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This week’s devotions are based on this week’s message: The Key to life and leadership is Grace!  (WATCH HERE)

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“What God gives to you is meant to flow through you.”

A speaker at a campus ministry used this phrase as he wrapped up the school year to encourage the students as they scattered from the campus to their summer internships, breaks, or family vacations.

Do we carry this thought as we go through life?

Perhaps it is easier to grip and hang on to the grace of God and treasure it for ourselves.  Without a doubt, grace is an amazing blessing and reality for ourselves.  It gives us security in our status before God and it solidifies our identity as a child of God.  These are realities I pray we never let go of. 

However, the message and impact and power of grace are not just for our heart.  God has given it to us to be a blessing, but also for us to bless others.  What God has given to us is meant to flow through us.  I like that phrase because it reminds me that grace sends me with purpose.

Life no longer is about my sinful nature, selfish agenda, but rather the agenda and purpose which God has given me to be an ambassador of his grace.  Look at what the Apostle Paul wrote: 2 Corinthians 5:18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.

I’ve imagined a conversation in heaven after Jesus finished his work on earth.  The imaginary scenario was posed that Jesus was talking with the Holy Spirit in heaven, who congratulated Jesus on a job well done.  But then the Spirit asks, “You entrusted this great message to those 11 disciples?  What happens if they don’t take the truth you gave them and share it with others?”  To which Jesus replied, “I don’t know.  I have no plan B.”

The amazing thing about grace is, like Paul, God has called us to a ministry to be an ambassador of grace, to take what God has given to us and let it flow through us.  What is incredibly powerful about this is that it is simply sharing your story with grace.  You get to relate to others the impact God’s grace has had on you.

But, that means realizing the impact God’s grace has had on you!

The Apostle Paul understood the impact that God would take him “the worst of sinners” and appoint him to his service.

1 Timothy 1:15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. 16 But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.

Could we say the same about ourselves?  To be sure.  Sin is sin.  Grace is grace.  Paul had his story.  We have ours.  If we were the only sinner in the world, Christ Jesus would have come to display his unlimited patience for us and to us.  We are the example today of God’s grace.  If God can save us by his grace, he can save anyone else in this world.  It’s this simple reality that we get to share with the world because grace sends us with this purpose: Be an ambassador of grace!

Apply: Notice today the people around you.  To whom is God sending you to share the message of grace.  Let what God has given to you, flow through you today!

Prayer: Lord, thank you for showing me unlimited patience by giving me your grace.  Use me, wherever you send me, to be an ambassador of your grace to the people around me.  AMEN.

This week’s devotions are based on this week’s message: The Key to life and leadership is Grace!  (WATCH HERE)

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Who are you?

Really.  Who are you?

The question of identity is one that is front and center in the culture dialogue today.  We have identity politics that takes a certain skin color or gender or ideology and assumes that everyone of that “identity” will vote a certain way.  We have gender identity issues which leave very young children questioning whether they are male, female, cat, dog or dinosaur.  To be sure, these are not issues to be made light of, but to recognize are very real in our society today.

At the heart of them?  What is my identity and who gives it to me?

Identity has shifted away from some objective reality (Example: I am male – because I have the male chromosomes and body parts.) to personal feelings.  Identity has become more what you feel about yourself than objectively who you are.  Identity can become what others put on you to try to create a “group think” on a particular issue.  Identity is complicated.

Listening to a leadership podcast (sorry can’t remember which one), identity issues were highlighted as a key struggle for young people.  The issue is compounded by social media and the image that one feels they must portray on those platforms to have the “likes” and “followers.”

In fact, even in spiritual matters, identity has become a leading issue people are wrestling with.  Why?  Because identity goes down to the core of our being.  We may “identify” with some surface issue, but identity is really who we are or who we believe we are.

So how can we take an unsettled, confused, misguided culture about identity and begin to establish truly godly perspective on the issue of identity at large, but most importantly for our own hearts?

We look to the one who really matters.  Not to friends or family, but we look to the Lord God who created us.  What does he say about our identity? Here’s just two passages:

Ephesians 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

1 John 3:1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

By faith in Jesus, we ARE children of God.  This is an identity statement.  You ARE a child of God.  We don’t just “identify with” children of God…we ARE children of God.  Why does this matter?

I can stop looking for an identity outside of God’s reality.  When we came to faith in Jesus at baptism or later in life, God GAVE us the identity as his child.  Embrace this reality to your core because here is the consequence (in a very positive way.)

As a child of God, I am loved, accepted, and forgiven…regardless of what other people say.

As a child of God, my identity is settled in Christ…not my social media platform.

As a child of God, I know he doesn’t make mistakes and he made me male or female.

As a child of God, I am not identified by my sins and mistakes, but by the blood of Jesus who made me perfect.

As a child of God, I am defined by the riches of God’s grace, not the riches of my bank account.

As a child of God, I am free to love others without need for them to fill in my identity by how they respond.

As a child of God, my identity is settled.

As a child of God, I live in the reality of grace that God so lavishly spread on me!

Grace settles my identity because grace makes me a child of God!

 

Apply: You are a child of God.  How does that change how you show up in life today?

Prayer: Lord, thank you for lavishing your grace and love on me to make me your child.  Let my soul always be settled in the identity you gave me, “I am a child of God!”

For additional reflection today: Listen to this song: I’m no longer a slave to fear (LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8TkUMJtK5k)

This week’s devotions are based on this week’s message: The Key to life and leadership is Grace!  (WATCH HERE)

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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.

This week’s devotions are based on this week’s message: The Key to life and leadership is Grace!  (WATCH HERE)

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1 Timothy 1:2 To Timothy my true son in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

With these words, the Apostle Paul addresses Timothy, a young missionary with the Apostle Paul and a young leader in the New Testament Church.  He was left in the city of Ephesus with the church that met there.  Paul wanted to come to Ephesus, but until he did, he trusted Timothy to give direction and instruction to the believers.

At first glance, one could look at the book of 1 Timothy and just see a book written to the leaders of a church and dismiss it without much relevance for the average Christian.

Let’s not do that.

Like with any other book of Scripture, God’s Spirit wrote it and preserved it so we could be blessed by it.

The blessing of the first letter to Timothy is that it gives us great insights into life and leadership.  Over the next six weeks we will unpack six key realities about life and leadership, all connected to the one foundational reality for every Christian: Grace.

When Paul opens his letter, he communicates grace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Just a few verses into the letter he recognizes that it is pure grace that he was even serving as an apostle and missionary of the Lord Jesus.

1 Timothy 1:12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service. 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. 14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

There was no way from a standard of spiritual performance that the Apostle Paul should have been used as a communicator of the Gospel.  In his early years, although he was a student of Scripture and zealot for obeying God’s law, he stood opposed to everything that breathed of Christ.

He gave his approval to the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr in the Christian faith:

Acts 7:57 At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58 dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.

He breathed out murderous threats to all who professed faith in Jesus:

Acts 9:1-2 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.

How in the world could you explain the fact that God would use Paul to proclaim the Gospel, the very thing he stood opposed to?

“I was shown mercy.” “The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly…”

When God uses sinners for his purpose, it is purely a testimony to the grace of God.  When God changed Paul’s heart, grace began to define every aspect of his being, his purpose, his identity and his status before God.  The burden of guilt and lack of perfection fell from his heart and was replaced by the overwhelming grace, mercy and peace of God.

Paul realized that the key to life truly is grace…God’s grace.

The same is true for us today.

 

Apply: Consider all the reasons you SHOULDN”T be a follower of Jesus or on a mission for him.  Then just cross them all off and write “grace.”  Grace is the key for it all.

Prayer: Lord, thank you for loving me enough to call me out of my sin to the safety of your love and forgiveness…not because I have earned it, but simply because of your grace.  AMEN.

This week’s devotions are based on this week’s message: Let Easter Change you: Godly Community!  (WATCH HERE)

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We started this week with the truth that the church is not a man-made idea, but it’s God’s idea to be a blessing to each of us and for us to be a blessing to each other.  But there’s more.  There is a focus to this gathering that is bigger than any individual, but includes every individual.  There is a purpose that surpasses a temporal entity to become an eternal reality.  

God has given his people, his church, the purpose to bring the Gospel of God’s love and grace to the world.

The first New Testament church that gathered on the hill with Jesus was told this:

Matthew 28:18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

The church was not just to gather for the blessing for the people already there, but to GO into the world around and bring the message of grace to all people.

Jesus simply wanted them to share what they had already experienced.

He wanted them to share who he was and the importance of his life, death, and resurrection.

He wanted them to share how grace overcomes guilt and gives peace, joy and hope.

He wanted them to tell their story of the impact of God’s love in their lives.

In doing so, the Spirit of God would use their words and witness to bring the message of God’s love to another heart and change the eternal destiny of another soul.

Acts 1:8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The great thing about Jesus direction to share God’s love with the world is that he empowers us to do the very thing he asks us to do.  “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.”  “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go…”

As members of God’s church, we all carry the same overarching mission: Make disciples.  There is no “Plan B.”  God has chosen to use you and me.  We are his “Plan A.”  

The great thing about this mission is that sharing God’s love is not limited to one person or one time and place.  God can and will use you wherever you show up today.

Doctor’s appointment?  Maybe God has someone in the waiting room that needs his love through you today.

Going to a school class?  Maybe God has a classmate that will sit next to you or walk next to you in the hall that needs an expression of his love today.

Have a spouse or children? Maybe today God is going to use you to forgiven and extend grace in a situation you could choose to get angry and upset.

Headed into work? Could it be that your purpose at your company isn’t to just help the financial bottom line, but to engage a coworker in an eternal bottom line?  

Have a day off? Perhaps there is a neighbor who will ask for help and you will be able to head over and give your time to show God’s love to them.

Have to go grocery shopping?  Don’t just look for the items on your shopping list. Notice the people around you…God may have someone there that needs a word of hope or promise.

Do you get the point?  When we each embrace God’s mission for us to share his love with the world, we begin to notice opportunities we may have missed in the past.  Perhaps today our simple prayer is to have God open our eyes to see the opportunities around me to share his love today.

 

Apply:  Look at your schedule today.  Ask God to orchestrate and opportunity to share his love with someone!

Prayer: Lord, thank you for making me part of your church.  Lead me today and everyday to embrace your mission for the church as your mission for me: Make disciples…share your love. Will you orchestrate a clear opportunity today to do just that?  AMEN.