Friday, August 17, 2012

The grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love

1Ti 1:11  According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.
1Ti 1:12  And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry;
1Ti 1:13  Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.
1Ti 1:14  And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.

A blasphemer- one who speaks out against God.
A persecutor- one who harms others without regard to the love of God we are to have towards one another.
Injurious- one who is dangerous.

And this man obtained MERCY because He did NOT know the real love of God. He didn't have a heart conviction towards the mercy and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

It was the grace of our LORD- the grace that is EXCEEDING and ABUNDANT with FAITH and LOVE which is all found in JESUS CHRIST!

We cannot ignore this because we too often find ourselves ignorant of the great love of God. We get all confused and imagine the love of God means having things go easy in our lives. This ignorance coupled with our natural inclination towards flesh lusts can cause great confusion.

The love of our SAVIOR is all we truly need, but we bewail and moan our lives of hardship believing we need so much more when the truth is we need less of the things we are longing for and more of the love of our SAVIOR. 

We commit a lot of sin ignorantly and have obtained mercy for those sins. When we realize our sin and continue in sin we need to repent, to truly repent and forsake the sin, not indulge it. All through the GRACE of our God, our LORD, our SAVIOR!

God will reveal His love to us through His Son, but we have to be willing to believe in His love, to have faith in His love.

Our lives as Christ followers will NOT be easy, we aren't promised ease, we aren't promised problem free lives. We are NOT even promised semi-easy lives. Our lives could be filled with misery of the likes we don't want to imagine and Christ will still be LOVE and we can still find LOVE in Him, outside of ourselves and our existence.

God isn't punishing us when things go wrong, not even when they go horrifically wrong, it's not our punishment.  The love of God works in ways we can scarcely comprehend. We are called to have FAITH in the love of God, faith without wavering.

Heb 10:23  Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering- for he is faithful that promised

No where are we promised ease and we HAVE to remember this!  When things are at their absolute worst we have to remember we aren't promised an easy life, and it's not God removing His love when things go wrong. God never stopped loving Job all the while Job suffered, so why do we believe He is punishing us and not loving us when we suffer?  This is something Satan wants of us, to believe God is inherent bad and unfair.  The moment we believe God is unfair we are treading on Satan's ground and it's a ground that will open up and swallow us whole if we let it.

By the grace of God may we NOT let that happen.


All in HIS LOVE!

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