You Are His

You Are His
by Max Lucado

 

God’s grace defines you!

 

Society labels you like a can on an assembly line. Stupid.  Unproductive. Slow learner.  Fast talker.  Quitter.  But as grace infiltrates, criticism disintegrates. You know you aren’t who they say you are.

 

You are who God says you are:  “spiritually alive.” Heavenly positioned, “seated with him in the heavenly realms.”  “One with Jesus Christ.”

 

Of course, not all labels are negative.  Some people regard you as clever, successful. But it doesn’t compare with being “seated with him in the heavenly realms!”  God creates the Christian’s resume!

 

Grace defines who you are.  The parent you can’t please is as mistaken as the doting uncle you can’t disappoint.

 

Listen, God wrote your story.  He cast you in his drama. You hang as God’s work of art, a testimony in his gallery of grace.

 

According to Him, you are His.  Period.

 

“And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.”  Ephesians 2:6

Meeting Jesus

Meeting Jesus
By Scott Patty

Jesus came to be met.

So many people don’t realize this. To them, Jesus is a figure in history, long dead and irrelevant, or the inspiration for discontent cultural revolutionaries, or the leader of morally uptight Americans. But a person to be met and known?

In the opening chapter of John’s Gospel, we learn of the coming of Jesus. Grand statements about him are made in this chapter. The Word was in the beginning. The Word was with God from eternity. The Word was God. Jesus is this Word, which became a man and lived among us. Jesus is God and man in one person.

John 1 goes on to tell us that Jesus met people, and people actually met him. It tells us that we, too, can meet him.

How can we meet a man who lived two thousand years ago? Jesus is alive and he relates to us by his Spirit. He has given us information about himself in the Bible. He still speaks to us through the Bible. He gave us minds that can think, desires that lead to decisions, and bodies that can be used for service. Put all of this together, and we see how we can meet Jesus.

Meeting Jesus starts when he, by his Spirit, speaks to us from his Word. We then understand the words about Jesus, believe in him, decide to follow him, and make it our mission to serve him. Meeting Jesus happens because Jesus introduces himself to us, and we respond to him in faith.

Our lives should be saturated with this one, overarching goal: to meet Jesus. He has already introduced himself to you in his Word. I hope you will continue to meet him there.

What’s There to Gain from Loss?

What’s There to Gain from Loss? 
by Laura MacCorkle

At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.”
Job 1:20-21, NIV

In the next-to-last chapter of Dr. David Clarke’s The 6 Steps to Emotional Freedom:  Breaking Through to the Life God Wants You to Live, a few sentences stand out in regard to our personal response to loss:

“You’re stuck if you have not genuinely changed as a person, in your relationships with others, and in your relationship with God. The whole point of loss is change.  Each loss ought to move you ahead in these three areas… God wants you to experience positive change, and one of His main methods to promote change is loss.”

Whoa. When’s the last time any of us has looked at a loss in our lives as something good? As something meant for positive change? As something from which we can gain?

It’s so much easier to become bitter, to stay depressed, to go into denial or to lash out in anger at those closest to us. 

When I think back about all the loss I’ve experienced in my lifetime, I don’t know if I can see resulting positive changes every time. Divorce, death, job lay-off, broken relationships, a church split… these are some of the losses that have impacted my life so far. Yes, some have grown me and strengthened my spiritual life.  But others are still a painful work in progress.

In the Bible, Job has got to be the No. 1 poster child for loss. He had it all: great wealth, good health and multiple children. And then one by one, God allowed it all to be taken away.

There was great suffering. Job agonized and felt alone. He cursed the day of his birth. I can imagine him thinking, Please, God, I am so tired of hurting. I have nothing left. Why are you allowing this to happen to me? I don’t know how much longer I can be ‘strong,’ hold it together and act like everything is fine.

But despite losing nearly everything, Job never curses God (although he is honest about his feelings). He honors His Creator and is faithful. Job sees that God’s way is the right way. He repents. And then God blesses him, giving him TWICE what he had before.

God doesn’t explain to Job why he allowed the suffering. And Job is okay with that. In fact, he goes on to live another 140 years: “He saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so he died, old and full of years” (Job 42:16-17).

We see that Job’s loss didn’t cripple him. He didn’t shrivel up his spirit and choose the bitter route for the rest of his days. No, what happened to Job only strengthened his relationship with God and matured his spiritual understanding. And that is the ultimate gain.

Like Job, we are to be faithful to God even when we endure loss in our lives.

Intersecting Faith & Life: Ask God today how, through your loss, He can help you gain positive change as a person—in your relationships with others and in your relationship with Him. Ask Him to use your experience to encourage someone else who has also suffered loss.

A Prayer for True Love

A Prayer for True Love
By Marjorie Jackson

“The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” 1 John 4:8 (NASB)

God’s love for you and me is passionate, pure and beyond anything we’ve ever experienced, accepting us as we are. Our good, our sins, our past and our flaws are all bare before His eyes, yet being the perfect Gentleman and Father He is, He washes, changes, teaches and grows us tenderly. He reminds us of our worth and beauty as His daughters. He wants to forgive, bless and take care of us. He loves us with unconditional agape love.

Good news: His love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:8) We can love like that, too — not in our own strength or willpower, but by the Holy Spirit perfecting God’s love in our hearts. (1 John 4:12) The deeper we know God and His arduous, purposeful love for us and for others, the easier we can love others as an act of loving obedience to God.

1 John 4:20 tells it like it is: “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (NASB)

Of course. How can we defy God’s command to love the people He has placed in our lives and still claim to love Him? Our obedience to God’s Word comes from our love and reverence for Him who gave His all so we could keep on giving and loving like He has done for us.

It is only when we love God first and foremost that we can reach our full potential in loving others as friends, sisters, daughters, wives and mothers. As we grow in our love for God and in our knowledge of His love, we begin to change. We begin to see and love others differently.

In reality, true love happens when the stars don’t align, sparks dim and butterflies fly away. Love happens when we sacrifice, knowing we’ll get nothing in return. We are patient, kind, never envious or boastful, modeling 1 Corinthians 13 in our hearts and with our behavior without expecting payback or accolade. We lay down our lives in love.

Today’s key verse, 1 John 4:8 says, “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” I hope you find true love. I hope you and I grow so close to God that we naturally begin to “love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5b, NASB). May you and I so overflow with God’s love that it runs up and over onto everyone we meet. His love will never fail, because God Himself is true love, and God never fails.

Heavenly Father, Thank You for loving me long before I ever loved You. Affirm Your love to me so I may know it well and pour it out on those around me. You are good, and Your love is perfect. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.