Sunday, July 5, 2020
God’s Creation
Our part:
to reflect God’s Grace,
Christ’s Light
Joel 2:23
I will look with favour upon you and make you fruitful and multiply you; and I will maintain my covenant with you.
Ephesians 3:12
In [Jesus] we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him.
Words of Grace For Today
Once we have practised, that we are saved by Grace alone (not by our own efforts) then we are ready to understand what our own efforts are: they are responses to God’s Grace, and always should strive to extend that same Grace to others, even our enemies.
It is odd then to read Joel writing: I will maintain my covenant with you. God makes a covenant with us. It is unlike other covenants (contracts). It is one sided: God promises to do for us, God does for us, God does not demand anything from us in return. God does not look from the covenant to us to respond. God’s promises give us life and a model for how God created us to live in creation. That’s God’s part. There is nothing like us maintaining our part of the covenant. That is a return to the false pride that drives us to try to be godlets, as if we could.
That does not mean we have nothing. We have everything by Grace through faith in God. That includes a boldness and confidence.
We can boldly step up to extend Grace to others.
In the face of enemies that deride and seek to destroy us, we have confidence that self-sacrificial love is God’s way and therefore our way to sure victory: love will win and evil will lose, hate will dissolve, riches, power, and reputations gained wrongly will evaporate, and those who have lived out God’s Grace for others will already have their reward in that they have an abundant life. Extending God’s Grace to others is the sufficient requirement for an abundant life and defines what an abundant life is. Love as Grace is everything.
Through faith in Jesus we have a boldness and confidence that comes from the Holy Spirit guiding us each day to seek out, enjoy, and share God’s blessings.