reflections on the love that changes everything
The God who lifts our eyes with His majesty is the same God who lifts our lives with His mercy. In Jesus, He restores our dignity. He renews our calling. He invites us to live as His beloved children, reflecting His love into the world He has entrusted to our care.
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.
In Jesus, you have God, and there is nothing greater than that…. Life with Him will always be greater than any life without Him, and you will never face a moment where Jesus is not enough for you.
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.
You are a child of the high King of heaven who has begun his reign. He reigns in our hearts, he reigns in this world, and one day, all the world will see Jesus for the great king he is.
…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.
Because of Jesus—His life, His death, and His resurrection—the same power of God that raised Jesus from the dead is also at work in you right now. It’s active in your life, strengthening your faith, growing your love, and fortifying your hope.
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?
Farewell to Shadowlands 