View the story “The Cross & Dying to Sin or What Grace Is All About” on Storify] Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it…
Don’t you just love how God works? How he gives us a fresh start time after time? How he pulls us out of chaos and shows us the right way to go? But me he caught—reached all the way from sky to sea; he pulled me out Of that ocean of hate, that enemy chaos, the void in which I was drowning. They hit me when I was down, but God stuck by me. He stood me up on…
My last post was about repentance, forgiveness and becoming holy by God’s grace. I still stand behind those words but God has been teaching me some more on the subject during the weekend. I don’t want anyone to think that salvation depends on anything but God’s grace. Even though the Holy Spirit brings some matters to our attention so that we could repent (and we are wise to do so) we can never be fully aware of and hence repent…
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:13, NIV) God, indeed, sticthed us together in our mothers’ wombs but that is not the end of the story. God is calling us to be daily stiched with God’s grace. The first step is to surrender to God’s will. Because, as Martin Luther states it: “God creates out of nothing. Therefore, until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him”. ~Martin…
When we live in grace God does not treat us as sinners anymore. We are his saints. But it does not mean that we would not be sinners anymore. We are not practicing sinners, that’s true. But we are recovering sinners. This does not mean that we could do whatever we want to and then ask for pardon. God forbid! A saint can’t willfully and actively continue to sin because we have been washed clean and died to sin. But…
Did you know there are beach pebbles that need water to stay white? If you take them away from beach they turn boring grey and they lose their whiteness? It is the same way with Christians. If we stay away from baptismal water and daily renewal we become grey, we lose our whiteness. I got an email yesterday from a new friend asking about “how does one saint not be also a sinner”. We all have experienced how difficult it…
Are you a friend of grace or a stranger to grace? I don’t know anything more liberating, more exhilarating and more exuberant than God’s abundant grace. In grace the whole salvation story comes together and starts to bloom. Grace is so wonderful, amazing, powerful, wild but gentle that it tames me over and over again. It embraces me and woes me for God time after time. It surprises me, it encourages me, it corrects me, it renews me, it treats…
It is very easy to see all the wrong in others. We try to blame anyone and everyone but ourselves. We even blame God to make ourselves feel a bit better. But it does not work in the long run. We don’t get any cleaner by taking mud baths. Look! Listen! God’s arm is not amputated—he can still save. God’s ears are not stopped up—he can still hear.There’s nothing wrong with God; the wrong is in you. Your wrongheaded lives…
There are times when my head takes over my heart. You see, I do trust God to be good. Yet sometimes I seem to be hesitant to instantly obey. I don’t want to delay my responses to God’s commands but sometimes it does happen. There are times when my head says “Wait a minute! Could this really be happening to me? Maybe I should take a pause and think about this before doing anything in haste. But “it’s impossible to…
“Is your default mode toward others judgment or grace?” asked Rick Warren on Twitter on the 28th of August, 2010. I’ve been contemplating it ever since. Have I fully embraced grace, been changed inside out and now truly reflecting God’s love and grace? That’s what I want. But it’s not always so easy. I wonder how I can truly love the people but hate the sin. Can I really love so completely that my disagreement won’t sneak in as a…
