By Lisa Thayer
I love how
Paul begins this chapter with all his credentials. He lists his upbringing, his nationality, his
family background, inheritance, orthodoxy, activity and morality. Paul was someone others looked up to. However, his conversion (Acts 9) was not
based on what he had done, but on God’s grace.
Even the most impressive credentials fall short of God’s holy standard. No one can add anything to Christ’s offer of
salvation by grace through faith. What a
believer does is a result of faith, not a prerequisite of faith.
Last week I
shared with you about my ‘rut season.’
While in my rut, I was reflecting on things from the past and it
challenged me to become better. I have
longed for unity for a long time. Only
the unity I was desiring was for others to be unified with me. Pride was leading me for a long time and I
had some expectations of other people and it only left me disappointed.
But, God is
so generous and He showed me that my desire for unity was His! To be unified with Him. I’ll tell you that since realizing this
truth, I just want to share this grace with anyone. Just like Paul, everything else is just
garbage. My possessions, my education,
my home, my job. “I want to know Christ – yes, to know the power of his resurrection and
participation in his sufferings, because like him in his death, and so somehow
attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”
(v. 10-11)
God wants us
to embrace the life He has prepared for us, not resist it, not just tolerate
it, not just endure it. Embrace it!
How can we
embrace this life? By relinquishing our
own lives to Him. I certainly had
different ideas for how things would work out.
I’ve thought that each of my children would be a bit different. I thought that my home life would be
different as well as my vocation. We
have to practice, or better yet, exercise our faith every day, by reaching
forward – not behind – by reaching forward and walking in faith.
So many
people are not much different from year to year. They stay entrapped by sin, they remain in
bondage, more guilty and more fearful.
But I can testify that God’s grace is enough! I may have been caught off guard by the
changes in my life, but God’s grace is enough.
Nothing that has happened in this season of my rut has caught God off
guard. He’s even known about how painful
it has been. But you cannot go anywhere
without God’s goodness and mercy and grace following you everywhere you
go. I have found that anything that
causes me to need the Lord, anything that presses me closer to His heart, is a
blessing. Anything that makes us more
conformed to the image of Jesus is a blessing.
And if Jesus learned obedience through the things which He suffered, do
you think we can become like Jesus – become obedient servants and children of
the Lord – without suffering?!?
There are no shortcuts as we embrace the cross. We may have to endure the fire, but Christ will be there with us and He will bring us out without a hair being singed. He will deliver us in His way and His time.
