Tag Archives: son jesus

Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – God’s Gift of Forgiveness

Leave a comment

 

Colossians 3:12-14

Motivated by love, God provided a way for our sins to be forgiven: He sent Jesus to be our Savior. When we trust in the Lord’s substitutionary sacrifice on our behalf, we receive the gift of forgiveness.

Before placing faith in Christ, we were dead in our sins and objects of divine wrath (Ephesians 2:1-3). But our merciful heavenly Father sent His Son Jesus to redeem us. At the cross, the Savior took our sins upon Himself and experienced God’s fury for our sake. His death secured a pardon for us; there was nothing we ourselves could do to acquire God’s acceptance. We are saved by grace—through faith in Christ and what He accomplished (Ephesians 2:8-9). Our salvation is a free gift from the Father.

God’s will is that we, as forgiven people, show mercy to those who wrong us—to the same degree that He forgave us in Christ. But the human tendency is to attach conditions when extending mercy. We think, I will forgive you only if you apologize. Or, You must fix the problem, and then I’ll stop being angry. Or even, You must make restitution before I will let this go. That’s not what our Savior did. Romans 5:8 expresses it this way: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Depending on how much hurt we’ve experienced, we may require time and healing before we can truly forgive. But we are to remember that showing mercy is God’s will. We’re called to pardon those who have caused us pain. Through reliance on God’s Spirit, we can become Christlike and forgive.

Bible in One Year: Jeremiah 51-52

Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – The Need for Salvation

Leave a comment

 

Ephesians 2:1-3

Followers of Christ know the importance of being saved, but the world sees no need for rescue. Let’s think about some key truths regarding man’s need for salvation.

Those who don’t have a personal relationship with God through His Son Jesus are:

Spiritually dead.Many people don’t realize that there are three kinds of death—physical, eternal, and spiritual. Eternal death comes at the end of the age, when all those who have refused Jesus as Savior are cast away from God permanently (Matt. 25:41). Spiritual death occurred in the Garden of Eden. Disobedience severed Adam and Eve’s intimate connection to God and caused all of their descendants to be spiritually detached from Him (Rom. 5:12). We’re born as “dead” people in need of new life.

Living a life of sin. Our nature is to rebel against God, and that’s called sin. Over and over, we choose what pleases us, not Him. We’re enslaved to sin (John 8:34), and any effort to free ourselves from its power is in vain. We need someone to rescue us.

Under divine wrath. Because of our disobedience, we are under God’s judgment, awaiting punishment. All efforts to earn His approval and escape our sentence are insufficient. Sinful man has nothing acceptable to offer holy God. Our only hope of escape is for someone else to take our penalty.

The good news is that the Lord has provided a way for all to pass from spiritual death to life, from the bondage of sin into freedom, and from condemnation to intimacy with Him. Jesus Christ alone is the way (14:6), and He meets our every need.

Bible in One Year: Psalms 145-150

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — Pain With A Purpose

Leave a comment

 

 

 

Read: John 16:17-24
Bible in a Year: Judges 13-15; Luke 6:27-49

 

[Jesus said,] “I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.” —John 16:22

I asked several friends what their most difficult, painful experience in life had been. Their answers included war, divorce, surgery, and the loss of a loved one. My wife’s reply was, “The birth of our first child.” It was a long and difficult labor in a lonely army hospital. But looking back, she said she considers it joyful “because the pain had a big purpose.”

Just before Jesus went to the cross, He told His followers they were about to go through a time of great pain and sorrow. The Lord compared their coming experience to that of a woman during childbirth when her anguish turns to joy after her child is born (John 16:20-21). “Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you” (v.22).

Sorrow comes to us all along the road of life. But Jesus, “who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb. 12:2), purchased forgiveness and freedom for all who open their hearts to Him. His painful sacrifice accomplished God’s eternal purpose of opening the way to friendship and fellowship with Him.

The joy of our Savior outweighed His suffering, just as the joy He gives us overshadows all our pain. —David McCasland

Dear Father, Your precious Son Jesus chose suffering for me. Thank You for His sacrifice on my behalf. Thank You that even my pain can be a tool in Your hands to make me more like Your Son.

Suffering can be like a magnet that draws the Christian close to Christ.

INSIGHT: John 16 concludes Jesus’ most extended teaching session recorded in the gospel of John (Chs. 13–16). Jesus had begun the evening by washing the disciples’ feet in a remarkable act of servitude (13:1-17). After this He would go to Gethsemane and, ultimately, to Calvary. There He would make the ultimate sacrifice as He died on the cross for the sins of humanity.
Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – Accepted by the Lord

1 Comment

Read | Romans 8:14-16

Our heavenly Father knows how we yearn to be accepted and to feel that we belong. He provides for both of these needs when we receive His Son Jesus as our Savior.

Because of Adam’s sin, our spiritual connection with the Lord was severed (Rom. 5:12). Consequently, every human being since then has been born with a “flesh” nature that keeps man separated from God. But the Father had a plan to reconcile us to Himself through the shed blood of His Son (Col. 1:20). We must understand that we are sinners who cannot pay the penalty we owe for transgression—and that Jesus’ death on the cross pays the debt on our behalf.

All who accept Christ’s sacrifice will be forgiven of sins and reconciled to God. Having been justified through the Savior’s blood—with our debt cancelled and His righteousness counted as our own—we each become a new creation in Him.

At salvation, we are accepted into God’s family and given the right to call Him our heavenly Father. With this acceptance comes a sense of belonging. We are now part of a worldwide family who are joined together in Christ. On the outside, we look different from one another. But on the inside, we are united through the same Spirit (1 Cor. 12:12-14).

Our performance-driven society tells us that acceptance is based on what we do and how much we achieve. But God’s message is the opposite: Faith in Christ is the sole reason for our acceptance by Him. The presence of the indwelling Holy Spirit affirms that we will always belong to the Lord.

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Be Christlike

Leave a comment

 

God said, Let Us [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] make mankind in Our image, after Our likeness. —Genesis 1:26

When God said, “Let Us make man in Our image,” this image refers to character likeness. He meant that we were going to take on His nature, His character, as reflected in His Son Jesus. In Colossians 1:15, Paul tells us that Jesus is the exact likeness of the unseen God [the visible representation of the invisible]; He is the Firstborn of all creation. As believers, we are to be transformed into His image and likeness.

The greatest goal of every believer, and certainly those of us who want to be used by God in positions of leadership, should be Christlikeness. We should want to handle situations and treat people the way Jesus would. That should be our goal. Jesus is to be our example.

In John 13:15 He said to His disciples, after washing their feet like a servant, For I have given you this as an example, so that you should do [in your turn] what I have done to you. And Peter tells us in 1 Peter 2:21, For even to this were you called [it is inseparable from your vocation]. For Christ also suffered for you, leaving you [His personal] example, so that you should follow in His footsteps. The vocation, the high calling of every believer, is to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.

God is going to keep working with each of us until we get to the place where we act the way Jesus would act in every situation of life, until we manifest the same kind of fruit of the Spirit that He manifested.

Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – Jesus Christ: A Gift from the Father

Leave a comment

Charles Stanley

Matthew 7:11

We try to give presents that are meaningful but we aren’t always successful. However, God’s gift—His Son Jesus—is always the right one for everybody. This gift is:

Heaven sent. Jesus was sent to earth from the heavenlies in order to fulfill God’s plan (John 6:38). Every aspect of His life—from His birth as a little baby to His death on the cross—was part of the Father’s gift to us.

Needed. God gave His Son to us because of our desperate need for rescue. Sin ruined the human race (Rom. 3:23) and placed us all under divine condemnation (5:18). Since we are unable to pay the price justly demanded by God for our sin, our greatest need has always been for a Savior who could pay our sin debt for us (6:23). Only Jesus qualified because He was without sin. He became our Redeemer, reconciling us to God (5:10).

Sacrificial. God sent Jesus to die in our place so that we might become part of His family. The Son deliberately sacrificed His life to accomplish the Father’s plan.

Perfect. Jesus was God in human flesh, walking among mankind. His character and will are flawless, and He works perfectly on our behalf (8:28-29).

Precious. Jesus Christ can do for us what no material thing or other person can. In Him, we become new creations belonging to God (2 Cor. 5:17).

God wrapped His special present to us in human flesh so we might know Him and identify with Him. How closely intertwined is Jesus’ life with yours?

Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – God’s Perfect Love

Leave a comment

Charles Stanley

1 John 4:7-9

We were created to be members of God’s family and recipients of His perfect love. In fact, through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus, He demonstrated just how much He loves us.

When we receive Christ as our Savior, we become children of God and experience His unconditional love. Divine affection for us does not vary in quality or quantity. It will never end or even diminish. No circumstance can cause the Lord to stop loving us. Several stories in the New Testament exemplify this:

  • Consider the Roman centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant. Was the soldier’s request ignored because he wasn’t one of God’s chosen people—the Jews? No. Seeing the man’s genuine faith, the Lord granted his request out of love for him (Luke 7:2-10).
  • Jesus extended forgiveness to the thief on the cross, who placed his faith in Christ (23:39-43).
  • Before his conversion, Saul of Tarsus was convinced that Jesus was not the promised Messiah and His followers must be stopped. To that end, the future apostle Paul persecuted the Christian Jews and uttered murderous threats against the church. God’s love did not even skip over one so violently opposed to His children. On the road to Damascus, the Lord appeared to him with an offer of salvation and gave him a great work to do—evangelizing the Gentile world (Acts 9:15).

The human mind cannot fully comprehend divine love. In Christ, thieves, persecutors, and those who may look like outsiders are all equally loved.

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — The Crash

Leave a comment

Our Daily Bread

Micah 7:8-9,18-20

He will bring me forth to the light; I will see His righteousness. —Micah 7:9

For years after the Great Depression, the stock market struggled to win back investors’ confidence. Then, in 1952, Harry Markowitz suggested that investors spread their stock holdings over several companies and industries. He developed a theory for portfolio selection that helped investors in uncertain times. In 1990, Markowitz and two others won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their theory.

Like those jittery investors, we followers of Jesus may also find ourselves frozen in fear after a “crash” in our personal lives, unsure how to pick up the pieces and move on. We might even spend our remaining lives waiting for a “Markowitz moment,” when one big idea or action can help us recover from a previous failure.

We forget that Jesus has already done that on our behalf. He covered our shame, and He set us free to fellowship with God and serve Him daily. Because He gave His life, and rose from the dead, when we “fall,” we can “arise” with Him, for “He delights in mercy” (Micah 7:8,18).

The moment we find Jesus, our eternity with Him begins. He walks alongside us so He can change us into the people we long to be and were created to be. —Randy Kilgore

Father, my actions aren’t adequate to fix my

failures. Thank You for doing that through

Your Son Jesus who gave Himself for us.

Help me to look up and walk with You.

Look up from your failure, and you’ll find God standing ready to receive you.

Bible in a year: 2 Chronicles 4-6; John 10:24-42

Insight

Today’s reading contains a song of victory. Israel, who has been judged for a cold heart and acts of disobedience, will one day respond gladly with obedience to God. The nation will find light in the Lord’s presence. Interestingly, the passage shares a similar spirit to Moses’ Song of the Sea: “Who is like You, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?” (Ex. 15:11). Micah underscores that God detests those leaders who unscrupulously use their position of power to fleece the helpless and to corrupt courts of justice. But the message of hope is clear to all who repent with heartfelt sincerity and wish to return to a place of genuine obedience.

 

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — I’m Alive

Leave a comment

Our Daily Bread

Ephesians 2:1-10

You He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins. —Ephesians 2:1

Laura Brooks, a 52-year-old mother of two, didn’t know it but she was one of 14,000 people in 2011 whose name was incorrectly entered into the government database as dead. She wondered what was wrong when she stopped receiving disability checks, and her loan payments and her rent checks bounced. She went to the bank to clear up the issue, but the representative told her that her accounts had been closed because she was dead! Obviously, they were mistaken.

The apostle Paul was not mistaken when he said that the Ephesian believers were at one point dead—spiritually dead. They were dead in the sense that they were separated from God, enslaved to sin (Eph. 2:5), and condemned under the wrath of God. What a state of hopelessness!

Yet God in His goodness took action to reverse this condition for them and for us. The living God “who gives life to the dead” (Rom. 4:17) poured out His rich mercy and great love by sending His Son Jesus to this earth. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, we are made alive (Eph. 2:4-5).

When we believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we go from death to life. Now we live to rejoice in His goodness! —Marvin Williams

I know I’m a sinner and Christ is my need;

His death is my ransom, no merit I plead.

His work is sufficient, on Him I believe;

I have life eternal when Him I receive. —Anon.

Accepting Jesus’ death gives me life.

Bible in a year: 2 Samuel 3-5; Luke 14:25-35

Insight

Twice in today’s passage, Paul affirms that our salvation is God’s gift, for “by grace you have been saved” (vv.5,8). He reminds us that we are saved so that we can do good works (v.10). In other epistles, Paul encourages us to be “zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14), to be “fruitful in every good work” (Col. 1:10), and to demonstrate “an abundance for every good work” (2 Cor. 9:8). Martin Luther put it this way: “We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.”

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — The Golden Rule

Leave a comment

Our Daily Bread

Matthew 7:7-12

Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them. —Matthew 7:12

The concept of The Golden Rule—treat others as you would like to be treated—appears in many religions. So what makes Jesus’ version of the saying so exceptional?

Its uniqueness lies in a single word, “therefore,” that signals the generosity of our heavenly Father. Here is what Jesus said: “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them” (Matt. 7:11-12 italics added).

All of us fall short of what we know to be true: We do not love others the way God loves us. Jesus lived out that admirable ethic with perfect love by living and dying for all our sins.

We have a loving, giving Father who set aside His own self-interest to reveal the full measure of His love through His Son Jesus. God’s generosity is the dynamic by which we treat others as we would like to be treated. We love and give to others because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Our heavenly Father asks us to live up to His commands, but He also gives us His power and love to carry it out. We need only to ask Him for it. —David Roper

Heavenly Father, I know that I lack Your

patience and mercy and love. Please show

Your perfect love through me in some small

way today. In Your Son Jesus’ name I pray.

We have committed The Golden Rule to memory; now let us commit it to life. —E. Markham

Bible in a year: Deuteronomy 17-19; Mark 13:1-20

Insight

In the reading today, we see how our Lord emphasized the importance of persistence in prayer. The actual Greek grammar might be better translated as “Seek and keep on seeking. Knock and keep on knocking. Ask and keep on asking.” Sometimes sincere believers may believe that a sign of faith is to ask God once for a request and never repeat it. But the teachings of the New Testament do not support such a concept. In the parable of the judge and the widow who repeatedly asked him to hear her case, the idea of persistence is central (Luke 18:1-8). As is the case with Job, King David, and other biblical characters, faith is often expressed through repeated prayers and pleading.

 

Uncategorized

Our Daily Bread — To God Be The Glory

Leave a comment

 

1 Chronicles 25:1-8

Chenaniah, leader of the Levites, was instructor in charge of the music, because he was skillful. —1 Chronicles 15:22

When Jason was asked to sing at a church he was visiting, he was delighted to participate even though he wasn’t asked until a few minutes before the service started. He chose a familiar hymn, “To God Be the Glory,” because it was a song that was especially meaningful to him. He practiced it a few times in the church basement and sang it without accompaniment in the church service.

Several weeks later, Jason learned that some people in the church didn’t appreciate his ministry. They thought he was showing off. Because they did not know him, they wrongly assumed that he was singing to impress them, not to honor the Lord.

From the Old Testament we learn that God appointed people with skill to be involved in temple worship. From construction workers to worship leaders—people were chosen based on their skill (1 Chron. 15:22; 25:1,7).

The Lord gave each of us different talents and spiritual gifts to be used for His glory (Col. 3:23-24). When we serve with that purpose, not to lift up ourselves, we don’t need to be concerned with what others think. God gave His very best to us—His Son Jesus—and we honor Him by giving our best to Him. —Julie Ackerman Link

The Master needs what you have to offer,

No matter if you think it’s small;

His work on earth is done through His children,

So give Him your best, give your all. —Hess

We are at our best when we serve God from our hearts.

Uncategorized

Greg Laurie – The Ultimate Imitator

Leave a comment

 

And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many.” —Matthew 24:4–5

It seems as though everyone has a cell phone these days. Everywhere you go, people are talking on their cell phones. And now there is actually a cell phone for dogs, which is a collar with a little speaker that allows you to talk to Fido.

How did we ever survive before cell phones?

I remember when the first cell phones came on the market. They were heavy and had a very short battery life. Then came the Blackberry, which was very popular. But the industry was turned upside down in 2007 when Apple released the iPhone. Walk into any store today where cell phones are sold, and you will find that most phones resemble the iPhone. This template, this prototype of sorts, changed everything.

Whenever something is popular, whenever something is successful, whenever something is effective, you can be sure there always will be imitations.

The ultimate imitator is Satan, who has his cheap imitations of all things that are true. For all the real Christians who believe in Jesus, he has his fake believers out there—posers who pretend to be something they are not. We have real miracles performed by the hand of God, and Satan has his fake imitations of those as well. God has His Son, Jesus. And one day Satan will have his son, his own imitation of Jesus, the Antichrist. This man will be history’s vilest embodiment of sin and rebellion.

Here is your choice: Are you going to be for Jesus Christ or the Antichrist? Either it is God, or it is Satan. If you make the right choice, then you can know with certainty that your name will be written in the Book of Life. But if it is not written in the Book of Life, then you are doomed.