UCB Word For Today

Jesus said: ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice…for great is your reward in heaven’ (Matthew 5:10-12 NKJV). To be persecuted for righteousness’ sake is to live as Jesus lived – with His character, His motives, His obedience, His trust in the Father, and His purity of heart. It’s to be a peacemaker, to hunger and thirst for what’s right, to turn your back on sin, and to be a fountain of mercy. If you live this way, you’ll be persecuted just as Jesus was persecuted. You won’t have to be confrontational in what you say or do – your very life will be confrontational. It’s the contrast that will bring confrontation! Jesus spoke the truth, lived the truth, and was willing to die for the truth. He never sought to pick a fight, but He spoke up every time the truth He spoke was challenged. And He promises that when you are insulted and abused for the same reasons He was, if you remain faithful, you will receive the kingdom of heaven. In other words, you’ll have a reward in heaven, and you’ll be given spiritual authority in the kingdom of heaven. What you may suffer here on earth is only temporary rejection, insult, or abuse. What you gain in heaven will be eternal and glorious. The Bible says: ‘The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us’ (Romans 8:18 NKJV).

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

The Hebrew word for ‘peace’ is ‘shalom’; it refers to a sense of well-being that produces calmness and confidence, even in a crisis. It’s assurance in the midst of uncertainty and confusion. Those who have an immovable, unshakeable, rock-solid trust in God are those who experience genuine peace of heart. How do you acquire such peace? First, you must know what God says in His Word and believe it. You must make God’s Word the foundation of all you believe and, therefore, of all you say and do. You must take God at His Word and surrender your will to His commandments and His plan. You must root your expectations and hope in His promises and His desires. True peace of heart is always built on truth – the truth of who God is, who you are ‘in Him’, and how God wants you to relate to Him and with others. To know God’s truth is to experience God’s peace. As you seek to bring this kind of peace to the hearts of others, you are acting like your heavenly Father. It is God’s desire that you be reconciled to Him and experience salvation and genuine heart peace. Our message is this: ‘Acquaint yourself with Him, and be at peace; thereby good will come to you’ (Job 22:21 NKJV). Paul put it this way: ‘Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Romans 5:1 NKJV). Our ultimate role as peacemakers is not simply to see men and women at peace with one another but also at peace with God.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

The Greek word for ‘pure’ is ‘katharos’, from which we get our English word ‘catharsis’. Psychiatrists talk about catharsis as the cleansing of a person’s destructive attitudes. The biblical word refers to a cleansing of all impurities from your inner spirit – impurities that include evil tendencies, evil thoughts, evil desires, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life (see 1 John 2:16). To be pure is to have all these impurities removed so that you might reflect the character of Christ Jesus. One of the main plagues in our society today, and even in many churches, is double mindedness. We have mixed motives, a divided mind and heart. We must put an end to segregating our lives, which causes us to speak and act one way around fellow Christians and another way around those who don’t know Christ. To be pure in heart is to have integrity – to have your heart, your head, and your hands fully integrated and aligned with the commands of God. To be a person of integrity is to say what you believe, and then do what you say. Jesus said very plainly, ‘No man can serve two masters’ (Matthew 6:24 KJV). ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ The pure in heart see God’s loving heart and mercy in every passage of Scripture. They see God in every event of history, shaping and moulding circumstances to serve His higher purposes. And they see God in the midst of their own difficulties, pain, and suffering. When your heart’s desire is to see and know God better, He will fulfil that desire.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

Mercy is more than forgiveness, less than love, different from grace, and one with justice. Forgiveness becomes operational only when a wrong is committed, but mercy is operational at all times. Mercy leads to and produces forgiveness, but mercy is more than forgiveness. Mercy reaches out to the weak, to the needy, and to those needing protection and direction. Just as forgiveness flows out of mercy, so mercy flows out of love. Love is the source of mercy, but love is greater than mercy – it exists apart from any need or sin. Mercy offers a reprieve from punishment, but grace offers complete pardon. Mercy relieves our pain, but grace cures the disease. Mercy overlooks the mistakes, but grace forgets the mistakes. God is both merciful and just at the same time. Mercy that ignores or refuses to deal with sin is a false mercy. Justice requires that we face and deal with sin. Mercy grants us the privilege of facing and dealing with it so we might be forgiven of it. Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.’ The more mercy we exercise, the more mercy we receive from God. We are to be conduits for God’s mercy with an ever-increasing capacity to impart it to others. The person who exercises mercy is unshackled from emotional chains, freed of spiritual bondage, and liberated from the bitterness that hinders spiritual growth. Mercy flowing from God to us removes the blockages that keep us from becoming whole. And the good news is that we will never be asked to extend more mercy to others than God has extended to us.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

Righteousness is not an optional spiritual supplement; it’s a necessity for Christian living. It’s something you must desire as much as a starving man desires food and a thirsty man desires water. Are you hungry for more of Jesus? Do you have an appetite for His Word? Do you long to experience the kingdom of God? If so, Jesus says that you will be ‘filled’. He will give you more of Himself. When you are hungry for righteousness, He will impart to you the power of a righteous life – which means keeping God’s commandments and following the leading of the Holy Spirit day by day. The Lord will give you the power to say ‘no’ to offers that are not right in His eyes. And He will give you the power to say ‘yes’ to those things that are of eternal benefit and to manifest His power in right decisions, right actions, and right words spoken at the right times, in the right situations, for the right results. The Lord will fill you with the ability to be His agent at home, at school, in your place of business, in the political arena, and in church. When you hunger and thirst for righteousness, God will satisfy you with His presence, His power, and His peace. When you deeply and truly desire more of the Lord, you will receive more of the Lord to the point of being filled to overflowing. God keeps His promises, and He will keep this one also: ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.’

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

To be ‘meek’ doesn’t mean to be a doormat or to be indecisive, timid, fearful, or spineless. It does not mean to act like a loser or a cowardly wimp. Meekness is ‘power under control’. The Bible says Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth in his day (see Numbers 12:3). Yet he was willing to go toe-to-toe with Pharaoh, to lead a grumbling people across a wilderness, and to climb a smoking, shaking mountain to meet personally with almighty God. Jesus described Himself as ‘gentle and lowly in heart’ (Matthew 11:29 NKJV). Yet He was the most courageous man who ever lived. What made Moses and Jesus meek? They manifested supreme power under control. Proverbs 16:32 (NKJV) describes this kind of power: ‘He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.’ Proverbs 25:28 (NASB) tells us the flip side of meekness: ‘Like a city that is broken into and without walls so is a person who has no self-control over his spirit.’ The meek are those who have the power to hurt but choose not to. They have knowledge to destroy someone’s reputation, but they don’t use it. They have reason to hate but refuse to act on it. Such people exhibit meekness, which is simply strength harnessed and used to do good. And those who exercise meekness walk in God’s blessing. The meek persevere until good overcomes evil, answers are found, remedies are generated, and reconciliation overcomes estrangement. And the meek sleep well at night – because their trust is in the Lord!

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

Jesus was not necessarily speaking about mourning the loss of a loved one, but that those who mourn over their sins will receive God’s comfort. When you weep over your sins and the trouble they brought to yourself and to others, you put yourself in a position to receive God’s forgiveness. True repentance does not focus on self. It’s not morbid or despairing; it doesn’t come from false humility or from wallowing in self-pity. It is acknowledging openly, plainly, and simply that you need God’s mercy and grace. As long as you delight in your sins, try to justify them, or blame others for them, you cannot be forgiven. It is only when you pray, ‘I confess that I have sinned against You in my thoughts, my words, and my actions’ that you put yourself into a position to be cleansed of your sin. The Bible says, ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1:8-9 NKJV). And in that is your comfort! It is God’s forgiveness that produces genuine joy and comfort in your souls. It is God’s forgiveness that heals your deep inner wounds, and that restores you to intimacy with your heavenly Father. David said: ‘I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the LORD.” And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone’ (Psalm 32:5 NLT).

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

What does it really mean to be ‘poor in spirit’? This phrase has nothing to do with finances or status. It means that you become conscious of your own spiritual emptiness – that without God, you are nothing, you have nothing, and you can do nothing of consequence or eternal benefit. To be poor in spirit means you know that all of your self-righteousness is as filthy rags and all of your self-propelled achievements are short-term and fleeting at best (see Isaiah 64:6). To be poor in spirit means that you know you need God. Why would this cause you to be ‘blessed’? Because you are open to receiving God’s free gift of salvation and allowing the Holy Spirit to work in your life. You are willing to humble yourself and pray: ‘Lord Jesus, I need You. I accept You as my Saviour. I want to yield my life to Your will and do things Your way to the glory of Your Name.’ If you are poor in spirit, you are willing to declare yourself spiritually bankrupt. And in so doing, you lay down your pride of spirit, your pride of will, your pride of intellect, and your pride of heart at the feet of Jesus. If you are poor in spirit, you open yourself to God’s saving mercy and grace. Consequently, you are able to enter God’s kingdom and enjoy all of its benefits and its blessings. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ means you can sincerely pray, ‘Lord, I acknowledge my total dependence on You.’

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

In an old book titled Prevailing Prayer, author Eli Wigle described John Wesley’s prayer life this way: ‘As a matter of habit and rule, John Wesley’s ordinary private praying consumed two hours a day. At times he would gather his company and pray all night, or till the power of God came down. Nothing was considered too great or too small to take to the Lord. Seized with pain in the midst of preaching, so that he could not speak, “I know my remedy,” he said, and immediately kneeled down. In a moment the pain was gone…Being seized with a pain, fever and cough, so that he could scarcely speak, “I called on Jesus aloud to increase my faith. While I was speaking my pain vanished away, my fever left me, and my bodily strength returned.”…Wesley…stirred the world with the fire of his zeal, because he had stirred heaven by the fire of his prayers. His pleas had access to men’s consciences, because they had access to God.’ Why did Wesley spend two hours each day in prayer? 1) Because he saw prayer as a cleansing and correcting force. In one of his prayers he said, ‘Oh, fill up all that is wanting, reform whatever is amiss in me, perfect the thing that concerns me.’ 2) Because he knew that God’s will is the only plan and purpose that God is committed to. ‘Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us’ (1 John 5:14 NKJV).

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

The Scarlet Letter is the story of a woman found in adultery and required to wear a scarlet ‘A’ on her dress as a symbol of shame. We do the same thing, don’t we? We label people based on a mistake. Sadly, it’s just as true in some churches as it is in the culture. That isn’t how God sees us and labels us. He takes off the grave clothes of sin and covers us in the garments of salvation (see Isaiah 61:10). He gives each of us a new name, a new identity, a new destiny. There’s a storyline in John’s gospel that’s not unlike Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. A woman was caught in the act of adultery. The religious mob was ready to stone her to death when Jesus stepped in. His defence was pure brilliance: ‘He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone’ (John 8:7 NKJV). One by one, they dropped their stones and walked away. Then Jesus told her, ‘Go and sin no more’ (v. 11 NKJV). When you hear about someone’s failure, remember John Bradford’s famous adage: ‘But for the grace of God, there go I.’ Live by the maxim, ‘Love people when they least expect it and least deserve it.’ That’s how you change someone’s life. That’s what Jesus did with this woman. When the Pharisees were writing people off, He was writing them in. When everyone else showed them the door, Jesus showed them grace. Grace is the catalyst that turns guilt into gratitude. One act of grace can turn the worst moment into a defining moment in someone’s life. And you can be that agent of grace.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.