Skip to main content

No expiration date

I don’t care about my own life. The most important thing is that I complete my mission, the work that the Lord Jesus gave me—to tell people the Good News about God’s grace. (Acts 20:24)

On occasion I am asked why I write this blog and I have to answer pretty much the way the Apostle Paul did in this passage. I want to tell people everywhere about the grace of God - in my life, available for theirs, and thriving in spite of all the evil around us. Do I always exhibit this grace in my life? No, I am far from perfect and don't always have the greatest of consistency in my walk. Do I desire my testimony of God's grace to be rock solid? You betcha! Do I know his grace is renewed each and every day? Most certainly - for me AND for you!

Now I am putting you in the care of God and the message about his grace. It is able to give you strength, and it will give you the blessings God has for all his holy people. (Acts 20:32) We all mess up from time to time - some of us more frequently than others. This is all we can do sometimes - putting each other in the care of God and trusting that the message of his grace will do what needs to be done. Does this mean we don't want to help someone out of their muddle? No, it means we know who can undo the muddle the best!

I came across this little thought today and wanted to share it with you: "My trust in God flows out of the experience of his loving me, day in and day out, whether the day is stormy or fair, whether I'm sick or in good health, whether I'm in a state of grace or disgrace. He comes to me where I live and loves me as I am." (Brennan Manning) If you don't hear the truth in this statement, read it again. Day in and day out - trust in God. Where you live - he loves you as you are. That may seem like an impossibility when we stand in the midst of our muddle and in such desperate need of his grace to wash us clean once again, but it is never truer than we recognize our need.

Grace isn't God loving us because of who we should be, but because of who we are. We are his creation - his beloved children. As such, he loves us into grace and then he takes us from grace to grace until we are filled to overflowing with that grace. Grace never 'expires' - it keeps on keeping on until all who need it have received it in abundance. Just sayin!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What did obedience cost Mary and Joseph?

As we have looked at the birth of Christ, we have considered the fact he was born of a virgin, with an earthly father so willing to honor God with his life that he married a woman who was already pregnant.  In that day and time, a very taboo thing.  We also saw how the mother of Christ was chosen by God and given the dramatic news that she would carry the Son of God.  Imagine her awe, but also see her tremendous amount of fear as she would have received this announcement, knowing all she knew about the time in which she lived about how a woman out of wedlock showing up pregnant would be treated.  We also explored the lowly birth of Jesus in a stable of sorts, surrounded by animals, visited by shepherds, and then honored by magi from afar.  The announcement of his birth was by angels - start to finish.  Mary heard from an angel (a messenger from God), while Joseph was set at ease by a messenger from God on another occasion - assuring him the thing he was about to do in marrying Mary wa

A brilliant display indeed

Love from the center of who you are ; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply ; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. (Romans 12:9-12) Integrity and Intensity don't seem to fit together all that well, but they are uniquely interwoven traits which actually complement each other. "Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it." God asks for us to have some intensity (fervor) in how we love (from the center of who we are), but he also expects us to have integrity in our love as he asks us to be real in our love (don't fake it). They are indeed integral to each other. At first, we may only think of integrity as honesty - some adherence to a moral code within. I believe there is a little more to integrity than meets the eye. In the most literal sense,

Do me a favor

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. (Philippians 2:1-4) Has God's love made ANY difference in your life? What is that difference? Most of us will likely say that our lives were changed for the good, while others will say there was a dramatic change. Some left behind lifestyles marked by all manner of outward sin - like drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, or even thievery. There are many that will admit the things they left behind were just a bit subtler - what we can call inward sin - things like jealousy,