If we would stop long enough to look, long enough to “smell the roses” we’d be surprised at how much we don’t see…how much we miss, how much we take for granted, how blessed we truly are for we have been given so much!
Take away the material things and simply look at God’s undeserving mercy towards us is beyond everything we could think or imagine. If that were all we had, all we were given, we would have everything humanly and eternally possible…hummmm, oh wait! We do!
His grace, His loving kindness is beyond our wildest comprehension; it is beyond what we could even conjure up ourselves. If we would stop to ponder, stop to look for, we’d also see how much we do not deserve this merciful, loving, gracious God. Amazingly though, He’d quickly remind us that we are loved, loved with an everlasting love, a love so grand that He died for it; a love He waits to shower upon us through His mercy, forgiveness, and blessings.
Funny. We sure do get in the way, don’t we? Don’t we?!…okay, maybe I am the only one. But I can attest, Satan has a heyday when our thoughts toward God go array (been there). When we live in the land of disbelief, sarcasm, bitterness, greed, envy, lust, selfishness (been there)…our choice removes us from the only One who can fulfil, satisfy, reborn, love. Satan lives for the defraement of the character of God.
Friend, it is vital that we guard (daily making the internally stand ( this is a personal choice), to be at attention with intent to guard against and for) our thoughts and heart toward God, for God, and about God. The enemy is at work; we cannot forget that!
Be active. Keep yourself pure, walk in rightness, surrender to His Word (not creating our own image who or what we think of God), be deliberate in your obedience because my friend, we are not always right.
God’s incredible mercy towards us is just that…His response to us.
We are responsible for our response back to God?
Some may ask, does it really matter? Does He care? Yes! Yes! Yes! your response, my response matters to God! Because You matter to God!
- Did you know that our response displays the level of gratitude we have toward God.
- It reveals what our heart lives for, dies for, longs for.
- Our response reveals whether we seek after God or away from God.
- Our response reveals our our understand of who God is, what He says.
- It reveals what we want Him to be for us.
Is your response, “I can sin as much as I want, God will forgive me.“
Because of God’s grace, because of God’s goodness, because of God’s forgiveness, because of God’s love, because of God’s healing, because of God’s mercies we should be bursting forth with gratitude to walk in newness of life with Him.
Read with me Romans 6:1-14.
“What shall we say [to all this]? Should we continue in sin and practice sin as a habit so that [God’s gift of] grace may increase and overflow? Certainly not! How can we, the very ones who died to sin, continue to live in it any longer? Or are you ignorant of the fact that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We have therefore been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory and power of the Father, we too might walk habitually in newness of life [abandoning our old ways]. For if we have become one with Him [permanently united] in the likeness of His death, we will also certainly be [one with Him and share fully] in the likeness of His resurrection. We know that our old self [our human nature without the Holy Spirit] was nailed to the cross with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. For the person who has died [with Christ] has been freed from [the power of] sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live [together] with Him, because we know [the self-evident truth] that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has power over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin [ending its power and paying the sinner’s debt] once and for all; and the life that He lives, He lives to [glorify] God [in unbroken fellowship with Him]. Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin [and your relationship to it broken], but alive to God [in unbroken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts and passions. Do not go on offering members of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness. But offer yourselves to God [in a decisive act] as those alive [raised] from the dead [to a new life], and your members [all of your abilities—sanctified, set apart] as instruments of righteousness [yielded] to God. For sin will no longer be a master over you, since you are not under Law [as slaves], but under [unmerited] grace [as recipients of God’s favor and mercy]” (AMP).
- We have been given unmerited favor that flows of God’s truth.
- Does your heart, mind, soul, flesh grow more intimate with God as the days, weeks, months, years go bye?
- Can others see the affects of the oozing process of gratitude toward God you have?
- Does God experience that ooze from you?
Today, look for ways God has shown you much grace, much mercy, much love, much forgiveness, much blessings in your life…then bless Him back!
In Christ I am SHE {Saved. Hopeful. Empowered.}
In Christ I am SHE 