I’ve been going through my old diaries and pulling out insights that I really believe are from God’s point of view. I am convinced that hope in our Lord will help us all go deeper with Him as we trust in His goodness.
Jesus longs to reveal Himself to us more and more each day and in every circumstance. When He tell us, “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9),’” our response is to gladly boast in our weaknesses, that the power of God may rest upon us.
Today, this is the perspective I’m coming from in sharing a few things our Lord has taught and continues to teach me as I fight daily to live by faith.
- Weakness allows us to access God’s grace and reveals our huge need for prayer. It brings us to our knees and leads us to His throne of grace.
- We are helpless in our walks with God apart from His presence and power. When we want to know God’s plan, we must cry out for His help. It is a fearful place to be when you have the desire to do whatever He asks but attempt to do so apart from His presence and power. Lasting acknowledgement comes from God and is through God and is always for the glory of God.
- It will be hard for us to pray until we come to the point that we recognize our helplessness. Jesus says, “‘... apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:5).’” To help us, He shouts the reminder at us daily that He is with us (Matthew 28:20).
- Prayer will never be important to us if Jesus is just an add-on. If that is our understanding of things, we will mistakenly think that we can manage our own circumstances without Him. Our souls become dull if we don’t pray with a belief that Jesus plus nothing equals everything and that without Him we can do nothing.
- Grace works through weakness. We will never see the greatness of God’s undeserved, unmerited, unearned love until it meets us in our weaknesses. It is in those moments that we have the opportunity to embrace His love by faith as He expresses His presence and power.
- Jesus’ message, the gospel, is the same today as it was when He said, “‘For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken (John 12:49).’” What He spoke and lived into existence is our hope of glory. It is defined as our eternal life and starts when He comes into our lives the moment we say, “Yes, Lord, thank You.”
- Jesus tells us “‘For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it (Mark 8:35).’” We cannot lose our lives unless we value Jesus Christ’s life more than our own life, success, and wealth. Daily we choose His life and His way over our way and our happiness.
- We are never to play it safe in our walk with the Lord. In your daily life, take risks by faith in Jesus’ name and ask God our Father to use it to teach you to lose your life for His name’s sake. When Christians don’t take risks, like Peter did when he got out of the boat and walked on the water, we don’t get to see what God would have done. What a loss!
- When Jesus tells you to trust Him, say, “I do,” and remember our actions define what we truly believe.
In 1947, Carl F. Henry wrote, “We must confront the world now with an ethics to make it tremble, and with a dynamic to give it hope.” This is what our Lord Jesus Christ continues to ask of us.
Blessings, my friends. I am thankful for all you do for our soon coming King.
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