He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. Isaiah 53:7 (NKJV) Jesus went to the cross silent. As I read Isaiah 53:7 while meditating on the message of the cross, it touched me. It’s interesting that Isaiah compared Jesus’ ordeal to a sheep being sheared. Sheep are one of very few animals who stay quiet while being sheared. If you tried flipping a cat over on its back to give it a buzz cut, that cat would be anything but quiet. But you can flip a sheep over with its legs in the air and it …

For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Luke 19:10 (NKJV) God is all about love. The entire purpose behind why God sent Jesus to this earth was to restore His family to Him. Some think that God is focused on all your mistakes because His main goal is to make you perfect. That’s actually not His goal. If you were raised in legalistic religion or by perfectionistic parents, this may be a revelation to you. You may have grown up thinking that the only way you could be okay with God was to have your life all together. Or maybe the focus in your family was to never let others see your imperfections because you had …

Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Isaiah 53:1 (NKJV) The truth of what Jesus has done for us is so amazing that the prophet Isaiah wondered who would believe it. He wrote, “Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this?” (Isaiah 53:1, The Message). Isaiah’s prophetic look at Jesus in Isaiah 53 starts out by describing the Saviour of the world as an ordinary man with “no stately form or majestic splendor” (v. 2, AMP). He certainly wasn’t what the Jews were expecting. Yet Jesus was exactly what God had in mind all along. The plan was for Jesus to “give himself as an offering for sin so that he’d see life …

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 1 Corinthians 1:22–24 (NIV) When you trace Christianity back to its roots in each country, you can see how people tended to mix their cultural beliefs with Christianity. You can even find examples where very strange beliefs were mixed in—beliefs that go directly against Jesus’ teachings. In the Western world, we mix the beliefs of our culture with Christianity all the time. People pick and choose what they like from popular ideas or other religions to create a sort of pseudo-Christianity. Meanwhile, …

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 1 Corinthians 1:18 (NKJV) Do you want to experience more of the miraculous? The key to walking in incredible love, joy, peace, freedom and the promises of God for your life lies in understanding what happened from the cross to the throne. If I were to ask several individuals what they felt Jesus did for us, it would be interesting. Most Christians would say something about the forgiveness of our sins, and they would be right—but only partly so. As amazing as it is to have our sins forgiven, there is so much more! This month, we’re going to …