Praise the Lord for the way
He has redeemed, rescued, and restored us. We are part of His family. It is a
great blessing to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and to belong to His body,
the church. I have believed in the Lord Jesus from the early years of my life.
I have belonged to His body, the church, all these years. I have been blessed
beyond belief.
I read about a Vietnamese
man who set sail for Catalina. His mainsail broke, and he was adrift at sea for
many weeks. He couldn't save himself. No matter how good a sailor he was, he
was lost at sea until, ultimately, he was spotted and rescued by sailors of an
U.S. Navy vessel. He didn't earn his salvation. It was freely given. He, in
fact, didn't have enough money to buy an air ticket home. The sailors took up
an offering on his behalf. This is a small picture of what it is to be rescued
by God's grace.
I have known several young
families who have adopted children. One couple, whom I married 17 years ago and
now live in North Carolina, love Jesus and serve Him joyfully. They
have adopted a beautiful girl from abroad. This beautiful child was adopted
from abroad by these two parents, not blood related, who welcome that child
into their home, raising her as their own daughter. That's the New Testament
analogy for what it is to be rescued by Jesus, to be adopted into the family of
God, not based on our works or our own merit, or even our own blood ties, but
God's initiative.
A man was visiting some of
the beautiful old churches in Germany when, at one church, he was intrigued by
the carved figure of a lamb at a point near the top of the steeple. He learned
that when the church was being built, one of the craftsmen fell from the
scaffolding. As the other workers rushed to find him, fully expecting he had
died from the terrible fall, they were shocked to find him shaken up, but
alive! As he was falling, a flock of sheep was passing by and he landed on top
of a lamb. Though the lamb was killed, it also broke the man's fall, and he was
saved. In recognition of that amazing event, the other
craftsmen carved the lamb and placed it on the tower at the exact spot from
which the man had fallen. It was a reminder of the time a man was saved by a
lamb.
If we are in Christ, then
we too have been saved by the Lamb. God sent His only Son to break our fall, to
absorb the punishment for sin that was rightly ours, and to give us new life.
That's grace. That's God's unmerited favor.
Paul declared, "I have been
crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I
live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself for me". (Galatians
2:20)
In Christ,
Brown
No comments:
Post a Comment