An Abundance of Grace

And when He uttered those words, bowed His head and gave up His spirit, He carried the weight of all sin for all time. He became sin: For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. ( 2 Cor 5:21)

Yes, the wilderness is essentially the story of broken mankind as well as mankind’s redemption.

So, you see, all the way back in Eden, in tasking Adam to name all the creatures God was training Adam to know Him.

Understand, you are not your ‘flesh’. Your flesh, despite its influence on your soul, is not you. When you are saved, you are “one Spirit” with the Lord (See 1 Cor 6:17).

Sometimes, God waits, and we’ve all gotten used to accepting the old adage that He does things ‘in His time’. As we can see above, there will come a time when His mystery is finished and He will proclaim via His angel that there will be no more delay . What’s this mystery?

Every other religion in the world is somehow based upon works – climbing up to heaven. The one and only true religion is about trust and relationship with God. The sheep trust the Shepherd because they know the Shepherd. He says that all other religions are thieves and robbers because as agents of the wicked one, they want to steal your soul away from the Father.

That’s because being these things is directly linked to KNOWING God. ‘Then I will give them a heart to know Me , that I am the LORD; and they shall be My people , and I will be their God , for they shall return to Me with their whole heart. (Jer 24:7)

Something about Nazareth had clouded Nate’s mind but Jesus brought in the light, swept away the clouds and Nazareth was no longer an issue. This is the doubt that many people hold to who want the truth but can’t get past the prejudice of their ‘logic’ or the frustration of ‘rabbit-holes’ that turn up empty.

When you look into that mirror of your soul, who do you see reflected? The greater you learn to trust and submit your ‘all’ to Him, the clearer the view of Him will be. Oh, He’s always there in your spirit in utter perfection.

So how you perceive yourself is very important to your overall health. Do you think Christianity is a self-improvement program? Do you continue to try to overcome sin? I hope not because Jesus settled that once and for all. Do you just continue in your sin? I hope not because if so, you haven’t realized who you are – your identity in Christ.

Now, we can read this “heavenly thing” and even if we don’t quite understand it, we can accept it and trust the Lord. But Nick is a Pharisee, a “teacher of Israel”. His cohorts condemned Jesus to death. For him to ‘hang in there’ with Christ was more challenging than it was for the disciples. So when he accompanied Joseph of Arimathea to bury the body of Jesus in the garden tomb when all the disci...

So, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes , and a tree desirable to make one wise , she took of its fruit and ate.

In one moment, He Who is perfect unleashed the truly cosmic destruction of darkness and establishment of the perfection of God’s light and life into the tainted creation.

Check it out – the foolish, weak, base, despised and the NOT - these are God’s elite, His chosen.

As I cautiously approached the car, the rear window on the passenger side came down and a man in the back of the limo asked me in English if I needed help. It was about another half hour or so into Rome where we were headed so I reluctantly said, “Si, grazie Signore,” and we climbed into the limo.

This is the big war. This is the war in each individual with God. And the only way for there to be peace is with our surrender, surrender to God’s grace through Jesus Christ. Each of us individually can make peace with God this way. It is, in fact, the only way to make peace with Him.

These blessed believers deeply, deeply desire rightness, for all things to be made right. They know that no man, no agency in this world can provide that or even come close. Everything and everyone in this world is drowning in sin. Only God the Son, Jesus Christ can fill our lives, our hearts with rightness. And for those who “hunger and thirst” for it, He will.

The most famous, perhaps the most important sermon of all time. He saw multitudes and went up higher. We don’t know how many, if any, of the multitudes followed but we do know that His disciples drew near.

You see, in verse 16 we read “Then God made two great lights:” and the Hebrew action is indeed “made” not “created” – it uses the word pronounced “aw-saw” which means to make from existing materials versus “bara” which means to create out of nothing.

If we are ‘paying attention’, we notice something ominous about the second day. It was the only day out of the six days of creation that did not mention that “God saw that it was good.” Recall that on that day, He separated the waters above and below by an expanse He called Heaven. Now, I’ll suggest for your consideration that this may have been for at least two reasons.

You see, there are three heavens. The first heaven is what we call the sky, that is, our atmosphere. The second heaven is what we call the cosmos or universe. The third heaven is what we call Heaven, the home of our Lord and our place of forever home. It is a spiritual place, entirely real, more real than our physical existence but truly indescribable.

Friends, Jesus sought another way; Peter turned away. Their faith never failed though. What you’ve been through may have left you feeling broken, beaten or bereft of the youthful exuberance and experiences of young, fresh faith you once had. You may feel very hard pressed to place your trust in God and obey Him; but don’t mistake that for the absence or failure of the faith He has planted in your...

This is fascinating for it was the light that was good – not the darkness, not the light and darkness – just the light.

And so, we can see that God, with His “just weight and balance” gave His loving attention to His people, the Jews for two prophetic days and then turned His attention to His people among the Gentiles for the same time.

However, it’s possible that just as Israel thinks it has finally settled their existential dilemma by defeating Hamas, Hezbollah and achieving peace with it neighbors via the Abraham Accords, “ The end of it shall be with a flood ,” (Dan 9:26c)