March 5, 2010
“It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did this all on his own, with no help from us!” Ephesians 2:5-6 The Message
The Great Exchange that becomes The Great Wonder for once lost wanderers …? #8
You cannot earn it … You don’t deserve it …. Your life and your efforts don’t qualify you for it. You can spend your life trying with all that you are and all that you have to be worthy and you will still fall short…way short. Because once you have in your mind what it is to be found worthy .. there is nothing you can do or accomplish that can prepare you for what God designed before your first breath. He knows your sins (yes .. the ones that make you think you are basically good and the ones that make you feel hopelessly enslaved and estranged from everyone and everything you love.) … your secrets … your failures … the past ones … the future ones … the ones you will live out today. He knows your disappointments and those you have disappointed … the wounds you have received and the ones you have inflicted … all of your efforts to be good and the true results that leave you just the way you began. And still He pursues you with a mercy that is humanly unimaginable …. with a grace that covers all of those things … with an inexhaustible compassion and indefatigable love. Because He is God the Father of all creation and his hearts desire is to have you with him. He didn’t lose his temper with you because He knows there is only One who can reconcile, renew and restore you. We struggle in a sin dead life to give it meaning .. purpose .. and some lasting legacy only to discover that it is in Christ and Christ alone that we find a life worth living. So …. after rescuing us from ourselves, what is His plan for us? His unconquerable plan is to shower us with GRACE AND KINDNESS IN CHRIST! That is his idea of a real future … that goes on and on and on and on! This is his idea of work … for you, his saints! It only takes a moment to pick his plan over your own … and there is no shortage if you want to splash it all over the world you live in today …!
“Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work.” Ephesians 2:7 The Message
Ken Chester and Bob Stec : Grace-Gripped is sent M-F to 21rst Century Ephesians following Jesus and friends of Priority One (ken@priorityone.org and rstec@icisaacs.com — Bob is on the P1 NC-East Core Team) ** A one-day delayed thanks to Alan Hawkins for his insights on Jesus the Sabbath restoring one 3/4 G-G **
