Thursday 28 Jun 2012

Thursday Reading: Ephesians 2:4-7

Key Verse: Ephesians 2:5
5  Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)

Devotion:
Have you ever tried to sit down and compare your life when you were deep in sin with your life when you followed Christ? Did your life change or are you still plodding along the same old path? When I look back at the time when I first got to recognise all that Christ had done for me I can see that I made an effort to change things in my life; but all too quickly I gave in to many things that I had done previously just so that I could continue to do things I liked or continue to hang out with others. The fact that I could now see that we were doing wrong was the part that I struggled with in the beginning.

It did take quite a long while before I began to realise that even though I was the same person with the same bad habits and the same things wrong, I did not have to continue giving in to those habits nor did I have to continue doing all those things that I now knew were wrong. Christ had given me the escape route, had shown me the way, had encouraged me to go there and waited ever so patiently for me to see those facts. His grace and mercy had already covered my habits and ways, but my own mind had not realised that. Once I did eventually get to see that love as it was intended to be, my life began to change as my spirit basked in the peace that only He could give me.

We may look at all that Christ has done and begin to realise all that He has achieved by going to the cross, but we will not really see the enormity of what He has accomplished until we are with Him in heaven for all eternity. We may look back at a long life with Christ or we may be looking at a few days with Him; nothing in what we see now will really prepare us for the eternity we shall enjoy with Him because we are still bound by time. Who knows whether we will realise that as soon as we are with Him or whether it will slowly dawn on us after being with Him for an age – but we can be sure that we will get to see just how amazing His love for us is.

We may look at a long road a think that it will never end, but as we drive along it we see it changing and eventually we get to reach the other end. Everything we currently do always has an end whether we see that end approaching from a far distance or whether we hit the end unexpectedly, we will see the end. Life eternal will never end. Instead we shall continue to grow and live in Gods boundless grace and mercy!

Points to Ponder:
How long would you wait for something?

Are you making God wait?