Grace
Grace, as I've heard it explained, is "God's Riches At Christ's Expense." All that we have, all that we ever hope to be, all that we enjoy each day we live...all of it, comes from our Father in heaven. Nothing we have comes from anything we have ever done. We may think so, we may think it is our hard work, our toil, our labor, which brings on our great successes in life, but all of it is really just a gift from God. If God does not want it to be so, it won't be. It's that simple.
Who are we really? We are a spirit that inhabits a body here on this tiny planet called earth. We are on a temporary assignment here to bring glory and honor to our Father. This is just a brief stay on our journey toward eternity in heaven forevermore. A brief stay...just like our brief stay here in Florida that is about to end. It is almost time to move on to new destinations, new experiences, and new people who God will bring across our path. If we were to settle down here, make this a permanent "camp," think this is all there is, we would very possibly miss out on the very best that God has waiting for us.
If we think this world is really our permanent home, that this is all there is, we would make the very tragic mistake of missing out on the very best that God has waiting for us in heaven.
And afterward, when he wanted his father's blessing,
he was rejected. It was too late for repentance, even
though he wept bitter tears.
Hebrews 12:17
Who wants to weep bitter tears at the gates of heaven because we have missed out on the very best God has for us? No one in his or her right mind! I saw a bumper sticker yesterday, it said, "Out of my mind, be back in five minutes." It gave me a little chuckle because I have been there. I have been out of my mind wondering which direction I should be going in, where my thoughts should really be and sometimes heading down a road that God never meant for me to be traveling down.
Yesterday was Christmas day-a beautiful day here in Florida. There was only one thing
to do, go to the beach!! Why? Because we're in Florida on Christmas day and we've never
been in Florida on Christmas day before. The sun was shining and God was calling us to a
new experience. He was asking us to leave behind that dark, dismal road of self-pity with
the "landscape" of all that might be missing in our lives and venture out into His beautiful
world and enjoy Him!
My mind said, "No." My mind said, "You need to be sad on this day. You have one son in heaven and two others on the west coast. You are far away from your children and you need to crawl into this dark pit of self-pity and wallow in it until your world is dark and dreary. My mind wanted to go places that my spirit fought against. The flesh was battling the spirit big-time, and I had to decide, would I go with my mind, or go with my spirit. God help me, the battles were raging.
You may say it's an easy call. You have your health, you have a wonderful new RV that God has provided for you to live in, you are in Florida for crying out loud!!! What more could you want? But the mind...they say it's a terrible thing to waste!! Sometimes it wants to "waste" us! It wants to take us exactly where we shouldn't go so that we will miss out on where God is calling us to. God beckons to us, He urges us onward to better things than the world has to offer, but we choose the world so much of the time.
You have not come to a physical mountain, to a
place of flaming fire, darkness, gloom, and a whirlwind,
as the Israelites did at Mount Sinai when God gave
them his laws. (Heb. 12:18)
No, you have come to Mount Zion, to a city of
the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to
thousands of angels in joyful assembly.
Hebrews 12:22
It was Christmas, the day we celebrate the birth of our Savior--the Giver of all hope! But we have to choose Him. We have to say yes to His ways, we have to give our hearts to Him fully and go where He calls us to go, and then we will find our "hope in the resurrection to a better life." (Heb. 11:35b)
We all want a better life! We can all have a better life because "Jesus Christ is the
same yesterday, today and forever." (Heb. 13:8) He is constant and true each day we live
on this earth. Even though our circumstances change, even though we have days when everything
is going our way and days when it seems nothing is going our way, Jesus Christ is the SAME!
We can always depend on Him! When we depend on Him to show us the way--sometimes He will
even lead us to the beach on Christmas day! He will call to us and say, Come, enjoy all
that I have created for you. You were not created for misery and defeat but to live life
fully and abundantly in Me. Your life may be different now, it may not be anything you
ever expected it to be, but it can be good and fulfilling and wonderfully exciting if you
will only follow Me.
And so we walked on the beach in Florida on Christmas morning. We called our family and friends in California and woke some of them up to wish them a Merry Christmas from the beach! We stepped out of our minds and into the joy of the LORD to celebrate the birth of His Son, and it was good.
We were experiencing Grace, all of God's riches at Christ's expense. We were enjoying what we don't deserve but what has been freely given to us because God loves us and wants the very best for us. The devil comes only to kill, steal and destroy, and if allowed he will steal our joy first of all. If he can get that, our strength is gone and we are easy prey to his schemes. If we will sit and wallow in all that we don't have, we will drown in our self-pity and miss all God has waiting for us!
We had a great Christmas day, starting with the beach and ending the day at our friends' home, enjoying their family.
With Jesus' help, let us continually offer
our sacrifice of praise to God by proclaiming
the glory of his name. Don't forget to do good
and to share what you have with those in need,
for such sacrifices are very pleasing to God.
Hebrews 13:15-16
That's what our friends did for us. They shared what they had with us. They shared their food and their gifts and the love of their family with us, and I believe God was pleased. We may think that God has abandoned us, that He doesn't care because the hurt in our lives has been so great--how could He? How could He have allowed this to happen to us if He really loves us? And yet, if we will only open our eyes and follow where He is leading, I truly believe He will lead us to a life of such abundance that His love and His glory will shine through the darkness our mind is tempted to wallow in and we will be shown a better way of living each day.
Not only did our friends share with us, but another young man also shared with us as we were driving back from the beach on Christmas day. My cell phone rang and I was surprised at who God had "assigned" to call us on this day. It was a young man who has suffered much in his life. We met him on the day we were checking Phil out of high school to begin further chemotherapy treatments. This young man also was checking out of high school to begin experimental treatments on his brain tumor. His future looked bleak and looking at the two boys from the world's perspective, it looked as if Phil would be with us much longer than this other young man. That was the world's perspective but...
--this world is not our home; we are
looking forward to our city in heaven,
which is yet to come.
Hebrews 13:14
As I talked with this young man and he told me of the best Christmas gift he could have gotten, I marveled at how healthy he sounded and how at long last, he was able to drive a car. That was his best Christmas gift, he had finally gotten his driver's license-many years later than most his age. He was excited that his grandmother was with them for Christmas, and although he had to work on Christmas day, his dad had bought a ham and they would be enjoying that later for dinner. I joked with him about his new red car that his dad had helped him get, and told him to watch out for those tickets! He said he was a very safe driver, not fast, and I shared with him how Phil also had not been a fast driver. He said an interesting thing then. He said that perhaps they were both not fast drivers because they knew they were not invincible. Because of their health issues, perhaps they looked at it differently than most do at their age. I think he may have been right!
What an amazing, eye-opening gift on this Christmas day. A young man calling to wish us Merry Christmas who we thought in our worldly minds would never still be with us, and living this day without our own son who we thought would be-and yet my heart was deeply touched that he had thought of us on this day and had taken the time to call and share his life with us.
See to it that you obey God,
the one who is speaking to you.
Hebrews 12:25
God's grace, a gift that goes beyond this world and reaches past what we think and what we feel and offers us something even better than what we believe is possible. Did this young man realize that it was God who was speaking to him, that it was God putting us on his mind this Christmas, that it was God who wanted to reach out and bless us with the gift of love through another? I really don't know, but I do know that we felt God's love through this young man, and we felt God's love through our friends' hospitality as they shared their home with us.
Without wavering, let us hold tightly
to the hope we say we have, for God
can be trusted to keep his promise. Think
of ways to encourage one another to outbursts
of love and good deeds.
Hebrews 10:23-24
These were outbursts of love and good deeds. This was God keeping his promises to us,
to always be with us, to always help us, to always fill us with His joy when the world
says we should be sinking. The world and its ways are what will take us down and cause
us to lose our minds along the way. God and his ways are what will give us hope and help
us to keep our minds focused on what is eternal and what really matters above all, even
when our lives might look like they have been destroyed by worldly standards.
God's standards are so very different.
Do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord,
no matter what happens. Remember the great reward
it brings you! Patient endurance is what you need now,
so you will continue to do God's will. Then you will
receive all that he has promised.
Hebrews 10:35-36
If we throw away our confident trust in the Lord we lose everything, and the first things to go are our peace and our joy. If we start to depend on ourselves for what we have or don't have on this earth, we will sink very quickly. But if we keep our eyes focused on all that God has promised us, we will be filled with joy and peace until our time on earth is finished.
So take a new grip with your tired hands
and stand firm on your shaky legs. Mark
out a straight path for your feet.
Then those who follow you, though they
are weak and lame, will not stumble
and fall but will become strong.
Hebrews 12:12-13
The mind, oh the places it would like to take us-down roads that lead to destruction.
There should be huge signs warning us not to go that way, huge detours flashing in red
and yellow directing us back to the straight path that leads to God.
Where do we find these signs?
Do they exist?
I believe they do, in the Bible. In God's Word, He warns us over and over to keep our
eyes on Him.
--let us run with endurance the race that God
has set before us. We do this by keeping our
eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends
from start to finish.
Hebrews 12:1-2
God knew this "race" would be hard, and He knew there was only one way to finish in victory-with our eyes on Jesus. The signs are there, we just need to look for them. To "strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress." (Heb. 12:1a) When we are in the Word, there are clear directions about which way we should go. When we search them out and find them, it then becomes a choice, will we turn right or will we turn left? Will we go to the "beach" and bask in the wonders of God, or will we sit home and bask in the hardships of life?
We chose the beach on this Christmas day and it was an experience that we will carry with us as the years go on. It became a place of refuge provided by God to get us out of our own minds and into His way of thinking, which is above ours and so much better.
Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge
can take new courage, for we can hold on to his
promise with confidence.
This confidence is like a strong and trustworthy
anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain
of heaven into God's inner sanctuary.
Hebrews 6:18-19
Out of our own minds and into "God's inner sanctuary." A sanctuary filled with promise and hope for a future, not only in heaven but here on earth, because when we are focused on Him--then this world grows strangely dim in comparison. The things that should seem to matter most, which should bring us down, don't--and the things this world can so easily cast aside as unimportant, even on Christmas Day, become brighter than the noonday sun on a beach in Florida in December.
If the world seems dark and dreary, it is because it is only a shadow of the things to come in heaven.
The old system in the law of Moses was only
a shadow of the things to come, not the
reality of the good things Christ has done for us.
Hebrews 10:1
Jesus Christ showed us what is real and what is true, and because of our hope in Him, we do not have to be trapped in the prison of our own mind. We can have the mind of Christ and we can see things from a fresh perspective. We can toss away the old way of thinking and grab hold of the new hope we have in Him. We can know that no matter what is happening in our lives, there are better things to come. Our story can have a happy ending! We can choose that! We can decide what is written on the last page of our lives! If you want true control of your life, there it is!! When we give our lives to our Savior, born on Christmas Day over 2,000 years ago, we choose the "beach." We choose to walk in the light of His Son and enter his Most Holy Place.
And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can
boldly enter heaven's Most Holy Place because
of the blood of Jesus. This is the new, life-giving way
that Christ has opened up for us through the sacred
curtain, by means of his death for us.
Hebrews 10:19-20
It's a new life and a new way of living that goes beyond what our simple minds can even comprehend. This new life can only be experienced when we will first take that step of faith, believing in Jesus Christ, and then choose to continue to walk with Him each day of our lives. Only then can we experience God's wonderful gift of Grace!
Living in His peace and joy,
Diane
