Grace For The Journey

  God must really like gardens, because they find great importance in His sacred Word.  On the night He was betrayed, Jesus agonized over His coming death, to the point of sweating drops of blood, in the Garden of Gethsemane.  You will, of course, remember that it all got started for the human family in the Garden of Eden, where our first two parents were placed to care for and have dominion over their new home.

The Bible says in Genesis 2:15,22, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it . . . Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.”

The paradise of the Garden of Eden was man’s first home.  But that quickly changed when Adam and Eve turned toward the self and away from God.  But God did not leave them to wallow in their dreadful rebellion.  He pursued them and promised to send His Savior to save them from their sins.  And in His grand salvation project, God has promised something very special for all His people:

The Bible says in Isaiah 58:11, “The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and strengthen your bones; you shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”

Did you notice the last portion of that verse?  God says, “You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail?”

Here is a garden better

Than the Garden of Eden!

Here is a “Gospel-Garden,”

Where the water never runs dry.

In other words, God will forever be on the throne of our lives; sin and death will be no more.  To be like a well-watered garden is to be full of the life that can only come from the truths of the Gospel.  We are liberated to live lives of freedom, joy, and faithfulness to Jesus, because we live under the banner of His finished work.

The Bible says in John 7:37-39, “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.  He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.  But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing I Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.””

To be a well-watered garden is to be saturated with the super-abundant power, life and blessings that flow freely from the Spirit of God.  And they will flow forever . . .

• The blessing of total forgiveness
• The blessing of unconditional love
• The blessing of unbroken fellowship with God
• The blessing of complete approval
• The blessing of unimaginable joy
• The blessing of unmerited favor
• The blessing of unending life

Jesus is the caretaker of God’s Gospel-Gardner and we will be wonderfully taken care of in His Gospel-garden.  Nothing can ever come between us (Romans 8:38-39).  Our sins cannot separate us from the caretaker or the Gospel-garden.  Neither Satan nor his demons can separate us from the caretaker or the Gospel-garden.  Not even death can separate us from the caretaker and the Gospel-garden.

God has promised to complete the good work He has begun in us (Philippians 1:6), and what He has promised He will do.  How?  Through what He promised in Isaiah 14:27, “For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart it?  His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?”

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.”