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No separation from the world, no work I do, no gift I give can cleanse my conscience, cleanse my hands, I cannot cause my soul to live. But Jesus died and rose again. The pow’r of death is overthrown! My God is merciful to me and merciful in Christ alone.
grace of remembrance
But forgetfulness is not a minor thing when it comes to grace. It robs you of worship, identity, humility, courage, and hope. Thank God he ordained for us to gather and remember.
You see, only people who acknowledge how deep their need is and who admit that they have no ability whatsoever to meet that need on their own get excited about the grace that meets every one of their spiritual needs.
The Event vs. Process Mentality. Here we are just impatient. We sort of want God to do the good things he has promised us, but we don’t want to have to persevere through a lifelong process. We want God’s work to be an event rather than a process, and when it’s not, our commitment begins to lag.
Then it frees me from seeking my identity horizontally because I am given an eternal identity in Christ.
No matter how little I am appreciated by those around me, no matter how little I am understood, no matter how little I am loved, and no matter how little respect comes my way, I can go to bed in peace knowing that the one person who counts knows me thoroughly, but he will never turns his back on me even in light of his complete knowledge of my sin, weaknesses, and failures.
He is the faithful friend who will not forsake us even in our worst moments.
Well, one of the themes of this devotional is that biblical faith—that is, true faith in the existence, presence, promises, and provisions of God—never requires you to deny reality in any way.
He is infinitely greater than any problem you could ever experience.
Remember today that when God sends, he goes too!
Second Corinthians 5:15 says that Jesus came so that “those who live might no longer live for themselves.” Embedded in this phrase is a diagnostic that applies to every person who has ever lived.
I reduce my focus down to the small space of my wants, my needs, and my feelings.
I tend to curse hard work, the need to serve others, the call to persevere, the inescapable reality of suffering, the requirement of daily labor, the call to engage myself in the work of a bigger kingdom than my own, or the moral requirement to use my gifts for the glory of someone other than myself.
Grace and grace alone is able to make otherwise lazy people industrious workers to the glory of God.
So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.
And remember too that it takes grace to admit how much you still need grace. That grace is yours in Jesus.
We can escape situations, locations, and relationships, but we cannot escape ourselves.
you humbly embrace the fact that you have been given glorious grace that can do for you what you could never do for yourself.
The admission of sin doesn’t lead you somewhere dark and depressing, because you know you’ve been given grace that is greater than your sin, and your celebration of grace is real and heartfelt because it’s done in the context of your confession of the very sin that grace addresses.
Confession of sin without the celebration of grace leads to guilt, self-loathing, timidit...
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Embracing grace without the admission of sin leads to confident theological “always rightism,” but does not result ...
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run to Jesus weeping and celebrating at ...
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This passage tells us where peace is to be found. It is never found in trying to figure out the secret will of God. It’s not to be found in personal planning or attempts to control the circumstances and people in your life. Peace is found in trusting the person who controls all the things that you don’t understand and who knows no mystery because he has planned it all.
the kind of peace that doesn’t fade away when disappointments come, when people are difficult, or when circumstances are hard? You experience it by keeping your mind stayed on the Lord. The more you meditate on his glory, his power, his wisdom, his grace, his faithfulness, his righteousness, his patience, his zeal to redeem, and his commitment to his eternal promises to you, the more you can deal with mystery in your life.
We don’t just need forgiveness and ultimate deliverance; we also desperately need present help—help so that we will have the will to desire and the power to do what is good in the sight of God.
You simply cannot hold to an “all that’s important is the pleasures of the moment” view of life and believe in eternity at the same time. In light of eternity, it makes no sense to forget God and live for yourself. In the face of eternity, it is irrational to write your own rules and demand your own way. Eternity requires you to take life seriously.
The horizontal situations, locations, experiences, and relationships of everyday life are dangerous places to look for hope.
Why? They all fail you. First, everywhere you could look horizontally has been affected by the fall in some way.
Reliable hope is Jesus!
It is the great war for the rulership of our hearts.
We don’t own our physicality. We don’t own our emotionality. We don’t own our spirituality. We don’t own our mentality. We don’t own our psychology. We don’t own our communicative abilities. We don’t own our relationships. We don’t own our gifts or our experiences. We don’t even own our possessions in the deepest sense of what ownership means.
“You are not your own, for you were bought with a price”
You begin to get close to what God has designed your life to be as one of his children when you understand that nothing that makes...
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Every one of God’s children has been given a call to ministry, and every one must think of himself that way.
God’s plan is to make his invisible presence and his invisible grace visible through his people, who incarnate his presence and carry that grace to others.
vision.
We need to be reminded again and again of our place in the work of the Redeemer.
commi...
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We need to be encouraged to make specific and concrete decisions to better position ourselves for the wo...
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trai...
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We need to understand what it really looks like to represent the grace of the Redeemer in the lives of the pe...
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True prayer happens at the intersection of surrender and celebration.
It is surrender and celebration that keep those requests from being selfish demands or bitter complaints.
October 13
God’s mercies are new morning after morning after morning.
There are fresh mercies for you today, formfitted for all the things you will face, both those that you know about and may worry about, and those that you don’t know about yet. God’s mercy isn’t generic. It is personal grace, situational care, and concrete help. It meets you right where you are and gives you just what you need. You get it as you need it and are given as much as you need.
It was the beginning of sin’s disastrous exchange—worship and service of the Creator exchanged for worship and service of the created thing (Rom. 1:25).
There are so many reasons to be discouraged in this fallen world, it’s a wonder that anyone is happy.
Yes, you are a citizen of this world and you are touched by its brokenness, but as you are, you must remind yourself that you are the citizen of another kingdom.
