When Jesus died, his life was not taken… it was given.
Even in the last statement Jesus makes on the cross, we can see this.
The Gospel is what defines the Church. In a world that is constantly pushing us to do more, try harder, the Gospel runs counter to everything the world preaches. In our own sinfulness, we naturally trust in our own performance, but it is the performance of Jesus alone that sets us free.
Oscar Wilde said, “I can resist anything except temptation.” I can resonate with that. The devil knows exactly where I’m weak and vulnerable and I’m a sucker for his lies.
Throughout the scriptures there’s a looping pattern that we see in the nation of Israel. Over and over and over again, the Israelites rebel against God.
We all have a crazy collection of religious ideas that we’ve gathered throughout our life. It’s a crazy collection with ideas from Grandma and Grandpa and Oprah and all kinds of other influential people in our life that we’ve crammed into a spiritual junk drawer that shapes what we believe.
My son is almost three years old, which means he is now at the age where I can give him a rule and with evil in his eyes and a grin on his face, he will happily ignore my rules. Since he’s just a toddler, he’s not very good at being naughty and it’s usually more entertaining than frustrating.
There is no question that the Reformation was crucial to the development of Christianity and incredibly important in the recovery of the central teaching of grace. In Luther’s day, the Church had by and large abandoned a true teaching of the Gospel for something that was nothing more than buy-your-own-forgiveness.
Behavior modification is like putting band-aids on cancer. It’s not really going to fix the underlying problem. You know when you were little and you thought that your mom’s kiss could fix any scraped knee?
I’ve heard people often say, “I’m my own worst critic.” I’ve even said this before about myself. But I don’t really think it’s true. At least not all the time, and definitely not for myself.
Grace changes everything. In a world of “do more” and “try harder,” we are need of people who are willing to continue to resound the call of “it is finished.” Grace is the intoxicating message of the extravagant, relentless love of our savior.
The hype has calmed down a little bit and the bloggers have all weighed in. 50 Shades of Grey is a blockbuster movie, a bestselling book, and the hot topic of journalists, and reporters.
There’s an awesome story in the book of Numbers when God decides to use a donkey to get his message across.
When it coms to the salvation of man, God is always the one doing the work. God does the rescuing. God does the redeeming.
When I envisioned family devotions in my head, it was always a picture of my kids hanging onto every word I say as I opened up the scriptures for them. I pictured my son interacting with me about the Bible story.
