Thank You, Lord for Your promises:
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Mt 5:4 NIV
We mourn because death is painful. It was never part of God’s original plan, but now it has become a pivotal part of God’s Redemption Plan. Listen again to this extra verse from Romans 6:23
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
So we humans sinned, and continue to sin, against God and His way, so death spiritually, soulfully and physically, are real in this world. We are born spiritually dead with that tendency to deny God’s authority over our lives. We sense death soulfully through those symptoms of death we have talked about on many occasions, things like depression, anxiety, worry, bitterness, anger, hatred, greed and so on and so on. And eventually, each of us will experience physical death too, when our time here is done, just like my Dad last week. But God loves us way too much not to have given us a way out of this horrific predicament. God has prepared for us a gift like no other: eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And what must we do to receive this precious present? Believe. Believe what? Believe that we are sinners doomed to eternal death, an eternal separation from God. Believe that God loves us so much that He gave His one and only begotten Son to pay for our sinfulness. Believe that the Holy Spirit will come to reside within our dead hearts bringing eternal life into us, making us a New Creation in Christ, now and forevermore. When we believe these, we will reach up our hands in surrender to God and He will usher us into His Redemption Plan. It really is that simple.
Join me in memorizing 52 verses this year:
January: 1- Jn 3:16; 2- 2Co 5:17; 3- Jas 2:26; 4- Eph 2:10
February: 5- Jn 10:10; 6- Ro 6:23; 7- Rev 21:4; 8- Php 4:13
March: 9- 1Pe 5:7; 10- Jn 8:32; 11- Dt 30:19; 12- Jn 3:30; 13- 2Chron 20:3
April: 14- 2Chron 20:12; 15- 2Chron 20:15b; 16- 2Chron 20:17; 17- Ro 8:28
18- 1Co 13:13
19- Php 2:12
20- Mt 5:4
<>< Peace, Diane
