1 Peter 5:8-11

Without faith we cannot please God. 

Satan wants nothing more than to destroy your faith in salvation. Even if you believe but make salvation about  your good works and not the grace given in Jesus, he limits the truth that sets you free.

Jesus Christ is our only hope. His birth, death and resurrection removed the veil that separated us from a holy God. Instead of us He sees the spotless Lamb slain for us.

We do good works out of our love for Him. God’s love for creation was so great that He wanted no one to perish. He wants all of His creation to have the choice to believe in the gift that He offers in Jesus. Grace, amazing grace. To God be all glory.

John 3:16-17 

3:16 For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him.

The cross plus nothing saves!

Here’s the deal: The ordinary is the hiding place for the holy. Put simply: God is real in small gifts and simple pleasures.

God is present in the commonplace, the mundane, the weak, the flawed, and yes, the compromised. The profane is not the antithesis of the sacred, but the bearer of it.

These are gifts to embrace, gifts to receive, gifts to give.
And yes... we are so bent on removing ourselves from the mundane, that we miss miracles. And not surprisingly, once we see it, we do our best to turn it into a project. We do not give ourselves the permission to rest in the solace that God is present…

Fully alive smack dab in the middle. This moment matters. Sabbath Moments

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry

1 Peter 5:8-11

8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 9 Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. 10 But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. 11 To Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. The New King James Version

Acts 14:22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying, “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.”

1 Corinthians 1:9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Colossians 2:5 For though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.

2 Timothy 2:10 Therefore I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

James 4:7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.