God gives us a feast while our enemies stand by.
If you’re a completely committed follower of Jesus Christ, then you will have friction with some members of your family and certain friends, specifically those who do not want to follow Jesus Christ.
Here, life under the new covenant of grace is described as the "new and living way." This could be contrasted with the "old and dying way" of attempting to live under the old covenant of law. The "newness" of grace is not really a matter of time sequence, because the grace of God actually precedes the law in man's history with God. The "tree of life" in the garden of Eden was God's provision of grace for Adam and Eve. The promises of God to Abraham (given hundreds of years before the law) depended upon the faithful grace of God, not the legal performance of Abraham.
"If we would see much of Christ, let us serve him." — Charles Spurgeon
Half our fears arise from neglect of the Bible. — Charles Spurgeon
"Did Christ finish His work for us? Then there can be no doubt that He will also finish His work in us." -John Flavel.
Those blessings are sweetest that are won with prayer and worn with thanks. ⏤
Thomas Goodwin
Often, the most intense warfare happens just at the brink of a breakthrough. Don’t relent!
The Bible is remarkably blunt about how broken we are. Most of the patriarchs of the Bible were pretty rotten fathers. Other than Jesus, all of the biblical characters we meet are generally like us: people who botch almost everything. None of them are particularly good, and when we idolize them, we do a disservice to one of the great themes of the Bible — that we are all failed sinners in desperate need of grace.
Jesus loves us in the midst of our failures and is making broken people like us new again.
Parenting requires grace – lots and lots of grace. Thankfully, that’s exactly what Jesus offers us! Building habits won’t change God’s love for us, but God’s love for us can and should change our habits.
God works slowly out of compassion, not apathy.
Put your hand to the plow now—and don’t look back.
“I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” —Philippians 3: 12-14
“Life can only be understood backward; it must be lived forward.” —
Soren Kierkegaard, Quoted in Living Quotations for Christians, edited by Sherwood Eliot Wirt and Kersten Beckstrom, copyright 1974, (Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., New York, NY) p. 144, ref. 1940.
We who follow the Lord Jesus Christ are "ministers of the new covenant." The term "minister" means servant. The phrase "new covenant" speaks of relating to God by grace. Thus, we are those who serve God by the resources of His grace. Our day-by-day lives, lived in service of the Lord God Almighty, are to be developed by the grace of God at work in us.
"Come afresh to the cross today, and rest there now forever." —
Charles Spurgeon
"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less." -
C.S.Lewis.
Above all, measure your progress by your improvement in love for God and man. -
William Wilberforce
True Christian liberty is not the power to live as we please but to live as we ought.
⏤ Arthur Pink
Forgive yourself for the things you didn’t know…
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