Oct 4, 2011
Grace.
As God has been unveiling a tiny piece of the beauty and magnificence surrounding such an intangible concept, I sit awe-struck in the stands. It’s so incomprehensible that all of humanity can’t wrap their minuscule brains around it. It’s so beautiful. So totally unexpected in the story of mankind throughout history. It’s so beyond us, far above anything we could have ever come up with.
I mean, really, would you have come up with the concept of ‘grace?’ Treat un-respectable people with respect. Treat unloving people with love. Treat anti-God people with the gift of God. Our whole flesh nature cries out for justice, for fairness, for consequences and rewards. At least most of us can understand the concept of sin and the separation of unholy beings from a Holy God. That makes logical sense — if we are willing to admit it.
But Grace? It’s a twist in the entire plot. It’s a fourth dimension exploding our three-dimension world.
Stooping down to lift us up out of our sinful humanity, our utter depravity, our desperate rebellion. Releasing us from our sin, by taking our place so we would have the option to never pay the PENALTY. Forever.
That astounding mercy is great enough. But Grace doesn’t stop.
Letting us out of our dungeon. Forever. To be free from the PROBLEM of sin and live in HIS FREEDOM.
Wow. And Grace keeps going.
Welcoming our filthy existence daily into HIS PRESENCE.
BAM! Even if I could possibly comprehend the cross, I would never imagine in a million years that He would ever want to see us again. Saving from sin, maybe, but saving us to Himself? I mean, really? Daily put up with us?
Not only that, but ADOPTING us as HIS CHILDREN. Identifying HIS holy and precious name with our dragged-in-the-mud title.
It gets better. The privilege and honor of Him COMMISSIONING us to be HIS IMAGE-BEARERS to a lost world. Flat out GIVING His precious name to US. Wow. What responsibility and trust.
And not only that, but promising to GO WITH US, to DWELL INSIDE US and be our STRENGTH, our INNER CORE, our PROTECTION, and our GRACE TO OTHERS.
We can’t even give others grace. We have to borrow His grace to give. Get that.
In class this summer, one of the girls repeated a quote from the book we’re reading through: “Love that goes upward is worship; love that goes outward is affection; love that stoops is grace.”
I attached to this quote, but something about it rubbed me wrong. And then I realized: it correctly defined what I give others as Not Grace. Hardly affection, at best. Often more bordering worship. I love in order to be loved.
The reason is because I’m not stooping. I’m on the same level as the rest of humanity. Each one of us, made in Christ’s image. Each one of us, blind and desperate without Him. I deserve nothing, so can’t demand any rights to be respected by others. The love I give others is usually barely that. Selfish love. Not grace.
Only God truly gives Grace.
And maybe that’s why it remains so pure, marvelous, and beyond my wildest dreams.
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Apr 23, 2011
Working in Web, I have the privilege to watch so many ideas form and get put into play through developmental meetings and such. Plans to improve the way we do things now to better suit what we are trying to get across to people. In my mind I find myself thinking, “Wow! This will be awesome! Maybe this has to happen first before Jesus comes back….” but then I realized…that’s a very common thought that I have. It takes many forms, like maybe I’ll get married before He comes back, or maybe I have to live on my own before He comes back, or maybe I’ll grow old before He comes back, etc.
But no…He could come back ANY SECOND! No one knows the time or season. Which makes me wonder…
Am I okay with leaving behind those plans, those ideas? Am I holding these ideas above my joy of Jesus’ return? Feels kinda like parable of the servant that’s waiting for the masters return and the servant that’s too busy to care. I keep thinking, I’ll get this done before He returns, but I never know WHEN He will return, so why do I fuss about making plans and then looking forward to those plans when I should be looking forward to Christ’s return?
I think that’s just one of the many lies of the enemy that I was fooled into thinking and believing. But I am learning to rebuke the enemy when I think thoughts like that to get my focus more on Christ and His return than my “plans for the future and make things better ideas”
Jesus is coming back. Soon! I need to get my focus off of myself, and look more towards what God is doing. Look at the growth of the church in Asia, in Africa… God is moving so miraculously, and I’m more focused on what the future holds for me than what God wants me to do right now for His glory. Time is short. We don’t have much longer. We need to get our act together and share the Gospel at any opportunity.
Praying for you all! I hope this encouraged you to step out like it has for me.
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Apr 13, 2011
I Give You Everything Lord
Jesus I love you, I say this from the depth of my soul,
It’s only to you I give my life and everything that seems to be a goal,
My life’s attainment in riches, glory, and fame,
Has all come to nothing, even at the mention of your name,
I’m sorry I have failed your mandates,
Make me someone worthy enough to be some type of Your candidate,
I need and want to be more like you,
And if you must, give me the flu,
Just to hear you speak,
And tell me my heart sure does reek,
Tell me the state of my eternal life,
And if you must, tell it to me from something even as strife,
Just to pound hard your principles in me,
And make me not want to flee,
To follow hard after your heel,
And not just talk to you before every meal.
Make me to see things in your type of view,
Lord, Help me to seek YOU!!!
Donovan 2011
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Mar 18, 2011
I look around me today and I just can’t believe it. It seems the older I get and the more I understand about the world around the more I just can’t believe the things that human beings do to themselves and one another. Wicked, how deeply wicked are we that live in this current age where already the wheels are turning, and have been turning, to call good evil and evil good. We are so backward in all that we are and do and we are asleep, hypnotized, if you will, by the world around. Do we not care; do we not see where we are going? Could we even begin to turn the ship around even if we wanted too? All the more it seems that I see the signs for the end. I have no way of knowing when the Lord will return. A hundred years, ten years, a month, a week, a day, or a minute. I know that He is coming and I pray that He will come soon.
When will my soul awaken to God’s calling? When will Americans and the church at large awake out of their sleep? I want to wake up, but I so love my sleep, I want to dream and have my own life, but that is not God’s calling. I am to live for Him and His kingdom! When will you awake oh my soul within me? When will you give up your rights and serve God with a passion and zeal that would mirror that of the early church? When??? Why do you sleep? Awake and see the lost world around you and see the lost and hurting.
Oh that God would be my all, can I not lay down my rights for the One who created me.
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Mar 18, 2011
“You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.” – Deuteronomy 11:18-21
This world is broken. The heart of man is dark, not seeking after God. To change a man, you must change his heart. The word of God is the only thing that will break down the barriers, destroy the sin, change the heart, cleanse the abrasion, heal the wounds, and lead the humbled healed man to the arms of the One who heals.
“And without faith it is impossible to please Him…” – Hebrews 11:6
Where does faith come from?
“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” – Romans 10:17
Where will this broken world hear the word of God? There are a few places, but above all, it will be from us.
“As you walk along the way…” We need to be speaking the word of God in the same way that we breathe. Jesus said, “…for out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.” – Luke 6:45 If His word is in our heart, it will overflow to all who we meet.
To say that the word of God should overflow out of us does not mean we have to quote a verse every hour. Rather our lives and speech should be shaped by the words that He has spoken, and as a result we will be reflections of Him to those around us.
God is not silent. Once a word of God is spoken, it continues on for eternity. All other words are recorded and then looked at as history. They are in the past, read by a reader in the present. But God’s words are current, “living and active.” – Hebrews 4:12 Man’s words are a frozen river. Some of them true, some of them not. They can be examined and learned from. God’s word is a flowing river that you can jump into and swim in. Splashing, drinking, diving deeper and ultimately being drawn in the right direction. The sea, which is the goal and the source of the river.
2.7 billion people, almost half of this world’s population, lives in the proverbial desert. They have not heard of the river. They seek healing in the rivers of their own country, asking, “can we not wash in our own rivers and be clean?”
Millions bathe in the Ganges, believing that it will cleanse them of their sins. Egyptians would worship the Nile, believing it to be the source of all their wealth. And yet all the while, their souls are dying of thirst.
Jesus said, “whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” – John 4:14
What this world needs is to be brought to Jesus that their old self would be drowned the river, that in the rushing waters of baptism their sins would be washed away into the ocean of forgetfulness. And that they would be raised as a new creation, reborn to a new life.
This is good news! And the world is literally dying to hear it. We must bring them news of this river, by the speaking of God’s word. One of the ways that His word is living is that it is constantly shared by those who receive it. As we walk along the way, and further than that, purposefully directing our steps and our lives so that our path would be among those who have never heard.
“When the poor and needy seek water,
and there is none,
and their tongue is parched with thirst,
I the Lord will answer them;
I the God of Israel will not forsake them.
I will open rivers on the bare heights,
and fountains in the midst of the valleys.
I will make the wilderness a pool of water,
and the dry land springs of water.
I will put in the wilderness the cedar,
the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive.
I will set in the desert the cypress,
the plane and the pine together,
that they may see and know,
may consider and understand together,
that the hand of the Lord has done this,
the Holy One of Israel has created it.”
– Isaiah 41:17-20
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