God's Thoughts In Our Daily Life
James 2:18 18But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
May our circle of Grace, Life, Faith and Action always be moving us forward in God’s service for His purpose in improving our lives and the lives of others.
We often begin our walk of faith by working and serving in areas where we can see both where we are and where we are going. If we step away from this spiritually for a moment we can see where the safety and predictability of these actions will accomplish many things that while useful they may not serve our best purpose for God. This could leave us in a dangerous place of comparing our success and failure to others around us. It is a natural human instinct and sometimes based on our circumstances and past it can be hard to move past. We often limit our Faith to what we can logically reason out and fit within our box of understanding. In other words, we want to see the path clearly from where we are to where we are going to end up. The writer of Hebrews helps us to understand that faith requires us to go into areas where even with a plan we do not know the path and yet hope in our faith takes us along the journey for God.
HEBREWS 11:1 Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.
If faith then, is a step for us where we give control to God then we become a living part of God’s purpose. The great, and scary, part of living out this purpose is that God has an expectation of us to do “our” best – not average, not compared to anyone else but our best for Him every day. God has no limit like we have in logic and reason, and Faith will often carry us into areas we cannot explain. We only pray and work to realize the unlimited potential a day brings and recognize that we bring the only limit to our faith in each day.
“Faith has no limit – The only limit to our realization of tomorrow is the doubt we hold onto from today.”
Garbiel – The Travelers Gift
God’s Grace is the movement of God for our salvation through Jesus Christ and the next move is ours. Faith is our belief in God’s work and while Faith cannot be seen it is the fuel by which we accomplish the purpose God has called each of us to in His service. Faith moves our experience of Grace into action through our lives. Our human nature can sometimes allow us to become lazy and just cruise along simply existing in life. God did not create us to exist but to live our lives as an expression of our relationship with Him. James reminds us that Faith requires action –
Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. James 2:17
We are all within God’s purpose whether we have made a confession of Faith or not. If we have not then His purpose can only be to move us to make the confession of belief in Jesus Christ so we can then exercise our Faith. If we have confirmed our belief in Jesus Christ, then our Faith lives in our actions that allow us to fulfill God’s purpose. Our prayer today is that our Faith will move us to actions that reflect God’s presence in our hearts.
EPHESIANS 2 New Living Translation ( NLT )
8 God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. 10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
If we can start our year from Mary’s point of view in our last post with our priority focus on God, we will end up with a nice list of goals. Some of the areas in our lives that we plan to help ourselves and others will be straightforward and some will have physical and spiritual gaps that we need to cover to accomplish them. An understanding of the connection of Grace to Faith will be of help to us with all of our plans. Especially recognizing that we will make our plans to the best of our ability but God’s purpose will prevail.
PROVERBS 19:21 You can make many plans, but the Lord’s purpose will prevail.
Our confession of Faith in the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus requires that we believe that confession. While that sounds obvious the belief is in the saving power of God or His Grace. It can be hard for us to reconcile our sin with God’s grace because we often cannot see how we can just be forgiven for all that we know we have done wrong. God’s gift of salvation extends to us His unmerited favor of forgiveness for our debt of sin because we cannot pay it on our own. Our faith in God’s grace provides us the proper perspective for our works of faith to accomplish His purpose. Paul clearly says that our Faith in Grace brings us to the new life God has planned for us so that we will be able to do the good things He has planned for us.
LUKE 10: 38-42 Jesus Visits Martha and Mary
38 As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39 Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught. 40 But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.” 41 But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! 42 There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”
One of the biggest challenges we face as Christians is in setting priorities in our lives. The small day to day things seem to consume our time and energy so looking at an entire year can seem daunting to us. The start of a New Year however, gives us an opportunity to look at what is in front of us. There are things from the past year we were successful with that we would like to build on, there were failures we might like to try again to get right or leave behind and a whole host of areas we have not even tried because we don’t deem them possible for us. If we are honest we will continue the things that are working, drop the failures and let a lack of faith keep us from the things that might really improve not just our lives but the lives of others as well. So how do we go from where we are to where God would have us be ?
The answer is different for each of us and can be a struggle just like the one we read about in Luke 10 between Martha and Mary. They were both in the presence of Jesus and had a choice to make in how they honored him on his visit. Martha chose service in preparing a large meal for their guest while Mary simply went in to visit with Him. Much has been written and spoken about this text to determine which one we are in our lives. The answer here brings us great comfort because we are and should be both just in the right order. God’s greatest desire for us as His crowning creation is for us to have a relationship with Him. To visit and worship Him as not just our creator but our sustainer and guide in this life. If Jesus is the focus of our life then any review and plan forward for action ( SERVICE ) in our lives will be in honor of Him. The Martha in us is not limited or held back by worship but guided by it. We can be a mighty vessel for God provided we use the Compass of Jesus to point us in the right direction and for the right purpose.
The reflections of the past year become our starting point for a New Year with our focus and eyes on God. The new clean page of the year in front of us is both exciting and humbling that while there is much to do we cannot do it all alone. This is a good time to begin to look forward and understand that our actions make a difference not only in our lives but in the lives of those that we meet along our way. Our actions, whatever they may be, will affect our lives and be seen by others as more than just our actions. Our lives at some point reflect what is in our heart and that shows clearly our character or what drives us from the inside. If God is present in our lives and at the center of our hearts then His love will show through in what we do each day. It is a powerful enough reminder for us that our goals and actions in this year have a result that would reflect God’s love and purpose in our lives. This thought may also help us prioritize, in this busy world, what we invest our time and energy in for the coming year knowing that it will reflect our relationship with God.
It is always refreshing to start something new. To be able to begin with a clear heart and spirit on a new white sheet of paper with unlimited possibilities. Our biggest challenge is to actually start with the freedom that we have in front of us without letting the past color too much of our new start. Of all the strengths from our relationship with Jesus Christ one of the most powerful is that of forgiveness. Each day becomes a new opportunity in our lives to live out and share God’s love in our lives with others. If this were true in our lives then why do we struggle so much with the freedom of a new life? Could it be that our old life had some advantages to us ? We were comfortable, everyone knew what to expect, no explaining to do, no different actions to take. People appreciated and accepted us in our flawed state and we were all good with one another. Wow, I am glad we got that aligned I thought this was going to get complicated for a minute …… We are all comfortable in our flawed lives and living at or below the expectations of others and to ourselves not to mention God.
The rich young ruler in Mark 10 – lived his life to the best of his ability and sought Jesus humbly to determine how he might obtain eternal life but his real motive was of human intent in that he wanted an eternal life with the qualities of this life? He calls Jesus good and the next statement is often taken as just that a statement, that by itself is true and right, but it can also be a question that Jesus poses to the young man to gage the seriousness of his intent. Mark 10:18 18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked. “Only God is truly good.
Does he believe he is talking to God or simply a teacher that has an answer he knows he cannot get answered anywhere else and if he feels good about his life up to this point then certainly he has less left to do in attaining eternal life than many others right? Jesus knowing his heart confirms for him what he must do and the young man replies that he has kept the commandments to the best of his human ability for most of his life –
Mark 10:21 21 Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. This verse is a great comfort in that Jesus loves us beyond our physical capability in this life and yet Jesus in love still had to point out the gap in this mans life between his physcial and spiritual actions. Jesus told him go and release all that he had but the text says he had many possessions and he could not part with them on faith alone. Jesus uses money once again, though not the real topic here, to illustrate the physical and spiritual struggle we have in our day to day lives when we reflect. The good comes thru and the things we have neglected or failed at we would rather skip but these are the very things God wants us to focus on and give from our spirits beyond our physical selves. Time, money, energy, talent …… still not enough because the spiritual requires an acknowledgment of God being first – dependence on Him. If we can reflect and plan forward giving him control of our lives then we can accomplish many things that are not physically possible today because we have not allowed God to make them possible for us.
Mark 10:26-27 26 The disciples were astounded. “Then who in the world can be saved?” they asked. 27 Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But not with God. Everything is possible with God.”
Our New Year is made up of many new days that are full of opportunity and potential ALL made possible in God.
Lamentations 3: 22-24 NLT
22 The faithful love of the Lord never ends
Luke 22:61 New Living Translation (NLT)
61 At that moment the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Suddenly, the Lord’s words flashed through Peter’s mind: “Before the rooster crows tomorrow morning, you will deny three times that you even know me.”
The end of another year provides an opportunity for us to look back over our past year and take account of our positive and negative experiences in this year. Reflection on our lives is a vital part of improving our future direction and purpose in life. Luke 22:16 may not be the first text that comes to mind when we think of a motivational reference for looking back on our lives. We often prefer to focus on the positive areas and with good reason; they have a good direction for us and we feel successful in them and look forward to building on them. While that is for sure an important part of our purpose God often prepares us for our greatest purpose from our failures. To look at a year and leave them out would be to ignore the larger hand of God’s spirit moving in our lives to teach us a larger lesson that we can use to help others in a way we may have not even dreamed of in the past.
I have to wonder how often Peter reflected on this failure in his life? How did it weigh on him that he got not one but three warnings that his heart was not committed to what he professed and that no matter how he looked at it he failed Jesus. He could always look back on his Good Confession that Jesus was “ The Christ, the Son of the living God” or walking on water but this failure could never change. If failure were the only perspective for Peter then he would not get the complete message God had for Him in the events of the night before Jesus died on the cross. We too often get so bogged on the failure we don’t look at it in the reflection of God’s perspective on our lives. Peter’s denial wasn’t a surprise to Jesus only to Peter and Jesus saw it because he used the opportunity to show Peter that there were no limits to His love and ultimately His forgiveness. Just a short time later Peter would use the strength and wisdom of this time in his life to share this Love and Forgiveness with others on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit Jesus promised came to His believers in this life.
We would do well to reflect over the past year and prepare from where God has allowed us to be, whether in success or failure, for the future and purpose he has placed inside each of us.
As Advent closes with the fulfillment of Jesus birth we are reminded that the expectation of Advent begins our journey to the cross and ultimately to the resurrection of Jesus on Easter. If we pause here at the end of the year to reflect on this past year of our lives and also on the journey we have made thru the Bible we can recognize a few truths. One is that our lives are uncertain at best and preparing to be our best for God each day requires that we give Him each day and live it in the Love as He Loved us. Two is that the Love we yield our lives to is a Love beyond our ability to comprehend. The Bible is a Love story of God’s Love for His creation in us and how He provided for our very life physically and spiritually. His Love lives in us and can be shared with everyone we meet along our way.