reflections on the love that changes everything
[When we] think that God grades sin on a curve like we humans do… we underestimate the graciousness of God. What can happen … is we can be burdened by sins which God has already forgiven….it prevents us from receiving the forgiveness and grace that God has for us…. How deep are the depths of God’s grace?
And it doesn’t matter where you are—regardless of the loneliness, pain, sorrow, suffering, or grief that you are right in the middle of right now—
your Heavenly Father is with you, and He loves you, and He will carry you through that time.
And He’s inviting you to come home so that He can embrace you and restore you as a beloved, forgiven child in His family.
For when we look at what Jesus taught his disciples about prayer in Luke 11, we see that prayer is all about relationship, the relationship between us and God. That relationship is a gift given to us by Jesus.
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?
Living according to the Spirit means turning away from our sinful desires and focusing instead on Jesus, the new life He gives us, and the guidance that He gives us through His Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the one who helps us to focus on Jesus and His many blessings and gifts to us.
Your war with God is over because God has reconciled you, and me, and everyone else who believes in Jesus, to Himself—and He did that by paying the full cost of our forgiveness and giving us His righteousness.
Jesus more than paid for all the sins of all the people in the whole world. By doing so, He opened the gates of heaven for God’s righteousness to come pouring down upon you and upon me. We are now flooded… with the purity, holiness, and uprightness of God.
Because the infinite worth of Jesus’ suffering and death on our behalf vastly exceeds the debt we owe for our sin, God the Father looks at us and makes the only just decision he could. He declares that we are righteous, in other words, that we are completely and totally innocent of all our sin, and he sets us free. God no longer holds anything against us.
God still loved his broken and flawed creation and immediately promised to restore it by sending a special descendant of Eve who would defeat evil, bring humans back into relationship with God, and restore and renew his beloved creation.
The women at the tomb had the right information—an empty tomb, an angel’s message, a reminder of Jesus’ promise—but their frame didn’t allow for resurrection. At least not yet. But Mary’s frame changed when she heard her name from the lips of the risen Christ. And that changed everything.
Farewell to Shadowlands 