10th February 2025

I am tackling those cupboards during these dark dreary winter days. Giving them a clean, getting rid of clutter that speaks for want of a new life, just not here. I have a cupboard of perfectly usable coffee cups, well maybe two, but they have fallen out of use for lack of love. Do you find you have the same thing happening? Things that no longer give you a thrill, or joy, things you are better without, but they just sit there crying out for someone to do something about it. Those cups are going to get a hole drilled in the bottom and get planted next spring, made new, for a new purpose. The word ‘new’ was my focus word last year, and I am not sure that I am done with it yet.

If we are in Christ, if we belong to him, it is a wonderful and amazing thing. It is not a stagnant thing, we are in a constant renewal process. Sometimes this process can be a little daunting, scary, and downright uncomfortable, but the result is a peaceful calm knowing that it is done, and for the better. It is hard for me to take that first step at times; I usually need God to give me that little nudge on the back. Often, I have heard those words of 2 Corinthians 12:9: ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ God does not ask us to do things that he has not given or will give, us the means to do. It is God’s power, God’s work not my own within me. Let me say that that is a good thing.

Why is God making those changes within us? He tells us in Titus 3:4 that he is making changes because of his kindness and love for us. What better motive is there?

God has a grand purpose in mind for us. He wishes us to be his heirs, his adopted children, dearly loved and cared for by him forever. As God is the creator of all things, we have always been his, but now we are being made new into the image of God that he had purposed for us from the beginning. And we are shown by this process that we will always be his. No one can take us away from his love; not even Satan, whom I call the Predator, and not even death, ‘indeed nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8:39 NLT).

Local congregation:
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Word of Life contact:
wordoflife@gracecom.church