jesus

The truth of this verse hasn't really dawned on most people. They mistakenly think that Jesus was able to work wonders, to perform miracles and to live above sin because He had divine powers that we don't have. Thus, they have never really aspired to live like He lived.

"Oh my," they say with great humility, "I could never live like Jesus did. After all, He had an advantage. He was God!"

One day as I was walking along a highway through a park praying, I asked a simple question, "Lord, what do You want me to tell Your people?" Without a moment's hesitation, these words came ringing through my spirit and my mind:

Tell them how much I love them.

They were so filled with love and compassion that it defies words to express it. For days afterward all I could think of was 1 John 4:16. "And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us."

There are those who've said that some of the diseases that are on the rampage right now, diseases such as AIDS, are God's way of punishing immoral people today. There is absolutely no scriptural basis for that!

Even though Satan lost all his authority on this earth the day Jesus rose from the dead, for the past 2,000 years he's been running around as a spiritual outlaw—continuing to kill, steal from and destroy all who will let him. But, you know, he's not going to be able to do that much longer. There's coming a day when he's going to be put out of business completely. There's coming a day when the evil he's done here on earth will be put totally underfoot by the power of God.

More than 21 years ago, God said something to me that will mark my ministry forever. It was this: The only hope that any man has anywhere in the world is faith in Jesus Christ.

In light of what's happening around us today, the truth of that statement is more painfully obvious than ever before. We are a generation with diseases no man can heal, with problems no man can solve. What fleeting successes we have are quickly overshadowed by new and greater crises.