Christians should count the various trials in our lives as joy. Not as defeat. Not as pleasant. Not as punishment. Not as meaningless. Not as insignificant. Not as a reason to complain. Not as a lack of God’s care. Trials can be many things, but they cannot be joy-stealers unless we let them. While it may feel like trials are breaking you today, you can be sure that God is building you up through them in ways that are going to be amazingly good in the days to come. Your faith muscle becoming stronger. Your deliverance becoming sooner. Your witness becoming louder. Your homecoming becoming sweeter. Yes, you have hardships; but you also have hope.
The Way To Happiness
It is defined in different ways. It is pursued in different ways. It is measured in different ways. But what happiness has in common no matter how it is defined, pursued and measured is this: every single human being wants it. The message of the world is to “do what you want to do and be who you want to be” and this will make you happy. Only it … Does. Not. Work. The message of Jesus is “do what I want you to do and be who I made you to be.” In doing so, we will experience His joy, and our joy can be full no matter what else is happening in our lives. Want to be happy? His. Way. Works.
Let Us Offer Thanks For His Giving
We can be grateful for many things, and we should be. We can be grateful to many people, and we should be. We can be grateful on many occasions, and we should be. But there is One who makes every good thing, every good person and every good occasion in our lives possible by His abundant and amazing grace. God sent Jesus to be perfect for us because we aren’t, absorb wrath for sin so we don’t, and secure the blessings for us that we can’t. Jesus paid our sin penalty and paid for our special privileges so that we might be forgiven, freed and favored. Today and every day, let us offer thanks for His giving.
The Sweetest Of All Thanksgiving
The sweetest of all thankfulness isn’t superficial; it goes deep. It goes past feeling happy that certain things are in our lives. It goes past naming those things so it is known that we appreciate them. It goes past even tracing their origin back to God and thanking the Giver for all of our blessings. There is a delightful, wonderful, beautiful experience when our gratitude is not merely directed toward God for His gifts, but toward God for Himself. The way to be best thankful for all that God has given us is to be most thankful for Him.
What You Will Discover
What you’ll discover about life with Jesus is this… The better you know Him, the longer you follow Him, and the greater you enjoy Him, the deeper you will experience all the blessings and benefits of God’s grace. He will be honored in you and you will be happy in Him. And that’s what grace is all about. God and sinner reconciled so that… God receives the full and lasting worship He’s always deserved, and you receive the full and lasting happiness you’ve always wanted. It starts now, grows over time, and will extend into eternity where it will explode into unhindered, unbridled, uninterrupted pleasure forevermore.
Following Jesus Is A Journey
Following Jesus is a journey. Where do you go from here? What is your next step? Step one is to welcome Jesus into your life for Who He is: Savior, Provider, Counselor, Leader, King, Treasure. If you have never repented of your sinful life apart from Him and received the life that comes with Him, then by faith ask God for this right now. If you really mean it in your heart, He will give it to you. Step two onward is to grow in grace. Step after step, you let Jesus be Who He is … for you. You seek to know Him, follow Him and enjoy Him, letting His peace, hope and joy rule in your heart as He rules your life for your good.
Has He Started A Good Work In You?
Has God started a good work in you? How can you and I know that we have received God’s grace? There are two really good indicators that your faith in Him is genuine: you have a growing hatred for sin and a growing love for Jesus. You don’t just want to be free from the consequences of sin, but sin itself. You don’t just want to have the blessings of God, but God Himself. There is a desire that begins growing inside of you to experience all that God has for you, in this world and the one to come. You believe in Jesus for the first time, and then you believe in Him more fully over time. We grow. That’s how we know.
Relying On And Resting In Grace
We’re given… New identities. New desires. New lives. New futures. Christians have a faith in Jesus that is demonstrated by loving obedience, though imperfectly executed. That means there is grace to help us get this right, and there is grace to help us when we get this wrong. Our entire spiritual journey is one in which we rely on grace to take steps of faith in living as God intends for us, and in which we rest in that same grace when we take mis-steps knowing that God won’t give up on us. Jesus is the Author and Finisher of our faith, and we can be sure of this: God will finish what He starts in us.
Faith Is Saying Yes And No
Faith is saying “yes” to God’s grace by agreeing with Him that you’re a sinner who cannot do anything to make yourself good enough to be accepted by Him, and then by asking Him to begin a good work in you to increasingly change you into a radically new person that is acceptable to Him. Faith is also saying “no” to our old lives of indifference and rebellion to God by turning away from them to Him. We mean it when we say of our sin: “I did it. I regret doing it. Help me not to do it again. Lead me to something better in you.” When that happens… God doesn’t just give us different lives; He makes us into different people.
Grace Poses A Question
Grace is God’s answer to the question of how sinners like you and me could ever be welcomed into His presence, His family and His blessing. Then, grace poses a question for us to answer: will you receive it? The gospel of grace is only good news if it is true, if you are included in it, and if you believe it. It is true. You can be included. Do you believe? You can have it all if you believe that Jesus is Who the Bible says He is, that Jesus did what the Bible says He did, and that Jesus will deliver all the Bible says He will. Grace leads us to Jesus. Faith leads us to follow Jesus. Nearness leads us to love, enjoy and become more like Jesus.
It’s Not About Your Doing Or Deserving
You can’t afford it; but it’s already paid for. You can’t earn it; but it’s freely given. You can’t secure it; but it’s always available to you. God’s grace has countless implications and applications for everyday life and eternal life, ranging from getting good things to getting through bad things to getting to the best things. There is grace for you to have the life of real contentedness that you’ve always wanted. And that’s just the beginning, for His grace will expand and extend throughout eternity. All you have to do is … Want it. Ask for it. Receive it. Enjoy it. Grace isn’t about your doing or your deserving; it’s about God giving us His gifts.
The Final Word
Don’t listen to what the world says. Don’t listen to what a loved one says. Don’t listen to what your heart says. At least, don’t let what those sources say be the ultimate guiding voice in your life. They will often tell you what you want to hear even if it’s not for the best, they often aren’t interested in what is for your best, and they often simply don’t know what is the best. Only the truth-telling, love-bestowing, all-knowing God will unfailingly guide you into what is best for every decision, situation and action. That’s why it’s so important that we read the Bible often to hear Him speak into our lives. Today, let God’s Word have the final word.
When Someone Wrongs Us
The normal response is to burn with vengeance inside. The natural reaction is to bring on vengeance outside. When someone wrongs us, we often desire to make things right by making them pay for their wrongdoing. But Jesus modeled a different way of handling the hurts of others. The way of love. The way of forgiveness. The way of grace. This doesn’t mean we skip appropriate justice for serious wrongs; it means we show appropriate pardon for petty ones. And in all wrongs, big and small, we pray the wrongdoers will find their way to Jesus so He can change their hearts and lives for good. Just as He changes ours.
Inviting Others Into Our Joy
One of the primary aims of Christianity is to invite as many people who are far from God into the joy that we have in Him so they can experience it with us. To fight the good fight, finish the race and keep the faith means not only enduring in the gospel ourselves until our homecoming, but also equipping others with the gospel so they can fight on, race on, and keep on when we have gone on, until there is no place left that has not heard the good news of Jesus. A life well-lived is one in which we press on in the faith ourselves and pass on the faith to others so that God is honored in more of us and more of us are happy in Him.
He Opened His Mouth And Taught Them
“And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying…” – Matthew 5:2
When Jesus makes promises, you can count on them to come true. When Jesus gives commandments, you can count on Him to help you. When Jesus transforms hearts, you can count on it changing what you do. The Beatitudes are not a suggestion for how should you live in order to earn your way into His kingdom, but rather a description of how you will live if you have already entered His kingdom. By grace, through faith, producing good works, with love, in power, for joy, to the glory of God. You can have assurance that you are on the right path if there is evidence that you are walking with Jesus on it.
Blessed Are Those Who Are Persecuted For Righteous …
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 5:10
When we pursue God’s way instead of the world’s way, we will find people in our way. Opposition. Persecution. Separation. There will be those who push back and push away because of our allegiance to Jesus. But we can rejoice! For no matter what it costs us now, we will gain infinitely more in the end with the coming of His kingdom of eternal rewards for those who love Him and remain faithful to Him. By His grace, let us keep doing right, keep doing good and keep doing the things that honor our Savior. If others are going to be offended by us, may it be because of our righteous acts and not our sinful ones.
Blessed Are The Peacemakers
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” – Matthew 5:9
To be a peace-maker, we must first be a peace-experiencer. When we put our faith in Jesus, we immediately experience peace with God and increasingly experience the peace of God. With our sin no longer separating us from Him, we are empowered by His grace and His Spirit to be instruments of peace in the lives of other sinners around us. We do this by proclaiming the gospel message and reminding those in conflict of the precious promises made to those who let His peace rule in their hearts instead of being ruled by their sin. Today, let us strive to bring people together with each other and people together with God.
Blessed Are The Pure In Heart
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” – Matthew 5:8
Attraction. Affection. Admiration. Adoration. This is the progression of pleasure for those whose hearts have been purified by God through faith in Jesus, and who are pursuing God by faith with all of their hearts. What starts as interest in Him soon blossoms into love for Him which leads to enjoyment of Him and climaxes with worship to Him. We like how we feel in His presence … how we feel about Him, how we feel about ourselves, how we feel about our lives, how we feel about our futures. So, let us strive to remove those things that keep us from seeing and savoring God for Who He truly is. We will be truly satisfied when we do.
Prioritize Pleasing God
The paths will divide. The objectives will conflict. The plans will differ. The desires will compete. The advice will disagree. We will often find ourselves having to choose sides for who we will listen to, go with and live to the satisfaction of … God or people. We simply cannot be and do what will make Him happy and others happy at the same time, all the time. Rather than compromising to satisfy the crowd, let us show others the better path, the better objective, the better plan, the better desire and the better advice found in the good news of Jesus. Today, by grace, let us prioritize pleasing God over pleasing people.
To Gain All
We go to great measures to gain treasures in this world. But trophies, trips, triumphs, titles, toys, things and time spent on earthly pursuits and pleasures with no regard for eternity will undo us in the end. It’s not that these things are inherently wrong, evil or unprofitable; it’s that we often ignore God to pursue them and value them more than we do Him. God has given us all things richly to enjoy, but the point of that enjoyment is to point us to Jesus. To gain all that the world has to offer yet not have Jesus is to have nothing at all. To gain all that Jesus has to offer yet not have the world is to have everything.
