God in Christ has demonstrated His love to you.
God’s love is bigger, greater, more self-sacrificing , more amazing and more abundant than any other love.
God’s love never fails, never ends and keeps on going no matter the circumstances, obstacles or cost.
When we ran from God and hide from him, He chased after us, caught us and embraced us.
God is for you, He has already moved to help you and His commitment to you is demonstrated in His love for you , poured out to you freely in Christ.
The heart of the universe is perfect love.
This love has been given to us by and through grace, and grace is not a doctrine or a theology but a person, Jesus Christ.
He followed us into our own darkness. The darkness we had fashioned, we had so expertly created by our own hands and the God’s we had so convincingly made to satisfy our hearts desires. It was here behind the walls we built of our own imaginations that we thought we could finally escape God.
But God instead of rejecting us gave us the freedom to follow our own cravings and offered himself up and ran straight into our arms. He sent himself as the messanger of reconciliation and took our judgement, our punishment and gave us mercy offered up in grace.
We can have abundant life because of His determination to deliver us from the separation that we had created.
Christ never gives up on you, never leaves you and never forsakes you.
You are the delight of the Father’s heart the joy of the eternal God who adores you from beyond time
For God’s love doesn’t depend upon you, isn’t conditional to your response, it is founded and shown in the sacrifice of Christ who loved and died for you when you had turned your back on him.
In the depths of your heart is a residence of perfect love for the precious son of heaven has planted himself into the garden of your heart.
You were created in the image of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
You were designed to be a reflection of the Trinity.
You were formed by the glory of God, in the glory of God to radiate throughout eternity the glory of God.
The love of God, which is out if time, entered time in you and took up residence in your jar of clay.
And just as the three in one draw their identity from each other, we were created to draw our identity from our creator. This identity is the real treasure our hearts desires. And this identity is the value of our true worth.
To look for indentity in anything else diminishes our value, to each other and to ourself.
Our value is a reflection of our hearts treasure.
You are a child of your Father’s love and you are beautiful, a captivating image of your father’s love and everytime He looks at you it reminds him of the consuming passionate love that created you.
Above all else you are the climax, the pinnacle of creation and God sacrificed himself so you could run straight back into your Father’s arms.
Your real identity is found and established in the heart of the Father’s love.
“For though the mountains should depart and the hills be shaken or removed, yet My love and kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall My covenant of peace and completeness be removed, says the Lord, Who has compassion on you.” – Isaiah 54:10
This remarkable verse is the promise of the reign of the coming King. The establishment of a Kingdom Covenant that would surpass creation and time.
The apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans declared exactly the same message when he wrote, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present or the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
It is an unconditional covenant, a covenant founded and kept by the finished work of Christ. A covenant birthed by the desire and passion of God. A covenant created before the foundations of the world and ignited by the Cross.
For in Jesus Christ is the fullness of God and all God’s love, kindness, peace, completeness and compassion is in Christ.
The promise of the King is now the Kingdom alive inside you. For all God is and all Christ is, is contained in the Kingdom Covenant alive in you.
The unconditional declaration of Christ over you is that He is the eternal promise of God, given to release you into the fullness of God. God’s gift, freely given and all you do is receive him and live in its fullness.
“For your Maker is your Husband—the Lord of hosts is His name—and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; the God of the whole earth He is called.” – Isaiah 54:5
The promise of God here is magnified in His commitment to deliver his people from their captivity, the promise of a kinsman to free us from the shadow of death and transfer us into the fullness of the Kingdom.
The slavery of the consequences of sin are so deeply embedded in our world that we cannot escape its invading influence in our thinking and emotions. It slowly seeps away our trust and delight in pleasing our Father, but Christ is our redeemer.
Jesus Christ purchased for us an eternal redemption. His blood poured out for us cleanses our conscience from all condemnation, all guilt, all shame and all feelings of separation.
Redemption means deliverance form all captivity and entry into the unfading glory of God.
Jesus Christ entered the world to bring you into the glory presence of God, to release you from the prison of guilt and fee you from the dudgeon of condemnation.
The baby born in a manger, to a teenage girl was the promised redeemer, the sacrifice given for you to deliver you from all your captivity.
Advent Thought – The Promise of the Coming Witness
“Behold, I have appointed him (Him) [David, as a representative of the Messiah, or the Messiah Himself] to be a witness [one (One) who shall testify of salvation] to the nations, a prince (Prince) and commander (Commander) to the peoples.” – Isaiah 55:4
The promise of God declared by the prophet Isaiah is the assurance that God will visit his people with a witness to declare to all the heart of God. Therefore, if you wanted to know what God is like all you need to do is look at Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ life was a living testament to the glory of God.
The intention and commitment of God to his children was the coming of a saviour, a prince and commander who would guide, care and with kindness and love restore his children back into their father’s arms.
His children were always the desire of His heart, and Jesus Christ was the God’s witness to the plans and purposes of God. In all Jesus did he did with the power and commitment of His Father.
The fulfillment of God’s intention took place at the cross, it was at Calvary where mankind was reconciled back to God, the Cross was the starting point of history and the centre point of all God’s plans.
The promise of the coming witness is the eternal oath to reconcile man back to God, to make a way in the wilderness and to path a way into the Promised Land.
Take every opportunity to embrace the unconditional love and unmerited favour given to you in Christ Jesus. Today rest in the fact that you are loved, that you are blessed with every spiritual blessing and that God approves of you because Christ is alive in you and you are united with him. Let the love of God be your light in the dark pathway of life .
“Wait and listen, everyone who is thirsty! Come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Yes, come, buy [priceless, spiritual] wine and milk without money and without price [simply for the self-surrender that accepts the blessing].” – Isaiah 55:1
This is one of the most amazing passages of in the Bible, the declaration of God that his abundant life is a free gift. Here is the heart of the New Covenant that the charge God makes for his divine riches is without price. And it is without price because Christ has purchased it all with his life.
This is extravagant grace, outrageous favour where the only thing God demands is our acceptance. That we lay down our self effort, our performance mentality, and our self righteousness and receive the divine inheritance.
Isaiah shouts out to us from centuries past to listen. It is in the listening that we connect with the heart and purposes of God. Jesus said it in another way to his disciples, “For him that has ears to hear, let him hear!” To receive of Christ it is essential to open our hearts and listen to the truth of his grace, for in the listening comes the understanding to receive.
We don’t need money to receive all the blessings of God, we need an open and listening heart that delights in the love of our Father.
Come, buy and eat, it is all available to you, you don’t need money, just accept and receive it.
The promise of Christ is the promise of God’s free gift, the invitation of abundant grace to all.
“But Zion (Jerusalem in captivity) said, “The Lord has abandoned me, And my Lord has forgotten me.” The Lord answered “Can a woman forget her nursing child And have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you”. Isaiah 49: 14-15
There is a lie from Satan that has infected our view of God. This lie has rooted and established itself in our alienation from him. It is the lie that God does not want us. And this lie causes us to doubt God’s commitment to us, it causes us to withdraw from him and it causes us to feel abandoned in our hearts.
Here God declares the truth of his closeness to his people, his sustaining compassion in the turmoil of despair. His promise is that he will never abandon them, that he will never forget his promises to them and that he will never leave them or forsake them.
God’s commitment is that he is close, present, right with them, accepting them, guiding them and upholding them with his love.
Jesus Christ is the embodiment of that promise, here is God, alive in flesh reconciling man back to God, destroying the alienation of our minds. He is the living breath of God, the goodness of God, the mercy and compassion of God shining into the darkness of the world.
The promise of Christ is that God’s compassion is his radiant embrace that declares he has never abandoned us, that regardless of our feelings and thoughts, he is totally committed to us.
For we are his treasure, the delight and desire of his heart.
Living Grace 