reflections on the love that changes everything
All of God’s benefits to us—all the healing, redeeming, crowning, satisfying, and renewing he does within us—all spring forth from the forgiveness he accomplished for us through the life, death, and resurrection of God the Son, Jesus Christ. Only by embracing the incomprehensible vastness of our forgiveness can we fully inhabit the vast territory of our salvation.
The blessed life is not something we achieve. It is something God is already growing in us. Because the One who is the Living Water has come near. Jesus Christ — the Word made flesh, the true Tree of Life, the One whose roots go down into eternity — has stepped into our world of drift and weightlessness. He has taken on our chaff-like tendencies, our wandering hearts, our shallow roots. And in His death and resurrection, He has given us His life, His strength, His rootedness.
Let the hope of Revelation 21 shape how you grieve, how you love, how you forgive, how you endure, how you worship, and how you live your ordinary, everyday life. Because the One seated on the throne has spoken: “Behold, I am making all things new.”
So my encouragement to you today, dear friend, is to lift your eyes. Look up. Let your heart be captured by the glory that awaits you at the end of time. Because of Jesus, winter will not have the last word. You are going home to God. You are going to live in his eternal spring, and it’s all because of Jesus.
Jesus not only fulfilled the old covenant God made with Abraham and his descendants. He also gave us a new covenant of grace, and that covenant of grace was applied to you personally in your baptism.
…the moment when we empty ourselves of all our self-centered pride and self-righteous judgments, Jesus rushes in with more of His grace to draw us closer to Him.
If physical freedom is what we need to be free, most of us will experience a life of frustration. But what if God wants to give us another kind of freedom, a freedom that brings joy even when we are in prison? How can we live with that kind of freedom?
If our eyes are closed to what God sets before us, then the arc and trajectory of our life will never be what God intends for it to be….
And because each and every one of us only has one precious life to live, that would be tragic.
…How can we have our eyes opened to all that God has for us?
The whole idea of the book of Revelation—the whole purpose—is that God wants you to know, in a general sense, what is going to happen in the future so that you can have resilient faith as that future unfolds.
Training in godliness helps us to discern truth from lies and create habits of holiness that help us stay on track as we follow Jesus into forever. As we grow in godliness, then we can help others train in godliness. This helps them to become more like Jesus, and then they can help others, and so on, and so on. And that’s how the Kingdom of God grows.
