November 21: Don’t forget

Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”  (Luke 24:44-49 — New American Standard Bible)

This is the third time Jesus appeared to His disciples after His resurrection, and He used it to remind them that everything that had happened over the last week — His arrest, imprisonment, trial, whipping, crucifixion, and resurrection — had all been according to plan, and had been prophesied about many, many years beforehand. He reminded them that He had told them all these things ahead of time, and then went on to teach them that they were to be witnesses of these facts, and that they would need the Holy Spirit’s help to do it properly.

As human beings it’s easy for us to get side tracked by things swirling around us. Jesus had explained all these things to them before His death, but they had forgotten, or had allowed the pain and confusion of the moment to take over. I’m sure they all started remembering what He had said as soon as He began to explain things from God’s point of view, but the problem was that they had allowed doubt and emotion to blind and “dumb them down” for a number of days. After this experience they were wiser and stronger, and after receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit, they grew even more. But this will always be a weak-link in our lives as long as we’re here on earth: being sidetracked by emotion.

What has God revealed to you about who He is and what He wants to do in your life? What do you have a strong conviction about? How does Jesus treat people in the Bible? What does He promise to do for us? — We cannot compromise or negotiate on these things. We have to hold on to them like they were bags of gold or diamonds. To defeat us, the devil doesn’t have to make us give up on God. All he has to do is make us forget what God has revealed to us… to “dumb us down” with fear, doubts and overblown emotion.