GraceCreates

By Jon Walker

Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. Romans 15:7 (NIV)

Jesus accepts us, despite our messy lives, impure motives, and irritating attitudes (Ephesians 1:6). His acceptance of us doesn’t condone any sin, rather it recognizes we are God’s workmanship, each of us a uniquely shaped child of God created for a specific purpose (Ephesians 2:10).

One of the ways we reflect God’s love is to accept each other just as Jesus accepts us: this brings glory to God (Romans 5:7).

Jesus was not afraid to be friends with non-believers (Luke 19:7), looking past the sin in their lives to see who God created them to be. He understood accepting the person is not the same thing as accepting their sins. As the old saying goes, “Love the sinner, not the sin.”

Jesus was ridiculed for being a friend to sinners, but he believed the kingdom of heaven was available to any that would turn to him.

When Jesus called Matthew to be a disciple (Matthew 9), the tax collector got a bunch of his tax-collecting friends together for a large banquet with Jesus (Luke 5:30).

Some religious leaders approached Jesus’ disciples to ask why their Master was associating with people who they judged should be outcast – people who should not be accepted. Jesus responded to their inquiry by saying, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Luke 5:31 NIV).

Like a doctor accepts a patient regardless of the disease, Jesus accepts us—he loves us—in our present condition, and like a doctor, his intent is to heal us of our sin.

Don’t we all want that from Jesus?

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

“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11 (NLT)

Why, God, do you allow bad things to happen?

Over the years, as I’ve shouted this question to God, grappling to understand the explosion of evil in the lives of good people, I’ve encountered what seemed to be an unsettling silence from God.

I know that his Word tells us evil exists in this world because of sin, and that the fists of the Evil One are indiscriminate, hammering the innocent along with the guilty. Truth also says the Evil One will take direct aim at us as we walk more closely with God.

When we’re in the middle of the mess, we often quote Jeremiah 29:11 (NLT): “For I know the plans I have for you . . . They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

God is telling us that we may misunderstand his plans for us, we may incorrectly perceive his plans as evil, but those plans are the very thing that will give us, literally, “a hopeful future.”

If you keep reading in Jeremiah, God says he’s working in our lives to help us seek his face. To echo Eugene Peterson, from his commentary of Jeremiah, just when we think we’re being pushed to the very edge of our existence, we realize we’re being pressed to the very center of God.

God is pushing us toward a hopeful future, one where we’re healed, where our burdens and mistakes are lifted from our shoulders, where we walk in the light of God’s cleansing grace.

Ask God to help you develop a “hopeful future” faith, a faith that believes things may look bad, but God is working it for good. Tell God, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).

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

I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:13 (NIV)

We’re not as strong as we think we are, but God is stronger than we think.

You become strong through God’s strength. His strength enters your life, delivered by the Holy Spirit—Jesus within—and the more dependent you are on God, the stronger in him you become. In our weakness, he is strong (2 Corinthians 12:10).

“I can do everything . . .” doesn’t mean, ‘Now that I’m a believer, I’m strong enough to do everything and anything for God.” Your own testimony can attest to the fears and failures related to such thinking.

The strength of “I can do everything . . .” comes through God, who gives you the strength you need for each day. Your ability to “do everything” is wholly dependent upon him because your strength is dependent upon him. It’s not a strength you work up to by pumping iron with emotional or mental barbells.

Strength comes from submission. The thing you do that may require the greatest strength is to submit yourself completely to God! But God is “working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him” (Philippians 2:13 NLT).

Strength is linked to faith. You believe in faith that God is giving you his strength; and so, in faith you can act in confidence, knowing the strength is there: “But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength” (2 Timothy 4:17 NIV).

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

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. John 5:8–9 (NIV)

For thirty-eight years the man was paralyzed in a sickly cycle of passive dependency, coping to make it to the end of each day, longing for something else.

It’s the kind of circular survival thinking that traps us in a death-like state where we’re ruled by our fears and our stress, far removed from the abundant life Jesus promised.

Then Jesus said, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”

He gave the man an option: “You can get up and walk, step into faith and leave behind your fear. God is strong, and he wants you strong.”

Like our own steps of faith, the first step was surely the hardest for the man. He had thirty-eight years of experience telling him his legs would not support a walk; he had no experience in trusting this man named Jesus.

It took courage, energy and pain to take the first step, but then, he had one step of experience telling him Jesus might be right; two steps telling him Jesus could be right; three steps telling him Jesus must be right; four steps telling him Jesus is absolutely right.

Jesus didn’t enslave the man; he liberated him, empowering him with choice and independence from his fears.

Paralyzed in confusion and fear, the questions remain:

• Do I want to be healed?
• Will I do whatever God says to be healed?
• Will I pick up my mat and walk, making godly choices?
• Will I step into faith and away from my fear?
   
  Father, I want to be healed. Help me in my unbelief. Be my strength and my boldness. Amen.

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.