Our Lord Jesus, died, that we might live. He made an end of sin, so that we would be purified.  Every breath we take is the grace of God, undeserved.  What then should we do when someone neglects so great a salvation?  What if we ourselves find ourselves in a season of being far from God, at peace with our sin, rather than trusting in God and pursuing freedom from it?

1 Corinthians 5:9-13 “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.  But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one.  For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?  God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

Paul here is referencing a situation in which someone “has” his father’s wife.  It’s very important to note that the verb tense “has” vs. “had” tells us that this is not a previous event that has been repented of, but this is ongoing, unrepentant sin.  All of us have sin in our past, all of us have sin today, but we should fear an unrepentant heart that is at peace with sin.  I’m writing this message specifically after a message about the love of God, because what I want us to see is both the fear we should have of God as righteous judge, but also the love of God in the hope of salvation.  

1 John 3:9 – “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.”

Christian, every one of us has sin in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13.  If we’re honest, we have all of the sins listed.  We should never rest in our sin though, we should be resting in God.  So when we approach sin, especially seemingly unrepentant sin in others, we must do so humbly, with tears of concern, in love and honest desire for the person to be reconciled to God in repentance.  Each of us must be honest with ourselves and God as to whether there is a legitimate ongoing fight against sin through repentance (turning from sin to God in 100% submission/dependence) and faith (trusting in the goodness of God through Jesus Christ to free us from sin through His death, and provide a greater promise of joy in Him for eternity in His resurrection).  This is how all of us were saved, and this is how all of us walk with God daily and are “being saved” in sanctification.

My exhortation is that we all take serious the freedom we have in Christ from sin, and not neglect or trivialize how great a salvation we have in Him.  Moreover, this passage is a reminder of how desperately we all need Bible saturated, God-loving, servant-minded brothers and sisters in Christ in our lives.  Get involved with your church, be involved with a small group of fellow believers, and start running the race with people who God will use to strengthen your joy in Him.  The people of God are God’s ministry for us, and God’s grace towards us.  If you have no idea how to start, let me know, and I’ll give you easy suggestions.  Sin is always crouching at our door, trials/suffering are always just around the corner – no one stands alone, but we are meant to be helped by and a helper for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Grace and Peace,

Adam

Friends, Before I jump in, I want to share how I was rebuked in a healthy way recently.  I, like many of us, have been going through a season of suffering/trial.  I began by doing a good thing – looking into God’s Word for guidance on what His will for this situation was.  Having come to a peace about what God’s Word said, I was eager to see that guidance applied to my situation, which involved others.  A couple brothers in Christ, in differing ways, called me to question my heart.  Could I be right about my theology/doctrine, but wrong in my motivation/application?  If my motivation is anything other than love, a gentle, humble desire to see the other person grow in their love for God, I have taken the good counsel of God and bastardized it from the living Word of God to become a weapon of my own selfish desires.  One even reminded me that even the demons know scripture (Jam 2:19, Luke 4).  The difference between us and the demons is love – everything we do should be out of a right understanding of God’s love towards us, and a desire to manifest God’s love towards others for His glory.  I share this both as a testimony of how gracious and good God is to us through our brothers and sisters in Christ, and also how much we all are in need of prayer and dependence upon God in all things – because apart from God, we are always prone to self-worship rather than the worship of God – God help me if I can even use His Word to sin, I am in need of grace every moment of every day.  We all are, and so in all my writing, in all my exhortation, we are all in this together.

I’ll tell you up front that I’m going a bit long today.  As a Christian, there is no greater help to our soul than to see and savor the love of God towards us.  It is in seeing God’s love that we are freed not only to love and find joy in God, but to love others.  Love is the end of Christianity, the overflow of a soul saturated by the Spirit of God; the end result of a heart that is secure, at peace, and in need of nothing beyond God who has already given Himself fully to us.  All that He has is ours, and thus we give all that we have in Him to others in love.

Friends, consider first what the love of God means.  You and I, in our flesh are incapable of the depth of love that flows from God.  We love people who love us, it’s a contract – if they treat us well, we will treat them well, but it is centered on us.  Even if we treat others well it is because in general we expect something in return either from that person, or to be praised by others.  God’s love is nothing like this.  1 Corinthians 13 (quoted at every wedding almost) describes all of the qualities of love – (verses 4-8) – “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.”  God’s love is extended to us not because of anything we have done for God, but simply because God is love, and His love has overflowed to us as mercy, grace, and lovingkindness in Jesus.  Romans 5:8 – “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

I wish all of us who have been broken, who have maybe never experienced selfless love towards us, would just sit here and dwell on the glory of the love of God.  Christian – if you are so loved by God, that He would die for you while you from your heart and your actions denied God, and rejected Him over, and over, and over again – if you were so loved by God as a sinner, how much greater must the love of God be towards you that you are now and adopted son or daughter, clothed in the righteousness of Jesus, our Savior.  He loves you, right now, right in the midst of all your sin, anxiety, struggles, regret – He declares to the world through Jesus, this is my beloved son, this is my beloved daughter.  I say we should rest here, because if your heart is not full of the love of God towards us in Jesus, you will never be able to truly love someone else, which is our calling as sons and daughters of God.

1 John 4:7-12 – “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”  

I want all of us to feel something here – God does not choose to love us at times and not at others.  God IS love.  If God has set His love upon you, and adopted you as a son or daughter through faith in Jesus, you can know that everything in your life has been wrought from the love of God.  Every thought, every act of God in ordaining everything in our life is done in love.  It may not feel like it, especially when we encounter loss, suffering, trials, or even the monotony of life, but God in every moment of every day overflowing in love towards us.  We may not see it moment to moment, but we can always look to Jesus and know that even suffering is used by God to demonstrate His love and draw us toward Him.  The love of God should be a warm blanket that you can wrap yourself in when things in your life are not as you would have them be – you can know that God is in control, and He loves you more than you can fathom.

Again, I would say, it would be good to stop here, and rest in that – consider your life, all that you have come from, and set your heart to know that the love of God has always been and will always be for you in all things.  Sometimes – often times, the love of God is greatest when he calls us to endure hard times and loss.  Having rested there, consider also your motivations in life in your interactions with others.  Knowing the love of God, how can you manifest the love of God to your brothers and sisters in Christ?  How can you manifest it to those who are far from God?  All of the commandments of God, all of His calling on our lives is done in love.  He will never leave or forsake us, and whatever plans God has for our life, we will walk day by day in the love of God towards us.

Grace and Peace,

Adam

Friends, This will be a struggle for me, because when I speak about God, there is no end to how much could be said about His greatness, His mercies, His grace towards us, and all of His glory in His perfections.  That said, I also want these messages to be accessible, a quick encouragement rather than a discourse, so I am going to try my best to keep most of these short, and maybe only go long once a week or so.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5 – “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.  For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.  And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

I was reading the passage this morning, and felt it’s message to be very timely.  Is this not what each of us is called to as Christians in simplicity?  To be weak, with reverent fear and trembling before our holy God, yet joyful knowing only Christ Jesus and Him crucified.  Christians by God’s grace have been given eyes to see their sin, they have by God’s grace been given ears to hear God’s Word and the message of Truth that Jesus took their sin upon Himself and died in our place, so that we would be free from the bondage of sin, and free to live in fellowship with God in joy.  My encouragement today, is simply that, consider the depth of what it means to know Jesus Christ.  Consider the depth of what is means to know him as crucified – what does that say about your sin?  what does that say about how you’re living?  what does that say about how you should love/interact with others?  Let us be weak in ourselves, but boastful in Jesus.  We are no longer enemies of God, but sons and daughters, called to live out the gospel in boldness as brothers and sisters in Christ.  Let our hope never rest in our “abilities” but in the power of God through Jesus.

Grace and Peace,

Adam

All of us are sinners by nature.  By our flesh’s nature, we desire affirmation, affection, pleasure, comfort, and happiness through what this fallen, broken world can offer rather than finding those things in God.  Apart from God’s intervention, we are not only prone to sin, but we are told we are actually slaves to it.  This is tragic news for those of us who have experienced the consequence of sin in our lives, both our sin against others, and others’ sin against us.  We do things that lead to pain to others, and we do things that lead to pain for ourselves.  God in His mercy, and great love towards us, did not leave us in this hopeless state, but in love, he came and died in our place, paid the price for our sin in His blood, to free us from our bondage to sin.

Even after we turn to Jesus for salvation, I and every other Christian, although now free to choose to worship God and find our joy in Him, still have sin that desires to lie to us and lead us away from God.  As your brother in Christ, who has walked both well with God and apart from God, my encouragement is to reject the lies of sin.  They are pleasant for a short time, but in the end, they lead to brokenness, destruction, emptiness, and death.  Long fellowship with God is much sweeter than anything the world could offer.  God dwells in us, His righteousness has become our righteousness, and rather than slaves to sin, we are now slaves to righteousness, bringing freedom, light, and the joy of God to our own heart and others.

Romans 6:16-18 – “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.” 

My exhortation to my own heart every day, and to all of you as my brothers and sisters in Christ is to keep looking to Jesus and the freedom from sin you have in Him.  If you are struggling with a specific sin area, and it is known to you, lay it down and keep laying it down at Jesus’ feet.  It may be a challenge for a while, and will require support from your brother’s and sister’s in Christ, but God will be gracious to you as you seek Him.  He loves you, and wants you to be joyful.  God also knows that the greatest source of joy is in a relationship with Him, so He will always seek that for you.  Remember, as you pursue God daily and encounter trials and temptation, remember that in Christ, the battle has already been won.  Remember that Jesus has purchased for you something better, a better life of freedom as you walk with Him.

Know you’re all loved and prayed for.

Grace and Peace,

Adam

Romans 6:4 – “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Friends, God has ordained that this daily fight of faith be fought together, as we all look to Jesus, our enduring hope.  Today, I want to share encouragement of how we are to view ourselves, in light of the gospel, to live in freedom from sin and joy in God.  In some ways, when God first calls us from darkness to light, faith is simple.  We are given grace to see that we are sinners, without hope in ourselves, separated from our holy Creator God, and we cry out to Him to save us, trusting in the death and resurrection of Jesus to secure our salvation.

So we plead for the mercy of God, sometimes alone amidst a trial, sometimes in church, sometimes over coffee or a meal with a Christian brother or sister, or in a myriad of different ways.  In that moment, we ceased to be children of darkness under the just wrath of God, and became, by God’s grace beloved children of God, holy and righteous in Christ.  However we viewed ourselves previously, God has told us that we are a new creation in Jesus (2 Cor 5:17), yet we still have sin.  If sin has been defeated, how should we fight against its deception now that we have come to God through Jesus?

Romans 6 expands this in detail, but we fight for faith in a similar way to how we began.  We still come to God humbly in dependence upon him, but instead of asking him to save us, we declare with Him, that when Jesus died on the cross, our flesh and all its indwelling sin was present with Him and was put to death.  In the same way, when Jesus was resurrected to new life, we have the same life as Christ lives in us.  We are united to Christ both in the death He died, and the life He lives.  We ask God’s mercy to keep us from temptation and deliver us from evil, but as those who are trusting in Christ in us for the victory.  We look to Christ, we trust Him, and we run to Him in all things, all day, every day.

This is a marathon, not a sprint, but God has promised to see us through until the end.  (Phil 1:6)  As temptation to pursue joy apart from God seeks to deceive you, remember who you are in Christ – your sin, your desire for the world instead of God, is dead, and you have been set free to a new life of everlasting joy in Christ.  1 Peter 1:6-9 – “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

Grace and Peace,

Adam

For much of my life as a Christian, there have been efforts toward killing sin and progressing in righteousness.  How I’ve pursued this though, has been marked by good intentions, but bad execution.  I would look at my life and see something that I knew was sinful or out of place with God’s character and say, ok, I need to work on that.  I need to stop doing that, or maybe, I need to start doing this, etc.  So I would pray about it, I would maybe set up some boundaries, and maybe get some accountability from others around it.  It all sounds good, right?  It might work for a time, but it would never last, especially with sin that was truly a struggle for me.

In Romans 7:7-8 it says “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”  But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.” So by focusing on my sin “problem”, and telling myself not to do something anymore, only created in me a law that created in me the desire for that thing all the more.  This is our sin nature, this is the depth of our depravity, and what Jesus came to save us from.  We often think of salvation in this way – that Jesus saved us from ourselves, saved us from sin, and saved us from hell/judgment.  I never mean to make light of this, because without Jesus breaking the bondage of sin, we would have no hope – but I want to exhort all of us, that the greatest part of our salvation was not in our being saved “from” things, but in being saved “to” Someone, namely God.

1 Peter 3:18 – “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God”

Romans 8:3-6 – “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

In God’s Word, we’ll see a lot of imagery that talks about how we should set the mind on the Spirit (Rom 8), setting our minds on the things of God (Matt 16/Mark 8), setting our minds on things above (Col 3:2), put on the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 13), put on Christ (Gal 3), put on the new self (Eph 4).  All of this speaks to what it means to walk not in our flesh, but walk by faith, walk in the Spirit of God to seek Him in all things.  In looking to Jesus in this way, the laws of God will no longer be a burden to bear, but the overflow of our fellowship with Jesus.  So all of the things I ought to do, like read my Bible, pray, avoid temptation, seek forgiveness, love/serve others sacrificially, are no longer checkboxes I have to complete, but the result of my embracing my righteousness in Jesus, and pursuing greater fellowship with Him.  How freeing is that?  There are not many things to do, there is only one – Look to Jesus.  I hope this is as much of an encouragement to you today, as it is to me.  We are all prone to wander, helpless apart from Christ, but He is near to us, desirous for us to go to Him for our good and His glory.

Grace and Peace,

Adam

(Christian) “Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread” – DT Niles

Friends, I want to give you more than just encouragement today.  I want to share with you my own life and experience in the hopes that in doing so, you would feel greater freedom to pursue joy in the Lord.  I’m 36 years old, and as best as I can tell, I have been a Christian for closing in on 30 years now.  God was gracious and merciful to save me at a young age, but that salvation did not cause me to instantly be turned into a beacon of righteousness.  Quite the contrary, my life has been marked by sin, broken promises to God and to others, and periods of my life where you would have had to strain to see any resemblance of Christ in me.  Even for those who would look outwardly at my life and see good things, that only means that I had become a good liar, because apart from Christ, there is nothing good in me.  When I have turned from Christ and fallen to sin, sometimes for extended periods of time, I found myself in places I never would have thought I’d be.  I have been the prodigal son of Luke 15 more times than I can count.

Why do I share all of this?  Because Christianity is not about where we are at a moment in time, but where our hope is found.  In the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15, there is a turning point for the younger brother in verse 17-21 that says “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!”  I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’ And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.”

Three observations – First – “He came to himself” is incredibly important.  Amidst suffering, amidst trials, amidst sin it is the grace and mercy of God to sinners that they see their desperate situation and need for God.  If you can go on sinning against God and he does not blow your world up to bring you to an end of yourself, that should give you great concern as to whether you belong to God at all.

Second – The prodigal never ceased to be a son.  The love of the father was always with him, even as he left and pursued pleasure in the world.  The father hurt because he knew the pain the son was headed for by leaving Him, but had compassion for Him always.

Lastly – the son knew where to go for bread, and went after it.

In 30 years as a Christian, in my own life, I can say that the greatest evidence of salvation/the Spirit of God in someone is what their reaction is to suffering, trials, and devastation from sin.  Do they run to God, or do they run from Him?  Where does someone turn to when they have lost all hope?  Although I would spare everyone the suffering and baggage of death, loss, poverty, brokenness/destruction from sin – and could easily turn here to encourage hard fought spiritual disciplines / accountability, I will save that for another message.  I will say there is greater hope in me for those who turn to God amidst those things, than for those who never experienced those things, and/or have never been desperate for God.  Looking back on my life, I hate my sin, I hate many of the decisions I’ve made, and people I’ve hurt along the way.  For the sake of others I would wish I could go back, but for the sake of my own soul, I count those things as blessings for the sake of knowing the depth of my condition as a sinner before a righteous and holy God.  Paul says is this way in Philippians 3 – “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Christian, Jesus is the bread of life.  Everything else is loss; it is nothing, and will never satisfy the longings of your soul.  As one beggar to another, as God gives you grace to see your sinful/broken state, how desperate your need for Him is right now, and how great a love He has for you, run to Him – pursue Him like a desperate beggar daily.  Ask Him to satisfy your heart’s cravings, and you will find Him to be more than enough.

Grace and Peace,

Adam

A word of caution – it has been said that soft preaching makes for hard hearts, and hard preaching makes for soft hearts.  Today’s message will not be an easy one to receive.  No one likes hearing about how bad they are.  My hope is that if after reading a bit you are compelled to stop, you press on, because the foundation of our relationship with God is predicated upon a right understanding of ourselves apart from Him, and also a right understanding of ourselves in Him through Jesus.  Our joy in God is directly correlated with the depth of our understanding of the love of God towards us in Jesus.  Those who have been forgiven of little will love little, and those who have been forgiven of much will love much.  (Luke 7:41-43)

Do you think of yourself primarily as a “good person”?  Most people define that idea by some self-determined level of morality, whereby they don’t do certain actions that others do, like steal, lie, murder, etc. Others will compare themselves to those around them, and judging their morality against the others, and self-determining themselves to be superior will say that they are “good”, meaning they are better than those around them.  No one would argue that certain behavior and actions are good relative to others, but God has some harsh words for those who claim that they are “good” in themselves or even capable of any good at all.

 Mark 10:17-18 – “And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”  (This was Jesus actually pressing into the person that He is God, but we’ll save that for another message)

Romans 3:9-12 – “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:  “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

In Romans (quoting Psalm 14) God presses this further to say no one DOES good.  In your life right now, you may go to church, you may read your Bible, you may pray, you may be generous in your money to give, you may serve others, and you feel good about those things.  Are you proud of yourself for doing those things?  Do you secretly hope that others see your “good actions” and think better of you for it?  Do you do those things in your own power, without giving God thanks for His provision and gifts to you to enable you to do those things?  When God sees your “good” works, do you know what he sees?  Filthy rags.  Isaiah 64:6 – “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment”

From our first day, until our last day, we are sinners before a righteous and Holy God, incapable of any good.  We may sin less, but we will never be sinless, and God hates sin.  In Ephesians 2:3, God says we are “by nature children of wrath”.  Sin is not something we do, it is something we are in our very nature.  God says of us in Genesis 6:5 – “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

John Piper defines sin (taken out of Romans 1) in this way –

Sinning is any feeling or thought or speech or action that comes from a heart that does not treasure God over all other things. And the bottom of sin, the root of all sinning, is such a heart — a heart that prefers anything above God, a heart that does not treasure God over all other person and all other things. Or, as I once tried to express it in a message years ago. What is sin? Sin is:

§  The glory of God not honored.

§  The holiness of God not reverenced.

§  The greatness of God not admired.

§  The power of God not praised.

§  The truth of God not sought.

§  The wisdom of God not esteemed.

§  The beauty of God not treasured.

§  The goodness of God not savored.

§  The faithfulness of God not trusted.

§  The promises of God not believed.

§  The commandments of God not obeyed.

§  The justice of God not respected.

§  The wrath of God not feared.

§  The grace of God not cherished.

§  The presence of God not prized.

§  The person of God not loved.

Friends, if you see God’s definition of sin, and understand the depth of hopelessness in our condition, and believe that our God is Holy and judges in righteousness, this should undo any sense of pride you can muster.  If you can read God’s word, and feel good about yourself, at best your knowledge of yourself and God is lacking, and at worst, you are a self-justifying Pharisee that will hear the tragic words of God spoken of in Matthew 7:21-23 – “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”  God be merciful to you, if even in reading that you look to your works for righteousness.  It isn’t that you can’t do enough good to make up for your bad deeds, it is that you cannot do any good deed, not even one.  If a prophet of God declares his righteous deeds to be filthy rags before a Holy God, what do you believe you will be able to offer God?  Nothing.  Everything in God’s Word, every letter of the law, was meant to point you to one indisputable fact – you have NO hope before God in yourself.  None.  What is left, when God mercifully allows you to come to an end of yourself is this – you cry out for a savior.  As long as we dwell in these sin indwelt bodies, every day, we cry out for our Savior.  Christians ought to be the most humble people on Earth, because there is nothing that we point to and say “I did this”, first and foremost as it relates to our salvation.

For those who know God, who have been called by Him, we know that although we were dead in our trespasses, God was gracious and merciful to save us.  Ephesians 2:4-10 –  “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Romans 5:8-10 – “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

Christ is all.  Jesus came not to save righteous “good” people, but he came to seek and save the lost, the broken, the weary, the poor in spirit.  Therefore, if anyone of us is to boast, let it be in this, that we know Jesus, and trust in Him.  There is hope in nothing else.  Our love for God will grow with our knowledge of how desperate our need for Him is, and how great a salvation we have in Jesus.  As we grow in the knowledge of God, so too will our joy in Him grow as we walk with Him humbly, and the peace of God will confound those around us.  The love of God towards us in Jesus becomes to us all satisfying.  The longing of our hearts that sought out lesser means of satisfaction through sin, that would never satisfy – have a greater provision in Jesus.  Our hearts find their fill in Him.  Our love from God and towards God becomes to us the means by which we can love and serve the unloveable, because we know that there was and is nothing in us worthy of God’s love – it was grace and mercy, so we display the grace and mercy of God to a broken world.  Our reconciliation with God now, produces in us a hope for a greater future reconciliation – face to face, in death where sin is no more, and there is no daily battle to fight for faith, but our faith becomes sight.  We have the greatest hope of any, because we had no hope, but were saved by a living God who saves the hopeless.  Instead of resting in our goodness, lets strive to rest in the finished work of the one who is Good.

Grace and Peace,

Adam

All,

I hope this finds you well!  I realize I have not written in a long time.  God pressed it on my heart recently to pick up things again.  As always, know that you are loved and prayed for and as always, I only want to be an encouragement, not a hindrance or contribution to email clutter!  So if any want to be taken off of my emails, please let me know, and I’ll do so.

Given the number of persons being written to, I imagine there are a great many different seasons of life being encountered.  For some, this is a season of gladness and prosperity, and for others it is a season trials and brokenness.  My encouragement today, is that Jesus will meet you wherever you are, and has a word all of us.  I’ve titled this Word for the Day message, “a new beginning”, because each day, each morning, and each moment is an opportunity for a new beginning.  The mercies of God never come to an end, they are new every morning (Lam 3:23-24).  Each of us, regardless of what season we are in, start off the day the same way facing the knowledge that there is nothing good in us.  We know that unless we daily (and moment by moment) choose to pick up our cross and follow after Jesus, we will follow after our flesh’s desires to reject God.  Paul says this in Romans 7:18 this way – “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.”   Knowing this, every one of us each morning, and as often as we pray, must in humility and repentance call out for God’s mercy and grace, to keep us from temptation, deliver us from evil, and grant our hearts superior affections for the Creator God, rather than the things in the world.  This is the heartbeat of knowledge of sin and faith in Jesus, and is like breathing for a Christian.

As an aside, I can speak of my own life, and tell you that whenever I believed things to be “going well” and whenever I rested in my own abilities, instead of approaching God in humility, I fell away from God and into sin 100% of the time.  I did not heed the warning from 1 Corinthians 10:12 – “let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” God is merciful to discipline and restore us out of His love (Heb 12:4-5), but how much better for us, if we simply walked in humble repentance from our flesh and self-seeking will to seek and beg for greater joy in the Lord each day?

So if we approach God with a spirit of humility today in this way, what does God promise?  2 Chronicles 7:14 – “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”  Psalm 149:4 – “For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation.”  James 4:6 – “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 1 Peter 5:6-7 – “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”   God promises to hear you if you humble yourself before him.  He promises to give grace to you, and to heal your heart.  He promises to bear your burdens as you bring them to Him.  How does God accomplish this?  Jesus.  “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor 4:6-7) God will strengthen you “with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Eph 3:16-19)  Jesus is our only hope and provision.  All of the promises of God to us find their “Yes” in Jesus (2 Cor 1:20).  He is our portion, and the Love of God towards us through Jesus is more than enough to satisfy the longing of our hearts, and more than enough for a new beginning.

Grace and Peace,

Adam