Monday, October 29, 2007

By Faith Alone

If we are too proud to bend our spirits before God, we will never get to heaven. We may be kind and gentle people always looking for things to do to help others out, but we are not good enough to approach the one and only Holy God. Not on our own merits anyway. And if pride is keeping us from admitting we need Jesus, from admitting that we will never be good enough on our own, then we will never accept God's saving grace and get to where all of us with intelligence want to go ... heaven. God says, 'I will make salvation for man a gift, a pure and simple free gift because I love him and because I am a loving God.' God supplied what was needed without charge to us, yet people most often turn away and look in other directions. Often, because of pride in our own efforts, we toss aside the only effort that has any true value in this dilemma. Only God's effort can bring us into a right relationship with Him. Many of us are turning away from God's free gift of salvation because we have hardened our hearts and think that we're too smart to need God.

God created us to enjoy us and to share His life with us but as it stands we are all sinners, born imperfect and estranged (Ro 3:23). God cannot tolerate sin in His presence and He, being the Creator, set the penalty for sin, which is death (Ro 6:23). This decree doomed all humankind to death because we are all sinners. But God devised a better way for us. There is only one way to heaven and that is through Him. And there's only one way to Him and that is through Jesus Christ (John 14:6). But because He loves us so much and desires to live eternally with us, He made the incredible decision to die in our place. He would pay the penalty for our sins and spare us from His wrath. God would die in our place. Can we fully grasp that? God, the Creator, the omniscient One, He who holds the universe in the palm of His hand would submit Himself to death so we wouldn't have to. There is a great chasm between heaven and us and God took it upon Himself to bridge that gap by sending Jesus Christ to earth, to be born of a woman, to be maligned, mocked, and murdered. But no one murders God unless God first permits it. He didn't have to die for us; He chose to die. It was His decision because of His great love for the world (John 3:16).

We can't work, reason, or beg ourselves into heaven. The bridge that spans the gap between humanity and Holy God is Jesus Christ and our faith in what He has done for us. If we have faith, we can cross right over that chasm separating us from our heavenly Father. When we confess to being a sinner in need of God's grace and place our faith in the ransoming and redeeming death of Jesus Christ, God counts us reconciled to Himself and we are allowed to draw near to Him since He has accepted Christ's death as our own. The debt was owed and Christ paid it all at Calvary. We owed the price; Jesus paid the the bill.

We mustn't for a moment think that all we want is what we deserve because all we deserve is death due to our sinful natures. The point here is that nobody deserves grace. That's why it's called grace. It's totally and completely undeserved. But God desired to spend eternity with us so all-consumingly that He donned human flesh, came to earth, and died for us. Those of us with any intelligence will say 'Yes' to Jesus and bend our spirits and our knees before our loving God.

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Well I did it, folks, I spent the better part of Saturday writing devotionals. From scratch. Although I was always quick to admit that I routinely "borrowed" from other writer, I decided to swallow my fear and go out on the proverbial limb and put some together all by myself. For better or for worse, I am writing all my devotions from scratch, from beginning to end, from now on. Hopefully I won't lose any readers and only my readers will know whether I pass or fail as a writer on my own merits. It takes me longer (and even longer to come up with their titles!!) and is more work but I think it's better this way. Instead of coming up with titles I may switch to numbers. They're almost too short to have titles anyway. So tomorrow when you come to read my blog you'll probably find it numbered instead of named. I never thought coming up with titles would be a problem but I found that it sometimes took me almost as long to name it as it took me to write it!!!

I went to my first 40 Days' small group this morning and had a great time. I enjoyed the DVD and the discussion was lively and meaningful. (This was the small group meeting that I missed last week.) I got to meet some people I'd never met before and feasted on homemade cinnamon rolls or at least they tasted homemade (they had a really good yeasty taste that you don't get from the cooked refrigerated ones). I think we should do more of this kind of thing. Jehovah's Witnesses have a small group meeting each week but their's is to study one of the Society's own books and there are definite benefits to meeting together in small groups. One of them being that it's easier to remember their names. We had 10 in our group this morning. Perfect size!!

We had rain sometime during the night because as I drove over to Evelyn and Jordan's house this morning, there were puddles in the road. The forcastors said we may have thunderstorms on the news last night and this morning so I'm really hoping for lots of activity this afternoon. I just love storms.

I got an email from Betty and she is now in Pharr (spelling may not be right) Texas and will be there for I think 3 weeks if my memory hasn't failed me. So please keep her in your prayers. Kim's mom has been given just about 2 weeks to 2 months to live but she is elderly, having lived a full life, and I don't believe she is suffering in any way. As far as I know, skatemama is doing fine. I don't know how she's doing with her MS. Hopefully it's going to be in remission and bother her little.

I need to get down in the yard and get the leaves raked up and taken to the burn pile in the vacant lot next door but I probably will put if off for a few more days (I can always blame the weather, LOL.) Just looked at my watch and, goodness, my day is dwindling (and I got up early!!) so I better get to some chores. I think I need to do some laundry today or tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow ... I don't have a single meeting left in this week. The only meeting I had for the entire week was the one I went to this morning. This is a rarity, not having meetings. To be truthful, it feels pretty good just knowing that I don't have to be somewhere on a certain day at a certain time. (Except to get our flu shots on Wednesday.) Now that our 40 Days is in full swing there are actually less meetings than there were for the 8 weeks leading up to the Kick Off. But I did pick up a 40 Days workbook this morning while I was at Evelyn's and so I'll have that commitment to work through during the week. I like workbooks generally so I shouldn't have too much trouble. Rick Warren is very good in his teaching and I feel like I'm getting a lot out of this campaign, spiritually. And really, personally too. It's forced me to meet new people, which is something very difficult for me to do.

I have read The Purpose Driven Life and listened to the cassette tapes too so this is like an in-depth review of what I've already learned and forgotten. Amazing how much stuff leaks out of our brains! It's frustrating to sit there and go, 'I used to know this!' But I have the basic concepts in my mind now and this time through the book is allowing me the chance to study all the little things. One thing I like about this campaign is that it doesn't over-burden you with too much information. There are just a few key things given to you each week to study and remember. Lots of information is given to flesh out these ideas and examples but the things themselves are not burdensome. Sometimes programs or campaigns will try to force so much information on you that you get to the point where you're not really learning anything! Nothing will stay with you.

Okay, I think this is going to be it for today. I need to get some things done. I'll check the laundry first. In fact I think I'll go put my sheets in the washer and get them washed and dried so I'll have them first thing in the morning to put on the bed instead of waiting and doing that until the day I want to change the sheets. That ends up leaving the bed unmade for hours while they wash and dry. I don't have to worry about dinner tonight since we had lots of lasagna let over from dinner last night. We didn't make the lasagna. It was Stouffer's (sp?) frozen and it was very good. The dish costs $9.99 on sale and that sounds high until you realize how many meals the two of us are going to get out of it and then it turns out to be much cheaper than if we'd made it from scratch. Anyway, if you haven't tried it, you should, because it's well worth the money. Very tasty! Until tomorrow ...

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