GraceCreates

By Jon Walker

So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have. I think it is right to refresh your memory… 2 Peter 1:12 (NIV)

At one point in my Jesus-life, I sensed God stretching my faith. Specifically, he told me to stop receiving a regular paycheck and started living, as we often say, “on faith.”

Truth says we all live on some form of faith, even if misguided. Early on God showed me we think we’re guaranteed a paycheck from our employer for many years to come, but that promise is based on assumptions and we really live in faith that the paycheck will be there each week.

So, with a radiant certainty that God would provide because he told me he would, I did what he said and I started looking for his provision — even keeping a log of every way God took care of us, and the list grew to be joyfully impressive. God was moving me from a tentative “I hope it will happen” to a certain, “I know this will happen.”

Yet, within a few months I was literally staggered with doubt. I’d lost focus, or at least my focus on God, and I started scrambling for ways to generate income. I started believing, again, that it was my responsibility to make things happen because, I thought, God may or may not come through.

You, my faithful friend, may be much further along than I am in learning to trust God; then again, you may have experienced exactly what I’m describing.

Could it be that I forgot what I believed? C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, says you never talk a man out of his faith – you can’t debate him out of his beliefs – but it is possible he’ll slowly, imperceptibly at first, forget what he believes.

Peter, the water-walker, says stay established in the Truth of God’s work in your life, keeping your memories fresh.

If you’d like to receive these devotionals regularly, you can sign-up at www.gracecreates.com/subscribe/. Jon Walker writes from www.gracecreates.com. He is a Zondervan author, and the former writer/editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-Line Devotionals. This devotional is copyrighted 2008 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.

By Jon Walker

As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. 2 Corinthians 6:1 (NIV)

There are days I want to pack it all in and quit this Jesus-thing. Quite honestly, in some ways life was much easier before the Holy Spirit began his work in me. I mean, back before, I could simply lie to get out of a difficult situation, I could make decision without the weight of or I could pretend my little world was the world.

The problem, though, is — it’s not a Jesus-thing. It’s a Jesus-life, and quitting is not an option he who began this good work in me isn’t going to bail on me, ever.

So, what do you do when you want to quit? First, you can find comfort in knowing you’re in good company:

• Jonah didn’t just quit; he ran (and that got him an all-expenses paid sea cruise in the belly of a whale!).
• Jeremiah tried to quit twice, and God said, in essence, “Look, you asked for this anointing. You asked to do significant things for me. Did you think I wouldn’t take you seriously?’

God gives us grace sufficient for our needs each day, and He gives us that grace every day. In 2 Corinthians 6:1, Paul, in effect, says, don’t waste the grace God has given you. He says don’t receive God’s grace “in vain” – rejecting it in order to nurture frustrations and disappointments.

In The Message, Eugene Peterson paraphrases the Corinthian passage by saying we’re to stay at our posts, alert and unswerving, because “our work as God’s servants gets validated — or not — in the details” of our lives: “People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly … in hard times, tough times, bad times ….” (2 Corinthians 6:4, MSG)

In other words, the very power of God – the very strength we need, the very testimony we were meant to model – emerges in troubles, hardships, and distresses (2 Cor. 6:4).

Let’s pray together that we stay at our posts in these uncertain times and not waste the grace God has given us.

If you’d like to receive these devotionals regularly, you can sign-up at www.gracecreates.com/subscribe/. Jon Walker writes from www.gracecreates.com. He is a Zondervan author, and the former writer/editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-Line Devotionals. This devotional is copyrighted 2008 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.

By Jon Walker

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 2 Corinthians 5:16 (NIV)

When I was growing up, I considered my older brother the embodiment of cool. Cole was funny, handsome, athletic, and popular. He married the homecoming queen and then became an Air Force pilot, where he exhibited courage and grace at war in Vietnam.

He’d quite literally been all around the world, and he always returned with fascinating stories about the places he’d been and the people he’d met.

Because I grew up feeling like an outsider, I often wished I could be like my brother, who seemed accepted and liked by just about everyone. One summer, while I was in college, I stayed a few weeks with my brother, and while we were at a restaurant with his many pilot friends and their wives, Cole said, “I think Jon would fit in well with our group.”

Those words count among the most meaningful every said to me. My cool brother was telling me I was accepted, and his cool friends agreed with him.

All of us have felt the sting of rejection. Perhaps you were the last one picked on the ball field, or maybe one of your parents let you know you’d never “measure up.”

Perhaps you struggled through an unrequited love, or maybe the company you’ve poured your life into for the last 17 years let you go with all the flourish and finesse of a guillotine.

The Good News is Jesus accepts “rejects.” We can see throughout the dispatches of the New Testament that Jesus didn’t care who you were or where you’d been. He accepted thieves, prostitutes, sleazy bill collectors, lepers, and the poor.

And, yes, my dear brothers and sisters, even now he accepts nerds, geeks, and freaks, people with zits, split ends, flat chests, or beer bellies. He accepts people who don’t have any friends, and he accepts those who have an abundance of friends. He accepts people who’ve made mistakes and those who will never admit they make mistakes.

Our lesson from Jesus is that he saw every person as an individual – valuable, important, a being created by God. Jesus looks past the surface, deep into our very souls, and yet he still loves us and accepts us.  Your bad behavior is temporary, and through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, it will quickly change to good.

If you’d like to receive these devotionals regularly, you can sign-up at www.gracecreates.com/subscribe/. Jon Walker writes from www.gracecreates.com. He is a Zondervan author, and the former writer/editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-Line Devotionals. This devotional is copyrighted 2008 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.

By Jon Walker

Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. 2 Corinthians 3:5 (NIV)

My buddy Paul Carlisle says you have to confess ‘I can’t’ before you can agree that God can.

The danger is — if we rush past ‘I can’t,’ we’ll never fully embrace the notion that only God can.

We’ll just keep thinking there’s still some ability (sufficiency) in us. We’ll continue to believe, wrongly, that we can do some things, perhaps all things, apart from God. We’ll lock into a mythology that, if we keep all the rules — or even just a few of the rules — we’ve somehow made ourselves into good, little Christians.

But these rules we keep and uplift are merely a “ministry of condemnation” (2 Corinthians 3:9) designed to get us to finally admit ‘I CAN’T and only GOD CAN.’

They’re part of the Jesus-Yoke, meant to show us we’re not as strong as we think we are, to show us there is a limit to how well we can carry out the rules apart from God.

Being Spirit-led means you recognize that the rules written on stone are outside us and, therefore, inferior to God’s full plan – which is to write the new rules on our hearts with His very own hand.

He’s placed His Spirit inside us in order to change us from the inside out. My fear is that you and I sometimes hinder the handwriting of God because we’re so busy pursuing the rules that we stop pursuing the God who created the rules.

If you’d like to receive these devotionals regularly, you can sign-up at www.gracecreates.com/subscribe/. Jon Walker writes from www.gracecreates.com. He is a Zondervan author, and the former writer/editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-Line Devotionals. This devotional is copyrighted 2008 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.