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Pray for grace to remember God and the unending end he has written into the story of all who put their trust in him.
God ordained for us to gather for worship because he knows us and the weaknesses of our fickle, grumbling, and easily distracted hearts. He knows how soon we forget the depth of our need as sinners and the expansiveness of his provisions in Jesus Christ. He knows that little lies can deceive us and little obstacles can discourage us. He knows that self-righteousness still has the power to delude us.
If you’re God’s child, you are a gallery of his glorious grace. The walls of your heart have been festooned with the gorgeous artwork of redemption: wisdom for the foolishness of sin, power for the weakness of sin, forgiveness for the guilt of sin, and deliverance from the bondage of sin. Grace means that beautiful things are being done for you and happening within you.
lights are out in the gallery.
So they give way to weakness when power is at their disposal. They give way to foolishness when they have been personally connected to the One who is wisdom. They hide in guilt when
If you hook the hope of your heart to the people around you, you will always be disappointed. No one is able to be your personal messiah.
you cannot look to them to provide for you what only God can provide.
You see, it is vital to remember that human love is a wonderful thing, but you will only ever find life—real, heart-changing, soul-satisfying life—in a vertical relationship. You should enjoy human love, but you should look to God for your spiritual vitality and
You should commit to long-term, loving, mutually serving relationships, but you must remember that only God can save you, change you, and deliver you from you. You should be willing to make sacrifices of love for others, but you should place your hope only in the once-for-all sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Could it be that the disappointment you experience in your relationsh...
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unrealistic and unattainable e...
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Could it be that you ask the person next to you to do for you w...
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There is but one Savior, and he is yours forever. You don’t need to put that burden o...
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essential relational wisdom: “[Live together] with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:2–3).
“with all humility . . . ” Pride always destroys a relationship. It causes you to feel more entitled and to be more demanding than
serving and giving.
It makes you have to ...
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Pride is an anti-relational way of having a relationship. Humili...
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Treating a person with gentleness makes him or her want to move near you. Responding with...
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person that he or she is safe in your care. It is an essenti...
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You cannot have a healthy communion with another flawed human being without being willing to wait. If you demand to have things your way and in your time, you are so busy loving yourself that you have little time...
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love . . . ” Love requires that you be willing to be forbearing, that is, willing to suffer. Why? Because you are in a relationship with a less-than-perfect person, living together in a...
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“eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit . . . ” Love means unity is more important to you than being right, having yo...
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rejoices in the fact that God’s Spirit in both of you gives you a wonderf...
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“in the bond of peace.” Love means committing to mak...
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Because this sturdy system of self-righteousness is natural for every sinner, it is unnatural for us to be
clear-sighted, humble, self-examining, and ready to confess.
So cry out today for eyes to see, that is, for accurate personal insight. Cry out for the defenses of your heart to come down. Ask God to defeat your fear of being exposed, of being known. Cry for the grace to be willing to stop, look, listen, receive, grieve, confess, and turn.
Stand naked before God and know that all that is exposed has been fully and completely covered by the shed blood of your Savior.
Our struggle with sin. It happens in the little moments of life, so it is easy to see what is a very serious thing as not such a big deal.
We all live in little, unnoticed, unremarkable, mundane moments of life, and because we do, it’s very easy to back away from the seriousness of our struggle with sin that is constantly being revealed in those little moments.
A person’s character is formed in ten thousand little, mundane moments of everyday life. It’s the character that is formed in those little moments of life that determines how you think and respond in the few big moments of life that you encounter.
the nasty retort the “me first” pride the flash of lust at the mall the anger at someone who got in your way those little bitter thoughts your addiction to little pleasures the impatience with a loved one Sure, they all happen in little moments that go by so quickly you may fail to notice them, but they depict a deeply needy heart.
remind you and me that we have not risen above our need for rescuing grace.
the war for our hearts is not over. Our need for a conquering Savior has not ended. These little moments actually point the finger at something that is huge—our struggle with sin and our need for the grace that can be found only in our Savior, the King, the Lamb, the Lord Jesus
None of us likes to suffer. None of us enjoys dealing with the unexpected. We all like our plans to work and our dreams to come true. We all want a life that is comfortable and predictable. The normal person simply doesn’t esteem the spiritual value of hardship. Because of this, it tends to be difficult for us to stay on God’s agenda page.
you and I struggle with the faithfulness of God, not because he has been unfaithful, but because we have.
He has never promised us that he will deliver to us our personal definition of the good life. Rather, he has promised that he will use all the tools at his disposal to complete the work of redemption that he has begun in our hearts and lives. He has not been unfaithful. He has kept every one of his promises.
The trials in our lives exist not because he has forgotten us, but because he remembers us and is changing us by his grace.
we do or say what is wrong, we tend to point to a boss, a spouse, one of our children, a friend, a difficult situation, a busy day, the fact that we aren’t feeling well, bad parents, some injustice, or a long catalog of other excuses. But the Bible is quite clear. We all suffer from the same terminal disease. None of us has escaped it. It’s not caused by the people or situations around us.
message—we are our own biggest problem. We are the thing with which we need help.
the hope-infused story of Scripture is that we have not been left on our own. God has controlled the events of the world as part of his
unstoppable agenda of rescue and restoration.
