That evening, Jesus offered the bread and wine of communion to His best friends on Earth. These men, knowing the most about Jesus, would have the greatest memories of Him to share among themselves and with others after His death, resurrection, and ascension. They would be the ones least likely to forget a single moment of their lives with Jesus. Yet, they are the men to whom Jesus said, “Remember.”

The act of Communion, never intended by Jesus for those men alone, would be shared by all who would each also come to one day have their own intimate relationship with Jesus, trusting Jesus as their Lord and Savior. For in a morsel of bread and a taste of wine, the Lord God has wrapped up the entire story of His relationship with mankind, including all of our individual stories with Him.

The bread and wine of communion, though, do more than tell a story. They tell the Story of our Lord God’s desire to share Himself—His life—with the Creation that He made for that very purpose. They tell the Story of God’s unbounded goodness and His eternal perfection, of His plan that is built on God’s total provision. They tell of freedom and fulfillment; of great faith and even greater faithfulness. They tell of all-encompassing grace and mercy. They tell the Story of purposeful salvation that reveals God’s limitless love for each individual person, who was specifically created by God for His pleasure forever.

Only God could pack so much into something so small. Made to be God’s conveyor of remembrance, every taste of the communion bread and wine carry Truth forward into our present and future. Each time that communion is received in remembrance of Jesus, the Story of Truth–the Story of God—is retold, recalling the Story from a new perspective. For every sip from the bottomless cup and every morsel of the self-replenishing bread increase personal remembrance of Jesus, enhancing our personal stories in deeper communion with Him.

In turn, more intimate communion enhances personal remembrance of Jesus in both heart and mind, providing us with new and greater intimacy with God. Then from those new God-given positions of greater intimacy, new revelation of Jesus gives more to recall \and tell in sharing the Gospel with others.

Each time that we minister to others in the Name of Jesus, sharing more of our Lord God’s Story with them, the Story itself grows by greater inclusion, increasing the depth of both remembrance and communion. Then in sharing those greater depths with others, they too are drawn deeper into the same communion with Jesus that Jesus Himself has drawn us into with Him. 

Opportunity for intimacy with our Lord God is God-created in the tandem acts of communion and remembrance. Far from being the Story’s conclusion,  receiving communion in remembrance of Jesus is the Story’s fulfillment, giving all glory to God alone. For in remembrance, God is glorified as the Story is revealed in us; in communion, God is glorified as the Story is revealed to us; and in ministering to others, God is glorified as the Story is revealed through us. God is always the One exalted by His Story. As we lift God, magnifying Him, He lifts us to a higher level of awareness, drawing us closer to Him. 

The complexity of God’s design is so vast that man could never have thought of it. Yet the simplicity of its implementation through the duplication of God’s loving acts of selfless service to others allows even children to understand and experience it. 

Initially, only eleven men chose to accept the invitation that Jesus offered to all twelve who had been at His Table that evening. Those who did were then empowered by God the Holy Spirit to become Jesus’ Body on Earth in His absence. In doing so, they shared far more than knowledge of Jesus. For in sharing the Gospel, they shared Jesus’ invitation to eat and drink at His Table:  a place of personal communion with God that Jesus makes possible for us all.

By the nurturing work then that was initiated by God the Father and fulfilled in Jesus, the Body grows, empowered by the Holy Spirit to be the Church. Growing from the life of God within, the Body of Believers comes together in increasing remembrance of Jesus and increasing communion with Jesus. The Body is united in Oneness with God and each other at ever-deepening levels, through our remembrance of God’s perfectly written unending Story of Jesus.

from The Life of the Cross, 2020

     [HOME]          [TOP]

But when the desires of our hearts are the same as the desires of God for us, then God is pleased to give us all that we need so we can have all that God wants for us.

 But when the desire of our heart is to personally know God Himself then God loves nothing more than to reveal some part of Himself to us. Here then is the portion of my story when God gave me just such an experience with Him.

In January 2007, I was alone, standing on a few square feet of floor in an auditorium during the final closing moments of a faith conference in my former home town in South Carolina. With my head bowed and my hands clutching the back of the empty seat in front of me, tears ran down my cheeks as I cried out to God in my heart and mind. I implored God, wanting so badly to taste the joy of knowing God that I had seen in other people. I wanted nothing more than to know God firsthand, and not have to be satisfied with just hearing about Him.

On that day, God heard my prayer and responded in a way that I never expected. Suddenly, God was there, allowing me to tangibly feel Him. God wasn’t beside me; nor was He above me, nor behind me, nor all around me. Incredibly, God was there in me, filling me with an unforgettable awareness of His loving Presence.

Know then that God answered my heart-cry, and He’ll answer yours.

Cathy Scott
Introduction to The Life of the Cross
May 2020

[

[Part I – The Events]

[HOME]     

To repent is an act of humble submission that realigns our wrong thinking with God’s perfect knowledge. It is an attitude that gratefully says, “You’re right and I’m not, God. So thank you, God, for caring for me, for correcting my thinking to bring us closer together in greater agreement forever.”

So now, in reading those ten verses that are listed below, try to imagine our God, whose goodness is so great that He wants that same kind of relationship with each one of His children in the same kind of right way forever. That is why, in the Book of Revelation that tells of the end times that God assures us are coming, the word repent is used more times than in any other single book of the Bible.

I may not know much, but I do know this:  Keep on repenting; you’ll never regret that you did.  

********************

Revelation 2:5
Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

 Revelation 2:16
Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

 Revelation 2:21
I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling.

Revelation 2:22
So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways.

Revelation 3:3
Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.

Revelation 3:19
Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.

 Revelation 9:20
The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk.

Revelation 9:21
Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.

Revelation 16:9
They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him.

Revelation 16:11
and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done.

[New International Version (NIV)Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?qs_version=NIV&quicksearch=repent&begin=73&end=73 . May 2020]

[HOME]          [TOP]

A year prior to this writing, I was immersed in a lengthy learning session with God, who was doing all of the leading. In that session, He was making me even more aware of the meager thinking that I had entertained for most of my life regarding the good provision that He had planned specifically to be mine. I had picked up and was trying to personally carry the heavy responsibility for the successful outcomes of my tomorrows, in terms of whatever provisions I still had today, after realizing yesterday’s losses. It was somewhat like being on a bumpy stock market ride that one couldn’t buy or sell their way out of but only trade within. I was forever trying to hang onto, save and stretch the good things that I had in hand in order to make them “last longer,” so that they, like other good things before them that had been used up, lost or taken away, wouldn’t run out and leave me wanting a “more” that I couldn’t produce.

Only by the grace of God that was given to me in those One-on-one learning sessions did I begin to see the obvious:  In depriving myself of receiving the full satisfaction from God’s good provision that He intended for me to enjoy right here and now, in order to have “leftovers” available later, I had not created the “more” that I needed to fully meet the needs of either. Holding back reserves that could have been more fully utilized to produce greater enrichment in the present only further fostered the deception that past loss had implanted concerning the necessity of trying to preserve the provision on hand.

I kept trying to do the earthly impossible:  prevent a desperate later need that would require me to ask God for something that I might not get. I was operating in a “there may not always be enough to go around mentality” that was based on fear, one that doubted that I would ever be “good enough” to get all that I ever really need in life. This differs a hundred and eighty degrees from the right management of God-given provision, a management style that operates in complete trust of God by freely utilizing and distributing all that is needed in the present, according to God’s direct and specific good instruction of how best to do so.

It didn’t take long, though, for God to allow me to see the error of my thinking. Suddenly, week after week, I had one new story after another to share with family and friends about the numerous God-directed deliveries that kept coming my way. Unexpected bags and baskets full of fruit, pictures, figurines and other items just kept showing up on my doorstep or being placed in my hands, leaving me flabbergasted, to say the least. Through the generous giving of others, God kept clearly speaking to me to say “I have far more to give to you than you know. Enjoy all that you’ve been given. Don’t be afraid of running out. There is more goodness yet to come. More is always on the way.”

As I slowly began to more fully accept that knowledge as absolute Truth that applies to me personally, as well as to all others, I also began to be able to see beyond the pre-set limitations to which my low expectations of receiving good things from God had confined me. Now, a year later, God is still further opening my eyes to better yet realize more of God’s good abundance that is given to me specifically, as well as to all in general. This time, though, God is not leading me through an individual study at home alone, but through a Bible study with fifty other women participants, who together are sharing their personal knowledge and experience of God’s good abundance with one another. Through my time spent in both studies, God has utterly convinced me of the following bottom line fact:

When we keep our eyes on our own clenched hands, we can’t see God’s outstretched ones.

This Truth played out recently in a tangible way in my home when I removed all but one of the many papers containing Scripture verses and quotations that have long hung on the half-wall by my computer. Overall, the papers together presented a big picture of the many individual reminders that I had believed to be necessary to give to myself on a regular basis. But as right as my good work of hanging the papers was at the time in fulfilling perceived personal need, it was preventing me from focusing in on the one Truth about my relationship with God that God knew that I was then in most need of seeing for myself. By zeroing me in on the words that are printed on the one remaining paper, God took me straight to the heart of a very personal matter with this breathtaking statement:

“He has taken me to the banquet hall, and his banner over me is love.” (Song of Songs 2:4)

Me… The word speaks volumes about the totality of the abundant goodness of God, not relative to the entire world, as does John 3:16, but to each individual to whom it applies. In my particular case, that person is rightly me, just as God so intended for me to see and believe when He brought the verse to my attention.

Each time that I read the verse, I see the abundance of God’s goodness to me personally. Despite my awareness that God is undoubtedly using those same words to speak similarly to a multitude of others, I am constrained by God to see only Him and me alone together in the wording. Those words reveal the intimate nature of the personal relationship that God has with me alone, for the words speak not only to me, but they are also affirmingly spoken by and about me:   “He has taken me into the banquet hall.”

In those words, I am enabled by God to see my complete acceptance by Him forever, for there I am, being personally escorted in the most honoring of all possible ways to the place that has been prepared for me to feast with Him. My presence is not by chance, accident or circumstance. Nor is it due to my simply being let in. I am escorted in, for all to see and know that I truly do belong to God in Christ Jesus. And above any worldly reasoning that might yet attempt to cast a shadow of lingering doubt over the rightness of the occasion is God’s open declaration of the reason for the entire scenario:  “His banner” is love.

Banners are important. Whether we realize so or not, we each operate under at least one metaphorical banner that declares our personal allegiance to someone or something. If God is not the Being for whom we are willing to fight and die, then maybe Satan outright or some false religion or idol is. Each banner that is raised apart from that of God declares a prideful self-determined independence from God for all heaven and earth to see and know. Publicly displayed, banners do as they are intended to do. In this case, they announce to the world to whom or what we belong, who or what we have chosen to be lord over us, who or what we believe can best meet our every need.

One of the Old Testament Names of God by which He revealed Himself to His people early on is Jehovah Nissi—the LORD is my Banner. The revelation came to the Israelites only after they had achieved victory over the Amalekites by means of Moses having held his hands up to God in surrendered praise of Him. The stance that Moses took and maintained with the help of family and friend openly declared to all the world that the Israelites belonged to God, that God had them covered, even in battle… and He did. (see Exodus 17)

This morning, I decided to expand my reading of verse 2:4 in Song of Songs by looking it up in Young’s Literal Translation. In doing so, I came to realize even more fully the extent of the provision that being under God’s banner covers. Literally, the verse reads this way:

“He hath brought me in unto a house of wine. And His banner over me [is] love.”

The banquet hall into which “He has brought me” is a “house of wine”… a house of effervescent banqueting wine… wine that is bubbling up with life. It is the wine of Holy Communion… the wine that celebrates the Blood of the Son that was willingly poured out to rescue me, to take me Home with Him to provide for my everlasting wellbeing, as well as for God’s ever-increasing eternal glory. It is the wine that, by its graciously generous nonstop flowing, continues ever-deepening my personal revelation of just how truly incalculably valuable I am to God and just how much He wants to yet lavish more of His abundant goodness upon me.

As this realization continues increasing within me, I am yet more awestruck by the knowledge that this same personal revelation is also occurring in uncountable others. Each and every one of us is being equally enabled by God in very specifically tailored ways to better see the abundance of His love that was poured out in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus for each one’s individual needs. The fact is that God’s good abundance is about both His ability to simultaneously “feed” (meet the needs of) every individual within a multitude of people and His willingness to do so to each and every individual heart’s content. While need is most often readily recognized as a very personal matter, God makes it known that supply is too.

Recently in the Sunday school class that my husband and I attend, reference was made to the importance of the one single lost sheep that a shepherd in a parable told by Jesus went out specifically to rescue. In that story, the shepherd remained constantly busy. The shepherd did the seeking, the finding, the carrying, the returning and the rejoicing. And what was it that the sheep did to help itself out of its predicament during all of the shepherd’s helpful actions? It did only one thing:  the sheep relented. It stopped trying to go its own way and submitted itself to the shepherd’s good care. In doing so, the sheep agreed to being saved.

Whether the lost sheep had inadvertently meandered away or whether it had purposefully decided to set off on its own, the parable doesn’t say. But either way, lost is still lost, and I have no difficulty in identifying with being lost and on my own. I know the aloneness of isolation and the anxiety that it produces. We all do, whether we admit so or not, and we all, like I, have longed at some time to be rescued—saved—from the evil that lurks in this world, threatening to do us very real harm.

But I also confess that neither before nor after I was eventually “found” have I ever really understood (nor am I sure that I would ever really want to understand) the full extent of just how lost (far from living rightly with God) I was when I needed to be saved. Not only did I need to be saved from the evil that I knew to be in the world at large, but even more so did I need to be saved from my own wrong ways of thinking and acting. Despite what I then believed, I didn’t really know what was best for me, let alone best for others.

Now though, within my growing awareness of the abundance of God’s assured goodness to me in Christ Jesus, there is, also just as assuredly, a growing awareness of what a pitifully sad state of affairs I was in after having tried for so long to run my life my way. Even though “doing life” my way had a surface appearance of goodness, it lacked God’s everlasting goodness that can only be reproduced by being rightly rooted forever in the eternal life of Christ Jesus. He, in being perfectly good, only supplies the truly good.

Early this morning, words that I had once heard God speak to me in a loud, booming voice came back to mind. The volume level with which those words had been delivered prevents me from ever doubting that it was God who had personally had this to say:  You’ll have it when you need it.

Those words arrived in response to a question that I had asked of God just moments earlier. Personally frustrated by a problem that I had perceived to be on my horizon, I had addressed my personal concern to God by beginning my question this way:  How do you expect me to…?

For years, the grammatical difference between my question and God’s answer stymied me, for my “how” question had received an “it” answer from God. Reality is that God’s answer was so far beyond that which I was then able to internalize that only now, during this writing, am I finally beginning to hear more of the complete message that God has been in process of delivering to me ever since.

Delivering anything, especially a message, isn’t always as straightforward or as simple as it might at first seem to be. A delivery is complete only if it is received as well as given. Until then, the transaction remains unfulfilled. Although God’s words to me were clearly heard, I was only able to receive (accept) the general meaning of the words themselves that I then understood. But even though I could not yet see either beyond or deeper into the words to receive more of the abundant goodness of God that was in the message that the words were given to deliver, I did something important. Rather than discard (refuse delivery of) that which I did not understand, I held to the belief that I had more in hand than I was able to see right then.

Supply and demand has long been a hot topic of debate (a frictional sore spot) between God and mankind, causing much dissension between the two. Even in the Garden of Eden’s perfect setting, where no good thing was lacking, fear of personal lack still arose to become a separating agent between individuals and God. Mankind has always had difficulty seeing all that God’s mighty big hand freely offers and provides.

At the time when I asked the question that God answered in a very loud manner, I had no anticipation of God responding at all, let alone Him doing so in such a demonstrable way. But as it turns out, the “audible” voice itself was equally as much (if not more) of the answer that I needed to hear than were the words that the voice delivered. I now hear the message being conveyed as sounding more completely like this:

• I, God, do exist
• I hear you, and I respond to you
• I will never let you be without anything that you need

When the Israelites cried out to God during their difficulties in Egypt, God heard their cries and responded to their need by providing them with both a deliverer and a seemingly impossible deliverance. He also promised them abundant life with Him, the One True God, the One who they knew to be the Creator of all heaven and earth. As such, God certainly had the ability to provide for their every need. On top of that, the promise that God had made to them was verification that He not only could do so, but that He would.

The only thing that the Israelites needed to do in order to live in their God-given land of abundance with God was to relent:  agree to truly live God’s way under His banner. History shows that when the Israelites did exactly that, they did indeed prosper supernaturally. But when they didn’t, their lives were no different than those of other people around them.

During the time when I was deluged with so many unexpected gifts that had arrived via friends by God’s direction, I could see nothing but God’s bountiful goodness to me. Though I had done not a thing to earn a single one of the items, they were all freely given, miraculously made mine by grace alone. All that I had to do to live in their abundance was to humbly receive them in thanksgiving for what they were:  gifts.

That is the message that I had missed seeing in the response that God had given to my question. The precision wording of His “it” answer to my “how” question had accurately shifted focus from my inability to do something on my own (a meager works mentality) to a fact that I could not yet see for myself:  my personal supernatural supply of all that I would ever need in God (a grace through faith mentality). God, in fighting the battle of my wrong thinking for me, has been and is continuing to bring me out of my meager thinking by giving me greater awareness of His good abundance to me, focusing my attention more on Him.

No one, including me, who has received Jesus as Savior need ever again “settle” in this world for the limited productivity of their own capabilities. If God can provide us with the faith to rightly trust Jesus to deliver us into His eternal life in the next world, and He has, then He can surely provide us with the faith to trust Him to deliver, one way or another, all that is needed to enrich our temporary living conditions in this one.

Our personal relationships with God the Father, through Jesus Christ the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit are God’s provision for connecting us all together, making us all one with Him and with one another. As such, we are each a link in distributing the good abundant life that is ever-existent in God alone and flows nonstop from Him. When God brings us into His Family, adopting us as sons in Christ Jesus, we are assured by the Presence of the Holy Spirit in us that we have all that we ever need. That includes opportunity to continually pass and receive whatever is being delivered by God to and through one another, making us part of His perfect supply.

Contrary to what many may think, abundant living is not so much about receiving an endless supply of acquisitions from an abundant God, who has it all. But rather, it is about having unlimited access to God Himself, who alone is the Supply that more than meets the bottom line need of every living soul.

God alone is Eternal Life:  the One True Life that has Self-contained power to multiply itself by giving itself away. Under God’s banner alone does life increase in abundance without end, for God alone is unending life. Every other banner that falsely promises to duplicate God’s good abundant results always falls short, and will yet continue to fall short, as it must, for it has no way of preventing its own demise. The ability to give and receive under any banner other than that of God is limited because it itself is limited resource.

Reality is seen and believed only in Christ Jesus, the One who is so full of God’s good, overflowing abundant life that He walked back out of death more fully alive than when He entered in. Jesus alone makes possible all things, including sacrificial giving that more than fully meets every need and becomes complete supply.

So declares the banner that God raised on Calvary, the one that is forever displayed over the Cross of Jesus for the whole world to see. The banner is God’s perfect love, openly embracing all who will freely choose to get under its everlasting covering by accepting the reality of salvation in Christ Jesus. That is abundant life.

Unearned, it can only be accepted as given:  continuously, as a here and now gift that forever pours out unending good blessings into an immeasurable future. The more of our current blessings that we personally see, the more that our thinking is then expanded to further open our eyes to uncountable new possibilities.

Jesus’ reality is this:  ever-increasing, life-generating abundant abundance now. So is our reality… in Him.

See it? Believe it? Receive it! Rest in the abundant assurance of every word:

You’ll have it when you need it.

Cathy Scott
February 2016

     [HOME]          [TOP] 

After parking in the driveway, my husband opened the car door and stepped out of our vehicle. As he did, an excruciating pain shot down his leg. It had been caused by what we would soon learn was sciatica. Without going into further details concerning the doctor visit and the instructions that my husband received from him, suffice it to say that we needed to get “home.” The problem, however, was that he couldn’t drive, and neither could I, due to a medical condition of my own. By Sunday, the two of us were both struggling, leading us to have a desire to ask someone to come and pray for us, even though we were both already praying ourselves.

We have any number of  Christian friends and relatives who would have been glad to have prayed for us that day, had we  asked them to do so, and others who knew about the difficulties that we were having and were already praying about our situation. But that day, for whatever reason, only one person came to mind for me to call. It was a woman who lives in the area, but whom I had only met briefly on an earlier visit. At that time, she had given me her phone number and told me that I was welcome to call her if I ever wanted her to come by and pray with me.

Well, that day I did. So my husband and I sat down together on the edge of the sofa, dialed the number that she had given to me, and set our cell phone on speaker. When the woman answered, we quickly explained to her why we were calling and asked her if we could take her up on her earlier offer. Regretfully she said that she wasn’t able to come by that day, but asked instead if we would mind if she prayed for us over the phone right then.

Immediately we told her to please go ahead, and so she began to pray for my husband’s need first. Then there was a moment of hesitation before we then heard her say, “And if I’m hearing God right, He is going to give you five and a half to six hours of sleep each night.” My husband and I looked at each other with complete surprise and immediately told her that the sleep was for me and not for my husband. He has no trouble at all in falling asleep and sleeping until morning. I, on the other hand, had been having trouble getting more than three hours of sleep each night. For weeks I had been telling my husband that I would feel so much better if I could just get five and a half to six hours of sleep per night.

That night, after receiving the prayer, my sleep did indeed begin to increase, and in a short period of time I was sleeping the five and a half to six hours each night that God had given to me. But here’s the kicker. Though I was extremely grateful for the sleep that I was then getting, and I was feeling some better because of the sleep, I soon realized that five and a half to six hours still wasn’t enough. Soon I was again telling my husband that I really did need more like seven or eight hours of sleep a night.  

It was then that I saw in my mind an Olympic skier who was standing at the top of a ski jump ramp, waiting to be given the signal to go.  At that very moment, I received this message:  “No one ever trains for the Olympics and then stands at the starting gate praying, “Oh, God, if I could just get the silver!” I realized then that that’s what I’d done by walking around saying, “If I could just get five and a half to six hours of sleep each night…” Metaphorically, I’d wanted the silver, and that’s just what I got. But before the skier ever took off, I was left with this message:  Go for the gold; don’t settle for silver! There is nothing wrong with winning a silver medal unless you received it by settling for less than the best that God has planned for you. If I had not settled for five and a half to six hours of sleep a night, I dare say that I would have long been getting all of the sleep that God made me to need to receive from Him. But know this: I still can. That’s God’s grace.

[HOME]          [TOP]

So taken was I by this particular study that I did go through the details again later, verifying the pastor’s findings for myself. Not that the pastor or his work was ever in question, but it is always good to verify such information before deciding to own it ourselves or to pass those findings on to others. So, I did. The study that is presented below is an intertwining of the pastor’s work and mine.

The pastor began his delivery of the message by referencing the two New Testament Scripture verses below:  Luke 9:58 and John 19:30.  As he read the verses from the large screen beside him on the stage, he emphasized an underlined word in each verse:   lay in Luke 9:59 and bowed in John 19:30.

Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58)

When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19:30)

Though lay and bowed are two distinct English words, each with its own particular meaning, in these two verses they are two different translations of the Greek word klino (G2827). (Greek is the original language of the New Testament from which our English Bibles have been translated; and (G2827) is the reference number that Strong’s Concordance has assigned to klino to simplify the research process.)

These two translations of klino illustrate the fact that no one language translates directly in a one-to-one correspondence to any other. Rather, translators understand the necessity of considering the context in which each word is being used, as well as other language factors, in determining a “best fit” translation. Considered in that light, the Luke 9:58 and John 19:30 example above makes sense. But since lay and bowed are, indeed translations of the same Greek word (klino), they must, despite their differing contextual uses, have the same basic meaning at their roots. This is where the research really gets interesting.

The short definition of klino in both Strong’s Concordance and the NAS Exhaustive Concordance  is “to cause to bend.” [Both of those resources, along with Thayer’s Greek Lexicon and numerous other helpful resources, are all located on BibleHub.com, making research easier and faster for novice researchers and seasoned veterans alike.] But the complete listings of the translations of klino in those two concordances contain more than just the one definition that has been quoted above. Other equitable translations provided by those two sources include all of the short definitions that are listed below.

rest, recline, bow, incline, cause to give ground, make to yield, ending, lay one’s head, be far spent.

The word rest has been listed first, because of its seemingly natural fit into the two verses being discussed. According to the online Merrian-Webster dictionary used by the Bing search engine, the word rest means “cease work or movement in order to relax, refresh oneself, or recover strength.” It also means “be based on or grounded in, depend on.”

In being fully God, Jesus had no need to physically rest from the work He was doing. But in being fully Man, He did. He grew tired and hungry at times, just as we do. Some examples that substantiate this fact are seen in Mark 4:38, where Jesus is sleeping in the bow of a boat; and in John 4, where Jesus’ disciples have left Him sitting by a water-well, tired and hungry. In both cases, as always with Jesus, even when Jesus was physically at rest, He was still busy doing the work that His Father had given to Him to do on the earth. (More on that subject later.)

Returning then to the definitions of klino in Strong’s, the NAS concordance, and Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, note that each source mentioned refers to the verb’s use in  Luke 9:58 and John 19:30 as being transitive in nature.

A transitive verb has two characteristics. First, it is an action verb, expressing a doable activity like kick, want, paint, write, eat, clean, etc. Second, it must have a direct object:  something or someone who receives the action of the verb. (Grammar Bytes)

So not only then do Luke 9:58 and John 19:30 both contain the same action verb klino, but both verses also contain the same direct object upon which the action of that verb is directed. That direct object is Jesus’ head. Now take a look at how Strong’s Concordance defines the Greek word that is translated as head in both of these verses.

(a) the head, (b) met: a cornerstone, uniting two walls;
head, ruler, lord

A remarkable comparison is made in 1 Peter 2:4-8 of Jesus being “the living Stone” —the One who was “rejected by men, but chosen by God.” But just before Peter concludes the metaphor in verse eight, he quotes Psalm 118:22. 

The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,
(1 Peter 2:7b)

A cornerstone of a structure is a strong, essential stone that is located at the base (foundation) of a building, where two walls come together to form a corner. The compound English word cornerstone (some translations say capstone) is the translation of two back-to-back New Testament Greek words that literally mean “the very” and “corner.” The first of the two of those Greek words is the exact same word that is translated in Luke 9:58, John 19:30, and fifty-seven other New Testament verses as head or heads. Only in this one occurrence of the word in 1 Peter 2:7b is it translated to mean “the very.”

Whether or not this was intentionally done for emphasis can’t really be said. But it points to the fact that Jesus is not simply another head of “something,” as many men are the heads of many different things in each generation. Rather Jesus stands out eternally as the One and Only Head above all other heads. One day, all will bow, bending their knees, as well as their necks, before Him.

For only on the Cross, when Jesus had given His all and His work was finished, could He then return to His Father’s Home–-His place of rest. No longer a sojourner—a traveler passing through; Jesus would bow His Head and give up His Spirit, knowing that after His resurrection, He’d be “flying Home like a bird to its nest.”

We too can enter into Jesus’ eternal rest, the rest that is all wrapped up in a trusting spirit. It’s the gift we receive by faith in acceptance of our own personal salvation in Jesus. As Jesus depends fully upon His trustworthy Father, so do we depend fully upon our trustworthy Savior through our confessed faith in Him:  

Jesus, the Christ, who died on the Cross to give us a place of rest in Him.

Jesus, the Cornerstone of the Church’s foundation, who holds His Father and Family together forever.

Where does this take place? Only where all can meet in perfect agreement:
Only at the Cross’ center-point; only in the very heart of the Cross.

          [HOME]         [TOP]

While I sat in our living room typing The Life of the Cross, the first of The Cross Series of books, a dense fog obscured the sixty-mile view from the living room windows of our mountain home. At one point, I looked up to discover that the fog had completely lifted to form a high cloud covering. Against that backdrop,  three small clouds distinctly hung in midair right in the center of my field of vision. A short vertical cloud and a shorter horizontal cloud formed a perfectly proportioned cross. A third puffy cloud, the smallest of the three, was sitting just above the upper left quadrant of the cloud-cross. Immediately upon seeing that smallest cloud, II somehow knew that it was a crown. Together, the three clouds, briefly forming a Cross and a Crown, provided the cover design for the books that I have written. I thank God for the unexpected gift!

I only had time to pick up a small point-and-shoot camera that was nearby and snap three quick photos before the three clouds simply evaporated and were gone. I have edited the best of those photos, making it darker and using a denim filter to try to enhance the photo. The cross and crown clouds that I have outlined are not as large as they appear, but look fo be that large in comparison to the cloud cover that is a much greater distance away. In the foreground are the tops of trees that are located on the downhill side of our property. The remainder of the ground that can be seen between the treetops and the horizon, which is 50-60+ miles away, is anywhere from possibly 500-1,000 feet lower elevation than is our living room from where the photo was taken.

It needs no explanation.
It is the Explanation.

It is the answer to every situation in life.
It is Life.

It speaks louder than all of Creation.
It is the Power behind Creation.

It uncovers all darkness in the world.
It is the Light.

 It rebukes all lies and deceit.
It is the Truth.

It breaks all bondage.
It is Liberty.

It is Love Complete,
It is God Revealed.

It is The Perfect Gift to all of mankind.
It was written just for you.

Cathy Scott,
The Words & the Prayers
(from the back cover of the book)
© 2008

When I realized that the Bible was written to me,
I began to understand it.
(Study on.)

When I realized that the Bible was written about me,
I began to live it.
(Pray on.)

Cathy Scott
The Healing of the Cross © 2009

When I arrived back home after the service, I sat down and opened my Bible to the table of contents. There I had recorded the sequence in which I had been led to read each of the books of the Bible. Studying the list, I counted the number of different books that I had read during the thirty-nine “special readings.” They totaled forty-four:  seventeen books in the Old Testament and all twenty-seven books of the New Testament.

I was intrigued. Thirty-nine is the number of stripes (lashings) that Jesus took upon His body for me, and forty-four of the Bible’s sixty-six books is the same two-thirds ratio as was the ratio of angels that remained in heaven after the others were cast down to earth (according to some interpretations of Revelation 12:4). I then realized that as my reading of the Old Testament was incomplete, so was the keeping of the Law. Whereas, my complete reading of the New Testament echoed the completeness of the New Covenant in Christ’s blood.

While these “coincidences” were interesting, what happened next removed any thought of “coincidence” from my mind. Some people may attribute what I did to my mathematical inclinations, but I know that it was all directed by God.

Consider what God achieved in having me read specific books of the Bible on thirty-nine occasions, reading some books once and others multiple times. Added up they totaled forty-four distinct books being read:  seventeen in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New Testament. Looking at the numbers, I counted in my Bible’s table of contents to identify the Bible’s forty-fourth book, which is the Book of Acts. Then I turned to chapter seventeen and read the twenty-seventh verse.

God did this so men would seek him
and perhaps reach out for him and find him,
though he is not far from each one of us.
(Acts 17:27)

[Part II – The Words & Prayers]
[HOME]          [TOP]