Grace For The Journey

  For the believer, the answer to the question of the title of today’s blog is, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ.  Yet, every moment of every day countless other “bosses” try to gain . . .

The attention of our minds,

The affection of our hearts,

And

The application of our wills.

Our minds, our hearts, and our wills will be ruled by something; there is no disputing that fact.  The question before us is: “Who – or what – will rule?”

• For some, their work is their boss. They live for career advancement and climbing the proverbial ladder of success.
• For others, achieving financial security is their boss. They live for building “bigger barns” and storing as much as they possibly can.
• For some, their boss is their painful past. They simply cannot get past the past; instead of learning from it, they live in it.
• Still others are ruled by a fantasized future. They live in a world of “waiting for their ship to come in,” always looking for the big score rather than daily progress.

I could go on, but you get the point.  When anything other than Jesus is our boss, we shrink the borders of our lives down to painfully narrow borders of survival and self-protection.  And this is no place for a believer to be living!

When Jesus is our boss,

We live for something greater than the life we are living.

When Jesus is our boss,

We live a life that truly matters, a life filled with significance, meaning, and purpose.

There are no mundane moments when we are living for the Master.  Small things become big things.  Unimportant things become important things.  Common things become uncommon things.  The Creator constructed us to live at this level of living that is greater than our level of living.

Because the One we serve is larger than life,

We are to be living for something larger than life!

You’ll remember that back in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve

Were not created to live a life of self-indulgence, self-satisfaction, and self-rule.

They were commissioned by God to live a life of transcendence,

Above and beyond themselves, and they were given the ability

To do what nothing else in creation was equipped and empowered to do.

That is what the Bible tells us in Genesis 1:26-28, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’”

God was their boss and the life they were living truly mattered.

They were to have dominion over all things. They were to be fruitful and multiply. They were to be the stewards of God’s creation and slaves to nothing.

But when they replaced God on the throne of their lives

And made themselves the boss,

They denied their own humanity

And disconnected themselves from the only One

Who could meet them in their place of deepest need.

So . . . who is the boss in your life today?  What have you been living for lately?  Remember . . .

When God is the boss our lives,

We are being shaped

– Not by the creation –

But by the One who created us: our Creator God.

This is God’s Word For Today … This Is Grace For The Journey

Rest and Rejoice in this eternal truth!

Pastor Terry

Ephesians 4:7 – “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”