Ramblings on Grace and God

So I struggle with the reality of grace even though I've experienced it and know it to be true. I don't deserve it and I rarely give it, but every time I fail, grace is there. As I grow older I see grace clearer, I still don't understand it, but I see it.

I wrestle with the reality of a God that doesn't beat the sh*t out of me when I fall, but he doesn't. He simply says, I love you, here's my hand, get up when you're ready. He doesn't force me to get up, I'm welcome to wallow in my failure as long as I want, he's there, with one hand on my shoulder, and the other ready to wipe my tears away and pick me up. But I'm selfish and I try to get up on my on, and his grace lets me try, he remains steady, waiting on my cry. We go back and forth, round after round, and he never changes. I don't get it, he should hate me by now, but his hand is there, waiting on my cry.

Grace really pisses me off sometimes, I don't deserve his love and yet he freaking loves me. I want faith to be black and white, right and wrong, he just wants to give me faith.

I'm selfish too, I take his grace, but I don't always give grace. Especially to people who don't look, smell, act, believe, and THINK like I do. But when I look at their life, his grace is there too. I don't get it, but I'm so thankful for it.

Observations of a city

You love this city and yet it sleeps
You love these people and yet they turn their eyes
Your heart longs for them to be united with you and yet their hearts are hard
Your song over them is to protect and save
Their song to you is where are you, who are you
You reach out and your hands seem broken for we are your hands and we don’t reach
You go to them and yet your feet don’t move because we are your feet
You love them and yet we don’t love

AWAKEN YOUR BODY!!!
RESTORE YOUR PEOPLE!!!!
AWAKEN THIS CITY!
BREAK OUR HEARTS!

Tear away the things that keep us from you.
Tear down these things we call your church and build the church promised in your Word

Your love is ever reaching
Your heart is ever loving
Your hands are ever healing
Your feet are ever going
Your mind is ever teaching
Your Blood covers all our sin
Your Life teaches abundance
Your Death teaches us obedience
Your resurrection teaches us your divinity
Your return teaches us promise
You are forgiveness

AWAKEN YOUR BODY
RESTORE YOUR PEOPLE!!!!
AWAKEN THIS CITY!
BREAK OUR HEARTS!

You alone are the answer for our city
You alone hold the key to our future

This is your city, we are your people
This is your kingdom, we are your servants
This is your city, we are forgiven
This is your kingdom, we are YOURS

You have called us friend and now we call you Master

Today's Joy

The beauty of today is that every moment has purpose. Moment by moment Jesus abides in us, thus when we abide in Him every moment has purpose. The perfect Christian life is you now as a believer, you have all the Jesus you'll ever need right now. Rest in that! Today choose to love others in Jesus, it will change your entire outlook on the day ahead.

Check out www.abideinternational.org

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

-Douglas Adams

Thought from Eugene H. Patterson

"I am busy because I am lazy. I indolently let others decide what I will do instead of resolutely deciding myself...If I vainly crowd my day with conspicuous activity or let others fill my day with imperious demands, I don't have time to do my proper work, the work to which I have been called. How can I lead people into the quiet place beside the still waters if I am in perpetual motion?"

Contentment

The past two weeks have been intensely emotional. I have been angry, I’ve been sad, I’ve been happy every time I’ve heard my wife’s voice or my son’s cry. But deep inside there has been a quiet contentment that isn’t controlled by my emotions, not by my circumstances, but by something simple. My contentment has rested solely in what I have claimed to have had as the center of my very existence, but I have failed to understand contentment until the last 2 weeks.

The idea of joy, contentment, or even happiness is just that, an idea or a dream if the center of our lives isn’t firmly set on Christ. The dreams that I have dreamed have all but died or at least the road that I would have chosen to achieve them have shifted dramatically, and yet there is a peace that I am just where I should be. I have a history of becoming restless, seeking for the next thing, the next idol built in my honor. Today I have no fear of tomorrow, for I finally understand that tomorrow can worry about itself. We are being made today for what we will be and what we will do tomorrow.

If we are always looking forward, or even from side to side, thinking that the grass must be greener on the other side we miss the point of abundant life. When Christ said he came to give abundant life he said that joy and contentment would be the fruit of that abundant life, but that cannot exist without an understanding of our security in Christ. When we allow ourselves to place our fears about tomorrow at his feet we then begin to rest in the peace and security that is found in his arms.

Thought from Elisabeth Elliott

The Christian has no right to ask the destination, it is the job of the Christian to daily submit to the sovereign will of God. If we do this the destination is sure and the outcome a success.