Grace For The Journey

  You and I have a responsibility to pass on the exalted truths of God from generation to generation.

And that includes not only

Proclaiming His hand of mercy,

But explaining His hand of judgment.

The combination of these divine attributes provides us with a full picture of God’s eternal plan of redemption, offering important life lessons for Christian believers.  The Bible says in Joel 1:2-4,

“Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your forefathers? Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten.”

The Word of God instructs us to be students of God’s story of redemption (not a story in the sense of a myth, fable, or fairy tale; but a story based upon historical facts and demonstrations of Who God is and what He had done).  And the only way we can be students of His story is to read it, meditate on it, and come to know it.  God inspired the prophet Joel to urge parents to take the time to know God’s story and to pass it along to their children.

The locusts Joel referred to were agents of God’s divine judgment on His people for their rebellion and disobedience.  And when the destroying swarms of locusts were understood to be an instrument of redemption in the hands of God, His people would respond in repentance and return to their God.

This is the pattern throughout the Old Testament history of God and His people:

Things would go well for a while;

The people would grow complacent,

And

Turn away from God;

God would send judgment.

And

The people would repent and return to God.

So . . . how well are you at knowing and telling God’s story of redemption to those around you?

Are you spending adequate time

In His Word each day

To know it well enough to tell it?

Sadly, many in the church today neglect the rich history of God’s story of redemption in the Old Testament.  Yet, the New Testament doesn’t make sense without the Old!

It has been well said that . . .

“The Old Testament is revealed in the New,

And the New Testament is concealed in the Old.”

Both the Old and New Testaments make up one single story of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

He is the key is to see the Bible

As one single, overarching story

From beginning to end.

The Bible is not comprised of 66 disconnected books offering stories with moralistic messages to keep us in line; it is the incomparable saga of God’s redemption and His pursuing love for rebels on the run.  And God wants us to know it so well that we can share it with our children . . . so that they will know it and share it with their children. With all the “stuff” we can pass along to our kids, there is nothing more important to give them than the story of our Savior.

In telling God’s story to our children,

We are also to share

How our story intersects with it.

We can share the lessons we have learned in life from both our victories and our defeats.  And we should explain how, through it all, God has loved us with an everlasting love that would lift us out of the ashes of depravity, death, and defeat; change our hearts and our destiny, and send us back into the game of life.

Now that is a story worth telling, over and over and over again!

This is God Word … This is Grace for your 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.”