Living By Grace

Living by faith! Living in complete surrender to Christ. This can be something that is very hard to do. Realizing and maintaining the attitude that Christ is sustaining us every moment. He is giving us grace to live!

Matt 6:26-27 For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, {as to} what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, {as to} what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and {yet} your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?

God is allowing us to walk and move and accomplish what He wants in our life. But God is also most glorified in you and me when we are completely satisfied with him. When we can count loosing life or family or jobs or toys or health as gain because we are left with Christ, that makes him look Glorious. When our joy is in God, not in this world. Paul says he boast in weakness because in weakness he is strong. That is saying that in weakness Christ is most satisfying.

We as Christian should not only think of Gods grace as the Justification of our sins even though that is completely what it is, but also look Grace as Gods sustaining power in your life that is given to us moment by moment in order that we may live out our lives in service to God.

1st Cor 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.

Paul realized that everything he did was by the Power/Grace of God! we should do the same. God holds our future and will sustain us.

Lastly remember that Gods grace will not take away our pain or suffering but allow us to have joy in the middle of it! It is a supernatural Power enabling us to give thanks for what we have.

2nd Cor 8:1-3 Now, brethren, we {wish to} make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, that in a great ordeal of affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality. For I testify that according to their ability, and beyond their ability, {they gave} of their own accord,

Trust in God and may His grace sustain you!

Miracles

Miracles are a huge Topic in today’s charismatic movement. It seems to be all about miracles. So should we look for miracles? Why does it seem like miracles were more for the apostles than us? Let us look at some of these things together.

A big question today is, why do we see so many miracles back when the apostles were around and not today. First I’d like to say that they’re lots of miracles today. Every time someone gets saved that is the greatest miracle of all, but just for question sake ill go with the question being supernatural physical miracles. Acts 5:12-16 is a perfect place where we see lots of miracles being used by apostles. We do need to remember who the apostles were before going into miracles. The apostle where directly taught by Jesus and sent out to establish his church. With this in mind we can see that God would do extra ordinary things with them so they can testify to God and establish the church. Today we have all the teaching of Christ and every thing that God chose to reveal has been given to us. This is a reason we don’t see as many miracles today. We already have everything we need to be sustained by Christ. We don’t need miracles to know its God. (2^nd Peter 1:3)

To go even further sometime supernatural things today can be to try and lead us away from God. Duet 13 talks about signs being used to lead us away from God. We need to be completely in love with Him so that these miracles don’t draw our attention to another teacher. Miracle from false teacher will be allowed by God to test the people to See if the love God or miracles.

So today should we seek miracles? This can be a good question. Many people would say yes. They would say that seeking miracles shows that God is real. But miracles are not the standard or the proof that God exist. All creation testifies that God is real. So we don’t need a miracle. I would tell you that we are not to seek after the miracles today. But we are to run after Jesus Christ and if a miracles to meet someone’s needs happens praise Jesus for it. Otherwise be fully in love with God. Be radical for him! Don’t chase after something you mite never see. But fallow the one who will satisfy your soul forever.

Providence

God’s providence is something I think everyone understands even if it’s to a small degree. If you say, “God is in control.” I think just about every Christian will agree with you. But as soon as you start going into what God being in control looks like that’s when people begin to disagree. I love the way Wayne Grudem describes Gods providence. His definition is, “God is continually involved with all created things in such a way that He… is preserving them, is in concurrence with them, and governs them.” This shows that God is in complete control over everything. The thing most people have a hard time with is Gods interaction with evil, and that’s what I’m going to talk about.

We must remember that even evil is included in to the definition above. Evil is not exempt from Gods control. But He uses it to bring about His glory in the world. He was not surprised that it came into the world but planned it so that He could show His divine Love through Jesus. But we must also realize that God never does evil. He also cannot be blamed for the evil that humans do. The perfect example for this is in Matt. 18:7. Jesus says, “It is necessary that temptation come, but woe to the man by whom temptation comes.” This shows us that evil is going to happen but it’s not Gods fault it’s ours even though God uses it for His glory. That’s how he can turn what was evil and use it for good. (Rom 8:28)

Another thing Grudem mentions is how God can Plan everything in the world and yet not be blamed for the bad that happens. He uses an example of a play writer who writes a play. The play writer knows all the actions that each character is going to make, but in the end it is not him who is doing the actions it’s the people in the play. This is a picture of how God works. It might not be exact but it is a good way of looking at the providence of God. It shows that God had created everything (even evil) and is the sustainer of events, yet he is not responsible for the actions that people do and doesn’t make them do evil and at the same time planned that that evil would happen.

To wrap it up, we as Christians or just people in general for that matter need to realize that God is in control of every action. But we are responsible for our actions. If we sin there is punishment, but if there is righteousness blessing is the reward. So in my life I want to act as God proclaims and commands. That way I get what he promises. But we also must remember that it is Him who even allows us to do those good things. Otherwise we might get puffed up and forget He is the only sustainer of all things.

Heb 1:3 "And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,"