Prayer – Lord, I’m just tired. Refresh and renew me, spiritually and physically. Thank you for hearing my prayers…and those of my family and friends. May we all be victorious and receive Your heavenly manna. I’m a bit hungry. Sounds like a wonderful thing to provide for us…it is almost 4,000 years old or freshly baked today?
Write this letter to the angel of the church in
Pergamum. This is the message from the one with the sharp two-edged sword:
"I know that you live in the city where Satan has his throne, yet you have
remained loyal to me. You refused to deny me even when Antipas, my faithful
witness, was martyred among you there in Satan's city. But I have a few
complaints against you. You tolerate some among you whose teaching is like that
of Balaam, who showed Balak how to trip up the people of Israel. He taught them
to sin by eating food offered to idols and by committing sexual sin. In a
similar way, you have some Nicolaitans among you who follow the same teaching.
Repent of your sin, or I will come to you suddenly and fight against them with
the sword of my mouth. Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and
understand what he is saying to the churches. To everyone who is victorious I
will give some of the manna that has been hidden away in heaven. And I will
give to each one a white stone, and on the stone will be engraved a new name
that no one understands except the one who receives it. Revelation
2:12-17 
Gather up these white stones.
Does one have your name on it?
Meditate. Just focus on God and relax.
God wrote Revelation and gave it to Jesus, who gave it to
an angel, and thus it was presented in a vision to the apostle John. People throughout
history have needed to listen to God’s word…to have ears to hear, but either
the word is not speaking to them or they are just not attentive enough to hear
it. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is essential to hearing, understanding,
and apply God’s words. Are you focused on God, rather than on yourself, so that
you can “hear” Him?
This idea of God giving us manna is wonderful to me. Remember the story
of God providing manna for the Israelites in the desert during their exodus
from Egypt.
"If only the
LORD had killed us back in Egypt," they moaned. "There we sat around
pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted. But now you have brought
us into this wilderness to starve us all to death." Then the LORD said to
Moses, "Look, I'm going to rain down food from heaven for you. Each day
the people can go out and pick up as much food as they need for that day. I
will test them in this to see whether or not they will follow my instructions.
... So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, "By evening you
will realize it was the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt. In the
morning you will see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your
complaints, which are against him, not against us. What have we done that you
should complain about us?" ... That evening vast numbers of quail flew in
and covered the camp. And the next morning the area around the camp was wet
with dew. When the dew evaporated, a flaky substance as fine as frost blanketed
the ground. The Israelites were puzzled when they saw it. "What is
it?" they asked each other. They had no idea what it was. And Moses told
them, "It is the food the LORD has given you to eat. ... Moses said to
Aaron, "Get a jar and fill it with two quarts of manna. Then put it in a
sacred place before the LORD to preserve it for all future generations. Aaron
did just as the LORD had commanded Moses. He eventually placed it in the Ark of
the Covenant—in front of the stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the
covenant. So the people of Israel ate manna for forty years until they arrived
at the land where they would settle. They ate manna until they came to the
border of the land of Canaan. Exodus 16:3-4, 6-7, 13-15, 33-35
They ate manna for forty years. Do you think they ever got
tired of it? Did they have twenty ways to prepare it for their meals like the Portuguese
people do for preparing their dried fish? We won’t know until we get to heaven…but
we can be sure that God has not forgotten His recipe for manna. Sounds like a
wonderful sweet bread to me!
Will you get a new name on a white stone? A pure white
stone—not a muddy one or an ordinary gray stone…or even one of speckled granite,
but a pure white one with a special new name. Hmmm. What will my new name be?
Will it be in Hebrew…or in some language of the Holy Spirit? I want to be victorious
and can hardly wait to have some manna and see this mysterious white stone.
Verse of Salvation ~ Come, let us sing to the LORD! Let
us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. Psalm 95:1
© 2023 Text, photos, and illustrations by Mickey M. Hunacek. All
rights reserved.
All scripture quoted from the New Living Translation (NLT) unless
otherwise noted.
New Living Translation copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale
House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream,
Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Biblical search from Blue Letter Bible - http://v3.blueletterbible.org/search.cfm.
Books by Mickey M.
Hunacek
Available as e-books or paperbacks at Amazon.com
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