Grace is one of God’s most amazing gifts. It provides us with everything we need to live in perfect freedom: pardon for our sins, healing for our hearts, the companionship of God’s indwelling Holy Spirit, and access to freely cultivate our relationship with Him. We work, worship, and enjoy life surrounded by His unconditional love. His grace upholds us, fills us, and sustains us.

Since we are forgiven people, the Lord responds to us not as enemies but as His dearly loved children (Rom. 8:15; Eph. 5:1). He hears our prayers, speaks to us, and acts on our behalf.

The knowledge that we live under the covering of God’s grace gives us…

• Security about our position. No one can snatch us out of His hand (John 10:28).
• Boldness to live for Christ. Nothing anyone does or says can shake our confidence in who the Lord is or who we are in Him.
• Peace for today because we can fully trust in His sovereignty. The Lord is carrying out His perfect will–and we can be sure that nothing is able to thwart His plans when we cooperate with Him.
• Hope for the future. This life is just the beginning. One day we’ll see Jesus face to face, be perfected as the individuals He created us to be, and live with Him in our true home forever.

The Lord is committed to transforming each of us according to His special plan for our lives. Even His correction is an expression of His loving favor (Heb. 12:10). When we falter or fail, we can rest assured that His amazing grace hems us in and always offers us redemption.

 A popular U.S. comic strip once held the attention of millions as it chronicled the misadventures of a boy and his stuffed tiger. The infamous pair was inseparable, lingering energetically in topics both adult and childlike. One day on a walk in the woods, six-year-old boy Calvin announces to Hobbes the tiger that he has decided he doesn’t believe in ethics anymore, because, as far as he’s concerned, “The ends justify the means.” “Get what you can while the getting is good,” Calvin reasons, “Might makes right.” 

At this, Hobbes, who is a stuffed tiger in the eyes of all but Calvin, promptly pushes his human friend into a mud hole.

 “Why’d you do that?” Calvin objects. 

 “You were in my way,” Hobbes replies, “and now you’re not.  The ends justify the means.” 

 Sitting in the mud, Calvin seems to reach a brief moment of enlightenment, until he uncovers a way to reconcile the conflict with self-interest: “I didn’t mean for everyone, you dolt. Just me.” 

 One of the more striking things to confront in each of the four Gospel accounts, besides Jesus himself, is the reactions people had to him. When in his presence, some like Mary and the man with leprosy fell instantaneously at his feet, others like the young rich ruler or the people of Nazareth turned away. In his presence some cried for mercy and others who needed a doctor were confronted with the question of whether or not they wanted to be well. In the presence of Jesus of Nazareth, choices were made, realities were challenged, worldviews were transformed.  

 Ironically, those deemed unrighteous and dishonorable by the social standards of the day were often the most responsive to the demands of Jesus. I have often wondered if this was because they were the ones most willing to see themselves rationally, those most willing to respond to their own inconsistencies with fear and trembling. In the presence of Christ, the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda came to see the contradictions he lived with, his unlivable beliefs, and his need for direction. The Samaritan woman at the well saw not only that Jesus was speaking truth, but that he was truth, and that his way was livable and hers was not. Called into the presence of Christ, Zacchaeus saw the depravity of his methods and the great hunger of his life for something more. Conversely, the rich young ruler walked away from Jesus’s instruction because it was a request and reality that he could not face. 

 Francis Schaeffer called the cultural phenomenon of living unaware or unconcerned with our inconsistencies “the age of non-reason.” He saw humans drifting in a sea of irrationality, willing to live with great contradictions, no longer living as though they had to be reasonable. Yet he also contended that a person’s worldview must be livable, and that we must be willing and able to live out the reality we profess. 

 As the young Calvin once said to his animated tiger, “Reality continues to ruin my life!” Finding himself in the mud, Calvin saw clearly that he could not live with the outworkings of his theory (though he proceeded to mend the belief illogically). It is both brave and essential to confront the belief systems that hold our lives and shape our ways. I believe that the Christian faith makes sense of life’s most foreboding questions, and that it is livable because it is true. Christ gently unearths the dark and fatal inconsistencies of our lives, calling us to consistency, to reality, to truth, to himself. 

 Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

Morning “And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.” Acts 2:4

 Rich were the blessings of this day if all of us were filled with the Holy

Ghost. The consequences of this sacred filling of the soul it would be

impossible to overestimate. Life, comfort, light, purity, power, peace; and many

other precious blessings are inseparable from the Spirit’s benign presence. As

sacred oil, he anoints the head of the believer, sets him apart to the

priesthood of saints, and gives him grace to execute his office aright. As the

only truly purifying water he cleanses us from the power of sin and sanctifies

us unto holiness, working in us to will and to do of the Lord’s good pleasure.

As the light, he manifested to us at first our lost estate, and now he reveals

the  Lord Jesus to us and in us, and guides us in the way of righteousness.

Enlightened by his pure celestial ray, we are no more darkness but light in the

Lord. As fire, he both purges us from dross, and sets our consecrated nature on

a blaze. He is the sacrificial flame by which we are enabled to offer our whole

souls as a living sacrifice unto God. As heavenly dew, he removes our barrenness

and fertilizes our lives. O that he would drop from above upon us at this early

hour! Such morning dew would be a sweet commencement for the day. As the dove,

with wings of peaceful love he broods over his Church and over the souls of

believers, and as a Comforter he dispels the cares and doubts which mar

 the peace of his beloved. He descends upon the chosen as upon the Lord in

Jordan, and bears witness to their sonship by working in them a filial spirit by

which they cry Abba, Father. As the wind, he brings the breath of life to men;

blowing where he listeth he performs the quickening operations by which the

spiritual creation is animated and sustained. Would to God, that we might feel

his presence this day and every day.

 

Evening “My Beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies. Until the day

break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved, and be thou like a roe or a

young hart upon the mountains of Bether.” Song of Solomon 2:16-17

 Surely if there be a happy verse in the Bible it is this–“My Beloved is mine,

and I am his.” So peaceful, so full of assurance, so overrunning with happiness

and contentment is it, that it might well have been written by the same hand

which penned the twenty-third Psalm. Yet though the prospect is exceeding fair

and lovely–earth cannot show its superior–it is not entirely a sunlit

landscape. There is a cloud in the sky which casts a shadow over the scene.

Listen, “Until the day break, and the shadows flee away.”

 There is a word, too, about the “mountains of Bether,” or, “the mountains of

division,” and to our love, anything like division is bitterness. Beloved, this

may be your present state of mind; you do not doubt your salvation; you know

that Christ is yours, but you are not feasting with him. You understand your

vital interest in him, so that you have no shadow of a doubt of your being his,

and of his being yours, but still his left hand is not under your head, nor doth

his right hand embrace you. A shade of sadness is cast over your heart, perhaps

by affliction, certainly by the temporary absence of your Lord, so even while

exclaiming, “I am his,” you are forced to take to your knees, and to

 pray, “Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved.”

 “Where is he?” asks the soul. And the answer comes, “He feedeth among the

lilies.” If we would find Christ, we must get into communion with his people, we

must come to the ordinances with his saints. Oh, for an evening glimpse of him!

Oh, to sup with him tonight!

 

I came to my garden, my sister, my bride.   Song of Songs 5:1 

The heart of the believer is Christ’s garden. He bought it with His precious blood, and He enters it and claims it as His own. A garden implies separation. It is not the open field; it is not a wilderness; it is walled around or hedged in. If only we could see the wall of separation between the church and the world made broader and stronger. It is sad to hear Christians saying, “Well, there is no harm in this; there is no harm in that,” and by this approach getting as near to the world as possible. Grace is at a low ebb in the soul that is always inquiring about how far it may go in worldly conformity.

A garden is a place of beauty; it far surpasses the wild uncultivated lands. The genuine Christian must seek to be more excellent in his life than the best moralist, because Christ’s garden ought to produce the best flowers in all the world. Even the best is poor compared with what Christ deserves; let us not disappoint Him with withering and feeble plants. The rarest, richest, choicest lilies and roses ought to bloom in the place that Jesus calls His own.

The garden is a place of growth. The believer must not remain undeveloped, just mere buds and blossoms. We should grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Growth should be rapid where Jesus is the gardener and the Holy Spirit the dew from heaven.

A garden is a place of retirement. So the Lord Jesus Christ would have us reserve our souls as a place in which He can show Himself, in a way that He does not to the world. As Christians we should be far keener to keep our hearts closely shut up for Christ! We often worry and trouble ourselves, like Martha, with much serving, and like her we do not have the room for Christ that Mary had, and we do not sit at His feet as we ought. May the Lord grant the sweet showers of His grace to water His garden today.

Family Reading Plan

Isaiah 50

Revelation 50