pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Tag Archives: grace


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Amazing Grace

Reading: Psalm 80: 1-2 and 8-19

In our passage today the people of God find themselves outside of relationship with God.  The vine that God planted and grew in Israel, that God allowed to prosper because of divine protection, is being attacked by their enemies.  The wall has been laid waste and the people perish.  The psalmist cries out to God on behalf of the people and asksGod to “awaken your might, come and save us”.  The Psalm ends with a promise not to turn away from God again, but it is couched in the if-you-save-us-first provision.

When the people were with God and God was with the people, life was good.  Israel grew and prospered.  But they allowed the people they conquered to influence them and soon enough Israel was bowing to false gods, to foreign idols.  And soon the Israelites looked up and realized that God was angry with them.  Maybe at the time their promise not to turn away again was sincere.  Maybe they did truly desire to return to full obedience to God.  Maybe they were desperate enough to mean what they pledged.

At times we too find ourselves in a bad spot.  As with the Israelites, it is because we have turned away and have chosen earthly idols over God.  It is because God is no longer our priority that we feel God is distant.  But God is only distant in our minds.  The living presence of God, the Holy Spirit, is still right there trying to work in our lives.  Unlike the Israelites, we have a personal connection to God through the gift of the Holy Spirit.  We also have Jesus as our great high priest in heaven.  He who became flesh knows what it is like to be human and Jesus stands between God and us.

Like the Israelites, we too stumble and we too fail.  But thanks be to God for the Holy Spirit, the power of God dwelling in us, ever drawing us to be more and more like Christ.  God’s mercies are new every morning and God’s love never fails.  Praise be to God that this sinner is still loved and still welcomed always into the family of God.  For this amazing grace we say thanks be to God!


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New Creation 

Reading: Colossians 3: 1-11

Paul calls for a transformation from our old self that is of the world into a new self that is made in Christ’s image.  To accomplish this change we need the help of the Holy Spirit.  We cannot make this transition on our own.  It can be something we desire and even something we feel led to, but the power to transform human lives into eternal lives rests in God’s hands alone.

God’s love and grace are always reaching out to us, ever seeking to draw us closer to that love and grace.  We are born with an innate sense of God and good in us, with a spark of the divine, so to speak.  As we naturally see God’s love in the world, we do so through the spark of the divine that is within all humanity.

Early on life, God’s grace begins working in our lives.  John Wesley would call this prevenient grace, the grace that comes before.  It’s that grace on the doorstep of our life, inviting us into a relationship with God.  As we step through that door and begin to grow in our faith, this grace becomes justifying grace – that grace that helps us see the world as God sees it and to live our lives by God’s ways and will.  As we mature in our faith, God’s sanctifying grace begins to work in our lives, drawing us ever closer to Jesus, ever closer to perfection.  Although we never reach perfection in our earthly bodies, it is ever the goal.

To accomplish all this, Paul calls us to “put to death” all that is inside of us that does not draw us closer to God.  It is emotions, desires, drives, idols, friends, places, habits, … all that stands between us and God.  It is through faith in God and through the power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives that we continue on our journey of faith, step by step, ever drawing closer to our Lord.  May God strengthen us all on our journey.


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Simply Love 

Reading: Hosea 11: 5-11

We have a varied view of God.  Since God is vast and far beyond human understanding, it makes sense that we cannot pin down an exact image or view of God.  On one end of the spectrum we see God as judge and in that role God decides on consequences and hands out punishment for our choices.  On the other end we see God as love, giver of new mercies every morning and of endless grace and other blessings.

God is just and in our relationship expects obedience and faithfulness from us.  In the Old Testament God gave the people the covenant to uphold and the Law to follow, with its accompanying sets of sacrifices.  In the New Testament God brought the new covenant into being through the life and witness of Jesus Christ.  In the latter part of the New Testament and for us today, God gave the gift of the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us.  Even though we have all of this to help us be obedient and to follow God’s will and ways for our lives, we so often fail.  Even when we fail, God loves us.  Even when we fail time after time, God continues to love us.

The constant giving of love, mercy, and forgiveness that we experience from God transforms our lives.  We are made new creations, without blemish, every time we seek God’s throne of grace.  We are drawn in over and over and over again into God’s transforming love, marvelling that it is never withheld, that it is never conditional, and that it is given without cost.  God simply loves us, imperfect and sinful as we are.  God simply loves us.  For this we say, thanks be to God.


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Steadfast and True Love

Reading: Hosea 11: 1-4

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times”.  This oft-quoted parenting line may be familiar to you.  It’s familiarity is closely followed by the line, “When will you listen”?  This second line is probably thought more than it is shared!  Both seem to be staples of parenting.  As parents we try to reach out children all they need to know to grow into mature young adults.  We pour all we can into them hoping they turn out well.  When they stumble or fail, we love them anyway and we continue to pour our love and guidance into them.  They are ours and we love them dearly.

As one reads the Hosea passage, one can imagine God saying or thinking these familiar parenting lines.  Verse two particularly stood out to me: “The more I called Israel, the further they went from me”.  There are times when we too have felt as if our child had done exactly the opposite of what we asked.  So, as parents, we can relate to the frustration God is voicing about His children.

When I reflect on my life, I do not have to think too long or too hard to recall many times when I am sure I disappointed or frustrated God.  There is a long list of missed opportunities and poor decisions that I am sure leave God shaking His head.  My heavenly Father says over and over again, “John, when will you…?”

The love we know and experience as earthly parents is just a fraction of the heavenly love God has for us, His earthly children.  No matter how many times we fail, question His love, or choose something other than His will or way for us, His love never changes.  His love remains steadfast and true.  May our grateful response this day be to share His amazing love with all we meet.


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Restoring a Sinner

Reading: Psalm 85

The psalmist expresses a cycle that is common to us all.  The people of Israel sinned and found God’s forgiveness.  Time passed and they sinned again.  The writer expresses the need for God to forgive the people once again.  The psalmist calls for God’s unfailing love to once again yield mercy and grace.  The writer reminds themselves and God that God promises peace to His people.  The the writer again requests salvation from God.

It is a cycle we often repeat as well.  Earlier in one’s Christian walk, the cycle is repeated more often but throughout life we cycle through the sin-repentance-forgiveness pattern over and over.  Being human, frail and weak as we are, we will fall into sin.  Yet God, being unfailing love and unending grace, responds over and over again with forgiveness and an invitation back into right relationship with Him.

As we look back over our journey of faith we can identify times when we came to realize that we had been sinning.  It was not obvious to us before we reached a certain maturity level in our faith.  As we continue to grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ we come to junctures where we realize that what we were doing was really gossip or being jealous or lust or …  What was before simply part of who we are is one day seen as sin.  So we repent and think ‘not again’ as we are now aware that a certain behavior was sinful.  But like most sins, this one will return again.  Satan knows our weak spots and will continue to hammer away at them for a while.

As we mature in our faith and our relationship with Christ grows stronger, the time between recurrences of a sin will lengthen out.  And being fully human, we know that we may fall back into that sin once in a while.  But as we do mature, we recognize it sooner and come to a place where we stop at the temptation to gossip or whatever.  And then we begin to wrestle with other sins in our lives!

Into our constant battle with sin, into our human weakness, steps God’s love and grace.  God’s love and grace are far greater than our sin will ever be.  It is so great that nothing in all of creation is able to separate us from the love of God.  May we ever be thankful for God’s unfailing love and unending grace that always restores a sinner like me back to the true and loving relationship that is life itself.


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Calling, Waiting, Redeeming

Reading: Hosea 1:10

The Israelites of Hosea’s day have broken the covenant relationship they once had with God.  Their choices have led them far from God.  Like any parent, He is surely disappointed and maybe even a little mad, but the love for them is as strong as ever.  As parents we too have been in this situation with our own children, loving them in spite of their actions, words, or behaviors.  And like our heavenly Father, we long for them to repent of their poor choices and to return to the ways they were taught.  We so long for this because this is where our relationship is at its best, both for us and for our children.  God is no different.

With the Israelites and with us today, God continues to ever call us back into a right relationship with Him.  His promise to them is to make them a mighty nation – as numerous as the grains of sand on the seashore.  His promise to us is somehow more personal.  God’s promises to love us, to care for us, to watch over us, to bless us all still remain.  As His children, we are still God’s covenant people.  Yet through Jesus the relationship became more personal and intimate.  We can relate to Jesus’ human nature as a friend yet His divine nature is also present, revealing His power and majesty.  Through His resurrection Jesus imparts the Holy Spirit, a living presence of Jesus that comes to dwell in us once we accept Him as Lord and Savior.

It is through the voice and movement of the Holy Spirit that God continues to call us, His children, back to Him over and over again.  No matter what our choices, God still seeks to keep us in a righteous relationship with Him.  When we stumble, He calls out.  When we sin, He redeems.  When we wander away, He waits patiently, continuing to seek us out.  For God’s amazing and wonderful far-reaching, never-ending, life-changing love, we are ever grateful.  For all of His love, mercy, and grace we say thanks be to God.


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Continues to Call

Reading: Hosea 1: 2-10

The story revealed in Hosea is our story too.  Israel has fallen away from God and has begun to turn to Baal worships and other things not of God.  Yet God does not give up and continues to call them back.  Because of His great love and unending forgiveness, God seeks to renew Israel to an intimate relationship as children of God.

In our Christian walk we too cycle through periods similar to where Israel is in our story today.  Our focus and attention is drawn to things other than God.  Maybe for a season it is our future spouse or our job or our new friends.  The desire for recognition or a promotion or a new car seems to supplant God as our priority.  A new idol has taken God’s place.  Yet God is still there, waiting for us to return to Him, nudging us with the Holy Spirit, whispering our name.  He does not give up.

Even after naming all of Hosea’s children with names that remind the people of their broken relationship with God and even after review how the people have failed to be faithful to God, He ends the passage by saying, “they will be called sons of the living God”.  In this we see that in spite of all they have done and in spite of His anger with them, deep inside God knows that they will always be His people.  Always.

We too may stumble.  We too may wander.  We too may sin.  But God continues and continues and continues to call to us.  As followers of Jesus Christ, we too have been marked as children of God.  He continues to call our name.  We give thanks that in His great love and mercy, God continues to call us home and into His arms of redemption and grace.  Thank you God.


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Unending Love, Amazing Grace 

Reading: Amos 7: 10-17

Can you remember getting in trouble when you were little?  When we were first learning to follow the rules often there were times when we simply felt that the rule did not apply to us or that the rule was wrong.  The ‘rules’ and following them were outside of our own little world.  Sad thing is that this is still occasionally the case for us in adulthood.  The pull of what we want outweighs what we see as the immediate consequences and we stray outside the lines.

King Jeroboam had strayed outside the lines.  The king and the nation of Israel have engaged in sinful living.  They have oppressed the poor, worshiped false gods, and no longer follow God’s laws.  Earlier in the book of Amos, God had issued a call to repentance through the prophet.  The king and people ignored it.  Even after God has threatened to destroy the kingdom and to send the people into exile, Israel continues to live in sin.  Because of their great self-centeredness, they angrily refuse to be accountable to God and they tell Amos to go away.

Can you recall a time when you were enjoying life just a bit too much?  Can you remember a time when you justified a poor choice or behavior because you were enjoying the results or the outcome?  At times and in seasons of our faith it can be all too easy to get off track and to find ourselves where we should not be.  Despite nudges to repent from the Holy Spirit and calls from friends and family, we struggle to break free and step back inside of God’s love and guidance.

But God continues to work on our hearts and our family and friends pray and keep trying to hold us accountable.  We come to see our sin and repent.  God, in His unlimited love and grace, pours out forgiveness and we are restored to a right relationship with Him.  Our sin is wiped away in the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ.  We are humbled by God’s amazing grace and unending love.  We find ourselves transformed and have grown in our faith.  As a new creation in Christ we are ready to again live as a child of God.  We look back and wonder how we ever got ‘there’.  We promise to never go there again, but Satan does not give up.  Sin and temptation never go away.  Yet we also know that God is greater than he who is living in this world.  His amazing grace and unending love will always triumph.  For this we shout, thanks be to God!!


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Grace and Love

Reading: Luke 8: 26-39

Jesus is willing to go anyplace and into any situation to save someone.  The man possessed by demons lives among the dead.  The caves provided shelter for the outcast man but also make him unclean.  He lives amongst swine – animals that are unclean.  And to top it all off, he is possessed by demons.  Yet Jesus strides right past all that would keep others away and casts out the many demons to make the man whole again.  Jesus heals him so he can leave behind all that makes him unclean and so that he can return to life in the community.

Many of us today live with what we could consider demons.  Both within our heads and from culture and society we hear voices that seek to lure us in and to draw us away from God.  Bright shiny objects and the draw of power and position call our name.  There are many things that draw us towards sin and temptation as well.  One could consider this ‘legion’ of things that seek to pull us away from God and realize we are each in a pitched spiritual battle to stay in a right relationship with God.

At times we will succumb to temptation and to the things of the world.  We too will become ‘unclean’ as we are covered in our sin.  But even in this state, Jesus still calls our name.  He still seeks to draw us to Him so He can cleanse us of all that entraps us.  Like the unclean demon-possessed man, sometimes we also ask, “Jesus, what do you want with me”?  We wonder how He could love a sinner like us.  We wonder why He would seek to come near us in our broken state.  But Jesus loves us all, no matter who we are or what we’ve done.  Allow His grace to cover your sins.  Allow His love to wash over you.  Allow His love to make you whole again.


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The Faith OF Christ

Reading: Galatians 2: 15-21

In the original Greek of today’s text, there was no word between ‘faith’ and ‘Jesus Christ’.  The structure of the original sentence would have implied a certain connection.  Through the study of this and with an understanding of the whole message of the Bible, the word inserted is almost always ‘of’.  As is: the faith of Christ.  In using ‘of’ it places the redemptive work of saving grace fully on Jesus, not on us.

While it is true that we often live as if faith ‘in’ Jesus is what matters, wrongly thinking that somehow our own actions will save us.  In using ‘faith in Christ’ we are trying to take a role in something that is solely the work of God.  It was Jesus’ faith alone that led Him to the cross and it is God alone who offers us grace – that unmerited, undeserved free gift of love.  Our role is simply to live into the faith of Jesus Christ in God that allowed Him to go to the cross.

Once we can accept this and begin to understand the faith of Christ in His saving act, then this initiates a response on our part.  Once we wrap our heads around this great gift, then we begin to live our life as a grateful response to this gift and to His love.  As one of my devotionals put it this morning, we begin to “embrace a cross-shaped faithfulness of our own”.  In embracing this we understand and begin to live out God’s desire and plan to make all things new and to restore all of creation, bringing healing to all brokenness.

We understand that we ourselves are made new as children of God.  We respond by inviting and bringing others into this right relationship with God.  We respond by seeking to bring healing and restoration to the brokenness of our world.  The faith OF Jesus Christ dwells in us and shines out into the world through our lives.  This is the gift a faithful follower of Jesus Christ offers back to a world in need.