Forgiven for a purpose!
“All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.” 2Cor 1:3-4 (Message)
We are forgiven for a purpose; we are comforted [by God] so that we can be of benefit to others. We are here for a reason; redeemed and forgiven for a purpose, for a time such as this. We are not here to bide our time at the station waiting for the glory train. We have a calling on our lives; to shine His light.
It’s Monday morning and we are here to give the world hope. To live out our salvation life in plain view.
“Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air… Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night.” Phil 2:15 (Message)
Does being call to comfort sound too cute or coochy?
Not tough enough?
‘Comfort’ comes from the same root word as ‘fortify’. How mad is that! To offer comfort is to place a fortress around someone, to defend them, to halt the enemy’s advance! Does that sound weak or woolly?
When we offer comfort to someone we build a castle around them!
In their day castles were at the cutting edge of military hardware. Everyone wanted them; if you had one, you were unstoppable. Some castles even designed to boast about their own might. All you really needed was a drawbridge and a portcullis to be pretty well defended, but some castle designers went over the top. They put in five, six or even seven portcullises. Why? Because it said to any passer by bent on invasion, ‘don’t even bother, mate.’
“The LORD is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation…” Ps 28:8
We are safe in God’s hands. Our redemption is secure.
Jesus even mocked the invader of our soul, the destroyer of our hope, when he rose from the dead – victorious over sin and death! Paul writes in Eph 4:8 that Christ “led captivity captive!” (Amp), or as we would say “In your face!!!!”
“God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.
So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose?” Rom 8:29-31 (Message)
I don’t want to just ‘twinkle’ today. Who knows how long we have; how long until Christ wraps things up? This hope we have is not a dim and distant flicker, a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’. It is now, it’s real, it defies ‘captivity’.
C’mon! Let’s radiate our salvation!
"Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.” Is 60:1 (NIV)
We are forgiven for a purpose; we are comforted [by God] so that we can be of benefit to others. We are here for a reason; redeemed and forgiven for a purpose, for a time such as this. We are not here to bide our time at the station waiting for the glory train. We have a calling on our lives; to shine His light.
It’s Monday morning and we are here to give the world hope. To live out our salvation life in plain view.
“Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air… Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night.” Phil 2:15 (Message)
Does being call to comfort sound too cute or coochy?
Not tough enough?
‘Comfort’ comes from the same root word as ‘fortify’. How mad is that! To offer comfort is to place a fortress around someone, to defend them, to halt the enemy’s advance! Does that sound weak or woolly?When we offer comfort to someone we build a castle around them!
In their day castles were at the cutting edge of military hardware. Everyone wanted them; if you had one, you were unstoppable. Some castles even designed to boast about their own might. All you really needed was a drawbridge and a portcullis to be pretty well defended, but some castle designers went over the top. They put in five, six or even seven portcullises. Why? Because it said to any passer by bent on invasion, ‘don’t even bother, mate.’
“The LORD is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation…” Ps 28:8
We are safe in God’s hands. Our redemption is secure.
Jesus even mocked the invader of our soul, the destroyer of our hope, when he rose from the dead – victorious over sin and death! Paul writes in Eph 4:8 that Christ “led captivity captive!” (Amp), or as we would say “In your face!!!!”
“God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.
So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose?” Rom 8:29-31 (Message)
I don’t want to just ‘twinkle’ today. Who knows how long we have; how long until Christ wraps things up? This hope we have is not a dim and distant flicker, a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’. It is now, it’s real, it defies ‘captivity’.
C’mon! Let’s radiate our salvation!
"Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.” Is 60:1 (NIV)
posted by Andrew at 6:14 am
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