Today’s a new day! I hope you know God is always with you. You never need to walk alone. God always goes before you. He stands with you. Whatever you might be walking through today, be confident God is with you. ~OC
Keep Showing Up
Today’s a new day! You may not have much to bring to the table right now. And that’s okay. Sometimes just showing up requires extraordinary strength and faith. You could find a million reasons to give up, but please don’t. In the wilderness, showing up is an act of worship, a step of obedience towards God and a firm no in the face of the enemy’s lies. ~OC
Hope
Today’s a new day! I believe Hope is one of the most important tools in our toolbox. Hope is not based on our circumstances. No, it’s a firm conviction, a way of seeing the world. Hope is what carries us through difficult times. We know God is in control, regardless of what our struggles might lead us to believe. We trust suffering is temporary and that God will use even the worst of situations for good. Evil might have the first word (cancer, broken relationships, etc), but we boldly proclaim that God will have the final word.
Many times in the last twenty-one years, I’ve found encouragement in 2 Corinthians 12:8-9, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”
I may or may not regain my health. That’s in God’s hands. But as I continue to walk through this crazy beautiful health journey, I will hold on to God’s hope, love and grace. That’s more than enough for me. ~OC
A Different View
Today’s a new day! I have several friends who do not like going to church, but they think Jesus is really cool. When Jesus was walking on earth, thousands of people flocked to hear him teach. He had something worth saying and his message was life changing. If you are a Christian how do you live? If a non-Christian spent the day with you, would they change the way they viewed Christians?
Some people believe that the Church is a place that is only for people who are good enough. Nothing could be further from the truth. The faith lived out by Jesus was one that was taken up by people who were the wrong sort according to the religious people of the day. They did not have it all together. People came to Jesus with their imperfections and some turned to him and called on him for forgiveness and he forgave them and he led them in a new life. Jesus never sent anyone away who was imperfect and he never sent people away who didn’t agree with him or who didn’t want to follow his teaching. One of his disciples Peter, cut off the ear of one of the people who had come to arrest Jesus (John 18:10), Peter also denied knowing Jesus three times (Mark 14:66-72). In Matthew 16:18, Jesus shares these powerful words, “Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.” In Peter we see the worst and best of the Christian faith, but Jesus loved him and still chose to work with and through him.
Where some Christians go wrong is that they try to portray themselves as perfect rather than the truth which is that we are all broken and thankfully have been forgiven. That as Christians, we are all on a journey of change. I’ve heard it said that: God loves us as we are, but he also loves us too much to leave us that way.
When we make the choice to follow Jesus we are born again, spiritually beginning a new life. The Bible also talks about us reflecting the glory of God as he changes us (2 Corinthians 3:18). The apostle Paul who wrote most of the New Testament talks about a battle going on in every Christian between the Spirit (God in us) and our sinful nature (Romans 7:9). Who will we listen to? Will we live for ourselves only or do we want to live for God?
I pray every Christian will walk securely in God’s love, acceptance, forgiveness, grace and all of His beautiful gifts. I pray as God’s children, we will be guided by the Holy Spirit living in us to keep on striving to become more like Jesus. ~OC
Gift of Grace Part 3
Today’s a new day! Grace is simultaneously a call to rest and a call to action. There is nothing more freeing than knowing that we have contributed nothing to our salvation. It means we can do nothing to mess it up. Praise God that it is “by grace we have been saved through faith”—and that even this faith is a “gift of God” so that there is no room for boasting (Ephesians 2:8-9). Praise God that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of Christ” (Romans 8:39). Indeed, we fix our eyes on Jesus as the “founder and the perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2), knowing He will be faithful to complete the work He has started in us (Phil 1:6). Our trust is in who God is and in what He has done on our behalf. What a sweet joy to rest in that truth. But resting in that truth is not a call to sit on the bench. No, in light of the fact that our standing in Christ is sure, we are called to get to work. No sooner does Paul tell us that we are saved by grace through faith does he tell us that we were “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Ephesians 2:10). Even after telling us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author of Hebrews goes on to tell us to “strive . . . for holiness” (Hebrews 12:14). When we experience the amazing grace of God, we cannot just check out and wait for Jesus to come back. No, we called to be the first fruits of a coming kingdom, showing all creation what the restored image of God looks like (James 1:18; Romans 8:18-23, 29-30). “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). And this newness isn’t just “not sinning”; rather, this newness is marked by a zeal to advance Christ’s kingdom (2 Corinthians 5:20). Never shortchange the power of grace. As believers, we have a responsibility to share the transforming gift of grace with a lost and hurting world. even as it is transforming us. ~OC
Gift of Grace Part 2
Today’s a new day! Being a Christian and living a life saved by grace does not mean we take sin less seriously; it means we take sin more seriously. We cannot continue to live in our old self and continually bring out the grace card. Yes, we are saved by grace through faith and not by works. But that doesn’t mean we can be flippant about our sin. Jesus told us, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). The Apostle Peter reminded us that “as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15). Genuine faith produces the fruit of good works; by the same token, “faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:26). That’s why Paul, even after he has told us that there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1), admonished us to “put to death the deeds of the body,” which themselves lead to death (Romans 8:13). If we take a casual attitude toward sin, we will eventually take a casual attitude toward Jesus. While we should never live in guilt and shame over sin from which we have truly repented, we cannot allow ourselves to live a life where we think that a decision to follow Jesus means anything less than actually following Him. ~OC
The Gift of Grace Part 1
Today’s a new day! The beautiful gift of Grace is not freedom to sin; rather, grace is freedom from sin. Jesus did not die for our sins so we could continue to live in them. No, He died for our sins so that we could go and sin no more. Will we always deal with sin in our lives? Absolutely. Does our struggle with sin separate us from the love of Christ? Absolutely not. But our attitude as one truly saved by grace should not be to continue wallowing in the very behavior that Jesus died to deliver us from. Rather, a person redeemed by the love of Jesus will strive to trust in the work He did on the Cross and desire to become more like Him each day. When the Apostle Paul explained salvation by grace, he anticipated the replies of those who would seek to abuse it. That’s why he asked, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1-2). The Apostle John shared this warning, “No one who abides in [Jesus] keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen Him or known Him” (1 John 3:6). Jesus Himself warned that we “will recognize [people] by their fruits” (Matthew 7:20). As believers in Christ, we must not offer the world a cheap grace that allows us to proclaim devotion to Jesus with our lips while having a love affair with sin on the side. Our daily lives should reflect a real and life changing encounter with Jesus. That is what a broken and unbelieving world is looking to experience. Do our lives reflect the love, forgiveness, hope, grace and freedom of Jesus? The world is watching and wanting to experience that true freedom and grace. ~OC
Trust God
Today’s a new day! Never be afraid of the journey God has you on. He could be preparing you for an amazing adventure. Trust the process. Trust Him! ~OC
Grace
Today’s a new day! Your past has been washed by an ocean of grace. ~OC
True Friendship
Today’s a new day! As most of you know, friendships mean a lot to me. I have written several post about the importance of friendships and how I believe many people take friendships for granted. So I thought I would look more into what a friend really is. I figured the best place to look was the Bible. Here are a few things I discovered.
The Hebrew word for “friend” in the Proverbs passage is ʾahab, or ʾaheb, and is a very strong word that literally means “lover.” It’s used elsewhere to describe God’s friendship with Abraham: “Did You not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before Your people Israel and give it to the descendants of Abraham Your friend forever?” (2 Chronicles 20:7). Then in 1 Samuel 18:1, we read about Jonathan’s friendship with David: “Now it came about when he had finished speaking to Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself”
I believe that’s the type of friendship we all desire. Sadly, those kind of friendships are becoming more difficult and rarer, in large part due to our current culture’s social media conditioning that trains us to be aloof, uncaring, and self-centered. Such an attitude is bad enough when it’s aimed at other people, but it’s an eternal catastrophe when it’s directed at God.
I truly believe we can do better. Will we make mistakes along the way? Sure we will. But I believe having real friendships is worth a few bumps along the way. How about you? ~OC
The Blessed Overcomer 