The Plumbline

For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory. So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom God has given us. We want to present them to God, perfect in their relationship to Christ. (Colossians 1:27-28) Christ lives in you - those are words we can take to heart. In fact, I like to personalize that verse and remind myself that Christ lives in ME. That gives ME the assurance I will share his glory and will be 'presented to God', perfect in MY relationships to Christ. Maybe you might want to personalize that one for yourself. Recalling this from time to time may just be what you need to 'counteract' some of the stuff your enemy is telling you about yourself. We are 'in Christ', he lives 'in us', and we are certain that where he abides, his 'perfecting power' is sure to...

For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. (I Peter 1:18-19) I was reading this passage today and really began to focus in on the words 'the empty life you inherited from your ancestors'. If you have just skipped over those words, like I have so many times, you may not have even realized what this passage points out so vividly. Our life, prior to asking Christ to take control of it, was merely an empty shell that required his intervention in order to be what it was created to become. That empty shell might not have seemed like much to any onlooker but to God, because of his intense love for his creation, it required a 'ransom' in order to redeem it from the emptiness it had inherited. If you have not heard the truth that man is a 'tri-part being', made up of body...