Behold The Real Blessing.

The shear beauty of the Lord. The beauty of the radiance of his glory. The unshakable joy and unceasing goodness that flows from the thought of even knowing Him. The God of all creation invites us every single day to be in Communion with Him. He invites us to come to his word and behold his Majesty. He beckons our souls to revel in his goodness. He has named us beloved of God in Christ alone. We are deemed worthy and holy in His presence. We are covered by the she blood of our redeemer. Jesus Christ. We are not only delivered from the penalty of sin, but its power and one day its presence. When God's word says we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, he means every blessing. He doesn't hold back his glory from us. He doesn't with hold a gift from His hand. He doesn't give and take away out of anger. He gives and takes away for the better. He takes knowing that He will replace that gift with something even better. But the blessings aren't even the best part. We have the chance to know the giver. We have relationship with the bless er. Instead of clinging to the blessing, cling to the promise and the hand of the giver of the blessing. There are often times though, we don't see all things that are good. Sometimes the good comes in a different way than we would like. Sometimes the good comes through trial. Sometimes the best gifts we receive from the Lord are in the midst of a terrible storm. Sometimes the good comes quietly and subtly. Sometimes the good comes right in front of our face and we reject it because we don't think we deserve it. 

What kind of faith do we have? Do we have a faith that is built on blessings? or do we have a faith built on the bless er? 

Let me add another thought to that though.... What is your view of blessings. When I was in Haiti, I was sitting on the roof of the church we were staying in and looking at our neighbors yards and farmland around us watching the sunset. I had seen so much during that day traveling through the cities of Haiti to our final destination. I had never seen poverty like that in my life. But as I looked at the people around me as my feet dangled off the roof and the sun setting, They were care free, happy, they had enough for that day. The night would soon come and they would rest, to wake up and work, live, eat, play and sing. Enjoying life to the fullest. Yet they had nothing to enjoy. There was no escape from their poverty. They weren't like the Americans that had come to visit them. We may have lived with them in those two weeks, but we were soon to head back to the states and have every "comfort" at our disposal. The Lord spoke to my heart in the moment. The thought  came into my head, " Is this what my 'stuff' looks like to you lord? dirty, broken, worthless, over used, rotten? Not only my stuff, but is this What I look like? Clinging so desperately to those things?" God Then challenged me on my view as blessings. So often I view my "stuff" as blessings. Do we refer to blessings as our house? our shoes? our education? our clothes? our money? Ephesians 1:3 says, " All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united Whit Christ." Notice how He says, "blessed us with every SPIRITUAL blessing in the HEAVENLY realms" Sure we can be blessed through our possessions and they can be tools for God's glory, but the root of the blessing is the intended use of the procession. I can wear shoes, but until I use those shoes to walk over and share Christ with someone, those shoes will stay shoes. I can have a house, but If I only use my house for me and my use and never be hospitable to the body of Christ or invite an outsider in, my house will be of no eternal value. The blessing is the Joy that comes out of giving, the gentleness that comes out of the service, and the relationship that comes out of the words spoken in quality time. We are blessed with many things, but never cling tighter to the blessing, but look to the Lord and cling to Him in order to get the blessing intended for you. The Haitians may have had nothing, but their view of blessings didn't lye in their things. Their blessings relayed in the love given to each other, the time taken for one another, and the Worship and praise To God the Father. We are truly blessed to know Christ. Paul says That He counts all things as rubbish compared to even knowing Christ. 

So where do you stand on that? do you value the created more than the creator? Do you have a better relationship with your Ipod than you do with you bible? Do you keep all your money to yourself when your money isn't even yous in the first place?

If that made any sense, which I pray it does, I challenge you to really evaluate you life according to God's word. I pray that you as the reader gain more of an eternal perspective. You are blessed to be a blessing. With EVERY spiritual blessing given by God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ. He holds nothing back from you. Cling to Him. Trust Him. Give Him glory. All out. No regrets. Go. 

God's Inexhaustible Grace.

 This is a quote from the book " Disciplined by Grace" By J.F. Strombeck.
              "The discipline of grace brings to mind and the soul the goodness and beauty of God, His unfailing lve, and His all inclusive provision. When the heart sees this goondess of God and riches of His grace; the pleasures, preferment, and honor and wealth fo the world lose their glamour. They are seen as temporal in contrast to the eternal values of God. The believer who realizes that through grace, and grace alone, he has been saved out of the lost and condemed world unto an indescribably glorious eternity with God sets his affection on thins above-- not ont hings of this earth. It is the work of grace to create and sustain this attitde.
              Ethics can teach men to deny the dishonest, immoral, and debased things of this world; but grace alone can teach the believer to deny himself the beautiful, attriactive and pleasant things with which God is not identified. By grace the believer has been called out of th unglodly world and delivered form the condemnation resting upon it. By grace he is alos delivered from the things of the world, and his desires become centered in Christ and the things of Him. ......... True Christian liberty is delieverancefrom the law of sin in the body with its desires for the pleasures of the world."

The topic of God's grace has been something that has been rocking my world. This page in this book says it all. God's grace is bigger than I think it is and bigger than I could ever imagine!!!
PRAISE HIM!!

Enablement

God has also been teaching me a lot about His ability and my inability. I have heard one definition of grace put this way, " God's grace is the encouragement and enablement of God to live and serve God."
How true that is. God's grace is sufficient. It is not only sufficient to forgive out sins. But it is sufficient to enable us to love and serve others. In and of ourselves we are not able to love. In and of ourselves we are not able to serve. In and of ourselves we are not good.


In the book by J.F. Strombeck "Disciplined by Grace" grace is defined another way. Stombeck says, "Grace is more than love; it is love operating righteously in view of the fact that the penalty for sin has been paid for." God's grace enables us to love others on the basis of HIS forgiveness. God's grace enables us to love others by looking past their shortcomings. How amazing is that!

I am learning that God's grace is so big and it is so vast. There are many ways God's grace is displayed, especially in the lives of believers. God's grace is manefested IN us becuase Christ is IN us.

Just some nuggets I've been mulling over.

God's Love

The Lord has been teaching me so much about His love and His grace the past few weeks. One thought I was mulling over is how we are called to love as Christ loved. Jesus was whipped, beaten, spit on and crucified by the ones he created. The ones he loved the most and were so dear to His heart. He WILLINGLY went to the cross. Can you imagine not only the physical pain but the emotional pain as well?
The only way that Christ finally died (physically) was when the Father turned his back. It was when God forsook him that He died and since Jesus is God, this shows that God forsook himself on behalf of the human race. He forsook himself to show his love. He forsook himself to shed his blood. And In scripture we are called to love and God has loved us. We are called to forgive as Christ has forgiven us. WOW. I don't know about you but that renders me speechless and totally inadequit. And thats a good place to be. God's love is so big and so great that I can't even begin to think about loving somone else like that. Thats where the Holy Spirit comes in. If I yeild to Christ, who lives in me, he will manifest his own life through me. Galatians 2:20 says, " I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."
I am nothing apart from HIm.

Another thought that came to mind as I was typing this out was that Christ died because the Father forsook him. That shows the relationship that Christ had with the Father. They were so one that Christ died without Him. Shouldn't our reliance on God look the same? That we would died with out the Father?

I challenge you to dig into this. To dig into the love of God in the Word of God. He loves you. Experience it. Live in it. Dwell there. There is no better place to be.

Reckon

Following the process of knowing is reckoning. Paul continues in romans 6:9-10 to say, "Knowing that Christ, being raised form the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him, for He died, he died to sin onece for all, but the life he lives he lives through Jesus Christ our Lord."  Its only when we know the truth about the effects of Christ's death that we can then take it into account as truth and then begin to live in the light of it. Knowing the thruth about Christ's death then allows us to reckon that sin has no power over me any longer. Christ's death frees me from the penalty of sin and reckoning myself dead to sin and alive unto God in Christ frees me from sins penalty. I didn't know the difference between knowing and reckoning in the christian life for a long time untill recently. knowing means seeing God's word as truth and reckoining means we apply those truths to our life personally. Romans 6:11 says, "Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves dead indeed unto sin, but alie unto God through Christ Jesus our Lord" There is action that shoud following our reckoining because in Romans 6:12 Paul goes on to say, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof"
When we KNOW our what Christ did, we then put on our new identity and identify with Christ. Since no our new identity is in Christ we then have to live accoridingly. Who you are determins what you do, not the other way around. What you do DOES NOT determine who you are. It just shows what you are and who you are. Thats why knowing and reckoning who and whos we are comes before our action and yeilding.
Rekoning is accounting God's truth as fact. We ARE dead and God calls us to 'reckon' or 'account' it as truth. Watchman Nee says it this way, "God tells us to reckon ourselves dead, not by the process of reckoning we may become dead, but because we ARE dead. He never told us to reckon what was not a fact."

Know.

Identity is a huge thing. Who you are determines how you act, what you wear, what you do and who you hang out with. But do those things determine who you are?
The truths of who I am in Christ have transformed my life drastically. In the past year my life has been torn down to the ground and built back up agian on the foundation of Christ. My life was a mess before I learned the truths I did in God's word. I was living out of "Adam's expeience"  I was living int he flesh. I didn't even think that there was another way to live. I thought that this life would continue to be a cylcle of sin, repentance, good works, restored fellowship with God and then having that experience over and over again. What I didn't realize was that I was continuing to walk in the flesh and in doing so I was strengthening my bonds to sin. I thought I was living in the freedom Christ offers in scripture. It's no wonder I grew weary of the Christian life and sought happiness in other places rather than God himself. I wasn't satisfied with my walk with the Lord because I truely wasn't walking in the new creation life he had for me. Before I came to know the Lord as my savior all I knew was sin. All I knew was bondage and all I knew was devistation. I didn't know anything else. After I came to know Christ as my savior though, I was made into a new creation. I was born again. But I didn't know what kind of inheritance and life I was born into. 1 Peter 1:3-4 says, " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the ressurectin of Jeuss christ form the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable , undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you." That is only a couple of verses of what the new life in Christ entails but Thats not enough to walk in light of every day. There is more truths believe it or not! It was once explained to me this way. If you had a great uncle who was a billion heir and he died and left all the money to you and no one ever told you, it really wouldn't change your life much and you would probably still be struggling to pay your school bill. But if you were told that you had been left all this money, you would then put on the identiy and title of  a billion heir and then live accordingly. You would live in the fullness of your inheritance. Even more so, We have been born into a new life in Christ and an inheritance that is unspoiled and unfading, that is eternal and is worth the very blood of Christ to pay for.
It all starts with knowing these truths. It doesn't help to appropriate truth you doint know about.
The most important truth for a Christain to KNOW is to know that Christ died for the forgiveness of your sins. The reason you are a Christian is because you came to the knowlege that God became man, and died  upon a cross and rose again for the sake of our soul and to pay for the sin of the whole world.  Watchman Nee in his book "The Normal Christian Life" says it this way, "You did not beeseech Him to come and die for you, you realized that He had already done so."
Not only did Christ's death pay for our sin debt, but we also need to recognize that His death placed us "IN CHRIST"meaning that when Christ died, we also died. This requires us to take God's word by faith. Taking God at his word. You entered the Christian life on this knowlege.  Paul adresses us knowing these truths in various verses in Romans 6. Romans 6:6 says, "Knowing this, that our old man is curcified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that hencefoth we should not serve sin."

Identity.

Loved. Cherished. Free, Veiwed in the eyes of the only one who is Holy. God sought me. Pursued me.Beheld me. I dont deserve Thee. Beautiful only because of CHRIST'S light. Strengthened only by the most High. Humbled, feeling shame for my wrong, Where I should be kneeling down at the throne. Blood shed for all my sin, Bought with a price. Not of this world Not the old life. Sin binds me NO longer. My identity is in Christ

He knew me before the foundations were laid, He wanted me to seek Him, to know His love and His grace. He searches me and knows me, and all I keep secrete, He knows my heart and my mind and all I keep in it. My actions and feelings are not easily concealed, when you come into His presence all is revealed. How He longs for my devotion, my love and my all, I'm so easily distracted, I slip and I fall. I forget what He's done, How He died and how He won. The battle of dark and light are no longer, so why do I let the sin in my life grow stronger? I am CHOSEN and HOLY, all because of Christ. So why do I let sin reign and have any claim on my life? I am saved from the pit, and the death I deserve. So shouldn't God be the only one that I serve? 

I am not perfect. NO I am not. But I'm a daughter of the King. I am a CHILD of God. Forgiven only by the blood. Every day living in dependence on God above. There is no other way by which to be saved. So there is no reason to be living like sheep gone astray. But Jehovah is good and he is sovereign. He is patient with me And redeems all those who are fallen. Be then, an example. Be the light. Be strong in the LORD.  Give up your OWN LIFE! 

 YOU ARE NOT YOUR OWN. YOU HAVE BEEN MADE NEW. GO TELL THE WORLD OF HIS GLORY. EXCHANGE THEIR LIES FOR THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH!