I am so grateful that God takes me where I am and transforms me completely into the image of Christ. He meticulously removes flaws, bad habits, negative emotions, and wrong thoughts and replaces them with truth and victory. As I humble myself, ask for His forgiveness and cleansing, and obey His instructions, the Lord takes away the sin and bad habits and gives me generational righteousness.
The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law (Deut. 29:29).
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Ephesians 2:7—
...that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
As I was reading this verse and the surrounding passage recently, it occurred to me that God did not just find Himself in a position where He would have the opportunity to show grace. He set up His whole plan for redemption with grace in mind.
Guided by faith and peace, the path is clear
I find that nothing shall overcome me,
But in my new soul is anxiety
Like the bitter cold, I’m frozen with fear.
But then I request, “Won’t You please draw near?
Truly if You my Friend ever to be
Why then You seem to hide when I need Thee?”
Taking the Heat, I fail to persevere.
In my pain Your goodness comes back to mind
Like a ray of light, then I find cause in
This moment of lapse, for it is not one,
But a chance for me to be redefined
By the standards of my Guide, from within
I am changed; I’m thankful I am His son.
In a past monthly women’s dinner, our senior pastor’s wife shared a powerful lesson about Mary’s response when learning she would be having the child to be named Jesus. As we focus on Christmas, I've been thinking about that lesson again.
When Mary was visited by the angel Gabriel and told that she, who was a virgin, would be having a child, she was faced with a very serious social prospect. Nazareth was not our modern-day world where a single woman can have a child without raising any eyebrows or receiving any significant condemnation. Not only was she going to be having a child, she was going to have to face being a virgin having a child. However, Mary did not go into a pity party or wail, “Why me?” She responded with,
How can this be, since I do not know a man? (Luke 1:34)
Many believers miss the link between Genesis 14, where Abram gives a tithe (tenth) of all his increase toMelchizedek, and Genesis 15, where God makes a great promise to Abram that actually leads to the foundational truth of the whole New Testament.