The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
“Achieve Or Receive”
Part 2 - Birth and Life
Living the Christian life requires the same gift of grace in the Lord Jesus Christ that began our Christian life. We must receive in order to achieve.
“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him… Let us have grace, that we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear” (Colossians 2:6; Hebrews 12:28).
We entered into relationship with God through the reception of the freest gift ever given, purchased by the highest cost ever remitted. We experience relationship with Him by the same freely granted favor. The former speaks of birth, namely spiritual conception and entrance into life, the indwelling life of Christ Himself. The latter speaks of how we think, believe, speak, act, and relate to God and people through the dynamic and active presence of the Holy Spirit. Both speak of a perfectly faithful God who fulfills His promise of life in all who believe, whether in our beginning or our continuing. “Rooted and built up in Him” (Colossians 2:7).
God does not call His people to make bricks without straw. Whatever He would have us do this day of thought, belief, word, deed, or relating to Himself or others, “exceeding, great and precious promises” of grace await our determination to avail ourselves of the gift no less freely bestowed than was our new birth. “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?” (II Peter 1:4; Romans 8:32). Indeed, consider that martyr of the Lord Jesus who awaited his execution through a long night in a dark and dank cell. He would give his life for his Lord when the sun arose. Before that, he would seek his Lord’s grace, that his death might honor Him, and that God would be the “very present help in trouble” He promises to be (Psalm 46:1). Our brother found his Savior perfectly faithful amid the flame, at the sword, or by whatever means the world and its devil found to serve as the means for the Lord Jesus to reveal the same grace in His servant’s death He imparted in the moment of His servant's spiritual birth. Indeed, if we could ask our brother of the faithfulness that resulted in his death for the Lord, he would instantly respond, “Oh yes, He was so very faithful in the hour of my passage from the world! Never could I have made the sacrifice, save in the light and glory of His sacrifice that made all grace available, possible, and actual in my life, and yes, in my death. All glory - all glory! - to the name of the Lord Jesus alone.”
Whatever the mode or measure of the sacrificial life to which our Heavenly Father calls us in this day, He has provided abundantly adequate straw for the bricks. “His divine power that given unto us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue” (II Peter 1:3). We live and die far more from Him than for Him. Our sacrifices are real. They hurt and they cost us. Moreover, our Father regards them with affirmation and compassion, and will one day reward us for them. However, in that day, we will reverently, respectfully, and gratefully cast any crowns we receive at the nail-pierced feet of the only hope we ever had for salvation and the life that bore “the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:11). Let us then have grace indeed, in this moment, in this day, and in this heart of ours wherein the Spirit of the Lord Jesus lives to supply His gift for living, as He did for our birthing.
“And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.”
(II Corinthians 9:8)
“But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”
(I Corinthians 15:10)
Weekly Memory Verse
And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.
(II Corinthians 9:8)
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