37 Days – A Promise to be For Us

Pastor Randy’s devotional:

So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!— is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Romans 8:31-35

February 2^nd Prayer:
Praise be to God! You are for me! Even when my feelings question Your love and acceptance, I can rest on Your promise to be for me. You couldn’t have been louder or clearer when You gave Jesus to save me. I will stand on the “for me” promise I have in You. Nothing can separate me from Your love. I love You, Father!

 

My thoughts:

A few years back I drew a likeness of the image of Christ with the words “What More Shall I Do?  - God”  When I did it I was thinking of this very topic.

Here is my “simple man’s” way of outlining salvation.  God created the world and all that is in it.  Mankind destroyed the peace and blessing God had planned for us by turning from God and following the deceiving advice of the evil one, by Satan himself, in the garden of Eden.  Through Prophets, Priests, Kings, Pharisees and Sadducees God continued His pursuit of man.  In an attempt to bring them back into a right standing, a righteousness with Him; God laid out the law and process of redemption through the sacrifice of lambs.  He poured out His wrath on those who rejected Him and by choice turned away from Him, while blessing those who followed Him and abided in Him.

Over time even God’s children had turned from loving Him and worshipping Him into existing through ritual and habit.  They had made a mockery of His love for them and His protection over them.  Sin abounded through pride, greed, power and self-centeredness rather than outwardly loving and caring for others.  God then set a new covenant in place with mankind.  A covenant built on His own sacrifice and His own grace, rather than relying on mankind.

In a single act of love God sent His only Son to the earth as a sacrifice for all mankind.  The perfect, sinless lamb of God would be killed, and His blood would be spilled as the propitiation, the payment for our sins.  By His design, because He is omnipotent and sovereign, He made a way for all of mankind to come back into His peace with the death and resurrection of one man, one perfect sinless man.  For you see, Jesus had to have lived a perfect sin free life in order to redeem our sins.  God required that the blood of redemption not be tainted by man’s sinfulness. 

Jesus Christ, lived the perfect, sinless life on this earth.  He was tempted, He was beaten, He was mocked and made to suffer; yet He never turned on those, but rather found a way to love them, through God.  So, when He walked up the hill at Calvery, cross over His shoulder, rocks cutting into His bruised feet, He was the perfect lamb of God, ready for sacrifice.  As His blood shed on that hill, the atonement for sins was paid.  It didn’t stop there though, because generations of mankind would come after Him.

His resurrection from the grave, and ascent into heaven established Him as the only path to God for future generations to come.  He sits at the right hand of the Father and continues to this day to atone for mankind’s sin.  He is the eternal sacrifice and filter for our imperfect, sin-filled lives.  We are drawn to Him because of our inherent need for redemption from Adam’s first sin.  Our sin is forgiven through Jesus Christ because God provided a way.  Not because we deserved it, but because of His loving grace for us.

So, I ask you as a proxy for God the Father, “What More Shall I Do?  - God”

Be Blessed,

Rich

 

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