E-Church Family,
Thank you for your faithful support. What a word given by our Bishop T.D. Jakes this past Sunday. If you were able to attend the service online you were taken on a trip down The Toll Road. We enter a week that only has much value to who we are. We must seek to gain a deeper understanding of what actually happened during Jesus’s journey to deliver us and bring about our salvation. I wanted to spend a couple moments to encourage you to focus on the significance of this week and the point of Jesus’s coming.
Our Bishop referenced the scripture in Matthew 21:5-7 that says, “Tell the daughter of Zion, “Behold, your King is coming to you, lowly, and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey. So the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them. They brought the donkey and the colt, laid their clothes on them, and set Him on them.” The burden of the donkey is truth to us that Jesus is our scape goat and our sacrificial lamb. Isaiah 53:4 says, “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” There is a significance and truth this colt brings to our lives. This donkey, who no man had every sat on is now carrying the messiah down the toll road. To the place where he will pay the ultimate price for the sake of our salvation. Our Bishop gave us 3 things we can take from this toll road experience.
We can learn the ‘Message of Discipline’. They ask the witness to place their hand on the bible and swear to tell the truth. Our Bishop described this as going from freedom to servitude. In Matthew 21:2 Jesus said, “Loose them and bring them to Me.” The donkey was loosed, but then called to serve. We have been snatched from the clutches of sin and death. He has freed us to ride in on us. When we let the only begotten Son of the Father who is full of grace and truth ride in on us, He will make our paths straight as it says in Proverbs 3:6.
Another lesson we can learn is ‘Life is Always Yin and Yang’. There will always be up and down times. The donkey represents the burden but, we see that at the same time there is a blessing riding on top of the burden. Psalms 118:26 says, “Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the LORD.” Jesus is the blessing. Our Bishop said, “When the blessing jumped on back of the burden, it let me know with every blessing there is a burden and with every burden there is a blessing.” Luke 12:48 tells us, “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.” Blessings and burdens ride in together on the toll road.
The last one I will leave you with is ‘Ascension Takes Time’. It is when we take our time that we develop the strength of patience. It is when we take our time we discern who is John and who is Judas. Paul said in 1 John 2:19, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” I want to tell you right just like our Bishop did on Sunday, there are people who left you because they were not of you. If they had been of you then there is no doubt they would have continued with you. No longer grieve over who left you. If they had been of you then, they could never have left you. God has not forgotten you nor has he overlooked you. He is riding in just on time!
Let me say a quick word of prayer over you. Thank you Father God for the liberty that is already over our lives. I pray this week be a defining moment in the many lives all across the world. I declare and decree Psalm 62:6 over our lives. The Sovereign and Most High God is the rock of our salvation. He is our defense and we shall not be moved. Jesus, be the cornerstone of all our lives. In Jesus’s name I pray. Amen.
Always thinking about you Echurch family and praying for you constantly.
Have a blessed week,
Pastor Onterio Green