All of us want at least two things in the Christian life; spiritual growth in Christ and fruitfulness for Christ. And I would say we all want it fast; like now, like instantaneous, like immediate, like no waiting time. Nothing wrong with these desires. In fact, something would be really wrong if these desires were lacking in our lives. But here is where we often struggle. When we are going through tough times in life and don’t understand what God is doing, we find great comfort in these familiar verses found in Isaiah 55:8-9. These verses also apply in the process of God refining us into the image of His Son or spiritually growing us.
In today’s scripture, Jacob says something which is soul-searching for every Christian – “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” I wonder if some of us would have to say that about church yesterday? Did we go to church and leave unmoved, unchanged, and not hungering more for God? Did we come to church, go through church, and leave church having never encountered the Lord Jesus? What I am referring to as encounters with the Living Christ are two things which always occur when we meet God.
The Christian life from start to finish is all of grace. God saves us by His grace. He grows us by His grace. He makes us like His Son by grace. He will bring us to heaven by grace. Yes, everything we have and are is all of God’s amazing grace. Every day we should be a people humming along the grand hymn of the faith written by John Newton – “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.” There is another aspect of grace we may not think of much; “The Preventing Grace of God.”
Today’s scripture was my portion of reading in my yearly Bible reading plan. It is familiar to all of us, but today, it jumped off the page with newness and clarity in its application. And the lessons are many and apply to all of us who are seeking to live for Christ. All of these lessons are in the context of “storms”, not a literal one as the disciples were encountering, but in the ones we face every day of life – emotional storms, spiritual storms, situational storms, relational storms . . . you may add a “personal storm” to the list. So, since these are realities in all our lives, let’s consider some valuable truths behind all our storms.
In today’s scripture, we see the deity of Jesus doing a miraculous work of feeding thousands of people with about enough for maybe a family of four, if they are not starving. But don’t allow the miraculous physically cause us to miss an important lesson spiritually. Jesus displays His power and the people displayed action to His power; they ate. The food would have meant nothing if they didn’t do their part in the miracle.
I wanted to follow-up and encourage you on what our emphasis has been as we move into 2017. We have basically laid out our vision and it is rooted in the Apostle Paul’s prayer found in Ephesians 3:14-19. Our desire, goal, and pursuit, as individuals and a church, into the new year is to “Know Christ, His love, and experience the Biblical realities of walking in the fullness of God.”