brianrushing.com

In relation to our need to be connected to Jesus on a personal level…
      Someone may fear that we are magnifying private religion out of all proportion, that the “us” of the New Testament is being displaced by a selfish “I.”
      Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow.
      So one hundred worshipers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become “unity”-conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. The body becomes stronger as its members become healthier.
–A. W. Tozer

Great Point!
We will not grow stronger in unity by simply trying to like each other more (we will still get irritated with each other). Instead, we will grow stronger in unity by individually growing closer to Christ. The closer each one of us becomes “in tune” with Christ, the more united we will find ourselves with others. It is only through Him (and our growth in becoming more like Him) that we will become people of love, charity, compassion, & patience, and therefore become the united Body of Christ.

Do you see the glory of God in His wisdom, power, righteousness, truth and love, supremely disclosed at Calvary, in the making of propitiation for our sins? The Bible does; and we venture to add, if you felt the burden and pressure of your own sins at their true weight, so would you.
–J. I. Packer

Too often I think, “I’m a pretty good person.” And in thinking this, I forget how serious my sin was – serious enough to require Someone else to die as a substitute in my place. It is seldom that I consider the true weight of my sin. And therefore, it is seldom that I truly consider how amazing the grace of God is, and how glorious He should be in mind. I should hold Him in the places of highest esteem at all times because of what He did to wipe out the consequences of sin for me.

Father, thank You for Jesus. Thank You for the cross. Help me to view sin as You do. Help me to better grasp the weight of my sin. And allow me to better understand Your great grace that was stronger than all of my sin.

Jesus never met:
      * a disease he could not cure,
      * a birth defect he could not reverse,
      * a demon he could not exorcise.

Forgiveness of sins requires an act of will on the receiver’s part, and some who heard Jesus’ strongest words about grace and forgiveness turned away unrepentant.
–Philip Yancey

Jesus can do amazing things in our lives if only we will choose to let Him work in us. Too many people resist the Lordship of Christ, they turn away from His grace and forgiveness, and they lose the opportunity to experience the abundant life He promised. Don’t resist what Christ desires to do in your life, even though it will require that you relinquish your will and your ways over to His control.

I had always vaguely felt facts to be miracles in the sense that they are wonderful; now I began to think them miracles in the stricter sense that they were willful. I mean that they were, or might be, repeated exercises of some will. In short, I had always believed that the world involved magic; now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story; and if there is a story there is a story-teller.
–G. K. Chesterton

This is simply another re-stating of the idea that an intelligent design requires and intelligent designer. Chesterton came to realize through the basic study of this world, that there was a purpose for it – a purpose for its facts and for its natural laws – and that there was a Person behind the purpose. As a story-teller himself, he realized that this life is itself a story and that there was a Great Story-Teller behind it all.

It is feared that many today who profess to be Christ’s never learn wisdom, and this through failure to attend sufficiently to God’s written Word…. How long is it since you read right through the Bible? Do you spend as much time with the Bible each day as you do even with the newspaper? What fools some of us are! And we remain fools all our lives, simply because we will not take the trouble to do what has to be done to receive the wisdom which is God’s free gift.
–J. I. Packer

I recently challenged our church family to read one chapter of the New Testament each day. If we would do that simple task, we would continue to be changed by God on a regular basis!