reflections on the love that changes everything
…your fear of standing before God is likely holding you back from stepping into the opportunities that he is setting before you. And that is a tragedy because God wants to give you a rich, full, abundant life that is greater and grander than anything you could ask or imagine.
…it was the Father’s wisdom that raised Jesus from the dead to begin a new creation, one that is centered on and supported by Jesus Christ, one in which all things, even those times of suffering which we may experience, work together for our good, and one in which, at the end of time, all things will be made new, including us.
Jesus knows exactly who we are,…and he still loves us infinitely and accepts us unconditionally anyway.
We human beings are far more like sheep than we want to admit. And, like sheep, we need a shepherd.
God’s answer to the problem of evil is to come into this world, become one of us, and suffer in our place to take away all the power of evil to truly harm us or to separate us from him and his great love for us.
But we find the courage we need in Jesus. What Jesus does is he gives us a new life with him in God’s kingdom….because the qualities of the life that Jesus gives to us can never ever be taken away from us by anyone, there is no fear of loss, regardless of the situation we find ourselves in.
Jesus faced opposition from political forces like Nehemiah did, and Jesus faced opposition from religious forces like Nehemiah did. But the project that Jesus came to work on was much more than just building a wall around the city in the Middle East. Jesus came to seek and to save all that was lost. He came to redeem and restore the world.
The reason that we can choose to take actions of faith when it seems like the world has turned against us, when evil is attacking us and our life and everyone else we hold dear is in clear and present danger, and our emotions are telling us that there is no hope is because Jesus rose from the dead.
That leader, that descendant of David who would be a forever king, would then build up a house for God, a new and totally different kind of family, where people would be connected, not by human ancestry, but by their common king, through whom they would have all the safety, security, comfort, and peace that they need forever.
…God is inviting us to bring our sinful hearts to him and trust in his goodness, his greatness, and his grace.
Farewell to Shadowlands 