Sunday, April 13, 2008

Saved By Grace

Today, I want to share with you a scripture and poem. May you soak yourself in his love and grace today.

Ephesians 2
He Tore Down the Wall

It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

- - - - - -

Poem by Bob

Sometimes we wish to undo things:
Perhaps words we have said.
If we could just change foolish words
For wiser ones instead.

Sometimes it may be more than words,
Things we can't undo
No matter how we wish we could;
They're there to follow you.

Our human flesh still bears the sin
That leads us to despair
But God's own promise He bestowed,
Shows that His love is there

His promise we are saved by grace
Through faith - a gift indeed!
A promise that may lift the soul
And fill its every need

No longer under management
Of sin that leads astray,
But part of God's own workmanship,
And growing day by day.

No longer objects of God's wrath,
No longer dead in sin:
By our renewing faith in Christ
New life God gives within.

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