Tag: grace

Delightful Freedom

Oh, the excitement of knowing we are loved and cherished.

Meditation Thought: “Rejoice in the Lord.” (Philippians 3:1)

To rejoice in the Lord is to think about the Lord, thank the Lord for blessings, trust the Lord to protect, guide and be with us. The concentration of our joy on the relationship with our Lord is to release joy in every other area: for ourselves, for all whose lives we touch, for the Lord also.

Oh, the excitement of knowing we are loved, we are cherished, not for our position or what we do, but because we are spirit of God’s Spirit.

We must move from the position under the law of forcing ourselves to do right out of fear, to the position under grace of accepting our freely-given love and forgiveness and then in delightful freedom from sin’s burden and recognition of love’s beauty, rush in eager anticipation to do right. Thus doing right moves from a resented, “poor me but I’d better do it anyway” attitude to “I’m so lucky to have the privilege of doing right because it’s such fun and the results are fantastic – for me, and for others too!”

The Beauty of Grace

…they will be attracted to an unusual beauty, a sweetness of spirit, someone who is effective and willing in helping them.

Meditation Thought: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

“I put on you the mantle of my grace for all to see. The beauty of my grace is to shine immediately to all those who look at you. My power is beneath that grace, working through you – but if you are not cloaked in my mantle of grace, and appear powerful in your own right, people see your human power, which will blind them to my power working through you.

The mantle of my grace protects you. If your own pride and thirst for power and recognition grow to the point that they burst open the fasteners of the mantle and it falls away, then what is visible is only your arrogance. If you stay meek under your mantle, keeping yourself healthy and fit and the proper size by feeding on My Word and My Guidance, and not indulging in the food of the world – false pride, selfishness, greed – so that you get too fat for my mantle of grace which I have thrown over you, the ones to whom I would have you witness of Me will not see a common, gross, unattractive creature, unappealing to them; they will be attracted to an unusual beauty, a sweetness of spirit, someone who is effective and willing in helping them.

In the first attraction they may not perceive that your power to help them, and their attraction to you, is not of your own doing, but is due to your dependence on Me. In deeper communication with you they will understand that your effectiveness is based on My power released in you: This is the purpose of each of my believers – to bring my beloved children to recognize Me as their Father and to delight in Me as their Guide and Protector, and the One who created them in love.”

Come My Beloved

“Come my beloved. Walk with Me, talk with me, and we shall do good in a hurting world.”

Meditation Thought: “Therefore, since we have been justified with faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” Romans 5:1

By faith I am standing in grace. It does not matter that I do not feel at peace and comfortable and happy at this moment. It does matter that God is with me; God is in me, and God is guiding me.

Moreover, He is guiding circumstances concerning me. How do I know? Because He told me so – He said so through prophets, through the faithful who have followed Him, and through the Word and through circumstances.

I am not in the situation I prefer – but I am in the loving guiding ship of my Creator, my Guide and my Protector. I trust you, Lord, whoever or whatever You are. I may falter – often – but You know how to guide me to places you want me to be, to think and say and do what is pleasing you – and therefore is pleasing to me and to others involved with me.

“Come my beloved. Walk with Me, talk with me, and we shall do good in a hurting world.”

(Context: Mom wrote this a few months after her Alzheimer’s diagnosis and just days after going through both a round of memory testing and finishing radiation for breast cancer.)

Transforming Power

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:8)
“Sow love wherever you find ground to sow it, cultivate it even if the ground is not perfect for growing. Just as you can grow plants by using the physical parts – the earth and seed, so you can ‘sow’ love and joy and peace and reap of harvest of more love and joy and peace. This is My will for you. This is My will for the world.”

Meditation Thought: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:8)

“Love, love, love – concentrate on the meaning of the word, and how to express that word as transformed into action, and thus results.

It is loving, transforming power that brings peace, joy, love, contentment and satisfaction. All people desire these, but many seek them by the wrong methods. Through the ages I have sought to reveal the truth about Myself, and many have perceived much of the truth. Those who know must share that knowledge as much as they are able – they are My family who realizes I am their creator – that the world was not created by ‘nothing’.

What you have learned through your science classes, through your Bible study, through your experiences and your belief that there is much more to creation than can be perceived through physical proofs is the Way the Truth and the Life that I desire for My beloved.

Sow love wherever you find ground to sow it, cultivate it even if the ground is not perfect for growing. Just as you can grow plants by using the physical parts – the earth and seed, so you can ‘sow’ love and joy and peace and reap of harvest of more love and joy and peace. This is My will for you. This is My will for the world.”

A Humble Posture

Meditation Thought: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble… humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.” (James 4:6 & 10)

Do not be a rebellious child, opposing the will of your Father, who has your best interest at heart, and who has infinitely greater wisdom and knowledge than do you.

Do you understand that for you to be proud is for you to rebel against your Father, and to distort the personality that is to be true to His image?

When you approach life – spirit life or physical life – with an attitude of humility – which is an attitude of being open to learn, of accepting the rights of others as equal to your own – and then choose to give them more rights than your own out of love, because you are the child of Love and you have come to know that if you give in love, you receive in love plus interest.

At first it appears a sacrifice to be humble – that you are giving up position, or are putting yourself down, not giving credit for your assets.

But these are not the attributes of true humility: true humility is the recognition of the fact that you are the child, and the Father is the Father, that He loves His other children as He loves you, and He desires good for all of you. He desires you love each other as He loves you, and He desires that you seek to encourage and uplift each other as He does His transforming works, bringing all to maturity under His teaching.

It is right to be proud of being the child of God; that is having true position. But humility is expressed when you recognize that this position is not of your own doing, but an act of loving grace from your Father.

To seek to be the very best you can be, as a unique child of the most powerful Force in the universe is to realize that, though the Father grants you many privileges, they are gifts to you, and not the results of your won creating, your own power.

So long as you seek to receive the gifts your Father delights in giving you in an attitude of gratitude and an eagerness to use the gifts as He intends them to be used for good, then you remain in an humble posture, and a flexible posture in which the Father is able to teach you and guide you effectively.

If you begin to delude yourself that the privileges are yours because you are so great within yourself that they are your “due” – and you take them for granted, and give no thanks for them – then you have become proud, and your Father needs to withhold the privileges in order for you to once again come into the proper attitude which is pleasing to Him and which is for your own good.

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