The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"By Experience"
"I have learned by experience that the Lord hath blessed me for thy sake" said Laban to Jacob, the heir of God's promise (Genesis 30:27).
Born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ live in an eternal blessedness based far more for the sake of Another.
"He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32).
On our best day of faith and faithfulness, God's blessing nevertheless flows to us through the person, work, and merits of the Lord Jesus. On our worst day, our Father also administers His grace and mercy through the same mediation of Christ. This does not suggest that our response to God does not matter, or that He does not work according to how well or poorly we walk with Him. It does mean, however, that the Lord Jesus serves as the primary basis of our Heavenly Father's relationship to us, His provision for us, and His working to fulfill in us "the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Ephesians 3:11).
How truly we can say to our Savior, ""I have learned by experience that the Lord hath blessed me for Thy sake." How much such experience of grace in times both faithful and unfaithful leads to a greater love for Him, and devotion to Him. How rightly we can consider the next blessing of breath as a gift of God to us that could not have entered our lungs were the Lord Jesus not who He is for us. Without His sacrificial death, His wondrous resurrection, and His saving grace freely given to us when we believed, God would rightly and righteously have had to leave us in our sins and their terrible consequences throughout time and eternity. Instead, through Christ, God's undeserved favor flows in our hearts and lives. We indeed learn this "by experience" as we walk with God, and we indeed discover how worthy He is of our utmost response of love. "We love Him because He first loved us" (I John 4:19).
That given so freely to us comes by way of a cost beyond all measure. "The love of Christ passeth knowledge" (Ephesians 3:19). No gift of God could come our way without that price having been paid by the only One who could pay it. We do well to remember this in our faithful times. Proper humbling and overwhelmed appreciation will result. In times of unfaithfulness, proper repentance and powerful restoration will raise us up to walk in renewed faithfulness. Most of all, a genuine love will grow in us for the Lord Jesus, who made a way for us to say both now and forever, "I have learned by experience that the Lord hath blessed me for Thy sake."
"He hath made us accepted in the Beloved."
(Ephesians 1:6)
Weekly Memory Verse
In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
(I Thessalonians 5:18).
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