Share the Hope of Christ’s Grace with this Reader

Today is Saturday, June 21, 2008 and I need your help because a Life Ignited subscriber emailed this to me after reading last Saturday’s email devotional. I’m asking you to leave an uplifting comment at the end of this entry if you have some time because he could really use some words of encouragement. Here’s the email I received:

“I wish you were right in what you said in this email message (the June 14 devotional) but the truth is the Lord wants me to die because I have failed Him too many times. My options for staying alive are rapidly running out. He has “abandoned” me because of my shortcomings.”

Here are my thoughts and, hopefully, encouraging words:

The first person I thought of after reading this email was Mary Magdalene.

Mary was looked upon as a great sinner. Most people thought that helping her was a waste of time because sooner or later you would find her back to her old ways of prostitution (and it was usually sooner rather than later).

But Christ knew her situation and the circumstances that had shaped her life.

He could’ve extinguished every spark of hope she had but He didn’t. Not once did he say to her, “I want you to die because you’ve failed me too many times—away with you!”

What He did instead was lift her from despair and ruin every single time she came to Him.

Seven times she had heard Him rebuke the demons that gripped her heart and mind—seven times He had cast them out, but she invited them right back into her life again falling prey to their cruelty and miserable control.

Repeatedly, she had heard Him call out to God in prayer on her behalf for forgiveness, deliverance, and freedom.

When to human eyes her case looked hopeless, Christ saw in Mary capabilities for good.

He saw the better traits of her character.

Grace has invested humanity with great possibilities, and in Mary this potential was to be realized.

Through His grace she became one with God. She was brought into Divine fellowship by Jesus.

When we look at her life we see her shuddering in the sand waiting for the rocks of self-righeousness and religious hatred to kill her spirit and crush her body...but she was saved at the feet of Jesus.

We find her at His feet again with the costly alabaster box of expensive perfume…

She was at his crucified feet when He was stretched forth upon the cross dying for her, dying for us…

She was the last one to leave His tomb on the Friday night after He was buried…

...and she was the first one at His tomb on Sunday morning after His resurrection…

...and, consequently, she was the first person He spoke to after rising from death.

There she was...at the tomb...mourning, weeping the loss of the One who had been her Rock of Hope—her anchor...wondering how she’ll ever survive without Him now that He’s gone.

Then she hears a familiar voice—it’s the voice she had heard so many times before—and it says, “Mary.”

Jesus called her gently by her name and said, “I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

It was important for Mary to hear these words because if anyone had ever been made to feel that she didn’t deserve a Heavenly Father or a relationship with God it was her. What beautiful words of assurance!

Mary was the proverbial “bad penny” that kept showing up, but to God she was the Lost Coin who had been found.

The reach of grace is infinite and there’s no place you can go to get beyond it. All you can do is refuse it, which some people do, but God never rejects anyone who comes to Him.

We each may find ourselves in the book of History’s Most Hopeless Cases beside great names like Jacob, who wrestled and struggled with God but refused to let go of Him…

...or beside the adulterer and murderer David who pleaded with God to hide His face from his sins, and would later write:

“Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion..The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love...he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who love him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him,” (Psalm 103:2-13).

Or we might find ourselves beside Peter who, when, outside of the boat, took his eyes off of Christ and started sinking and had just enough time to blurt our before going under: “Save me!” and Jesus did.

Or we might find ourselves beside Paul who admitted, “I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin” and cried out “who will deliver me from this body of death!” (Romans 7:14, 24).

Our only hope no matter how hopeless we are or feel is to cast ourselves at the feet of Jesus.

1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

Remember these two things:

1. This is a promise. You’re not forgiven because you feel like you’ve been forgiven. You’re forgiven the minute you ask. This transaction isn’t based on your performance it’s based upon God’s promise. Which means you’re forgiven even when you don’t feel forgiven. This is a transaction of grace on God’s part and faith on your part.

So tell yourself often: “I’m forgiven. I’m forgiven. I’m forgiven!”

2. How often will Christ forgive you? As many times as you need. He died once and for all so that He can forgive you as many times you need. The only sin that Jesus can’t forgive is the one you don’t ask Him to forgive.

He’s in the business of redeeming and restoring people:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him,” (John 3:16, 17, NIV).

Jesus knows the circumstances of every soul—He knows what you’re going through and why you do or don’t do what you do or don’t do.

You might think, “I’m sinful, very sinful” and you might very well be, but the worse you are, the more you need grace; Jesus never rejects the sincere heart that comes to Him for life, hope, freedom and peace.

He freely pardons and restores everyone who comes to Him for forgiveness and restoration. For Him to kick you away because you’ve failed Him too many times would mean that He died for nothing because when He died, He died for you…

...so that you might have life. So stop dying because Jesus has already died so that you don’t have to! Get it?

Know today that you’re forgiven, by faith claim it, and get busy living now.

Dedicated to Your Spiritual Freedom,

Lynell

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