Daily Affirmations - Day 3 - Lowly and Victorious - Nature of a Servant

Day 3: Nature of a servant

I will praise You, Lord, among the nations; I will sing the praises of Your name

Christ Jesus… being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:5-8).

Our Father, what great love You have lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1). But we been given this incredible standing at a great cost— a redemption paid by love of matchless magnitude: This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us (1 John 3:16).

Lord, this week as we celebrate the events and milestone markers leading up to Easter, open our eyes, our ears, our hearts, and our minds to see, to hear, to understand, to perceive the staggering depth of Your love. Impress on our hearts the incredible reality that the God of heaven made Himself nothing and died on a cross at the hands of broken, wounded, warped humanity for broken, wounded, warped humanity.

Help us to see that the groans and the prayers, the fervent cries and the tears (Hebrews 5:7); the suffering and the affliction, the piercing and the crushing, the wounding and the punishment (Isaiah 53:45) of our Lord was a gift of love tagged with our individual name, offered for our own precious soul. Help us to know that the overwhelming sorrow (Matthew 26:38), the prayers in the dust with His face to the ground (Matthew 26:39), and the agonizing cries (Mark 15:34), opened for every one of us the only Way to a holy God.

Let us clearly see that the bitter cup of justice— the payment for all our wrongs and for all the wrongs and evils of humanity for all time— could not be taken away, could not pass from Jesus (Matthew 26:39), or we would perish forever in our separation from God. Help us to understand that the overflow of love displaced the last dregs of wrath as He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross (1 Peter 2:24).

But in Your amazing plan resurrection would come, and the God who took on the lowly nature of a servant would be exalted to the highest place of victorious, glorious majesty:

Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:9-11).

O God, teach us to bow now, willingly, in gratitude and awe. Teach us to embrace, esteem, and worship the name that is above every name— the name that every blaspheming tongue will one day acclaim, according to the irrevocable word of the Lord (Isaiah 45:23).

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