Through Jesus' Love

We can love God because He loved us first.  We can reach out to God to form an intimate relationship because He drew us unto Himself first.  We can bear fruit for the kingdom of God because He instilled in us the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit.  We can spend eternity with Our Heavenly Father because He gave us His Son, Jesus, to die on the Cross for our sins.

Everything that we have comes from the provision of God.  How can we not heed His call on our lives?

Through our redemption in Christ, we receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  We do not get a mere piece of Our Savior within us or a replica of Our Savior within us.  We get the full power and person of His Holy Spirit within us.

If our lives are in submission to Jesus, the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit is available for us to tap into at all times .  If our lives are not fully submitted to Jesus, we will find neither the full power of the Holy Spirit nor the faith to access His power.  When our submission to Jesus is complete, the power and faith to use this extraordinary gift is released in its fullness.

There is sin in every human’s life.  Even the tiniest of which separates the individual from ever entering into the presence of God.  While feeling true sorrow for transgressions and making an earnest attempt at not failing again are good things, they are not enough to bridge the gap from God that is caused by sin.

Only the Cross of Jesus is sufficient to reconcile the separation created by sin.  Only through Jesus Christ can anyone prepare their place in heaven.  He is the reason for celebrating the Christmas season.

America was born by our founding fathers under a call for fierce independence from a government that wanted to control their citizens’ relationship with Almighty God.  As our founding fathers fought to be independent of  England, they were steadfastly dependent on the God of the bible who aided and blessed their movement to freedom. 

Over time, Satan has done his work on many of America’s citizens.  Many have become arrogantly and selfishly independent and have built their lives around self-manipulated lifestyles that require no God – at least in their minds.  Perhaps the only way that they will ever recognize God is by seeing Him in the lives of fulfilled Christians.  May our lives testify to the power and the glory of Our Heavenly Father and the true freedom that is promised through His Son.

If we find that we have a boss or co-worker that we do not get along with, we have reason to rejoice.  God has put him or her there for our growth.  If we find that we have a neighbor or a family member that we have issues with, we have reason to rejoice.  God has put him or her there for our growth.  God has purposely placed all the people that surround us.  They are in our lives for us to learn how to forgive them, love them and serve them just as Jesus Christ forgives, loves and serves us all.

For many of us, the hard part is that it all starts with forgiving.  If we have trouble with forgiveness, we need to ask Jesus to show us how.  In His Word, He promises to perfect His strength in our weakness.

It is easy to see why Jesus said it was so hard for the rich man to get to heaven.  In the comfort of his riches, the rich man felt no need for a Savior.  He thought he had everything he needed.  The rich man could not foresee the upcoming problem.  The hunger of his flesh would never be satisfied.  His flesh would always seek more than he had.  But more importantly, nothing that he could do in the flesh could prepare him a place in heaven.

For all of us, whether we be rich by the world’s standards or not, there is only one source that can satisfy the hunger within us and can provide our access into our eternal resting place in heaven.  Only Jesus can satisfy the hunger that is placed in our hearts by Our Creator.  Only Jesus can satisfy the redemptive needs of our souls.  Jesus is our all sufficient Lord.

  

 

Even though God has a specific plan for our lives, He allows us to make our own choices all along the way.  He has given us the free will to decide what path we take each day.  

Along with this right comes the burden of making an endless stream of decisions.  Some of the decisions we make are big and some are small, but they all have an impact on the paths we take.  Thus we often wrestle with our choices, creating a lot of stress in our lives.  We can make our decision process much easier by seeking God’s counsel through prayer.  By following the urgings of the Holy Spirit instead of our own impulses, we will make better life decisions with a minimal amount of stress.

God promises us in His Word that He will comfort us in our struggles.  But the teaching in His Word adds, “so that we may be a comfort to others who go through the same struggles”.

Reading, understanding and then applying the lessons of the bible to our lives can be a struggle.  Be assured that God’s promise “to comfort us in our struggles so that we can comfort others” applies here as it does for any other part of our lives.  God calls us to be diligent in our bible study so that He can expand our learning of His ways, so that we can apply the learning to our lives and so that we can share our revelation with those that God has placed around us. 

We live in a world where strife and chaos are more prevalent than peace.  We create a portion of this chaos ourselves by trusting in ourselves and focusing on ourselves as we seek the path to the “great life” promised by the world.

The path to the true, great life is found when we put all of our trust in God and focus our lives on Our Savior – not on our problems or our current circumstances.  On this path, we separate ourselves from the chaos in the world and find ourselves resting in the presence of Almighty God at all times.  This resting place holds for us the peace that surpasses all human understanding.

Every Christian is filled with a desire to pray for the needs of those around them.  The heart of the true intercessor, however, is focused on praying for the primary need of redemption in the lives of the people surrounding him or her.  All other needs, while perhaps urgent in the physical and material sense, are needs of the flesh.  The true intercessor will certainly pray for these natural needs, but only with the collaboration of the redemptive needs on the prayer table at the same time.