Have you ever  wondered  why  Jesus  left  heaven to live  in this  world clothed in a body  of  flesh?  Why  does the Bible call Jesus the Word?  Of all the names for Jesus, the Word is probably the least understood.

 Man communicates through symbols that represent words. A word is simply a sound or a combination of sounds, in speech or writing, that express ideas. These sounds communicate a meaning. For example, hieroglyphics are simply ancient symbols used to represent ancient words. The English alphabet uses twenty-six letters and ten numbers that we combine into words and ideas. I am trusting that the reader will understand these concepts as I combine letters into words, words into phrases and sentences, and sentences into ideas.

Even with alphabets and letters as symbols, some concepts are difficult to grasp without a picture or a visual illustration. Jesus is God's symbol. As the Word, he represents God in human form so that we can see God living in our earthly conditions and circumstances, and know what is valued in heaven.

The Old Testament unfolded God's nature in many circumstances. We can see evidence of His working, but he did not fully disclose himself. He worked through special men for special seasons. Moses saw him in a burning bush when God was ready for him to lead his people out of Egypt. He shared his plans for Sodom and Gomorrah with Abraham.

The common man, however, didn't know God. People settled for what their ancestors knew before them. At the synagogue, the priest intervened between them and God. They contentedly followed the crowd not caring about their destiny. Before the printing press made Bibles affordable, men couldn't search the Scripture to know God's mind.

 Hebrews reveals Jesus, ". . . [As] the brightness of His [God's] glory, and the express image of his person . . . (Hebrew 1:3 KJV). Jesus reveals God's nature so that all men could know him. Since Jesus communicated the Father nature of God to man, we can now know the joy of a relationship with our Heavenly Father.  Only through God's Son can we know God. He is the very expression of the Father in human form. We could not recognize this nature until it was lived out the life and testimony of Christ Jesus. By knowing Jesus we can know the Father.

Jesus declared, "If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him" (John 14:7). He is the visible image of God to a world that uses symbols or pictures to understand new or complex concepts.

Jesus is our symbol to help us understand God's glory as shown in grace and truth. Glory is simply the honor resulting from a good opinion and describes the nature and acts of God showing himself to the world. We beheld His glory; we saw the good qualities, nature, and being of Jesus, as the only begotten of the Father.

What men couldn't see in the religious leaders, they could clearly see in Jesus Christ. God used many people to fill roles and complete tasks. Only one, however, is the Son of God, whose blood can wash away our sin.

Grace is divine influence upon the heart and its reflection in the life. Scholars call it the unmerited favor of God. Christ not only shows grace, he is its complete expression: grace in action. Grace gave Jesus the strength to reject Satan. Grace gave him power in the garden to set his own will aside.

Through Christ, we can clearly see God's grace. He didn't merely talk about it, or preach about it as others did. He lived it. He embodied it in his own life. We too can have this grace. Grace gives us what we need when Satan tries to destroy our lives and testimony.

Truth is more than information found in the God's Word. The Law of Moses was true. Truth, however, came by Jesus Christ. The Old Testament gave us shadows and promises; Jesus brought and gave the substance of those promises. Jesus Christ, as the Word, became flesh and dwelt among us, as the image of God, the Father, who is also full of grace and truth.

When we understand Jesus as the Word, we see why he entered the world clothed in flesh. Of the many names of Jesus, the Word is the very essence of God, the Father, lived out in his living Symbol, Jesus, the Son.

Jesus, I pray that you help us see our Father God as we cultivate a relationship with You. Thank You for becoming the Word and revealing God's nature to our limited finite understanding. You are truly Grace and Truth.

Closing Thought:

Have you worked to develop a separate relationship with God, the Father since meeting Jesus? We can know all Three Persons of the Godhead individually. If you haven't, start now to develop a relationship with each Member. You'll be glad you did.

 Have you ever forgotten the power cord to your laptop when you were away from home?  It always seems like that's when you need it the most. The battery is gone and you're not nearly finished with your project. You have a valuable tool that works fine, but it's useless to you because you can't plug it into a power source.

Don't you think that sometimes God feels that way about us? We have talent, skills, knowledge, even faith, yet without power, we're useless. Our internal batteries work for a while, but like the computer, we must have an external power supply. As the True Vine, Jesus gives us the power to serve. 

John shows us a wonderful illustration of a Christian's relationship with the Source of real life and everlasting hope. The world tells us that there are many paths to God. All religions offer some form of eternal promise. However, there is only one True Vine. Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by Me" (John 14:6 MKJV). 

To abide in Christ is simply to stay plugged into the Root of all life. If you cut a branch off a vine, it will soon shrivel and die. There is no life in the branch. As beautiful as a rose is, there's a sadness about it when it begins to die. Even when you put it into a vase with water, it doesn't last long separated from the bush.

Peace slips away slowly, when we're not even aware of it, usually one decision at a time. One small disobedient act leads to another, then to another, and another. God calls to us, wanting us to spend time with Him instead of watching our favorite television program. We promise Him we will stop and visit just as soon as it's over. At bedtime, we remember our promise, but we're too tired to give Him any quality time so we say a quick prayer and promise to slow down for Him tomorrow. Slowly good intentions replace obedience and we find ourselves pushing thoughts of God further and further back to alleviate feelings of guilt.

"It's the little foxes that spoil the vines" (Song of Solomon 2:15). One little compromise after another lead to bigger compromises until one day we look at our lives and realize we walked completely away from God's will into a life of trying to find ways to please God in our own abilities. We dust our Bibles off, promising God and ourselves that we're going to do better. For a few days, we're faithful to prayer and study, but no matter how hard we work at it we can't get back what we've lost. We measure every experience against memories of the past, the way it used to be. We begin to doubt whether we'll ever find that elusive peace that was once such an important part of our lives. Unfortunately, present experience never measures up and consequently we fall back into the familiar pattern of compromise and disobedience.

Until we can let go of our past experience and understand that God wants us to grow through to a new level we will never find what we need. The past was our childhood. When we cried, God was right there. He fed us when we were hungry, cleaned us up when we felt dirty, and held us when we were lonely. How silly would we look if we were to crawl into a baby bed and cry for a bottle? Yet spiritually that's what we do. We must let go of the desire to go back so that we can go forward.

Peace is the result of intimacy with God, knowing that we can trust Him in whatever enters into our lives. Intimacy with God is the result of dying to self and our own desires, wanting only to please Him. When all that matters is pleasing Him, we are open to new experiences and a new level of relationship; we become a friend of God.

Over eighty percent of our success involves relationships with people. Talent, education, and looks will only take one so far. Eventually, we must depend on the good will and favor of others.

God gives us a family where we interact and learn such relationship skills as patience, trust, and conflict resolution. We learn about God from our parents. We learn to relate to neighbors from our siblings. Our identity forms as we interact in the nurturing environment of a loving family.

Unfortunately, most families fall short when it comes to nurturing. Mine had plenty of love; the problem was that nobody knew how to show it. I had only one intimate conversation with my mother and none with my father in my entire childhood. They provided everything I needed and they loved me very much. They just did not know how important it was to express that love.

If we fail to learn these important lessons, we will have trouble in our marriages, families, jobs, churches, and neighborhoods. We will continue to relate to people the way we did in our childhood. 

Our pastor suddenly reminds us of our obnoxious brother with who drove us crazy. Our wonderful husband eventually turns into a carbon copy of our distant, uncaring father. The little priss with who shares our office is just like our tattletale of a little sister who seemed to be on this planet only to make us miserable. 

So what do we do? W e take it until we have had enough, then we call them the names we have always wanted to call our father, our brother, or sister, but never had the courage. We quit our jobs, walk out on our families, leave our churches, or move into better neighborhoods and start the cycle over with new people. 

A simple glance at church history teaches us that man has never understood relationships and their affects. Cain's murder of Abel is an excellent example of brothers who did not understand them. Abraham put Sarah in harms way to save his own life. Many of the heroes we use as examples in our teaching made foolish relationship choices.

God is preparing men and women to understand relationship principles and then teach these principles to others. He is concerned about our relationships. Above all, he wants us to know and understand him, to appreciate how he thinks and feels, and so that we can work more effectively in service to others.

I learned a whole lot about myself several years ago, during a three-month, doctor ordered sabbatical; and it was not pretty. I had lots of troublesome residue left over from my childhood. Although my marriage was great and my teenage kids were not threatening to sell their stories to Ophra or surprise me with an all expense paid trip to meet Jerry Springer, I still had a lot of junk in my belief system. 

After a happy ten-year marriage, I pretty well had much of the family thing down. The problems we faced and dealt with were from outside our home, finances and professions. That is where food addiction found its way into my life. I found myself turning to food for acceptance and comfort. 

My response to pressure was to pull back from the pain and retreated into food. The more pressure stirred my emotions the more control food gained over me. I would diet and loose twenty pounds. Six-weeks later, discouragement caused me to give up and within a few weeks, I would have gained thirty. Over a period of eleven-years, I had ballooned up to nearly 300 pounds.

One day after losing 80 pounds, I found myself standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open. My head was inside, my eyes scanning every shelf as if my life depended on what I would discover there. Suddenly I came to. I stood up straight, shook my head, and quickly closed the refrigerator door. I walked back into the living room where I had been standing before my eyes glazed over. I wasn't even hungry. Why was I foraging in the refrigerator? What was I thinking about before my mind went into neutral? 

My mother. I had been thinking about my mother and the fact that I needed to call her. A fleeting thought about her and the old behavior patterns associated with our relationship returned before I was even aware of their existence. I felt stress, I reacted. It didn't matter that it had been over five months since I had experienced this type of behavior. I did not even realize how much influence relationships had over me. 

The things we accept as truth about who we are often dictates our behavior. When we spend time in prayer, God shows us many erroneous beliefs we have accepted about ourselves hidden in our unconscious minds. Most of these are things either someone has told us, or misperceptions accepted as obvious truth simply because it comes from some authority figure.

These veiled imps rarely reach the surface. They hide deep in the part of our minds where we file memories we do not want to face. The moment our guard is down, they pounce. Before we are aware of it, that old, destructive behavior rushes forward, set to take action. These imps stand in position, ready to accuse us in a moment of weakness.

It takes a determined effort, but we can uproot many of them. You do this, by keeping a constant vigil and questioning every belief that reaches the surface in your thinking. Where did you come from? What are you doing here? What are your motives? Where have you been hiding? What comment, raised eyebrow, terse remark, shocked expression, or ear-piercing scream did you piggyback into my subconscious mind? You can never find them all. Of course, that would be impossible. Your mind, however, can be your greatest friend or your most deceitful enemy. It is up to you.

Only I can choose to live free and take control or I can let these childhood imps push me, cringing into a corner. I choose freedom. Not only does freedom feel better, but it also looks better in a bathing suit.

 At other times, He leads us into the next step of our journey as He did king David, who fought a lion, then a bear. Only after he was ready did he battle Goliath. He was stepping up each time by facing what was in front of him and doing the right thing. Each step prepared him for the next one. He endured and became proficient at what the Lord had for him.

 As women, we often know that God has called us to serve Him and accepted it. The ministry isn't something that just happens or that we trip into. Sometimes people seem to be standing around waiting for the Lord to drop, knowledge, ability, and skills down upon us so that they will suddenly be able to do God's work. That rarely happens. God uses women in every occupation, but He expects us to be prepared when opportunity knocks.

 Paul said "study to show yourself approved..." (II Tim 2:15). If we intend to achieve God's plan for our lives we must first gain the wisdom and knowledge we need for a strong foundation. One of the most important things Jesus did was to train the disciples. He spent three years ministering and training them, teaching them how to minister.

 When God puts a calling in us, He is also calling us to learn things that we don't know. The Disciples submitted themselves to the ministry under Jesus for three years. Jesus taught them. They lived their lives with Him and became friends, willing to share His hardships and the burdens. They took on the vision that Jesus had for the lost. They realized the truth of Jesus' calling.

 The ministry isn't just the glorious, rewarding, self-fulfilling, exciting adventure that it appears. We must understand the full commitment. Peter was committed to Jesus from the start. He started following Jesus because he thought that He would take the kingdom back for the Jews. He wanted a physical kingdom. Eventually, he realized the vision of the eternal purpose of the ministry. Peter eventually became the leader for the local church. The true purpose of the ministry became his hearts desire. The truth was more important than his desire for the physical kingdom. The eternal kingdom was much greater that the earthly one.

The disciples became Apostles only after Jesus called them out. The word "Apostle" means, "sent out". They did not charge out on their own into a ministry. Jesus sent them out in agreement. In Acts (8:14) Peter and John were sent by the Apostles to Samaria. The importance of this is that one may think that he is ready for the ministry ahead of him; but only one that has been down the road knows what is needed to make the trip and what is required for the successful completion. Most ministries failed or lack in success because lack of training and knowledge.

The church is moving into a glorious time of change and growth. Our spiritual fathers left us a solid structure on which to build, both for our present and for future generations.

            Approximately every 50 years or so, God shines his light onto a new facet of his plans for “Operation Man.” In addition, he places a new emphasis on the gifts necessary to bring his plan to fruition for each age. Although his gifts are the same and will never change, history reveals that Christians in every generation brush the dirt off of buried truth bringing it to the light as God uses it to demonstrate his power.  

            The baptism of the Holy Spirit, tongues, and the manifestation of certain gifts were seen      sporadically throughout the centuries. Most of the early church fathers had some level of this experience at least once in their lifetime, even though they didn’t fully understand it. Many of them lived their entire life and ministry from the power and sweet memory of this one unique experience or moment with God.   

            We can see as far back as the 19th-Century how the early holiness movement and the Keswick “Higher Life” movement ushered in an unprecedented time of revival. The first known person to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues was a woman named Agnes Ozman on January 1, 1901. She was a student in Topeka, Kansas. From   Kansas, the Holy Spirit worked at Azusa Street in California for years. Today’s Pentecostal movement began from these roots. Our founders started the Pentecostal Church of God in 1919.

            During the 1940’s, the Pentecostal movement more than doubled in size, increasing in churches, ministers, and constituents. The middle of the 20th-Century was an important time of renewal for the church. The large ministries of that period operated in the gift of healing. People like Oral Roberts and Kathryn Kulman lead the church into a new era of growth and prosperity. Healing was the expected result of faith and prayer.

            Many of the churches and movements that grew so prosperously in the decade of the forties and fifties have reached a point of escalating decline in the latter part of the 20th-Century.

            Today we’re in a new century and a new era. God wants to do a new thing in our generation just like he has done in preceding ages. He is sweeping the dirt off hidden truths for our generation. He is moving through churches and bringing in the sweet fragrance of life. God is raising up leaders with vision. He is looking for mature, seasoned, capable men and women who hear his voice and know his Spirit through a deep, intimate, personal relationship.

            The Holy Spirit is breathing a new spirit of revival into the church. Like the pastors and ministers in the forties, today’s minister must seek the face of God and become sensitive to the moving of his Spirit. We can’t expect him to bless our stale, outdated, outmoded programs. People are looking for something with life and excitement. They won’t stay long in a church that has the stench of death.

            We’re living in one of the greatest times the church has ever known. These are the last days. You and I are hand picked vessels God is using to bring life to his church as we anticipate and work for his soon return. I hope you feel as exhilarated and as honored I as do.

Sometimes hope seems to hide in adversity's shadow. Adversity wants to convince us that it can destroy us. It taunts us and tells us there's no use to try. It wants us to give up and accept our circumstances.

A young couple enters marriage with great hopes and dreams, anticipating the wonderful future they will build together. They quickly learn that adversity walks alongside their hope. He loses his job, she miscarries their first child, and they are forced to live with their parents in a house shrouded in disharmony. The question, 'Why' hangs in the air.

In the beginning, there is always hope. Christopher Columbus left Spain because he had hope. The Pilgrims experienced unimaginable suffering just for the hope of freedom to worship their God. They spent two months on the Mayflower enduring taunting by the crew, sickness, storms, and death before finally landing at Plymouth Rock. They continued, however, and today we are a free nation.

The early American settlers traveled in wagon trains, thousands of miles across unfamiliar and dangerous terrain, just for the hope of a better life. Women buried their husbands along the wagon trail, yet they persevered and continued on their long journey west, their hope was their only comfort. Adversity was the constant companion of those heroes who struggled for a better way of life. Yet, hope was always close by, ready to encourage and nourish their battered faith.

I once heard a pastor preach a message titled, There is No Such Thing as Hope. His premise was that we must have faith. "Faith is to be sought after with everything in us. Hope is useless and unnecessary. It is faith that moves mountains," he shouted, "not hope." While it is true, faith is the drive that ultimately fuels our endeavors, hope is the spark that ignites faith's flames. How can we be confident that we will obtain our desires without the seed of hope from which to build?

Before every great work of art, before a nation is formed, before cathedrals are built, before a new life is born, there is hope. Hope is the seed of every great enterprise. It cannot be, if there is no hope. Adversity challenges every endeavor, every dream, and plan. We invest our finances, our time, and our energy, commitment, and reputation and adversity laughs aloud, calling us foolish. The lump of disappointment in our throat nearly chokes the life out of us as we raise our head up and ask, "Why?"

We wipe our tears and look across the horizon; we can see a cloud moving toward us. What can it be? How can we endure anything else? As the cloud grows larger, we can see the blue suit with the huge red "H" on its chest. The red cape of promise flaps as it moves closer. Hope has arrived. Adversity has to step aside while hope wraps its arms around us and soothes us with words of promise. Hope fuels our faith and we can go on once again.

Our dreams, desires, and promise are there for the taking. Adversity is there also, all set to destroy. Hope stands by, knowing that we will need it many times before we have achieved our dreams. For those who will let it, hope fans the flames of our faith with the promise of a better tomorrow.