Never

On this first day of another brand new week, this most blessed and highly privileged Lord’s Day Sunday, what a beginning we have been given! What an absolute mind-renewing, heart-recharging, soul-reviving week we are expecting. I know that you will be aroused in your very being when I share this testimony with you.

My dear friend and I had gone to one of our early morning Communion Sunday Church services and the minister spoke from a most well-known and often quoted Scripture passage. He had chosen John 6: 35. I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. As he began his sermon, he read the passage and all I heard was the word NEVER. I mean, I cannot tell you what the preacher said but I can tell you what I heard, like loud drum beat in my heart and mind. It was so penetrating, so deep, so persistent and so real that I was compelled to listen and respond to the Holy Spirit, working, NEVER in me. I was captured, I was taken, as it were by the Spirit who had me in a responsive echo. I was brought light, sound, joy, peace and utter transforming peace, when I could only repeat what I was hearing.

For example, as I sat there in that Chapel, with the rain pouring down heavily outside and the minister as if competing with the increasing sound of the rains, I distinctly heard, “You will NEVER know hunger again.” And I heard my response, “Never! Never? Never!?” Then I heard this. “I tell you, with Me you will NEVER be thirsty again.” Again I heard myself saying, “Never! Never? Never!?” However you take the speech marks, all I know is that I was totally in awe and wonder, yet believing as never before. One word, yes one word bowled me over and it refused to be erased from my mind.

As we were returning home my friend and I, before we could leave the church yard fully, I couldn’t be contained. I was waiting for my friend to say something about her church experience, but I was too anxious and when I opened my mouth I said, Well, all I know is NEVER! Before I could get the words out she burst out, saying that she too was held by the word NEVER. All the way home we only spoke about NEVER and confessed that what Jesus had said then to His disciples so long ago is not just relevant, but perfectly true for us today.

The word, NEVER, has taken on a whole, big, full, blossoming, fruit-bearing life for me and this is what you are being offered this week. I know and am unshakeable in my belief that our Jesus Himself, through His sent Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who brings to our remembrance the things of our Lord, will lead you on some treasured and everlasting NEVER trails, which will indeed change your disposition of heart and mind, wherever you may be.

Each day, we will follow a different trail of Scripture verses, where the Lord uses the word, NEVER, to us. Some may be familiar and some may not, but does it really matter, when we have God the Holy Spirit, as our Guide and Guard?