GK Steve

Love all souls hate all sins

[GK Steve @kariukiking1]

@rasselin44 @qvyrex .. And USA is the one country which destabilized even overthrows now legit governments worldwide for their selfish interests killing millions in the process... Russia is better off and more reasonable.

[PaulsCorner-VerseQuest @TNTJohn1717]

🚨There is a strange thing that happens in some families when parents get old. The same mother who spent twenty years cooking meals, washing clothes, tending sickness, and sacrificing sleep suddenly becomes an inconvenience when she needs somebody to drive her to the doctor. The same father who worked forty years providing for his household becomes a nuisance when he needs help carrying groceries. The children have grown up, purchased homes, established careers, and developed schedules so important that apparently the people who raised them must now make an appointment three months in advance to receive fifteen minutes of attention. Some people have enough time to scroll through social media for four hours, but not enough time to call the mother who spent eighteen years answering every time they cried. That’s quite an accomplishment in modern family values!

First Timothy 5:4 says children and descendants should “learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God.” Notice where Paul placed the responsibility. AT HOME! Some Christians are prepared to travel halfway around the world to demonstrate compassion but cannot find their way across town to help their aging father. They’ll contribute to a dozen charitable causes, attend three ministry meetings, and volunteer for every religious activity on the calendar, but ask them to help their mother with an essential need and suddenly they’re busier than Moses trying to get Israel through the Red Sea. If your Christianity can reach the other side of the world but cannot reach your own parents when they genuinely need help, something has gone wrong with your understanding of practical godliness.

Now, that doesn’t mean parents have the right to become lifelong dictators over their grown children. A mother does not acquire ownership of her son’s marriage because she once changed his diapers. A father cannot demand every dollar his daughter earns simply because he paid for groceries when she was twelve. Scripture requires wisdom, and caring for aging parents does not mean neglecting your wife, husband, or dependent children. There are also circumstances involving serious mistreatment where assistance must be provided through safe and appropriate arrangements. But don’t take those legitimate distinctions and turn them into excuses for plain old selfishness. There is a difference between a parent who genuinely needs assistance and one who demands control, just as there is a difference between an adult child who cannot help and one who simply cannot be bothered. God knows the difference, even when the relatives pretend not to.

Proverbs 23:22 declares, “Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old.” There is something worth considering before another year passes. The father who once carried you may eventually need help walking. The mother who once fed you may eventually need somebody to prepare her meals. The hands that worked for your benefit may become too weak to perform the simplest tasks. And one day, if the Lord tarries, you may find yourself sitting in that same chair, wondering whether the next generation has time to remember you. Honour your parents while you still have the opportunity. Flowers on a grave may look beautiful, but they cannot replace kindness that was withheld while somebody was alive to receive it. The fifth commandment was never intended to become a sentimental inscription on a tombstone. It was meant to govern how we treat our parents while they are still here.

[Adam | Faithful Messenger @Adam_FaithfulM]

Heinrich Hofmann never meant for you to see this painting.

He painted it for one wall. The one over his own bed.

Dresden, 1894. He was about seventy, and one of the most celebrated religious painters in Germany. His Gethsemane is among the most copied paintings in the world. He had painted this face so many times he no longer needed a model.

For his last one, he took no commission. He painted Christ looking straight out of the canvas and hung it where he slept. Every night he looked up at it and asked himself one question.

Have I kept the commandments today?

Now here’s the thing about that face.

Nobody knows what it looked like.

Four gospels. Eighty-nine chapters. Two of them carry the names of men who ate at His table.

Not one tells you the color of His eyes. Not His height. Not His hair.

They tell you what He said. Where He walked. Who He touched. That He slept in a boat and wept at a grave.

About His face, nothing.

That silence is strange, because of what the face of God used to mean.

Exodus 33:20. Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

Moses asked to see it. God hid him in a crack in the rock and covered him with His hand until He had passed by.

Then John 1:18. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son... he hath declared him.

John 14:9. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.

God got a face. Men looked at it across a supper table for three years. Then they wrote it all down and left the face out.

Watch what happens after the resurrection, and you may see why.

Mary Magdalene stands in front of Him and takes Him for the gardener. She knows Him when He says her name.

Two disciples walk the road to Emmaus beside Him and don’t know who He is. They know Him when He breaks the bread.

Seven men in a boat see Him standing on the shore. John 21:4. The disciples knew not that it was Jesus. They know Him when the net fills.

Three times the people who knew Him best looked right at Him and didn’t know Him.

And every time, what opened their eyes wasn’t His face.

A voice. Bread. A catch of fish. And for Thomas, the wounds.

So every painter has had to guess. Hofmann guessed too. This is not a likeness.

But look at what he put with the face.

Light behind the head. And a raised right hand.

Numbers 6:24–26. The blessing God gave Aaron to speak over Israel.

The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

A shining face, turned toward you. That is the blessing.

And the priest gave it with his hand lifted. Leviticus 9:22.

Now the last thing the disciples ever saw Jesus do.

Luke 24:50–51. And he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.

He left in the middle of a blessing. Hands up.

The last sight this world had of Him is the one an old man hung over his bed.

Decades later, John saw Him again. John, who had leaned on His chest at supper.

Revelation 1:16–17. His countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not.

The face like the sun. And the right hand.

Now go back to the old man’s question.

Five years before this painting, Hofmann painted a man who put that same question to Jesus in person. Christ and the Rich Young Ruler, 1889.

Mark 10:20. Master, all these have I observed from my youth.

Before Jesus answers him, before He names the one thing he lacks, Mark records what His face did.

Mark 10:21. Then Jesus, beholding him, loved him.

He looked at him. He loved him. Then He told him the truth.

Hofmann knew what that question does to an honest man at the end of a day. And he did not hang a judge over his bed.

He hung a hand raised to bless.

Now you.

You lie down under the same question every night. Did I do enough today? Was I enough?

Most nights the honest answer is no.

You have never seen His face. Neither have I.

1 Peter 1:8. Whom having not seen, ye love.

But the day is coming. Revelation 22:4. And they shall see his face.

Until then, you know the look. Mark told you.

Beholding him, loved him.

And you know what His hands were doing when He left.

They’re still up.

[Jimmy Falk5 @JimmyFalk_55]

@KarluskaP A Muslim woman goes into a Christian church to tell Jesus Christ...You're not the son of God...God responds...

[GK Steve @kariukiking1]

@Emma999Too They brought us a bill of over 1 million shillings in Eastleigh and so many other buildings are complaining. Despite payment their systems listed us for cut off before due date... Thugs in offices

[Adam | Faithful Messenger @Adam_FaithfulM]

The longest single story in the book of Genesis isn’t about Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. It’s about Joseph, and it takes up almost fourteen chapters. Read it once, and it’s a gripping family drama of jealousy, betrayal, slavery, prison, power, and forgiveness. Read it again after the Gospels, and you start to notice something. Again and again, the life of Joseph traces the shape of the life of Jesus, nearly two thousand years before He was born.

The beloved son. Genesis 37 opens by telling us that Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, and gave him a special robe. The exact kind of garment is uncertain, often translated as a coat of many colors or a long robe with sleeves, but everyone in the family understood what it meant. This son was marked out by his father’s love. At Jesus’ baptism, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Hated for his words. Joseph had dreams in which his brothers bowed down to him, and he told them. Genesis says they hated him even more “for his dreams and for his words.” He was hated not for what he had done to them, but for who he claimed he would be. Jesus told His disciples, “They hated me without a cause.”

Sent by the father. Jacob sends Joseph to check on his brothers, who were pasturing the flocks far from home. Joseph answers, “Here I am,” and goes. He walks miles to find them. And when they see him coming in the distance, they say to each other, “Come, let us kill him.” In Jesus’ parable of the vineyard, the owner sends his beloved son to the tenants, and when they see him, they say, “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him.” In the Greek Old Testament that the early church read, the words are the same. Jesus was telling His listeners that they were about to do to Him what Joseph’s brothers did to Joseph.

Stripped and thrown down. The brothers grab Joseph, strip him of his robe, and throw him into a pit. Genesis adds the detail that the pit was empty, with no water in it. A dry pit was a cistern, a place to leave someone to die. Jesus was stripped of His garments at the cross, and the soldiers divided them. Then He went down into death.

Sold for silver. The brothers sit down to eat while Joseph is in the pit. When a caravan of traders passes, one brother speaks up: “What profit is it if we kill our brother? Come, let us sell him.” That brother’s name was Judah. In Greek, Judah is Ioudas. Judas. Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver, which, according to the law of Moses, was the price for a boy his age. Judas sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, the price the law set for a slave.

The bloodied robe. The brothers dip Joseph’s robe in the blood of a goat and bring it to their father. Jacob sees the blood on his son’s garment and weeps, saying his son is dead. In Israel’s worship, the blood of a goat was offered for sin on the Day of Atonement. Here, the beloved son’s robe is stained with it.

Falsely accused. In Egypt, Joseph is sold to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh. He serves faithfully, and everything prospers under him. Then Potiphar’s wife falsely accuses him, and he is thrown into prison. Genesis records no word of defense from Joseph. Isaiah said of the Servant, “Like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” Jesus stood before false witnesses and said nothing.

Between two criminals. In prison, Joseph meets two of Pharaoh’s officials, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, both in disgrace. Each has a dream, and Joseph interprets them. One man will be restored to life and his position in three days. The other will be executed. Hold that next to the cross. Jesus died between two criminals. One was promised life. The other died in his sin. Joseph even says to the cupbearer, “Remember me when it is well with you.” The cupbearer forgot him. The thief on the cross said the same words to Jesus, “Remember me,” and Jesus did not forget.

Raised to the right hand. After two more years, Pharaoh has troubling dreams that no one can interpret. Joseph is brought up out of the dungeon, cleaned and dressed, and stands before the king. He explains that seven years of plenty are coming, followed by seven years of famine. Pharaoh raises him in a single day from prisoner to ruler of all Egypt, second only to the throne. Genesis notes his age: he was thirty years old. Luke tells us that Jesus was about thirty when He began His ministry.

Pharaoh puts Joseph in his own chariot, and men run ahead of it shouting a command: bow the knee. Paul writes that God has highly exalted Jesus, “so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.”

“Do whatever he tells you.” When the famine comes, and the people cry out to Pharaoh for bread, he gives them one instruction: “Go to Joseph. What he says to you, do.” Remember the wedding at Cana, when the wine ran out, and Mary turned to the servants and said, “Do whatever he tells you.” The one who was rejected is now the only source of bread for the whole world. Genesis says all the earth came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.”

Unrecognized. Then the famine drives Joseph’s brothers to Egypt. They come and bow down before the governor, exactly as Joseph had dreamed years earlier. And Genesis says, “Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him.” They are standing in front of the brother they betrayed, the only one who can save them, and they have no idea who he is. John wrote of Jesus, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.”

The substitute. Joseph tests them. He sets things up so that it looks as if Benjamin, the youngest brother and now their father’s favorite, must stay in Egypt as a slave. And Judah, the same brother who once suggested selling Joseph for silver, steps forward and offers himself instead: let me stay as a slave in place of the boy. The man who sold one brother now gives himself for another. That is when Joseph cannot hold back any longer.

“I am Joseph.” He sends everyone else out of the room and weeps so loudly that the Egyptians outside can hear him. Then he says to his brothers, “I am Joseph.” They are terrified and cannot answer. And he says, “Come near to me, please.” Then he tells them, “Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.”

In the book of Acts, as Stephen recounts Israel’s history, he says that the patriarchs, out of jealousy, sold Joseph into Egypt, “but God was with him,” and that it was on the second visit that Joseph made himself known to his brothers. Stephen was not just retelling history. He was speaking to people who had rejected Jesus.

Meant for good. At the end of Genesis, after their father dies, the brothers are afraid that Joseph will finally take revenge. Instead, he says one of the greatest sentences in the Old Testament: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.” Peter said almost the same thing about the cross at Pentecost: Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, and yet crucified by lawless hands. The worst thing ever done was used by God to save the world.

To the world, Genesis is a collection of ancient folk tales. But here is a story written down centuries before the Messiah, about a beloved son who was sent by his father, hated by his brothers, stripped, betrayed for silver by a man named Judah, falsely accused, placed between two condemned men, raised up at thirty to the right hand of the throne, given authority over the bread that saved the world, and finally revealed to the very people who had betrayed him, who found mercy instead of judgment.

Maybe you have been on the brothers’ side of this story. You have done things you thought could never be forgiven, and you are afraid of what will happen when you finally stand before Him. Hear what Joseph said, because Jesus says it better: “Come near to me.” He is not waiting to repay you. What you meant for evil, God can turn to good. And the One you rejected is the only one who has bread.

Jesus is the beloved Son, rejected by His own and raised up to save the world. Thank you, Jesus.

[Carlos Erazo @CarlosErazoGTG]

I WISH someone had explained this to me when I was younger Christian.

Every commandment in the Bible and everything it calls a *sin* is actually a *warning* from God not to hurt yourself.

In other words, as it has been said before… When God says DON’T, what He's really saying is: DON’T hurt yourself.

Let me give you several examples.

Sex before marriage - It is a scientific fact that sex creates a neurochemical bond with another person, not just physically but emotionally.

In other words, sex is not just the union of two bodies, but of two souls. So when God says DON’T, he’s saying: you don’t want to be bonded like that to somebody you barely know.

Lying - When you lie, you eventually destroy the trust other people have in you. And the problem with lying is that one lie often requires another to cover it up, until eventually, you've built an entire life around pretending to be someone you're not.

Envy - Envy is resenting God’s goodness in someone else’s life while ignoring God’s goodness in your life. Instead of living a life of gratitude and joy, you live one of bitterness and anger.

Pride - Pride makes a person care more about BEING right… than making a relationship RIGHT. And you become incapable of learning, apologizing, or growing.

Gossip - Gossip destroys relationships… and if someone is gossiping TO YOU about other people, chances are they're also gossiping ABOUT YOU to other people behind your back.

Unforgiveness - This one is tough because you’re already hurt with something. But when you refuse to forgive, unforgiveness makes YOU a prisoner of your past, and a slave to bitterness, resentment, and pain. God says “don’t.”

Greed - Greed makes you believe a lie that if you only had “more” then you’d be happy. Not true. You’ll be miserable.

Lust - We live a culture saturated with lust. It always destroys your ability to experience true intimacy with another person. This is why our culture is terrible at marriage, intimacy, and relationships.
Here’s the point.

Deuteronomy 10:12 (NIV) says “Observe the LORD's commands and decrees that I am giving you today … for your own good."

When God forbids something, it’s not because he hates you and he’s trying to rob something from you.

It’s because he loves you and he’s trying to protect you.

When He says DON’T, He's not trying to keep you from enjoying life.

He's teaching you how to truly live it.

[Adam | Faithful Messenger @Adam_FaithfulM]

The law told him exactly how to live.

Leviticus 13:45. And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean.

Torn clothes. Uncovered head. Face covered to the lip. And everywhere he went, he had to shout his own condition so people could get out of his way.

Verse 46. He shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.

Alone. Outside.

Imagine years of that. Walking toward a village and calling out the worst thing about yourself so mothers could pull their children away. Watching people cross the road. Never a handshake. Never an embrace. Never a hand on your shoulder.

Luke, the doctor, gives the diagnosis. Luke 5:12. A man full of leprosy.

Not a patch. Full.

And this man walked up to Jesus anyway, which he was not allowed to do, and fell on his knees.

Mark 1:40. If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

Read that sentence slowly.

He didn’t say if you can. He knew He could. He’d heard what Jesus was doing in Galilee.

His question wasn’t power. It was willingness.

You can. But do you want to? Would you want to - for someone like me?

That’s the question underneath almost every prayer that never gets prayed.

Now watch the order.

Mark 1:41. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.

He touched him first.

Then He spoke.

The touch came while the man was still full of leprosy. Before he was clean. Before he was safe to touch.

Under the Law, that touch should have made Jesus unclean. Instead, the uncleanness ran out of the man.

But here’s the detail most people miss.

Jesus didn’t have to touch him.

Turn the page in Matthew. Matthew 8 puts the leper first - verses 1 to 4. And the very next story, verse 5, is a Roman centurion whose servant is paralysed at home.

The centurion says, Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.

Jesus does. From a distance. Never sees the servant. Never touches him. The servant is healed the same hour.

Same chapter. Back to back. One healed with a word from miles away. One healed with a hand.

Jesus could have healed the leper from across the road. He could have shouted it. He could have pointed.

He chose to touch him. Because the leprosy wasn’t the only thing that needed healing.

How long had it been since anyone had laid a hand on that man?

Now go back to the Old Testament, because there’s a reason everyone stared.

In the whole Old Testament, leprosy is almost never cured. When the king of Aram sent his general Naaman to the king of Israel to be healed, the king tore his clothes in panic.

2 Kings 5:7. Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy?

Healing leprosy was something only God could do.

Jesus said it Himself. Luke 4:27. Many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.

And look at how Naaman was healed. The prophet Elisha didn’t even come out of the house. He sent a servant to the door with instructions.

Naaman was furious. 2 Kings 5:11. Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the LORD his God, and strike his hand over the place.

Naaman wanted the prophet to come out and put his hand on him.

Elisha wouldn’t.

Eight hundred years later, Jesus did exactly what Naaman wanted and never got. He came out. He stood. He put His hand on the man.

Greater than Elisha is here.

Now the ending, because it’s the part nobody preaches.

Jesus told the man to go to the priest quietly. He didn’t. Mark 1:45. He went out, and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter.

And look what happened.

Insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert places.

Read it again.

At the start of the story, the leper lives outside - alone, in desert places, unable to enter the town.

At the end of the story, the leper is back in town. And Jesus is the one who can’t go in. Jesus is out in the desert places.

They traded places.

He touched the outcast, and He became the outcast.

That’s the gospel in nine verses.

Hebrews 13:12–13. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.

He went outside the camp so you could come in.

Now you.

Some of you have been crying unclean about yourself for years.

Nobody makes you do it out loud. You do it in your head. Before you walk into church. Before you pray. Before anyone gets close enough to find out. You announce your own condition so nobody’s surprised. You keep your distance so nobody has to.

And when you finally get on your knees, the prayer comes out exactly like his.

I know you can.

I just don’t know if you’d want to. For me.

Here’s your answer. It’s the same one He gave the leper. Two words.

I will.

He’s not standing across the road. He’s not shouting from a safe distance. He doesn’t need you to be clean before He gets close.

He touches first.

Then He speaks.

I will.

Be clean.

[Adam | Faithful Messenger @Adam_FaithfulM]

There’s a night in Genesis where a man wrestles God and wins. Or does he?

“And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.” - Genesis 32:24

No introduction. No explanation of who the man is. Just a stranger in the dark and a fight that lasts all night.

Here’s the setup. Jacob is about to meet his brother Esau for the first time in twenty years. The last time they saw each other, Jacob had stolen Esau’s blessing, and Esau had sworn to kill him. Now word has come: Esau is on his way, with four hundred men.

Jacob sends his family across the river Jabbok. He stays behind alone. And someone grabs him in the dark.

Then comes the strangest detail in the story:

“When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint.” (v.25)

Read that again. One touch, and Jacob’s hip is dislocated.

Whoever this was could have ended the fight at any moment. He wrestled all night anyway.

He wasn’t losing. He was letting it go on.

Then the stranger says, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” And Jacob, crippled, no longer able to fight, does the only thing he has left. He holds on.

“I will not let you go unless you bless me.” (v.26)

And the stranger asks a question that cuts deeper than any wound: “What is your name?”

Here’s why that hurts. Twenty years earlier, Jacob’s blind father asked him almost the same question, “Who are you, my son?”, and Jacob lied: “I am Esau” (Genesis 27:18–19). That lie stole the blessing.

Now he’s asked again. And this time he tells the truth: “Jacob.”

The name means heel-grabber. Schemer. Deceiver. It’s a confession.

And in that moment, he gets a new one: “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” (v.28)

Who was the stranger? The text calls him “a man.” The prophet Hosea calls him an angel (Hosea 12:4). Jacob himself named the place Peniel, “for I have seen God face to face” (v.30). Many Christians through the centuries have seen here an appearance of Christ before His birth.

And Hosea adds one detail Genesis leaves out: “He wept and sought his favor.”

So this is how Jacob “won.” Not by strength. By weeping, clinging, and refusing to let go of the One who could have destroyed him with a touch.

That’s the God of the Bible. The God who lets Himself be held.

Who comes down into the dark, into the dirt, close enough to be grabbed. Who stays all night. Who wounds only to bless.

Centuries later, He came closer still. A God who let Himself be held as a baby in His mother’s arms. Who let Thomas touch His wounds. Who let sinners cling to His feet and wouldn’t push them away.

You don’t win with God by being strong enough.

You win by holding on.

“The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.” (v.31)

He walked into the morning with a limp and a new name.

Most people who’ve truly met God do.

[GK Steve @kariukiking1]

@o750000 @Bush200004 Yawa you had to release that hehe

[GK Steve @kariukiking1]

@o750000 @Bush200004 Hehe

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

Jesus said something about John the Baptist that should stop us in our tracks: “Among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist! Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matthew 11:11). John was no lightweight. Christ Himself said no prophet before him had risen greater. Yet Jesus then placed even the least in the kingdom in a position of greater privilege.

That greatness is not about superior personality, spiritual experience, public influence, or religious achievement. John stood at the edge of fulfillment. He pointed toward the Lamb and announced that the kingdom was near, but he did not live to see the cross, the empty tomb, Pentecost, and the full unveiling of what Christ had accomplished. We live on the other side of those events.

This is where the weight of the text lands. John saw the dawn. We live in the light of the risen Christ. He announced the One who was coming. We confess the One who has come, died, risen, ascended, and now reigns. Peter says that the prophets longed to understand the grace now announced to us, and even “angels long to look” into these things (1 Peter 1:10–12).

Furthermore, our place in the kingdom leaves absolutely no room for boasting. We did not earn this privilege by being wiser than John, more disciplined than Moses, or more spiritual than the prophets. We were simply born into a later moment in God’s redemptive plan and, by grace, brought into union with Christ. “Of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace” (John 1:16).

And I must say, this exposes how badly we often measure greatness. We look at platforms, gifts, experiences, crowds, titles, and accomplishments. Christ looks at something far deeper. The poorest believer who belongs to Him possesses privileges kings and prophets longed to see. We have the completed gospel, the indwelling Holy Spirit, access to the Father through Christ, and the certainty of a finished redemption.

So when Jesus says the least in the kingdom is greater than John, He is magnifying the grace of our position in Christ, not flattering our performance. We stand where we stand because Christ has brought us there. The greatness belongs to the kingdom, the privilege belongs to grace, and the glory belongs entirely to the King.

[Adam | Faithful Messenger @Adam_FaithfulM]

For twelve years, nobody touched her.

Mark 5:25. A certain woman who had an issue of blood for twelve years.

Under the Law of Moses, a woman with a flow of blood that wouldn’t stop was unclean for as long as it lasted. Leviticus 15:25. Anything she lay on, anything she sat on, was unclean. Anyone who touched her was unclean.

Twelve years.

No hand on her shoulder. No embrace from her mother. No husband, and if she’d had one, he’d likely been gone a long time. No temple. Every room she walked into, people stepped back.

And she’d spent everything trying to fix it.

Mark 5:26. And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse.

Now read Luke’s version. Luke was a physician himself.

Luke 8:43. Which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any.

The doctor quietly leaves out the line about getting worse under doctors. Mark the fisherman put it in.

She was broke. Sick. Untouchable. And she had one idea left.

But she wasn’t the one Jesus was going to see that day.

Back up a few verses. A man named Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, a respected man, has thrown himself at Jesus’s feet in front of the whole town.

Mark 5:23. My little daughter lieth at the point of death.

His only daughter, Luke says. And Mark tells you how old she was.

Mark 5:42. She was of the age of twelve years.

Twelve.

The year that girl was born, the woman started bleeding.

For twelve years, Jairus had a daughter growing up in his house: first steps, first words, laughing at the table. For the same twelve years, the woman had been slowly dying in the street.

And on the same morning, one was at the end of her life, and the other was out of options.

Jesus is walking to Jairus’s house. The crowd is crushing in. And the woman who, by law, should not be in that crowd at all, pushes her way through behind Him.

Mark 5:28. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.

Matthew and Luke tell you exactly what she touched. The hem. The border of His garment.

In Greek, kraspedon. It’s the word used for the tassels a Jewish man wore on the four corners of his robe, commanded in Numbers 15, to remember the commandments of the LORD.

And the Hebrew word for the corners where those tassels hung is kanaf. It also means wing.

Malachi 4:2. But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.

Healing in His wings. She reached for the corner of His robe.

And she was healed. Instantly. Mark says she felt in her body that the fountain of her blood was dried up.

She could have slipped away. Nobody would have known.

Jesus stopped.

Mark 5:30. Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?

His disciples almost laughed at Him. Hundreds of people are touching You.

But He kept looking. And she came forward, shaking, and fell down, and told Him all the truth in front of everyone.

Why didn’t He let her go quietly?

Because she didn’t just need to be healed. She needed to be seen healed. Twelve years of the whole town knowing she was unclean; now the whole town heard Him declare her whole.

Mark 5:34. And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.

Daughter.

It’s the only time in the gospels Jesus addresses a woman by that word.

He’s on His way to save one man’s daughter, and He stops in the street to call a forgotten woman His.

Now feel what Jairus felt during that conversation.

Mark 5:35. While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further?

His girl died while Jesus was stopped in the road for someone else.

Jesus heard it. And before Jairus could speak, He said one sentence.

Mark 5:36. Be not afraid, only believe.

He walked into the house. Put out the mourners who laughed at Him. Took the girl by the hand.

Mark 5:41. Talitha cumi. Little girl, I say unto thee, arise.

And she got up and walked. Twelve years old. And then Jesus told them to give her something to eat.

Now look at what happened to the law that day.

Under Moses, uncleanness spread by touch. The unclean woman touched you, you became unclean. You touched a corpse; you became unclean. Numbers 19:11.

That day a bleeding woman touched Jesus. And He took a dead girl by the hand.

By the law, He should have been unclean twice before lunch.

Instead, the woman became clean. And the dead girl got up.

With Him, it runs the other way. He doesn’t catch your uncleanness. You catch His life.

Now you.

Some of you are the woman. You’ve been sick a long time, or ashamed a long time, or alone a long time. You’ve spent everything, money, years, every doctor, every program, every fix, and you’re not better. You’re worse. And you’ve stopped expecting anyone to touch you.

Reach.

Not perfectly. Not with the right words. Through the crowd, from behind, with the last faith you’ve got. He feels it. He’ll turn around. And He’ll call you something you haven’t been called in years.

And some of you are Jairus. You prayed. You begged. He said He’d come. And then He stopped for someone else, and while He was stopped, the news came. It’s over. Don’t bother Him anymore.

He’s not late. He was never late.

He saved two daughters that morning. The delay for one was the miracle for the other.

Be not afraid.

Only believe.

[Adam | Faithful Messenger @Adam_FaithfulM]

It’s the verse skeptics love to post: a prophet curses some children for calling him bald, and God sends bears to maul them.

“He went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, ‘Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!’ And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.” - 2 Kings 2:23–24

On the surface, it sounds monstrous. Little kids. A bad joke. Forty-two of them torn apart.

But almost every detail in that summary is wrong.

1. They weren’t little children.

The Hebrew word is נַעַר (na’ar). It’s the same word used for Isaac when Abraham took him up the mountain (Genesis 22:12), for Joseph at seventeen (Genesis 37:2), for Absalom when he led an army against his father (2 Samuel 18:5), and for soldiers going into battle (1 Kings 20:14). It means a young male: anything from a teenager to a young man.

And do the math. Forty-two were mauled. That means the crowd was at least that big, and probably bigger. This wasn’t a few kids on a playground. It was a mob of young men pouring out of a city to confront a lone prophet on the road.

2. “Go up” wasn’t a random insult.

Read the verses just before. Elijah, Elisha’s master, had just been taken up into heaven by a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:11). Everyone in Israel would have heard about it.

So when the crowd shouts “Go up, baldhead!”, they’re mocking the ascension itself. Go on, disappear as your master did. We don’t want you or your God here.

3. Where it happened matters.

Bethel was the center of Israel’s idol worship. King Jeroboam had set up a golden calf there and told the people, “Behold your gods, O Israel” (1 Kings 12:28–29). This was a city that had turned its back on the LORD for generations, and now its young men came out to drive off His prophet.

And God had warned them. In the covenant, He said that if Israel kept walking in rebellion, “I will let loose the wild beasts among you” (Leviticus 26:21–22). Bethel was living under that warning.

Notice also: Elisha didn’t summon bears. He spoke a curse in the name of the LORD, and left it to God. The judgment came from the One Bethel had rejected.

And look at the scene right before it. In Jericho, Elisha heals a poisoned spring, and the city receives life (2 Kings 2:19–22). Two cities. One prophet. One received him and was healed. One mocked him and was judged.

It’s still a hard passage. It should be. Scripture doesn’t hide that mocking God is serious.

But here’s where it gets stunning.

Centuries later, another Man was mocked by a crowd. Not “go up.” This time it was “Come down”: “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matthew 27:40).

He had every right to call down judgment. His own disciples once asked Him to call fire from heaven, like Elijah, on a village that rejected Him, and He rebuked them (Luke 9:54–55).

Instead, from the cross, with the mockery still ringing in His ears, He prayed:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34)

Elisha’s mockers met the judgment.

Jesus’ mockers met a Savior who took it for them.

[Shahriq Khan @RealShahriqKhan]

When I was Muslim, I used to ask Christians:

“If Jesus was really God, why did He eat, sleep, and bleed like us?”

I literally would ask it with pride. I was super pumped about it because like it was some unbeatable argument. I loved how that felt.

But bro, later I realized something:

That question is not exposing Christianity - like at all.

It was exposing my total misunderstanding of what kind of God Jesus claimed to be for His people.

After I became a Christian, I pondered this a lot. I repent for this too!

The question is not: Why would God become weak?

The question is: What kind of God would willingly step into human suffering at all?

This was convicting for me because Islam taught me about a God who was distant and untouchable. But Christianity introduced me to a God who stepped into hunger, exhaustion, grief, pain, betrayal, blood, and suffering with us.

After I understood it, Jesus' humanity stopped looking like weakness to me.

It became proof of love.

If Jesus ate, it means He came close enough to experience hunger beside us.

If He slept, it means He embraced the exhaustion we carry.

If He bled, it means He did not stand above suffering watching us from a distance.

He entered it Himself.

Philippians 2 says Christ emptied Himself and took on flesh. Why? Not because He stopped being God, but because He wanted humanity to finally see what God is actually like.

And it turns out God is willing to suffer for the people He loves. That one realization changed so much for me.

Every other religion demanded sacrifice from humanity. Jesus became the sacrifice Himself.

PRAISE JESUS! I AM FREE! Follow me if you want to become better equipped to defend your faith, understand Islam, and lead Muslims toward Jesus.

[Adam | Faithful Messenger @Adam_FaithfulM]

There are two verses in Mark’s Gospel that seem to make no sense. And they might be the most personal confession in the New Testament.

It’s night in Gethsemane. Judas has arrived with a crowd carrying swords and clubs. Jesus is seized.

Then Mark writes: “And they all left him and fled.” (Mark 14:50)

Every disciple. Gone.

And then, out of nowhere:

“And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.” (Mark 14:51–52)

That’s it. No name. No explanation. He’s never mentioned again. Matthew, Luke, and John all describe the arrest, and none of them include him.

Why would Mark put this in? At the most important moment in history, why stop to tell us about an unnamed young man losing his clothes in the dark?

There’s an old answer, and it’s a beautiful one: the young man was Mark himself.

Here’s why many have thought so:

Mark’s family lived in Jerusalem. His mother Mary owned a house where the early church gathered to pray (Acts 12:12). Some have even suggested it was the house of the Last Supper. A teenage boy, woken in the night, throwing on a linen cloth and following the crowd out to the garden, fits that picture.

And only someone who was there would bother to remember it. It adds nothing to the story of Jesus. It only makes sense as a memory. Ancient writers sometimes left a quiet signature in their work, and this may be Mark’s: I was there. And I ran too.

We can’t prove it. Some read the scene symbolically instead. The prophet Amos had said that in the day of judgment, “he who is stout of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked” (Amos 2:16). Either way, the point is the same: when Jesus was taken, nobody stood with Him. Not the twelve. Not even a boy in a linen sheet.

But here’s what makes it extraordinary.

If this was Mark, it wasn’t the last time he ran. Years later he abandoned Paul and Barnabas mid-mission and went home (Acts 13:13). Paul was so frustrated that he refused to take Mark on the next journey, and the two great missionaries split over it (Acts 15:37–39).

Mark was the runner. The one who quit.

And yet near the end of Paul’s life, in his final letter, he writes: “Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry” (2 Timothy 4:11). Peter calls him “Mark, my son” (1 Peter 5:13).

The boy who fled naked into the night became the man who wrote the first Gospel ever written.

And in the middle of it, he left his own failure in plain sight.

Not hidden. Not edited out. Written down for every reader for two thousand years.

Because the Gospel isn’t the story of people who stayed.

It’s the story of the One who stayed for the people who ran.

[Shahriq Khan @RealShahriqKhan]

You know what shook me when I was Muslim?

The story of Hosea: In it, God tells a prophet to marry a woman He KNOWS will betray him.

She does. She runs to other men. She ends up enslaved, sold, and used up. Essentially, she is worthless to the world.

Then, God tells Hosea to go BUY HER BACK, to pay money for his own wife who cheated on him, and love her again. (Hosea 3)

I thought it was the most humiliating command in the Bible. Bro, why would any man do that!?

Then I realized I was exactly like the wife.

I gave my heart to everything but God. I chased other masters and I sold myself cheap. In a way, I made myself worthless.

But, God looked at me, the betrayer, and didn’t say “you’re not worth it.” Instead, He said, “Name the price. I’m buying her back.”

What's beautiful about this is, that’s the entire Gospel. God doesn’t wait for the unfaithful to come crawling back clean.

He pays to redeem them while they’re still dirty.

Islam told me to make myself WORTHY of God.

Hosea showed me an amazing, present God who pays to redeem the unworthy. The cross was Him naming the price.

Praise the Lord!

Follow for more Christian apologetics that doesn't stop at winning arguments but equips you to actually reach people!

[Shahriq Khan @RealShahriqKhan]

Let me be honest. I wanted to stay Muslim so badly.

Not even because of God or faith at first, but because of the life attached to my faith.

My dad’s businesses were waiting for me -  all signed and ready.

My mom’s community surrounded me: doctors, lawyers and politicians.

Bro, success was laid out in front of me. There was even an arranged marriage lined up for me. She was on track to be a doctor. Beautiful future with the house, the wedding, all of it.

All I had to do was say one sentence:

“Yeah, I still believe.”

That was it. If I said it, I could keep the money, keep the family approval and keep the life I had always known.

But here’s the problem, once I met Him, I could not unsee Jesus.

When I really read the Quran and compared it to the Gospel, I couldn’t force myself back into pretending Islam was the truth.

Honestly bro, knowledge becomes heavy at that point. I didn’t leave Islam to rebel, despite what many believe about me.

I left because I could not betray what I believed was true. No business opportunity, no relationship, no comfortable future was worth denying the King who gave His life for me.

So yeah, my life would have been easier if I stayed. But when Jesus says, “I am the way,” you don’t answer with, “But the other path feels safer.”

You pick up your cross and walk.

Follow me for more conversations about Islam, Christianity, Scripture, and how we can reach Muslims with the Gospel.

[Adam | Faithful Messenger @Adam_FaithfulM]

Luke was a doctor.

Paul calls him the beloved physician. Colossians 4:14.

And Luke is the only gospel writer who records what happened to Jesus’s body that night in the garden.

Luke 22:44. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

The other three gospels tell you He prayed. The doctor tells you what the prayer did to Him.

There’s a name for it now. Hematidrosis. It’s rare, but it’s documented in medical literature: under extreme anguish, the tiny blood vessels around the sweat glands can rupture, and blood mixes into the sweat. It’s been recorded in soldiers before battle and in men facing execution.

The body of the Son of God was breaking under the weight of what was coming, and nobody had touched Him yet.

No whip. No thorns. No nails. Just a man on the ground under the olive trees, and the knowledge of what the morning would bring.

Now look at where He was.

Gethsemane. The name means oil press.

An olive grove on the Mount of Olives, with a press for crushing the harvest, great stones bearing down on the fruit until the oil runs out.

He went to the place where olives are crushed, on the night He was crushed.

And look at the word Luke uses. Agony. In Greek, agōnia. It’s an athlete’s word, the strain of a wrestler at the limit of his strength. He’s not resting in prayer. He’s fighting in it.

Mark says He began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy.

And then Jesus said the most frightening sentence a human being has ever said about himself. Mark 14:34. My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.

The man who calmed the storm with three words, who had raised the dead, who knew the end from the beginning - on His face in the dirt, telling His friends He was so overwhelmed it felt like dying.

Matthew 26:39. He went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

What was the cup?

The prophets had already told you. Isaiah 51:17, the cup of his fury. Jeremiah 25:15, the wine cup of this fury, given to the nations to drink.

It was the cup of the wrath of God against sin. All of it. Every century of it. And He was going to drink it to the bottom.

That’s what He saw in the garden. Not the nails. The cup.

Now go back to the first garden.

Genesis 3. The first Adam stands in paradise. Every tree is his. One command. And he chooses his own will over God’s.

Then the voice of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam ran.

Genesis 3:10. I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

The first Adam hid from God among the trees.

The last Adam went into the trees to find Him.

The first Adam said: My will.

The last Adam fell on His face and said: Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

Now read what God said to Adam on the way out of Eden.

Genesis 3:19. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground.

Sweat. The curse was sweat.

The sweat of your face, until you return to the ground.

And in Gethsemane, in a garden, the doctor watched the sweat of Christ’s face fall to the ground, mixed with His blood.

The curse that started in a garden ended in a garden. The last Adam took the sweat of the first one, and He bled it out onto the same ground Adam was made from.

One more detail. Luke again.

Luke 22:45. When he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow.

For sorrow.

Matthew and Mark just say they were asleep. The doctor gives the diagnosis. They weren’t lazy. They were grieving so hard their bodies shut down.

Three times He came back and found them asleep.
Three times He went back alone.

Could ye not watch with me one hour?

He asked His closest friends for one thing, one hour, on the worst night of His life. And they couldn’t give it to Him.

He prayed it alone.

And look at what comes after the third prayer. Matthew 26:46. Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.

He doesn’t run. He doesn’t hide in the trees. Torches are already moving across the valley, and the man who was face-down in the dirt stands up and walks toward them.

The fight was over. It was won on His knees, before a single soldier arrived.

Now you.

Some of you are in your garden right now.

You’ve prayed for the cup to pass. You’ve asked three times. Thirty times. You’ve fallen on your face over a diagnosis, a child, a marriage, a fear you can’t say out loud. And heaven hasn’t moved the cup.

And your friends are asleep. Not because they don’t love you. Because they’re tired and they don’t know how bad it is. You’re praying alone.

He knows that garden. He’s been in it. He sweated through it.

And here’s the thing about that cup. The worst cup, the cup of wrath, the one with your sin in it - He didn’t let it pass. He drank it so you will never have to.

Whatever is in your cup tonight, that isn’t in it anymore.

What’s left is the prayer. The hardest one there is. The one that turned the curse around.

Not my will.

He prayed it first.

Now you can.

[GK Steve @kariukiking1]

@DenisGitari12 @Realkangethe God's work can never ever stop you'll grow old as a garment tear down like an old house as you watch the Gospel advance watch out your words