Forgiveness Follows Failure

Forgiveness Follows Failure
Thursday, May 10, 2007

In the past God spoke... many times and in many different ways. But now... God has spoken to us through his Son.
Hebrews 1:1-2

God, motivated by love and directed by divinity, surprised everyone. He became a man. In an untouchable mystery, he disguised himself as a carpenter and lived in a dusty Judaean village. Determined to prove his love for his creation, he walked incognito through his own world. His callused hands touched wounds and his compassionate words touched hearts....

But as beautiful as this act of incarnation was, it was not the zenith. Like a master painter, God reserved his masterpiece until the end. All the earlier acts of love had been leading to this one. The angels hushed and the heavens paused to witness the finale. God unveils the canvas and the ultimate act of creative compassion is revealed.

God on a cross. The Creator being sacrificed for the creation. God convincing man once and for all that forgiveness still follows failure.

1 of 365 devotionals in Grace for the Moment, Volume 2
Originally printed in No Wonder They Call Him the Savior

Isaiah 3:10-11

Isaiah 3:10-11

Isaiah 3:10-11

"Say to the righteous that it will go well with them,
For they will eat the fruit of their actions.
Woe to the wicked! It will go badly with him,
For what he deserves will be done to him."

God cares what you do!

Salvation - being forgiven for your sins and welcomed into God's family forever - is a free gift. It was purchased for you by Jesus when He went to the cross for you.

You don't earn your salvation by being good enough. You don't lose it by being bad enough. It's entirely dependent on what Jesus did, not what you do. You simply receive God's gift by faith. No wonder the Apostle Paul exclaims, "thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!" (2 Corinthians 9:15).

But God is reminding us today that although salvation is a free gift, it does not mean that God doesn't care how we live after we're saved. Just the opposite - the terrible price Jesus had to pay for our forgiveness shows just how much God hates sin.

Today, Isaiah is telling us one of the basic truths about how God has set up this universe. Those who do what's right will ultimately be blessed for it and those who do what's wrong will experience negative consequences. Any actions that seem to have escaped their consequences in this life will find justice in the next. It's never a mistake to do what is right.

Written by John North of Ambassadors For Christ. You can hear John Weekday mornings at 6.05am on FM103.2 and in our Audio Lounge.

Gratitude for Ungrateful Days

Gratitude for Ungrateful Days
by Max Lucado
“Always be joyful. Pray continually, and give thanks whatever happens. That is what God wants for you in Christ Jesus”
(I Thessalonians 5:16-18 NCV).

Look at the totality of those terms. Always be joyful. Pray continually. Give thanks whatever happens. Learn a lesson from Sidney Connell. When her brand-new bicycle was stolen, she called her dad with the bad news. He expected his daughter to be upset. But Sidney wasn’t crying. She was honored. “Dad,” she boasted, “out of all the bikes they could have taken, they took mine.”

Make gratitude your default emotion, and you’ll find yourself giving thanks for the problems of life. Need spice in your day? Thank God for every problem that comes down the pike. Is any situation so dire that gratitude is eliminated? Some of the ladies at the Women of Faith Conference thought it was. This great organization fills arenas with women, and women with hope. The president, Mary Graham, told me about one particular weekend in which a shortage of space tested everyone’s patience.

The floor had 150 fewer seats than needed. The arena staff tried to solve the problem by using narrow chairs. As a result, every woman had a place to sit, but everyone was crowded. Complaints contaminated like feedlot fragrance. Mary asked Joni Eareckson Tada, a speaker for the evening, if she could calm the crowd. Joni was perfectly qualified to do so. A childhood diving accident has left her wheelchair-bound. The attendants rolled her onto the platform, and Joni addressed the unhappy crowd. “I understand some of you don’t like the chair in which you are sitting. Neither do I. But I have about a thousand handicapped friends who would gladly trade places with you in an instant.”

The grumbling ceased.

Yours can too.

Impossible, you say? How do you know? How do you know until you give every day a chance?

From Every Day Deserves a Chance
Copyright (Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2007) Max Lucado

Use doubt to Deepen your Faith

Use Doubt To Deepen Your Faith

John 20:26-29

"Then He said to Thomas, 'Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing! Thomas answered and said to Him, 'My Lord and my God!'" (vv. 27-28)

Imagine what it must have been like for the other disciples, being in that room, hearing Thomas say he wasn't going to believe something was true until he saw it for himself? And can you imagine what it must have been like seeing Jesus appear in that room eight days later, speaking directly to Thomas about his doubts?

Jesus didn't lecture Thomas for having doubts because He knew the doubts would result in a strong belief.

The Lord is reminding us through Thomas that some people need to doubt before they will believe. Doubt can be healthy if it leads to questions. Then, if questions are honestly researched they can lead to answers. If the answers are accepted, then doubt has done its work. But when doubt results in stubbornness, and stubbornness becomes a lifestyle, that doubt is useless and harms the hope for faith.

When you have doubts, that's OK. But don't let doubts grow into stubbornness. Use those doubts to deepen your faith, as you search for the truth.

And notice that Thomas never reached his hand out to touch Jesus, he accepted Jesus as Lord by faith. Have you?

living in a temporary world...

Living in a Temporay World

2 Peter 3:11-12

“Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat!”

One of the most foundational beliefs we hold as Christians is also one of the things we forget most easily, and that is the truth that this world is temporary!

God is allowing the fallenness of this world to continue because He is not finished with the people in the world. But one day God will come and close down this world and everything in it. Everything temporary will be destroyed. The only things that will make it out of this world are the spiritual things: people, the Word of God, the spiritual fruit of our lives, the things of God.

When that day comes, it will be so obvious to us that we have wasted so much of our lives and so much of our energy on things that really don’t matter. We will wish that we had lived full-on for God, that we had focused our lives on the things that last forever.

In today’s passage God is reminding you to live today for what will matter then! What sort of person ought you to be?

Saturated in Love

Saturated in Love
Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Where God's love is there is no fear, because God's perfect love drives out fear.
1 John 4:15

We fear rejection, so we follow the crowd. We fear no fitting in, so we take the drugs. For fear of standing out, we wear what everyone else wears. For fear of blending in, we wear what no one else wears. For fear of sleeping alone, we sleep with anyone. For fear of not being loved, we search for love in all the wrong places.

But God flushes those fears. Those saturated in God's love don't sell out to win the love of others. They don't even sell out to win the love of God.

Do you think you need to? Do you think, If I cuss less, pray more, drink less, study more... if I try harder, God will love me more? Sniff and smell Satan's stench behind those words. We all need improvement, but we don't need to wood God's love. We change because we already have God's love. God's perfect love.

1 of 365 devotionals in Grace for the Moment, Volume 2
Originally printed in Come Thirsty

A Tree in Healthy Soil

A Tree in Healthy Soil

Colossians 2:6-7

"Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude."

When you receive Christ as your personal Saviour, He becomes Lord of your life. You must then choose to continue to follow His leadership through being a disciple and learner.

Jesus is not here physically, but you can still learn from Him and follow His lead in life by reading His Word and listening to wise Bible-based teachers. This helps you become firmly rooted like a tree that is planted in healthy soil.

The process continues as you need to be built up and established in your faith. You grow in your faith as you respond to what God says to you as you read and study His Word. If you reject what God is saying to you, you won’t grow. But if you respond, you will grow.

If you pursue this path of spiritual growth in your life: learning from Jesus, responding to His leading in your life, growing in your relationship with Him, learning some more, responding, etc., then God will bless you so much in your heart and your life, that you will find yourself “overflowing with gratitude”. You’ll praise Him because it feels your heart will burst if you don’t. What a great way to live!