatment
and to offer Himself in a completely uncomplaining and compliant submission.
He did not complain to God about the path God had chosen for Him.
He did not complain to the people who were torturing Him
and unjustly judging and treating Him.
He did not complain of the unfairness and humiliation
of being treated like a criminal.
Instead, He received what the Lord had laid out before Him,
embracing all that that path included, even the pain.
How unlike us when we complain bitterly about what life yields to us.
The Lord did not "open His Mouth" because He had already prepared Himself
to a life of service, to a life of submission, to a life of obedience.
Perhaps we can measure how submitted and obedient we are
to the degree we do not open our mouths in complaint and bitterness
as we walk through the painful places before us today.
Perhaps our level of complaint and bitterness are signs to us
that we need to come before the Lord in renewed submission and obedience
to His plan for our lives today.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:6b
. . . and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
(The Hebrew meaning for the phrase here
is that the Lord caused all the iniquity, all the sin, of mankind
to come together and light on Jesus, to land on Him, to be carried by Him.
He Who was innocent and knew no sin became sin for us
and was punished as if He were guilty.
He has done this for us who are guilty and actually deserve punishment
so that we are spared that deserved punishment.
What an amazing, loving, selfless gift to us that the Lord Himself,
knowing we could never be sinless in ourselves,
that we could never be good enough to measure up
to God's holy standards of complete and pure holiness,
provided the means Himself through the sacrifice of His Son,
to bridge the awful and otherwise impassable gulf between God and man.
Because of Jesus' complete provision for us,
today we can walk in absolute freedom from separation from God
and in absolute freedom to be in full relationship with the Father
through the Son's sacrifice and through the Holy Spirit Who now resides within us.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:6a
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
(Like sheep that, if unattended and left to themselves,
will wander off from each other and from the shepherd,
we, too, wander away and separate ourselves from each other
through competition and taking offense,
from those whom we need and with whom we are created to form community,
and we wander away and separate ourselves from the Shepherd
through rebellion and self-will,
under Whose provision and protection we exist
and with Whom we were created to be in relationship.
Like sheep that are foolish and unwise,
we recklessly allow ourselves to drift into areas of sin,
sometimes even walking boldly into those areas.
We hold grudges, we embrace anger and refuse to forgive,
we try to control others and situations to bend to our will,
we try to attain acclaim and status through our performance,
we try to protect ourselves with things and material goods,
and we repeatedly break the Ten Commandments,
if not literally, then for sure mentally.
In those places where we wander off into sin,
just like sheep that drift away from the security and protection of the flock
and, more importantly, of the shepherd,
we are unprotected, lacking guidance, without provision, and undefended
when we wander away from the Good Shepherd Who loves us.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:5b
. . . the punishment that brought us peace was on Him,
and by His wounds we are healed.
(The very punishment and death for which our sin nature
requires payment was paid in full on the cross
where Christ took on the punishment that sin deserves.
Through Jesus' death and resurrection,
we are restored to relationship with the Father
and given divine favor and approval.
Through Jesus' death and resurrection,
through Him Who procured our pardon,
the DNA of our sin nature is reversed and transformed,
making it possible for us to be at peace with our Creator and Father God.
Through Jesus' death and resurrection,
we receive His peace and are reconciled with God.
Through His death and resurrection,
our wounded, sin-sick body and soul are healed and forgiven.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:5a
But He was pierced for our transgressions,

(Completely sinless and pure, Jesus was wounded,
pierced by the thorns on His Head,

by the nails that fastened Him to the wooden beams,

and by the tip of the soldier's spear
who was ascertaining whether Jesus had breathed His last.

These wounds, these piercings that penetrated His flesh,

were for, because of and on account of,
our transgressions against a Holy and Righteous God
and were part of the appeasement of the wrath of a just God

against sin and its effects on mankind.

Like the Passover lamb that was pierced to inflict death
in preparation for offering it up as a sin sacrifice,

so Jesus, the ultimate Passover Lamb, was pierced

as He offered Himself up as the only sacrifice for sin

that would completely and forever atone for our sin
and release us from the death that we deserved.)

He was crushed for our iniquities;

(In the same way and to emphasize the enormous pain
of carrying the sins of mankind
and of what was happening physically to Jesus,
the prophet Isaiah puts into words the crushing of the Lord,
of Him being broken and wounded as He Himself took on our punishment.

The weight of the sin of the world crushed Him.

The monumental burden of the sins of the world weighed so heavily upon Him

that He was broken and crushed not only in body, but in spirit as well.
I have two sons whom I would not sacrifice for the "best" of us,

far less for those who are the absolute "worst" among us,

for the liar, the cheat, the murderer, the child molester, and the list goes on.

Yet God called on His Own, Only Son to sacrifice Himself for the sin of mankind

so that Jesus Himself could take on the punishment that was actually due us
and so to appease the righteousness of a just and loving God.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:4b
. . . yet we considered Him punished by God,
stricken by Him, and afflicted.
(When Jesus brought His message of salvation to His people,
He was rejected and died at their hands.
His Own people considered Him so abhorrent
that they thought He not only deserved what He suffered,
but that God Himself was meting out His punishment on the Man Jesus.
In fact, those who put Jesus to death did so under the rationalization
that He had sinned and that His death by their hands was God's punishment for Him.
He Who is very God Himself, Lord of Creation,
allowed Himself to be smitten by the very ones He had made.
The idea of the punishment inflicted on Jesus
in the Hebrew is that Jesus was like a leper
to the people gathered there in Jerusalem and demanding His death.
Leprosy was a condition considered an affliction of God
and a prophetic picture of the just punishment of a man of sin.
When we think that He took on the "leprosy" of sin,
what man considered the worst condition,
Jesus was actually portraying to the people there and to us today
His extraordinary act of love.
While He was not being punished by God
in the way that the people of His day assumed,
Christ was, in fact, receiving and experiencing the affliction
that a just God has to allow about sin's results,
a punishment of pain and sorrow and hardship
that sin brings into our lives still today
and that Christ has taken on Himself in our stead.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:4a
Surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering,
(Jesus not only lifted our sin pain off our shoulders,
but the idea in the Hebrew is that He lifted it and carried it, bore it.
He lifted the load off our shoulders and placed it on His Own Shoulders
so that He Himself would carry the load of anguish
that infirmities and afflictions produce.
Jesus' effort was not just to remove our load
but literally to carry it Himself, a much different picture.
What He lifted off us and carried Himself are our pain and suffering,
words that in the original Hebrew refer to sicknesses and diseases of the body,
and also with the fundamental sin sicknesses and diseases brought on by sin itself.
When Jesus purposefully healed sick people, the healings were a testament
not only to His divine mission to restore people to physical health,
but were meant to be a tangible metaphor of what He offers us,
complete "healing" from the effects of sin.
The Lord still lifts both our physical and sin sicknesses off our shoulders
and invites us into His complete healing of the whole man.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874