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Living Grace

Christ in me, the hope of glory

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Advent Thought – The Promise of God’s Delight.

“Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My Chosen One in whom My soul delights.I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the nations. – Isaiah 42:1
 
God designed and created you for beauty. He redeemed you for beauty. You were the delight of his heart, the raging fire of his desire and the eternal joy that ravished his plans. He designed the universe for your benefit, so you could marvel at his vastness, desire his goodness, be captivated by his kindness and bask in his beauty.
 
Jesus Christ was the glory of God revealed to mankind. He was the delight of God’s desire. Everything that was in God was found in Christ and Christ is the first born of every believer. We have been united into the fullness of Christ; his life is now the life that is alive in our veins.
 
And just as Jesus was the delight of God, we are now the delight of the Father. You now are covered in beauty eternal, cemented in love, clothed in the glory of God, intertwined with him in union down in the innermost depths of your heart; you exist in love, for love has made its kingdom in your heart.
 
For the servant came to free us from the lies of the enemy that enslaved, confused and trapped mankind. The lies that took away our value, degraded our beauty and trapped us into a prison of shame. He came to demonstrate the goodness of God, to act in the mercy of God and to touch us with the compassion of God.
 
The promise of God’s delight is the overflowing grace of God demonstrated to us, that while we were lost he entered our world and revealed the love of God to us in Jesus.
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Advent Thought  – The Promise of the Good Shepherd .

 

“Listen carefully, the Lord God will come with might, And His arm will rule for Him. Most certainly His reward is with Him, And His restitution accompanies Him. He will protect His flock like a shepherd, He will gather the lambs in His arm, He will carry them in His bosom; He will gently and carefully lead those nursing their young. – Isaiah 40 : 10-11.

The heart of what the gospel is can be summed up with the revelation that he is our shepherd.  God’s unconditional love showered upon us is manifested to us in his protection.  For his embrace of us is his commitment to us and peace is the fruit of his embrace.

Isaiah beautifully paints this wonderful picture, each word is a brush stroke of God communicating his intention to shower us with his goodness. Here the measurelessness of God’s grace, given to us in Christ, is communicated with the beautiful image of a shepherd caring and nurturing his lambs.

The shepherd looks for his sheep; he provides for them, cares, protects, holds and keeps them safe. He understands his sheep, he knows each one of them, he knows what to expect and he is prepared to risk everything for them.

And his total value and acceptance of us, gives us the freedom to be ourselves, to be the unique person we were created to be. Free to be human, free to be weak, free to be wrong, free to not understand everything, free even to have erroneous beliefs or doctrines. For no matter what we do, where our thoughts and acts take us, what lies or traps we fall into, what confusion we have, Jesus is determined to save us, Jesus is able and willing to keep us, because he was willing to lay everything down to find us, bring us home and keep us safe forevermore.

This shepherd embraces us with the fullness of heaven. This shepherd has planted his glory inside our hearts. This shepherd has united his life into our lives and now we to have the heart of the shepherd alive inside us.

In Christ Jesus we lack nothing, for the Good Shepherd is the embrace, delight and life of our hearts.

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Advent Thought – The Promise of the Revealing of God’s Glory.

“And the glory and majesty and splendour of the Lord will be revealed, and all humanity shall see it together; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” – Isaiah 40:5

The magnitude of the Glory of God is something we desperately need to understand and experience.

We need it because it was the desire of God for every one of us to be filled with the majesty and splendour of God. We were created by the Glory of God, in the Glory of God, for the Glory of God to be a shinning reflection of all the wonder, brilliance and colour of who God is.

The promise of the New Covenant is that God will restore each one of his creation to be who they were created to be, sons of the living God. And the promise of God that everything we lost in the Garden of Eden will be restored by Jesus Christ.

The Old Covenant was a fleeting shadow of the glory of God. Moses was not permitted to look upon the face of God, he had to hide his face as God’s glory passed next to him. But here in Isaiah is the promise of the New Covenant we have in Christ, that to us the glory and majesty and splendour of the Lord will be revealed.

And it was revealed to us in Christ, it was revealed in us by the Holy Spirit and it will be revealed through us as we delight ourselves in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

It was never God’s desire for you to live a single moment without enjoying the presence and glory of God. Christ’s promise to you is his abundant life overflowing in your life and for you to experience the glory, majesty and splendour of God radiating through your life.

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Advent Thought – The Promise of His Comfort.

“Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God.” – Isaiah 40:1

The coming of Christ into a lost world is good news. It is the news all creation has waited to hear. It is the news that healing is here, captivity is broken, oppression will cease, peace will be restored and the glory of God will be revealed to all mankind.

It is good news because God full of goodness, mercy and compassion demonstrates to us, the ungodly and the helpless his love. His love is greater, more self-sacrificing, more amazing and abundant than any other love.

It is given to us, the way it was proclaimed to God’s people through the prophet Isaiah. It is poured out to us when we were rebellious, when we had resistant thoughts and when we had a disobedient attitude towards God. For just like Israel and Judah we were not running towards God trying to find him, we like them were running away from God, hiding from Him, not wanting to be embraced and found.

Jesus Christ died for us when we were lost. He died and at that moment every past, present and future sin was eternally forgiven. It was a once and eternal sacrifice reconciling a loving, good God to a lost, shameful, rebellious creation.

The light of the Good News of Christ is that he has transferred our darkness into his abundant, radiant brightness.  In our rebellion there is comfort, there is hope because God has given us a confident expectation of His goodness, and that is in Christ we now have abundant life.

We have passed from the shadows of despair into his glorious, bright light.

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psalm911

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Today’s Impression – Align Yourself to God.

Today I had the impression of these words laid on my heart: –
 
Today is a day to align yourself to God.
 
To bring your thoughts, your mind, your feelings in line with what you already possess in your heart.
 
The encouragement of the Father is to align your heart with his heart and embrace the abundant life that is yours.
 
Don’t be drawn into viewing and seeing everything from the natural, don’t be influenced by worldly wisdom, but transform your thoughts by letting the power of the Holy Spirit wash over you with His goodness, mercy and compassion.
 
Remember Paul on the road to Damascus, God took the most vehement hater and persecutor of his Son, the man intent on destroying all Christ has accomplished and changed him into the most powerful writer and ambassador of Christ. This was accomplished through the grace of God. God’s goodness and his provision changes our worldly reasoning into divine power and life.
 
So if you want, you can agree with me:-
 
“Thank you lord for all Christ accomplished for me at the Cross. Thank you Lord, that you have provided health, healing in my body and mind, thank you Lord that you have embraced me with all the blessings of heaven and that my Spirit, soul and body are wrapped in the power of Heaven. I align my thoughts and feelings to your word, I align my life to the power that works within me and I thank you that today you are going to do exceedingly abundantly above all I could ask or think, because your power is within me.”
 
Jesus Christ accomplished a complete salvation at the Cross, Forgiveness, health, wholeness and freedom are all ours, today align yourself to the life of Christ working inside your heart.
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Word Whispers – 1 John 5:14-15.

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have whatever we asked of him.” – 1 John 5:14-15.

In Jesus Christ we are now the child God created us to be. His call to us from before time was to enter into all He planned and purposed for us. His will for us was birthed in Jesus Christ, formed in Christ, provided and given to us in His finished work. The cross was and is the declaration of God’s will to all who desire to listen.

Our confidence is now rooted and grounded in the finished work of Christ. It is not based upon our performance, effort and work. We can now be fully persuaded of God’s goodness towards us, in the fulfilment of all His promises through Christ.

And because our confidence is based on the finished work of Christ, we know that whatever we ask of him, he has already provided and given to us. For today, in Christ, we live in the day of answered prayer, the season of Christ’s eternal harvest, the time of the Lord’s everlasting favour.

You can be certain that God hears you, responds to you and gives you all the abundance of heaven through Christ.

Today is a day of anticipation and expectation.  You can anticipate goodness and unfailing love dwelling in you and flowing from you and you can expect the favour of God to shower his blessings on you and on everything you touch.

Let your whispers to your Father be filled with confidence and trust in all Christ has accomplished for you at the Cross. For you live in a day of answered prayer.

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Word Whispers – Colossians 4:2

“Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving” – Colossians 4:2

Grace at its deepest root means joy or rejoicing, and God accepts us into his arms and rejoices over us forever! Within us is a deep, deep well of living water formed from droplets of thanksgiving.

God has committed himself to you, He delights in you with gladness and is happy with you. He will never cut you off from him, leave you, reject you, abandon you or leave you alone to fend on your own. He is here inside you and He delights in you.

Jesus’ perfect work of grace has brought you into the relationship you always longed for, always wanted. In Christ, you have unconditional love, acceptance and intimate satisfaction.

Therefore, the pure satisfaction of our hearts united with Christ is an overflow of delight, vocalised with declarations of praise.  For thanksgiving is the voice of faith.

You were created for intimacy with God, to look in wonder at his wonderful provision, to touch the velvet skin of creation, to smell the perfumed fragrance around you, to hear the glorious sounds and to taste the delicious, healthy delights given to you. Everything God created was to fill your heart with delight and share with him his goodness,  that overflowed in a song of thanksgiving.

The essence of prayer is intimacy, the overflow of prayer is love and these are made beautiful with a heart of adoration.  Knowing all Christ has provided for us, experiencing his goodness in our life, is the way we cement ourselves into our abundant life.

Let thanksgiving be always in your heart and on your lips, for every word of thanksgiving confirms faith and realises the promises of God in you.

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Words Whispers – Psalm 62:8

“Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” – Psalm 62:8

God loves us as we are. We can be bundles of doubt, confusion, insecurity, pain, turmoil, frustration, self-contentedness, envy, and irritability. And even when we act awful, think awful thoughts, feel awful feelings, do the worst things imaginable, God is there, God loves us, accepts us and takes us under his wing. He is our refuge, our everlasting shelter, the safe harbour in the storm.

He has committed himself to us by placing His Spirit in us to abide forever.  His Spirit gives us complete security that he is on our side forever.   The finished work of Jesus Christ at the cross declares that if God is for us, no one and no thing can stand against us.

We can place our trust in Him, because He is totally trustworthy.  He has covered us in His love, bathed us in goodness, wrapped us in grace and embraced us with His kindness.  Our hearts have been united with his heart and our desires are now infused with His holy desire.

And trust is simply our heart’s positive reaction to His grace, our hearts confidence in His love, our hearts anticipation of His goodness.

Christ Jesus has soaked our spirit in the fountain of his life; we have been immersed into the abundant life of His new life. So, you can let the streams of living, healing water pour out of the overflow of your heart, and let the knowledge that you are safe in Him, become your refuge and shelter in every circumstance of life.

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