This week’s devotions are based on this week’s message: The Key to life and leadership is Grace! (WATCH HERE)
Do you ever have moments where your past comes back to haunt you? When you consider thoughts, decisions, and actions of the past and whether they measure up to godly standards, do you break out in a cold sweat?
Maybe it’s not a cold sweat, but Satan loves to take our past and make it a worrisome reality in our present. What are we worried about? Does God still love me? Will God forgive me? Will he ever let me into heaven?
God has placed inside of us a conscience that is our inner moral compass that directs us toward things that are right and away from things that are wrong. But, to be honest, we are good at overriding our conscience with justification as to why something that is wrong is OK in this instance. We can dull our conscience by telling ourselves, “I could be doing worse things.”
But then it hits us.
We have that moment when we are faced with our own mortality and the reality of standing before a perfect, holy God who has clearly laid out the standard that we are to be perfect as he is perfect.
But we don’t want to even deal with that reality.
So we put words in God’s mouth and say, “He just wants us to do our best.” We tweak the standard of perfection and think, “Just do a bit more good than bad.” We can look at what others are doing and tell ourselves that we are better than most and at least we haven’t done the “big” sins.
But we are not being honest and Satan is getting us to believe lies about our current reality and our status before God.
Why do we do these things? Because we want to have peace with God and when we do things that are outside of his will, it creates unrest, division, and discord that is not fun, not comfortable, and honestly, we just don’t want to deal with.
But if we don’t we are never at peace in our souls.
The Apostle Paul had a past he was not proud of. He relates to Timothy:
1 Timothy 1:13 Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.
How could someone with this past EVER have peace with God and have a soul that was settled in its status before God. How could God EVER forgive Saul for persecuting believers, blaspheming his name and violently acting against other people. There’s no amount of good that could overcome that, right? He should burn in hell, don’t you think?
One would think. But that’s not what changed Paul’s status before God. Here’s what did:
1 Timothy 1:14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
Grace settles our soul. Grace settles my status before God. I am forgiven. My past is covered in the blood of Jesus. The perfect life of Jesus is applied to my account. I have peace with God because GRACE has been given to me.
Grace puts our souls at rest…no matter what our past the lies of Satan cannot overcome the truth of Grace. You are forgiven. You are loved.
Apply: How does Satan work in your heart to unsettle it with sins of the past? How can you use the truth of grace to rebuke Satan’s lies and allow your soul to be settled?
Prayer: Lord, thank you for your grace which settles my soul. I am at peace with you because of Jesus. AMEN.