An Abundance of Grace
When it comes to the grace that is a glorious attribute of our God, we have a ton to wrap our head around – you know, God’s grace was supremely manifested in the giving of His Son’s precious life to pay fully, completely and forever, our immeasurably huge debt of sin. Most of us don’t get that, we’re ‘numb’ to the actual cost.
Episodes
Early in His ministry, Jesus roamed the shore of the Sea of Galilee and encountered two fishermen, Peter and his brother Andrew. He simply said, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” The result was:
They immediately left their nets and followed Him. (Matt 4:19,20)
Nearby, He also found two more brothers, James and John, fishermen as well:
He called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed H...
The Gospel Jesus taught is based upon faith and trust in an Almighty God Who offers eternal life freely. Contrary to this, the Law never saved anyone. That’s because mankind has always been powerless to keep it – only the Son of God Himself could do that and the Life of faith and trust He brought is empowered by the indwelling of His Holy Spirit.
Jesus, the Living Word, gave us many pictures, many examples to learn from. Taking on the menial task of washing the disciples’ feet, including Judas’, was one such picture.
God will speak if we will listen. 138 times, the Bible records that the Lord spoke to someone. 136 of those times are in the Old Testament while only two are in the New Testament. Why do you suppose that is?
Probably because the Word was made flesh in Jesus Christ and He said everything God wanted to say.
Being alone, or feeling that way, can be terrifying to some. To others, it seems normal. But being truly alone because of being forsaken or abandoned, ‘ghosted’ as they say, is progressively disheartening. It is part of the pain of hell.
But there is good news for those who have been born anew in Christ – forever and ever, you will never be alone again, never utterly forsaken or abandoned because God’s Holy Spirit is IN you and w...
Jesus said to him, “If I will that he (John) remains till I come, what is that to you? You follow Me.” (John 21:22)
That is, conform your ways to mine. You see, you don’t ‘follow Jesus’ by walking after Him but by Him living IN YOU (by faith) and you fully submitting to Him/His Spirit. So, again by definition, where He goes, you go. Do you follow?
Jesus’ peace, the peace He freely shares with us, is not some state of ‘higher consciousness’ but a direct connection and intimate relationship with the Source. The Abba Father, the One and only Creator. This peace is IN Him and THROUGH Him. And joyously, it’s PERMANENT.
For You meet him with the blessings of goodness; You set a crown of pure gold upon his head.
He asked life from You, and You gave it to him--Length of days forever and ever.
These people, sadly including John the B, were focused on the miracles – the visible works. But they were missing the real work of God, the eternal work.
You see, God does not lack, He does not need, but He does love. We are the ones who rebelled against Him and separated ourselves from Him. His love compelled Him to send His Son to seek and save us.
The Bible calls this idol “mammon” which simply means wealth. Security, pleasure, temporary happiness, and other things come with mammon but there are also plenty of traps such as pride, obsession, fear, distrust and more which capture and torture and ultimately strangle the human soul/heart.
If you are truly born again, your inner being deeply desires to revel in the unity of the new creature with your Maker.
Alas Nicodemas, the confusion was driving him nuts. His whole life had been spent pursuing the wisdom of the elders and the knowledge of the scriptures. He knew the traditions better than most Pharisees. In fact, he was known as the teacher of Israel. And for most of his life, he’d been quite confident about his knowledge.
But then came this itinerant rabbi doing these truly amazing signs. He gave sight to the blind, hearing to...
And when I think of patient endurance for a lifetime, I think of the wilderness and 40 years of wandering in it. Moses and the Jewish nation endured this – why? Well, we know that at first, they failed to obey God and take the new land. They chickened out. But the wandering wasn’t punishment, it was purposeful:
“And you shall remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you a...
I suspect that’s because after 2000 years or so it is much easier to preach on loving, much more reasonable to believe and obey the ‘love command’. After all, watching implies an expectation and requires trust that the expectation will be fulfilled.
There is no ‘getting better’ from SIN; there’s no amount of discipline or ‘growth’ that can drive it from you.
The ONLY way to be rid of its stench and blackness is to surrender all of it to Christ and absolutely trust Him. You see, He took the penalty for ALL of it that we surrender by faith on the cross of Calvary. He literally took all of it on Himself:
who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died ...
Simply put, hope is the expectation of coming good. It’s eternal because He’s eternal and it’s wonderful because He’s wonderful.
But there is always a choice and really, it’s the ultimate choice – believe God or believe the lie. To believe God is to believe that He took on human flesh, lived a perfect life and died on the cross, carrying the sins of all mankind. Then on the third day He rose again and is now seated on God’s right hand.
To believe the lie is to believe Satan as he shrieks, “You will not surely die. God doesn’t care about you. Sin is satis...
This one small verse tucked into the end of chapter four of Genesis:
And as for Seth, to him also a son was born; and he named him Enosh. Then men began to call on the name of the LORD. (Gen 4:26)
Do the math and you’ll see that this was 235 years after Adam’s creation. It seems to illustrate that mankind was ‘gun-shy’ so to speak about relating to the Lord. Let’s consider what had happened up to this point.
Yet we still tend to think of godliness as in the form of the serpent’s lure. We originally took that bait and we’ve been hung up on it ever since. As it ingrained itself into our sin-nature, the nature of the flesh, it manifested itself in religion.
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