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Monday... So how do we handle the bad times?


Mark 1:1-2 say, "This is the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. It began just as the prophet Isaiah had written: 'Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you and he will prepare the way.'"

Monday... So how do we handle the bad times?

Now the Psalms are honest and here at a bad time in the life of God's children they handled it the way we handle bad times, bad situations. Psalm 137:1-2 (NLT) says, "Beside the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept as we thought of Jerusalem. We put away our harps, hanging them on the branches of poplar trees."


So what are you going through? Is it a bad time? So how are you handling it?

Yes it is so easy for us to sit and weep and quit singing those songs of encouragement. Life can be really rough. 

Now Psalm 137 is the Psalm that I read today but I then went over to Mark 1 in the New Testament and here is how it starts. Mark 1:1-2 say, "This is the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. It began just as the prophet Isaiah has written: 'Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you and he will prepare the way.'"

I just finished the Gospel of Matthew and of how Jesus had been killed and many people would stop right there. That's what the people in Psalm 137 were doing but it is not where God stopped. For one he resurrected Jesus and he then took him back home. And then Mark starts by saying, "This is the Good News". Verses 1-2b says, "This is the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. It began just as the prophet Isaiah had written: 'Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you and he will prepare the way.'" 

In the middle of all the bad news of the Old Testament God reminded us that he is not finished. Verses 2-3 says, "Look I am sending my messenger ahead of you, and he will prepare your way. He is a voice shouting in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way for the Lord's coming! Clear the road for him!"

And a part of that was the discouragement that the children of Israel had lived through in the Old Testament. And there may be some of that in our lives today and we too need to "clear the road for him!" 

Now the Good News started back in the OT but the reality came about here in the NT. God throughout the OT was preparing the way for Jesus to come and to take care of what had happened in Genesis. 

No matter what you are going through there is Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God and what happened by his coming to earth. Look up. You have hope. Through his death and resurrection he can change how we handle the bad times. He has come and He wants to live in us and take us through those bad times with hope.

So let get up and quit crying and take our harps off of the branches and sing the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God even in the hard times. Yes, John the Baptist was the messenger that Isaiah foretold and now so are we. Yes, yes! #todaysbeginning

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