God, the Strength and the Portion!

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” – Psalm 73:26 NIV

God is meant to be our strength and portion because all of us are actually created by Him to be His image (Genesis 1:27). In addition to this, He literally came down into the earth as Jesus Christ (John 1:14) to crucify Himself on the cross as an atonement of our sins (Hebrews 2:14-15). “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) Furthermore, God has poured His Spirit into us to advocate us to obey His decrees, His laws and His commands (John 14:15-27). To be specific, it is the Spirit of God who is able to make us the righteousness of God and by Him, we live in Jesus Christ as sons & daughters of God (Romans 8:1-16). These are the reasons why Jesus was willing to crucify and resurrect back to life, so He can be within us as the Spirit (John 16:7-15).

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (Colossians 2:6-15)

In fact, Jesus Christ invites us to come to Him, rest in Him and take His yoke rather than the world’s (Matthew 11:28-30) The main reason for this is that the burden of this world is going to exhaust us that we are not able to endure it any longer, and if we come to Christ and rest in Him, then Christ is going to take the world’s burden away. This is because His yoke is light and He is a gentle and humble. Therefore, He does not force us to come into Him. He is simply waiting but constantly knocking on the door of our hearts to come in, in order to control us with the Holy Spirit how God has intended us to be  (Revelation 3:20). “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” (Romans 8:29-30)

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;  rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:1-11)