Thursday, December 22, 2016

Do You Hear What I Hear? Jesus Saves

My Utmost For His Highest
 
No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him… —John 6:44
 
“When God begins to draw me to Himself, the problem of my will comes in immediately. Will I react positively to the truth that God has revealed? Will I come to Him? […]  will I commit, placing myself completely and absolutely on God, and be willing to act solely on what He says? If I will, I will find that I am grounded on reality as certain as God’s throne.[…] Trusting in my own mental understanding becomes a hindrance to complete trust in God. I must be willing to ignore and leave my feelings behind. I must will to believe. But this can never be accomplished without my forceful, determined effort to separate myself from my old ways of looking at things. I must surrender myself completely to God.[…] it is God who draws me, and my relationship to Him in the first place is an inner, personal one, not an intellectual one.”  CHAMBERS
 
The process of salvation is a mystery.  We know from the Bible that God draws, certainly Jesus provided the sacrifice, by God’s grace our faith saves, and the Spirit seals.  But how that all works is a mystery.  A lot of people have written a lot of words trying to explain it, but the details just are not there.  When you boil it all down, what you have left in the pot is “Jesus Saves”.  We are looking at Christmas square in the face.  A reminder that God sent his Son (John 3:16) and Jesus came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10).  In our culture it is hard to remember that.  We express our love by giving each more of this world.  God expressed His love by giving us Jesus and eternal life.  I want to encourage you to remember the focus of all of this celebration is not us, it’s Him.  I would say that come Sunday morning or Saturday night, the focus of most people’s attention will be the gifts under the tree.  Our focus should be on the Gift that was hung on a tree.  “We have heard the joyful sound .. Jesus saves .. Jesus saves .. Spread the tidings all around: Jesus saves! Jesus saves!  Bear the news to every land, climb the mountains, cross the waves; Onward! ’tis our Lord’s command; Jesus saves! Jesus saves!”  Merry Christmas  ELGIN

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