Growing in Grace

Character is what we truly are, compared with what we seem to be. You can appear to be generous even when your heart is that of a skinflint. Character is different from piety. By piety, I mean a personal relationship with God. By character, I mean the quality of the person . Even so, they are certainly inseparable; God is quite interested in character, and there is something wrong if a pious person does not have a good moral character. . . When considering what makes for good moral character, the word virtue comes to mind. The ancient Greeks used the word to mean "excellence." I would like to consider the classic definition of virtue as part of our description of character. In the Greek catalog, there were four cardinal virtues - four things that you should never leave home without. The first is discernment . Unless you are able to discern what is really going on in a situation, what people are feeling, and what is important, you will always make wrong decisions . My t

Suppose your father grants you a piece of land. Free. You can farm it and make a living. There is only one condition. You first have to get the rocks out. And so you work. Four hours and days you work. With time, you see the task is too great. There's just no way you can do it. You give up. Then your father says you've done enough. "I have another plot of land for you," he explains. "This time the stones are gone." "Who removed them?" "I did." You go to the acreage and find his promise to be true. The stones are gone, and you are left to farm. And so you sow in gratitude. Nice story Max, but what does this have to do with Leviticus? The book of Leviticus is the deed to the farm. A rocky farm given by God to his children. . . laden with stones. Heavied with tasks. Loaded with rocky rules and regulations. Three months after their deliverance, the children of Israel spent a year at the base of mt. Sinai. They were nomadic p

The words of wise men are like goads, and masters of these collections are like well-driven nails. Ecclesiastes 12:11 NASB Wisdom, which I define as skill in everyday living, is one of the greatest needs of every generation. And the writer of Ecclesiastes 12 shares about the words of a wise man being like "well-driven nails" - words that bring perspective, security and life. Nail Number One: Remember God Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning author and Russian dissident during the Soviet era, said, "I have spent fifty years working on the history of the Russian Revolution. In the process, I have collected hundreds of personal testimonies, read hundreds of books and contributed eight volumes of my own. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 600 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God. " These powerful word

And my God will meet all of your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19 Sometimes I feel like we're in a boat that has had large waves crash over it. The boat fills up and we start to sink; so we start bailing. Pretty soon, the water level drops and we are afloat once again; only to have another series of waves crash over us. And so we begin bailing again. We get weary. And if we look at how much water we still have left to bail or see the waves coming toward us, we grow faint of heart. It can seem hopeless and we wonder how we'll ever keep afloat. But every so often, a wave will miss us or we'll notice the water level seemed to drop almost before our eyes. And this is when we see the Lord with us in the boat. He is right there helping us through our storms. And when we keep our eyes focused on Him, then the situation doesn't seem so overwhelming. He gives us the strength to carry on. And when we are tired, He takes over th

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life - to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son - how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.' We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God's mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exception and God means what He says. -C.S. Lewis

'What are we to make of Christ?' There is no question of what we can make of Him, it is entirely a question of what he intends to make of us. You must accept or reject the story. The things He says are very different from what any other teacher has said. Others say, 'This is the truth about the Universe. This is the way you ought to go', but He says, 'I am the Truth, and the Way, and the Life.' He says, 'No man can reach absolute reality, except through Me. Try to retain your own life and you will be inevitably ruined. Give yourself away and you will be saved.' He says, 'If you are ashamed of Me, if, when you hear this call, you turn the other way, I also will look the other way when I come again as God without disguise. If anything whatever is keeping you from God and from Me, whatever it is, throw it away. If it is your eye, pull it out. If it is your hand, cut it off. If you put yourself first you will be last. Come to Me everyone who is carryin

When any man comes into the presence of God he will find, whether he wishes it or not, that all those things which seemed to make him so different from the men of other times, or even from his earlier self, have fallen off him. He is back where he always was, where every man always is. . . No possible complexity which we can give to our picture of the universe can hide us from God: there is no copse, no forest, no jungle thick enough to provide cover. . . In the twinkling of an eye, in a time too small to be measured, and in any place, all that seems to divide us from God can flee away, vanish, leaving us naked before Him, like the first man, like the only man, as if nothing but He and I existed. And since that contact cannot be avoided for long and since it means either bliss or horror, the business of life is to learn to like it. That is the first and greatest commandment. -C.S. Lewis

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. -Romans 3:23-24 So many are determined to reach heaven on their own terms, not God's. They think Jesus Christ might be the way for us, but not for them. "The real need of people is to acknowledge their need for the one true God, to admit their sinfulness and to experience by faith His love and forgiveness. If we don't understand our own sinfulness and the judgment and penalty it demands, then there seems to be no need for the Savior." "Jesus Christ died for our sins and was raised so that, if we humble ourselves and receive Him as our Lord and Savior, we can be forgiven - despite any mess that we've made of our lives." Excerpted from " Moments With You " by Dennis and Barbara Rainey

They devoted themselves to the apostle's teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. -Acts 2:42 I'm very grateful for our church. Dennis Rainey writes, "I hope you're already part of a church family - not as a spectator but as a committed, involved participant in a community of followers of Jesus Christ. But if you're not, here are five things you should look for as you consider establishing yourself in a church. If you're already an active member and any of these things are lacking in your congregation, consider what you can do and how you can be praying for these characteristics to blossom there:" 1. Is it anchored in Scripture?  Is the Bible clearly taught as the authoritative Word of God? Is the Gospel of Jesus Christ the anchor, motivating you to live and proclaim the transforming grace of God in every area of your life? 2. Does it have a sense of community? Is there a connectedness between people when the service is ove