An Abundance of Grace

But it is key to understand that this working and gaining is NOT by human effort. It is entirely God’s Spirit at work in us and through us:

Politicians revel in it, celebrities revel in it, preachers revel in it, everyone except one – the child. No, not teens, but little children. And it’s absolutely critical to ‘get it’, to understand why.

Even as God Almighty gave life to Jesus and raised Him from the grave, so also, He has birthed us with Him to literally an eternal expectation of coming good (that’s the living hope). That means that in Jesus, we will never stop expecting or anticipating more and more goodness. Eternity is filled with God’s goodness.

Yes, Peter nailed it with his Son of the living God answer and may have felt pretty puffed up by the response Jesus gave him.

A friend of mine once asked me what my favorite word was in the Bible. I knew immediately; I said, “Hope”. He then asked me to describe this hope, and I had to think. I told him, “It’s not the wimpy word that we hear thrown around like, “I hope so.” Or “There’s really not much hope.” Or “Hope you can make it.” The hope I think of is an atomic bomb compared to these little firecrackers.

I mentioned in an earlier article that I suspect that something akin to a genetic factor might be involved in the transgenerational nature of sin. I don’t want to ‘pound that table’ too hard because sin is first spiritual and then physical. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to note that Jesus was, as we know, sinless and he was born of a virgin. A legitimate question is, was the virgin birth necessar...

Perhaps the most basic of our responsibilities ever since our creation has always been – choice. The Most High created a beautiful garden and placed our original ‘parents’ there and implicitly presented to them – choice. Two trees; one gave life and the other brought death.

As Christians, we desire to please the Sower of the Seed and bear much fruit, but without understanding the Word of the Kingdom, we can mistakenly focus on trying to bear ‘fruit’ by eliminating sin in our own strength/efforts. We neglect the fact that upon the cross of Calvary ALL sin was paid for in full.

Has it ever occurred to you that there is something that you’re doing all the time? Every moment of every day it is with you. Even when you sleep, you can only slightly escape it and then when you wake, there it is again. Sometimes, it’s superficial; sometimes it’s profound. It’s your thoughts, your thinking, your mind and/or heart.

And then there’s Jesus and with Him the glory of God is expressed in even more wonderous ways. He asked for and received the most indescribable glory that He had shared with the Father before the creation, before time, existed. The Bible says that that Glory raised Him from the dead.

When you are born again, Christ places His Holy Spirit IN you and He unites with your dead human spirit, giving new life – you become a new creation

His very being was being destroyed, his soul was sick and he knew it. The turmoil of illness put him in a sickbed and whether real or imagined, he seemed to have enemies all around.

Now, understand, no one owes a life to Satan, the debt is owed to God but it is a debt, a ransom, that only He Himself could redeem. So much of God’s character is all about redemption .

How many of us have cried out in a similar fashion as truly minor echoes of this blast that resounded throughout the cosmos and perhaps throughout all time. Was this a point in which He could not see the ‘other side’? The Bible tells us, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross…” What did He hold on to as He let go of His life?

The Pharisees ‘lived in the pages’ of scripture but they were blind to the truth because their own agendas.

There’s something wonderfully sudden when we recognize and accept Jesus Christ as God’s Son and our Savior. The Old Testament has many instances of sudden judgement, but the New Testament shows us over and over the sudden realization of the Son.

They loved Jesus and they wanted heaven, but if even the rich were kind of going hitless (pardon my baseball analogies) and they themselves were basically penniless – well: Then Peter said, "See, we have left all and followed You." The unspoken but clear implication was, “So then, what’s in it for us??”

Now, none of Christ’s encounters were by chance. He headed through Samaria for a reason, and it may have been to meet this small group of desperate people plagued with leprosy. As I read the above verses this morning, the part that caught my attention was, “And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed.” It was a test of their faith and a testimony to the priest(s).

It is so sobering to think that you could be so mistaken in your assumptions as to believe that heaven’s door will be open to you and then you hear from Jesus, “I do not know you…”. Then you step back and claim, “But we ate and drank in your presence…” all to no avail.

So, he’s got 100 sheep, and one wanders off. He leaves the 99 to go after the one who is lost but where does he leave them – in the wilderness. His total focus is on the one. Oh, he loves the 99 and presumably has an under-shepherd to care for them in the wilderness, but our lesson is that he is consumed with caring about the lost one.

Jesus was attractive, like a magnet, to OUTsiders. Here, a woman who was morally repulsive to Simon the Pharisee entered his house at great risk and put on a display of love and humility that was amazingly unusual, mind-bogglingly unusual, even freakishly unusual.

Moses, in anger, doubted the Lord about speaking to the rock. Instead, he hit it twice. His anger caused him to doubt that just speaking to the rock would cause water to come forth. You see, earlier, at Horeb, God had instructed him to hit the rock and the water that the people needed would come out. There, he obeyed and the miracle occurred.

But we have to focus on what He was doing, how He was serving – He was washing them, washing their feet. Of course, you may be aware that this was not an uncommon practice at the time. Generally speaking, people’s feet were filthy, having walked on dusty roads. So, what exactly was the lesson?

That’s what we learn about Jesus from the beginning. It wasn’t just that He could do a miracle; it was how He did the miracle.

What captured the king’s eye was the beauty of Bathsheba, but what captured his soul was the beauty of the Lord. The former led to catastrophe (though God, in His mercy, redeemed it), the latter led to eternity, that is, an eternal relationship.