Monthly Archives: April 2013

Shrink wrap is a type of plastic that shrinks when heated. When it shrinks, it forms to the shape of the item it is covering. Shrink wrap is used to package or protect items that range in size from a bar of soap to buildings. You’ve undoubtedly discovered that shrink wrap can make it very difficult to open your new CD or DVD. It certainly delivers on its promise of protecting the item it is wrapped around!

Shrink wrap is a very useful product today; a shrink-wrapped witness is not! A shrink-wrapped witness is a witness that has shrunk under the heat and pressure of daily living. The more you shrink, the smaller your witness becomes. A shrink-wrapped existence is living for nothing bigger than yourself . . .

•  Your goals
•  Your dreams
•  Your desires
•  Your vision
•  Your advancement
•  Your pleasure

A shrink-wrapped witness for the Christian is characterized by living with one foot in the world and one foot in the Word. And when forced to choose, these double-minded Christians always go the way of the world. They settle for living a life of mediocrity rather than a living a life of mastery by living for the Master. Their faith commitments are fine . . . just as long as there is no significant cost to keeping them. In the shrink-wrapped kingdom of self, there is little room for glorifying God and absolutely no room for seeking the good of others. It is shrinking the size of your life down to the size of your life.

But this is not for you! God has called you to live large, and living large means living for the Lord. We have been made by God for God, and our lives are to be marked by advancing the cause of His kingdom, not our own. Take a look at it from the psalmist’s perspective:

1 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. 2 Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. 3 Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.5 For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.  (Psalm 100:1-5)

Sharpen your focus on verse 3—“It is he who made us, and we are his.” God made us to praise and worship Him. “What is the chief and highest end of man?” the Westminster Confession of Faith asks. And the answer: “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.” Our lives are to be lived in the light of eternity, where every aspect of our story intersects with His Story. This is the place where our lives are driven by His love, His power, His glory, and His will. We are, as the psalmist said, “the sheep of his pasture” and we are to follow the Good Shepherd wherever He leads, trusting in His faithfulness, regardless of the cost or circumstance . . . even the path is difficult or it does not make sense to us.

CS Lewis wrote, “If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were those who thought most of the next.” Only the Gospel, deeply infused into the marrow of our bones, can free us to live such an incredible existence for the glory of God, an existence where a shrink-wrapped witness is as far as the east is from the west.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

I would like to finish off this week with a word or encouragement on the need for continual commitment when it comes to pursuing a life of holiness and obedience to our Lord.

In our ongoing battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil, we must be serious enough to make specific commitments to stand against the temptations that we face every day. Here are two wonderful examples from the biblical record that are a source of great encouragement and strength for every Christian in the middle of the battle.

I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl.  (Job 31:1)

Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.  (Daniel 1:8)

In The Discipline of Grace, Jerry Bridges wrote, “We are vulnerable to [two] kinds of temptations. Some arise from indwelling sin that still resides in our hearts; others come as a result of the environment in which we live or work.”

Job, who lived centuries before the time of Christ, provides insight into the Christian condition, a condition that remains sinful even after Jesus shows up. Sin no longer reigns in our lives, but it certainly remains, and we are to take sword to it every day. The temptation Job battled is one which all men and women face today: the inclination to look lustfully at someone. The ongoing temptation to do this is simply a result of the indwelling sin that remains in us.

Daniel, on the other hand, made it clear that we face temptation because we live in a sinful culture. Daniel lived in an unholy environment; but instead of giving in to it, Daniel resolved to remain holy, regardless of the cost.

Some people mistakenly think that making such commitments is “works of the flesh” and we ought not to be doing such things. We need only trust in God, they say. Well, let me provide a news flash. To be sure, we must trust in God and His empowering grace to provide the strength we need to resist temptations. But we must make the commitment to resist them! Resisting temptation must be our serious commitment if we are ever to make progress against it. We must pray and work, as much as it is within our power to do so. Job and Daniel remind us that the battle is both within and without, and we must be on guard on both fronts.

So . . . in what areas do you need to consider making specific commitments to fight against temptation? Are you willing to do so? Make no mistake; God has given you the greatest motive and motivation for sustained effort against temptation: His name is Jesus Christ. Keeping in view what Jesus has done on our behalf and will do in our future is the fuel that ignites the fire of our faith and inspires continual commitment to fight against all temptations—within and without.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

I would like to borrow the title of a book by Michael Griffiths, Cinderella with amnesia, as the focus of our meditation for today.

First, you need to know my affection for the Cinderella story and all things Disney. I proposed to my beloved Kim in Cinderella’s Castle at Walt Disney World in 1992. We spent our honeymoon at Disney World. And it is our favorite place to go with our four children as often as we are able. So I thought Mr. Griffiths’ title would be a great vehicle for working out a Gospel truth that we should all recall on a daily basis.

You know the story: Once upon a time there was a beautiful girl named Cinderella, who lived with her two stepsisters and stepmother. They disliked Cinderella and made her do all of housework—laundry, dishes, cleaning, scrubbing, and mending. Despite all this hard work and the dirty, ragged clothes she was forced to wear, Cinderella remained kind and optimistic.

You’ll recall that the king decided to give a ball in honor of his son, the prince. Invitations were sent out to all the young, unmarried girls in the kingdom. Cinderella and her two stepsisters were invited, but her stepmother was only concerned about getting fancy gowns for her daughters. The two sisters teased Cinderella, who had only rags to wear, and went gaily off to the ball. As tears filled Cinderella’s eyes, she heard a voice asking, “Why are you crying, child?” It was her Fairy Godmother, who had a plan to get Cinderella to the ball.

A pumpkin from the garden was transformed into a beautiful jeweled coach. Her two little mice friends were changed into prancing horses to draw the carriage. Some frogs became footmen, and two rats became the coachmen and coach driver. Finally the Fairy Godmother touched Cinderella’s ragged dress and it became a stunning white gown of silk, adorned with diamonds and pearls. On her feet was a pair of beautiful, one-of-a-kind, glass slippers. Cinderella was ready to go to the ball, but she had to leave before midnight. At the stroke of midnight, the coach would turn back into a pumpkin, the horses would become the mice, the coachmen rats, the footmen the frogs. And the beautiful gown would turn back into her ragged dress.

How impressed the prince was when Cinderella entered the ball room! Soon they began to waltz. The stepmother, not recognizing the young girl, said she was a wonderful dancer. The sisters whined that her gown and shoes were far better than theirs. The hours flew by . . . and then the clock struck midnight. Terrified, Cinderella rushed out of the ballroom, but in her haste she lost one of her exquisite glass slippers.

The next day, the prince began visiting every house in the town to find the owner of the missing glass slipper. Eventually he arrived at the home where Cinderella lived with her stepmother and two stepsisters. Both stepsisters tried to make the shoe fit, but to no avail. Cinderella entered the room and meekly asked if she could try on the glass slipper . . . and it fit! Cinderella and her prince went off to the palace, where they were married in splendor and lived happily ever after.

But what about the time between midnight at the ball and the day her prince arrived? Cinderella was . . .

• Dressed in rags
• Doing all the unpleasant chores
• Despised by her ugly sisters
• Derided by her wicked stepmother
• Disconsolately thinking about what might have been

What Cinderella had all but forgotten in her dejected, discontented condition after the ball was the feeling of being desirable, not despised . . . delightful, not derided . . . dignified, not disgraceful. Her “amnesia” had separated her from her ultimate destiny, which was the radiant bride of the prince, living a life adorned in splendor.

There’s a great Gospel truth contained in this story, one which we often forget: the pursuit of the Prince after His beloved. Just as Cinderella’s prince searched the city, our Prince is tireless in His unceasing pursuit of us. This great, true love story began all the way back in the Garden of Eden. Just as Cinderella’s spectacular ballroom gown was transformed into filthy rags upon the stroke of midnight, so Adam and Eve’s sparkling innocence was transformed into ugly sinfulness in the instant they ate the forbidden fruit. And just as terrified Cinderella ran from the prince, so Adam and Eve ran from God . . . as if any of us can hide from the God of the universe!

But just as Cinderella’s story ends in joy and delight, so does ours. God has never ceased His pursuit of us, and just as He restored Adam and Eve, He promises to restore us also. And His pursuit does not end when He saves us and raises us from death to life; God pursues us each day with a love that will not be denied and will never disappoint.

Cinderella is a wonderful picture of Christians who have been promised a seat at the royal banquet table, but all too often run away from our Prince, thinking that our ongoing struggle with sin makes us too dirty and disreputable to be fit company for His heavenly perfection. But there is no need to run or hide! One day we will be the radiant bride of Christ, without spot or blemish. The wrinkles will be gone and the ugly warts will be removed. The filthy rags we currently wear will be replaced with the resplendent robes of the righteousness of Christ.

Christian, you needn’t run from the ball; run to your Prince, no matter what the circumstance, no matter how dirty and raggedy you may look or feel. He is always waiting with open arms to receive you and He will gently slip the grace-filled, Gospel-saturated “glass slippers” of your salvation back on your feet.

“I have loved you with an everlasting love,” He whispers to us; “I have drawn you with loving-kindness . . . Again you will take up your tambourines and go out to dance with the joyful” (Jeremiah 31:3, 4b).

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Jesus said He was going to prepare a place for the faithful in heaven (John 14:1-3). But before the faithful get there, Jesus has prepared a furnace for them here on earth. Do you know why? It is because only a prepared people will be brought into a prepared place in heaven.

See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.  (Isaiah 48:10)

As a pastor, I have learned over the years that far too many people in church believe their faith in Jesus is designed to protect them from the difficulties of life. They are caught off guard by the raging seas of suffering. They are tipped over by the storm winds of wilderness wanderings. They are perplexed by painful providences. Yet the Bible makes it perfectly clear that our faith in Jesus will not preserve us from the storms of life; rather, our faith in Jesus assures us of them!

The prophet Isaiah tells us that God uses the furnace of affliction for our good. God is refining us and removing all our dross so that we will be a prepared people for His prepared place:

I will turn my hand against you; I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove all your impurities.  (Isaiah 1:25)

Who doesn’t want every impurity removed—and as quickly as possible? We all know from personal experience that we are sinners, both by nature and habit. We think things we should not think. We speak words we ought not speak. We do things we should not do. And we do it all too often. And that is why God is at work purging away all our disguising and disabling dross through the fires of affliction.

He knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.  (Job 23:10)

You see, those who have not trusted in Christ as Savior and Lord simply cannot make sense of the storm winds of life. They see them as random acts of nature and chance events that happen without rhyme or reason. But the child of God knows that nothing happens to us without first passing through His nail-scarred hands. God has ordained our fiery furnace to conform us into the image and likeness of His precious Son, and He will not stop until He finishes what He has started (Philippians 1:6).

Regardless of the fiery furnace you are facing today, personally or professionally, Jesus is preparing you for the place He has prepared for you. Some are focused far too much on the removal of their fiery furnace. To be sure, it is proper to pray that God might take it away. The apostle Paul prayed three times that his thorn might be removed (2 Corinthians 12:8). When it was not, he rested in it, because he knew Jesus was with him and that the grace of God was sufficient to enable him to withstand his trial.

When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into their fiery furnace, to the surprise of the king, four figures could be seen among the flames. Jesus was with them and protected them and brought them out unharmed.

Let not your heart be troubled this day, my friend. Jesus is with you in every fiery furnace you face. He is there for both your comfort and your protection.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

When you see others, what do you see? If you are looking through the lenses of the world, you see only what is before you in the way of physical appearance and performance. But if you are gazing through Gospel glasses, you see beyond the externals to what is going on inside a person with every beat of his or her heart.

The Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”  (1 Samuel 16:7)

How easy it is to judge a “book by its cover,” as has often been said. What a distorted or exaggerated picture the cover can project, causing us to miss the things that matter most! God said the heart matters most—not appearance . . . not height . . . not pedigree. And the heart can only be clearly viewed through Gospel glasses worn over the eyes of our hearts.

How easy it is to see others only in the light of what they can do for us—how they can assist us in advancing our agenda, accomplishing our goals, and achieving our dreams. But this is not for you! Gospel glasses help us see in others what God sees; and when we look at them from this perspective, we are being used by God to reverse the curse. Instead of loving things and using people as a means to an end, we begin loving people and using things as a means to advance the cause of God’s kingdom in this world. Gazing through Gospel glasses helps us focus on expanding the cause of God’s kingdom rather than our own kingdom.

The Gospel teaches us to see people—all people—as the image bearers of God. This means we see every person through the lenses of value, dignity, and purpose. Every person matters. Gazing through Gospel glasses enables us to see past our autonomous and self-focused style of living. We no longer focus on our own wants and needs and begin to look to the wants and needs of others, even going so far as to begin caring for people who don’t directly benefit or bless us. Gospel glasses help us to see better, think bigger, and live larger for the glory of God and the good of others.

Gazing through Gospel glasses empowers us to see the beauty and benefits of living in community . . . in spite of the conflicts that will inevitably arise. We finally understand that everything we have experienced and endured is all part of God’s perfect process of bringing us stumbling helplessly to the end of ourselves and kneeling humbly at the foot of the cross. We recognize our need for community and the needs of the community, and we do everything within our power to meet those needs, even at great personal cost.

So . . . what lenses have you been gazing through lately? What do you see when you look at others? If you want to see others as God sees them—as God sees you—you will have to look at them through the lens of the Gospel.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Can you imagine the last 30 days of your life playing up on a video screen in church next Sunday, revealing your every thought, word, deed, and desire? If you are anything like me, that is a possibility you would rather not consider! Yet we all know there is Someone who is watching that movie of our lives as it unfolds moment by moment. Indeed, He is the director of the production!

Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah? (John 4:29)

Can you imagine what that stunned Samaritan women must have been thinking when Jesus confronted her with the inside story of her life?

[Jesus] told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

“I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her,

“You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.” (John 4:16-20)

We can easily deduce one thing when we see how she recounted her encounter with the Living God: “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.” This Samaritan woman was touched by the transforming power of the grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
What a remarkable picture of God’s disrupting grace when it shows up in our lives! Here the woman came to Jacob’s well for some drinking water and instead left with the living water that slakes the driest and deepest thirst known to man.

Jesus exposed everything about her sinful past, yet we do not find in her response a hint of despair or suicidal thoughts. She was, for the very first time, completely known, and yet completely secure in that uncomfortable thought. Far from any thoughts of crawling into a hole and dying, she ran to tell her circle of influence about her encounter with the Redeemer. How remarkable to find compassion oozing out of this account rather than condemnation . . . acceptance rather than accusation . . . redemption rather than rejection. This is why we need to center our lives on the truths of the Gospel. The Samaritan woman was set free from being a prisoner of her painful past. Jesus broke the chains of her sinful choices and led her into a new direction of what she could be, instead of what she had been. And Jesus does the same for us each day.

Jesus knows every thankless thought, every wicked word, each disgraceful deed and depraved desire. And yet, despite knowing who we really are, He pursues us with a love that is unconditional and a forgiveness that is unending. Because Jesus is the Messiah, we can rest in the truth of being fully known and yet fully accepted. That is why the story of this Samaritan woman is such a comfort for us today. She went to the well to draw some water at “the sixth hour” (noon), a time when she could be reasonably assured she would not run into anyone looking for water. What she never expected was the divine appointment Jesus had set with her and His accurate disclosure of her dreadful past.

To be sure, every closet has some skeletons hanging in it. But in the closet where Jesus enters, those skeletons turn to dust and are blown away by the winds of the Gospel. Being completely known without being suicidal is only possible when we find our meaning, significance, and purpose in the One who knows us completely, yet forgives us completely and loves us eternally in spite of what He knows about us!
This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

There is a “cover-up” in life that is most attractive to the Christian. Now, I know the word cover-up doesn’t sound at all virtuous; it makes one think of political scandals, and probably raises some doubts in your mind about where I am going with this! But after you read today’s message, I think you will agree that cover-up is one of the most beautiful words you can utter, one that puts on display the lovely fruit of the Gospel. Let’s take a look:

Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends.  (Proverbs 17:9)

The dictionary definition of “cover-up” is a concerted effort to keep an illegal or unethical act or situation from being made public. It is also a loose outer garment.

The Christian cover-up, however, is something altogether different. It is living out the Gospel by covering (forgiving and forgetting, rather than repeating and putting on display) the wrongs, faults, or sins of another. And this is something we need much more of in the church today!

I want to be clear about my meaning here: I am not talking about hiding some sin or offense that must be exposed in order to protect the health, safety, and spiritual well-being of others. Proverbs 17:9 does not suggest anything of the kind! Indeed, what we are being taught is a Christian cover-up that advances the cause of the kingdom and blesses those who belong to it.

Instead of rehashing old sins that have been committed against us, we are to “cover” them with forgiveness. Instead of informing others of someone’s offense in order to pay the offender back for his or her wrong, we are to cover them with love that builds up. How often we cover up our refusal to cover the faults and sins of others under the guise of seeking prayer for them. Far too many Christians use this technique to engage in the sin of gossip.

The Gospel frees us from the need to pay back or get revenge. We know that our Lord has used a cosmic cover-up in our lives by forgiving every sin—past, present, and to come. Our sins are covered in the blood of the Lamb. And not only is this so, but in the process He has forgotten every one of them! God never brings our past iniquities back up to the surface after He has hurled them into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19). God never shoves all the times we messed up into our face after He has put all those sins behind His back (Isaiah 38:17b), never to be seen again.

Many of you have memorized the wonderful words of 1 John 1:9-10—“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” That is God’s remedy for bringing our sins under the covering blood of the Lamb. Repent of our sin, confess it to God, and then forget it!

When we placed our trust in Christ as our Savior, The blood of the Lamb of God, which takes away all the sins of all who place their trust in Him, has not only covered up all of our sins, but has carried them away forever . . . just as the scapegoat described in Leviticus 16:8-20 was sent out into the desert, never to be seen again. Our Lord never dredges up all of the times we have fallen short of the perfect mark of holiness set before us (Matthew 5:48).

So when you and I call these transgressions up in our own memories—and we all do this—we can know for certain that it is not the Spirit of God calling these sins to our mind; it is the world, the flesh, or the devil doing it. As Corrie Ten Boom beautifully explained Micah 7:19, “When we confess our sins, God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever … Then God places a sign out there that says ‘No Fishing Allowed!’”

The Gospel frees us from our past and the Gospel frees us from bringing up the past of others. This is the Christian cover-up we could all use a little more of each day!

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Today I would like to share a message of hope with you.  We can live weeks without food . . . days without water . . . minutes without oxygen. But we cannot live a single moment without hope.

Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!  (Ecclesiastes 9:4)

If you are reading this today and Jesus is your Lord and Savior, you are among the living; and because you are among the living, you are to be filled with a holy hope.  Here is one powerful Gospel truth why:

The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him.  (Lamentations 3:25)

The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him.  Notice that Scripture does not say the Lord is good to those whose hope is in their career path, their bank account, their good looks, their education, or their physical ability.  It says the Lord is good to those whose hope is in him.

So . . . where is your hope today?  Is it focused on Him . . . or something smaller, which may dangle the promise of a great reward but in the end will never deliver on its promise?  Look at what the Psalmist said:

Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.  (Psalm 34:10)

In other words, everything you need to accomplishall that God is calling you to do will be placed at your disposal. God will never call you to do something without giving you everything you need to get it done.  Nothing can stand in the way of God’s purpose for your life.  The world, the flesh, and the devil will oppose you, but greater is He who is in you—and that makes you greater than any and all opposition that stands in your way.

Difficulties at work? Hope in the Lord

Struggles in your single walk? Hope in the Lord

Distance in your marriage? Hope in the Lord

Challenges in your parenting? Hope in the Lord

Regardless of where this finds you today, keep your hope in the Lord.  Go to Him in prayer and plead your case. Go to Him in His Word and marinate in His truth.  Go to Him through the godly people He has placed in your life to give you counsel and comfort.  Because God’s mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23), each day is a day of glorious new beginnings.  With everydawn there is new hope, new opportunity, and new possibilities—but not for a dead lion . . . .  or any other dead thing for that matter! All those new beginningsare available only to one who isalive in Christ.

I think we would all agree that in the realm of the physical world it is far better to be a live dog than a dead lion.  What is true in the physical world is true in the spiritual world, only with far greater importance.  There are many great individuals who are walking around this world drawing breath, yet they are outside of the kingdom of God.  They know not the things of God, they have no concern about them, and thus they are dead in trespasses and sins. They are as the dead lion.

But for you whose hope is in the Lord, even if you are the “least” of all those who reside within the court of heaven, you are alive today and shall live forever more. Rejoice!

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

If you are a regular attender at Cross Community Church, you know we have been working through the marvelous truths contained in the book of Romans. We took a short break from Romans as we prepared to Resurrection Sunday, but we’ll be resuming our study of Romans this coming Sunday.

As we moved through the first three chapters of Romans, we saw that there is no one on earth who can stand unflinching before a perfectly holy God. It may be, from our human perspective, that the book of Job records the most important question that you and I must ask and have answered for us:

How then can a man be righteous before God?

How can one born of woman be pure?

If even the moon is not bright

and the stars are not pure in his eyes,

how much less man, who is but a maggot —

a son of man, who is only a worm!  (Job 25:4-6)

Paul’s epistle to the Romans answers this question with stark clarity:

There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.

We CANNOT stand righteous before God. Whether we think of ourselves as a “good,” moral person or a “righteous” religious person, we are as maggots standing before God! As Isaiah, said, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). There is nothing we can do, in our own strength, to make ourselves stand before God as righteous men and women. There is no amount of clean living, no amount of religious service, no amount of money we can contribute that will wipe the slate clean for us. We have together become worthless in His sight.

We are dead in our sins; we should be doomed and damned . . . if not for Christ! Apart from Him, we don’t even have eyes to see that He has provided the solution for us! “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Our rescuing hero, our Redeemer, has done it all, or as the centuries’ old hymn says, “Jesus paid it all.”

• God graciously provides us with the only possible solution to our sin problem.
• God became a man to pay the purchase price for our redemption from sin and death.
• Jesus is our propitiation—it is He who fully and finally paid the price for all our sins, past, present, and future. Because of His atoning work, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). God’s righteous wrath against our sins was completely poured out on Christ at Calvary. Therefore, God propitiates God!
• God gives us the faith to see this offer of salvation. It is not something we work out or work up to; it comes as a gracious gift from Him (Ephesians 2:8).
• God takes away all the charges of sin that stood against us. He “cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14).

Those stone tablets that Moses carried down from Mount Sinai almost 3,500 years ago had words that meant nothing but death for you and me; the perfect law of God painfully reveals our sinful state and carries a word of condemnation that no human hand can erase – only the nail-scarred hand of God can do that!

So . . . where do you stand today? Do you know that you can be righteous before holy God? You need only accept that truth that He has, in Christ, provided the perfect, eternal pardon for your sin. I plead with you, as an ambassador of Christ: if you have not placed your trust in that truth, will you do so today?

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

The change I would like us to meditate on today is not the change you might have in your pockets or that’s lying around on the dresser or in your car. I’m talking about the change takes place every moment of every day. And after changing diapers for four babies in our home, I have come to the profound conclusion that the only person who really likes change is a wet baby!

Every aspect of our lives is in a constant state of change . . . whether we like it or not. No matter who you are or where you live or what level of education you have completed, your life is a maze of twisting, turning changes . . . that may be for the better or the worse. Our bodies are in a constant state of change. Someone has said that we are all dying at the rate of 60 minutes an hour. We lose hair. We gain weight. We need more energy and less gas. Life is a constant challenge of change, and none of us can do anything about it.

But there is one thing in our lives that remains constant and unchanging.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.  (Hebrews 13:8)

The immutability of God (that is, His eternally unchanging nature) is a comfort to the Christian. Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever. “He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind” (1 Samuel 15:29). He is “the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17).

Now, that certainly does not mean that God is predictable or manageable! He bursts into our lives at times when we least expect Him to show up. And there are those times when we cry out to Him, but He seems to be silent. But through it all, we can count on Him and trust in Him, because He does not change!

Now, inasmuch as we are in a constant state of change, nothing happens to us by accident or due to some random roll of the dice. This may come as a surprise to some, but there is no such thing as “good luck” or “bad luck.” Change has no sovereignty over our lives; only God is sovereign. It is “God who holds your breath in His hand and owns all your ways” (Daniel 5:23b NKJV), and not so much as a bird falls to the ground apart from His will (Matthew 10:27).

God is seated on the throne, ruling over all the universe and sovereign over everything that happens, including all the changes we go through. And the one change that we welcome most of all is the change that is being wrought in us by the Holy Spirit—who, if He is indwelling us by virtue of faith in Jesus Christ, is conforming us into the likeness of Christ. Sometimes that change is painful, at other times it is disruptive. Often it is utterly imperceptible to us. But always it is for our good and the glory of God.

The work of the Gospel in our lives is to work more of Jesus into us and more of us out. As change in our lives is making us decrease and depend more and more on God, Jesus is increasing in our lives and anchoring us more firmly on the Rock of life. As John the Baptist said, “He must become greater; I must become less” (John 3:30). Change is a good thing for the Christian, because it always passes through the nail-scarred hands of the Unchanging One.

A fitting close today comes from an unknown author: “Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.”

So . . . what do you choose today?

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!