I am a friend of God’s and He calls me friend. I believe that He wants to call every one of us friend but He has to know us intimately first. The question now becomes, how’s your personal relationship with Him?
Today’s Prayer (make this personal)
Father, Today I want to pray and lift up all the backsliding Christians in the world. Reach down and through their circumstances, other people, and Your Holy Spirit, prick their hearts and stir their consciences that they would be drawn back to You. May You receive their praise as they see Your hand at work in their lives. May You receive glory and honor through their repentance and renewed lives. May Your will be done. If there be any way You want to use me to touch the life of a discouraged or out of touch Christian, then please use me to impact a life for good. Give me the words and the way and the unction to know who and what. In the matchless name of Jesus I pray, Amen.
Let’s eat.
Christ Took Our Punishment
Romans 3:21-31
But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe in Jesus. Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on obeying the law. It is based on faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law. After all, is God the God of the Jews only? Isn’t he also the God of the Gentiles? Of course he is. There is only one God, and he makes people right with himself only by faith, whether they are Jews or Gentiles. Well then, if we emphasize faith, does this mean that we can forget about the law? Of course not! In fact, only when we have faith do we truly fulfill the law.
Quote of the Day
Read whatever chapter of scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it – yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon him. ~William Law~