For the honor of His name (4)

Don't you love this topic? So far we've seen in this blog series that God brings honor to His own name by renewing our strength, guiding us along the right path, forgiving our sins, and rescuing us from danger.

Our response therefore should be thankfulness for His love and compassion, readiness to share our testimony, willingness to receive His forgiveness and to forgive others, and trusting Him to lead us to safety!

Let's take a look at Isaiah 48:9. When we read that scripture in context we notice that God is kind of mad at His people because they were disobedient, stubborn, unfaithful and what more. And then He says: Yet for my own sake and for the honor of my name, I will hold back my anger and not wipe you out.

Well, isn't that interesting? God honors His own name by being patient and by extending grace to the Israelites. 👉He is true to His nature as a good, good Father. Of course, we see the same thing in the New Testament... for God does not change, He is patient and He does not want anyone to perish.

Isn't it fair to say that when we extend grace to someone, when we hold back anger, and when we are patient, we bring honor to His name as well?

Give me an O

In my Bible Alphabet Blog Series O stands for Overflow.

Oh (O) how I love that word in its Biblical context. It stands for an abundant and abounding outpouring, starting with Gods love and grace towards mankind. If the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! (Romans 5:15).

Overflow stands for the blessings the Lord will bring when we honor Him by giving joyfully and generously. Proverbs 3:9-10 says: Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.

And yes, it stands for the sheer joy that we can experience when we are in Gods will, living by His Word. Psalm 119:171, May my lips overflow with praise, for you teach me your decrees. God is a God of healthy overflow, He always gives more than enough, whatever it is we need. And because He is so good and His love is so abundant, we can spill it all around us :)

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. (1 Thessalonians 3:12).

Fruit of the Spirit (7)

Personally I find it useful and refreshing to take a step by step look at the fruit the Holy Spirit wants to produce in our lives. I hope you are enjoying it as well, as we are beginning to see that we cannot force these things to grow in our lives and they cannot be learned.

It is super natural character of God Himself which will grow in us when we give room, when we yield our will to His.

What the Holy Spirit wants to produce in us, is truly beautiful: The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithful-ness,gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). Today I want to stop and think about goodness.

Goodness, that's an interesting one... We probably all know good people and maybe they do not even believe in God. Well, yeah, some people are simply more friendlier and more generous than others. Doing good is something we can learn from our parents, or in school, or from some kind of philosophical book. Is that the goodness the Bible talks about in this context? No, that is not the kind of goodness (friendliness, generosity, goodwill, grace, honesty, integrity, kindness, mercy, righteousness, beneficence, honor, humaneness, kindheartedness) when talking about the fruit of the Spirit.

The divine fruit 'goodness' goes much, much further than a positive human characteristic. We are talking about a goodness as mentioned in Luke 6:35 (GNT), Love your enemies and do good to them; lend and expect nothing back. You will then have a great reward, and you will be children of the Most High God. For he is good to the ungrateful and the wicked.

Well, Jesus explains it in a way that leaves no discussion, don't you think? Doing good to our enemies. And then that last part, a real eye-opener... God is good to the ungrateful and wicked. Ouch, is that really true? I have never heard someone preach on that one...

Being good to ungrateful people... when we find ourselves doing that, we can be sure His character is being formed in us :)

Growing in grace (3)

In the previous post I wrote about God's grace not being a one-time moment of truth, but an ongoing experience in our lives. We need to continually live and grow in grace, the apostle Paul understood that and wrote about it extensively. So, let's go back to Chapter 6 of Grace of Giving:

Paul is gentle in his attitude towards the Corinthians; maybe he knew giving was a delicate subject. In 2 Corinthians 8:8 (NIV) he says, I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. Paul speaks the language of the Spirit, especially concerning God’s law. He no longer barks God’s commandments at his listeners: do this, don’t do that, and shut up. No, he explains the new way of obeying God to them. It is no longer about obeying a set of rules; it is all about fulfilling them in a manner of love! Romans 7:6 sums up Paul’s new way of looking at things, No longer do we serve in the old way of a written law, but in the new way of the Spirit. 

No longer is he trying to tell people what to do (remember that once he was a zealous Jew, a Pharisee, committed to the law), no longer is he driven by the outward signs of religion. Instead of stuffing the Ten Commandments down people’s throats, he urges people to change their minds, to obey God from the inside out, and to be sincere in their love for God and others. He measures the level of their giving with the sincerity of their love. 

Paul experienced God’s grace firsthand; he writes about it all the time. He saw God’s grace in many aspects of life, not just in giving. Grace, God’s free and unmerited favor, can be found throughout the history of mankind. The Bible talks about the spirit of grace, the message of grace, the grace of God, the throne of grace, and so on. 

You may wonder how to actually live in that grace and how to benefit from it. How do you know if you have received God’s grace? Listen, It is by God’s grace that you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:5)  God poured out his grace on mankind—on you and me. If it weren’t for his grace, we wouldn’t be here! God has showed us favor, even in times when we rebelled against him when we were still sinners. God poured out his grace on mankind when he gave up his Son as a sacrifice for our wrongdoing. Grace is invisible, yet it is evident in everything God has done for us! Second Timothy 2:1 tells us that grace is ours. As for you, my son, be strong through the grace that is ours in union with Christ Jesus. 

We can be strong in that grace which is ours in our union with Jesus!