All About God's Love- All For Us

The more I thought about my previous post, the more I knew I didn't do justice to the lesson it was teaching.

"Siege" means: "the act or process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the resistance of the defenders and thereby making capture possible. "

When one is under siege, the sooner they learn, they need help from outside, the better. Sometimes God allows us, His children, to be sieged by the enemy, and I found that there were atleast, 2 reasons that struck me, and they both mean or lead to the same thing, knowing the One Who Loves us.

1. To grow in the knowledge of His sufficiency in our insufficiency-When we haven't experienced God as our Financer, we will never know He can finance us. When we haven't experienced God as our Healer, we will never know He can heal. When we haven't experienced God as our Deliverer we will never know He is able to Save us completely from all disasters. God is not and never limited in the way we think about Him. He is able, whether we know it or not. And if there be a lesson we really need to learn for our moving onto the next grade of our spiritual life, God would help us learn it.Would we as parents, ask our kids to drop out of school, just because our child is not able to add numbers or not able to read, not able to understand algebra, when everything else about them is fine. I think, we would never, we would try and find out what is wrong, what can be done about it and do it so that our child is helped. For a time when we're not around, we will make sure that our child will be well equipped to face his/her future, even without us. The king didn't know what would happen next and couldn't even provide answers to women who were eating their own children, but by the knowledge of God's amazing power and love, Elisha could perceive God's sufficiency.
2. To help us to see beyond ourselves -We like to be in control of what concerns our life. Where we live, where we work, where our children go to school, which church to go to, who to make friends with and so on...we don't like situations where we don't know what to do. These control mechanisms we have, tend to take away our trust in God, in His ability, we forget, we're just humans. On the downside of this, if we don't realise who's to be in control of EVERY situation soon, and that we can't do everything, the moment something goes wrong we'll blame someone, even ourselves and never forgive. That could lead to further sieges in our life. The king did not know God, like the way Elisha did. The king was sulking in bitterness and helplessness in the siege, Elisha on the other hand responds to the siege in declaration of God's power to overturn the economy and the siege all in one night.

Conclusion-The lessons that God gives us from the Word of God is not About us, it is FOR US. Its all ABOUT GOD and His love, FOR US. God didn't need to make the sacrifice. God didn't need to die that painful death...but it was done all FOR US. Rejoice as you read ABOUT GOD"S LOVE, and finding that it was ALL FOR US. Through God's Loving Sacrifice, we are given forgiveness, we are partakers of God's kingdom and sonship. Through God's sacrifice we are being made His Very Own.

11For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. 12It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13while we wait for the blessed hope - the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good. Titus 2:13-15

For those in the siege of financial difficulty-2 Corinthians 8:9 "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich" It is for us to realise that we are being made His children to have the same inheritance as His Son Jesus, because of our Lord Jesus. All provision for life has been made.

For those in the siege of sickness-Isaiah 53:5 "5But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole.

For those in the siege of sin-Trying to come out of sin without knowing God, in our own efforts and failing and then going round and round in this siege, 2 Corinthians 5:21 "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Ask God for help, ask God for strength Ask Lord Jesus to come into our lives and sin will be no more the controller. We cannot even in our best efforts live right in the sinful body, because like Paul says , the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, but even in this, it is not an excuse to sin wilfully.