Grace Nuggets - A Child Of God

We are made in the image and likeness of God. The very essence of God is the core of our nature. We are his delight, the joy of his heart, the overflow of his abundant love.

We are his treasure, when we are lost he searches the earth for us, his heart cries out for us and he sends encounter after encounter to us to woo us back to him.

We have as our origin the source of all things, the Father God

Great professors, academics and scientist debate and argue over the start of life. But God’s love letter to us, shows us that we all had our beginnings in the Father’s heart of everlasting, unconditional love. We are his prize, his cherished ones.

Each one of us is a precious gem in our Fathers crown. A son who was lost but is now found. A child of God.

Let There Be Light - Genesis 1:3

Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light – Genesis 1:3

Before a word was spoken an expectant heavens and a silent earth waited in darkness for a whisper to be heard. Every atom, every speck of dust, every drop of water listened intently for God to utter the words that would begin the dance of creation. Father, Son and Holy Spirit in glorious, joyous union, infinitely satisfied, overflowing with inexhaustible richness, unimaginable goodness, filled with desire to share this beautiful dance.

Before there was a Sun created to shine in the day and a moon to lighten the night, light separated the day from the night. The light was the “Word of God”, the spoken voice in the darkness.  For where the word of God is darkness must disappear. In God there is no darkness only light.

At the end of the book in Revelation 21:23, the apostle John witnesses the New Jerusalem, “And the city has no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its light. “ From the very first chapter to the last chapter the “Word” of God is a revelation of the lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Christ is the light that illuminates every page, every verse, and every heart and dispels the darkness.

And we join with every atom and wait and listen to every word that Christ has given us. We listen for the whisper into our hearts with the truth and light that illuminates our shadows.  The sound of silence is the sound of expectation, the sound of anticipation, the sound of creation, the sound that echoes throughout eternity and is whispered to anyone who stoops down to listen.

We receive the passionate invitation to join in the creators dance, overwhelmed with His goodness, overflowing with His love and drenched in the riches of his grace.

God's New Year Honours List

You have been included on God‘s Honours List, by grace through the finished work of Christ, you receive all the blessings of God, as you trust in His finished work and forsake your own efforts.

In Christ now....

God places his signet ring on your finger.

God has written your name on the palms of his hands.

God has blessed you with all the riches of heaven and seated you in heavenly places with him.

God NEVER reminds you or mentions wasted resources, He focuses on restoration and relationship

.

God has given you the seat of honour at the King’s table.

God has provided for you the most incredible lavish banquet.

God has provided for you His fatted calf, so you might be fully satisfied and never hunger again.

God overflowed the wedding with the best wine and you never need to thirst again.

God has permanently plugged you into Heaven

God is constantly smiling at you

Grace Nuggets - God's Mercy

God’s mercy is forever flowing toward us. His mercy stops God giving me the judgement I deserve. His mercy puts my judgement, my condemnation, my guilt upon Christ and Christ died in my place.

I can live free from condemnation and guilt and my body has been healed all through the mercy of God.

Grace inspires God to freely bestow and give me what I don’t deserve but gives me what Jesus deserves.

Because Jesus died on my behalf and in my place and as me.

Every day of my life God’s desire is to pour out to me all the goodness of heaven.

I receive all the riches of heaven that Jesus deserves and my old sin nature that deserves judgement is dead.

It has nothing to do with me and my ability; it is all freely given and has everything to do with Christ.

Every moment I live God wants to overwhelm me with his grace and mercy.

Grace Nuggets - Jesus Our Affection

Every promise of God has its completion in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the Way, the Truth and the Life.  All the purposes and plans of God are wrapped up in Christ and before time Christ had our names written on the palms of His hands.

We live and breathe in a world that is strewn with barricades and has put up walls to make us feel blind to the love of the Father through Christ. But God’s desire for us is that we feast on the finished work of His son. God sent his son into the world not to condemn us but to release us into abundant, everlasting life.

But how do we receive all that God wants us to have? By fixing our eyes on Christ. Desire comes first by peering at the object of our affection. When we see Jesus in all his goodness, all his love, all his beauty and the fountain of eternal unmerited grace, we will slowly become more like him.

When we see Him in all his beautiful grace, we fall deeper in love with him. We realise with overwhelming delight that we are now Sons of God and joint-heirs with Christ and that Christ is totally united inside of us, closer than a lover, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Grace Nuggets - Limitless Power

I have now the limitless power of God inside me.

I am a store of his glory and power, His kingdom has come and reigns inside me.

By the grace of God, everything of God through Christ's atonement is available to me, because God lives and dwells inside me.

By my union with Christ I have arrived in the fullness of all his grace, his unmerited favour, all the riches of heaven, an enjoyment of the Promised Land that  I had already entered.

My prayer to God has changed from , “I want more, there must be more.”

To, “Thank you lord, Let me bask and delight in all you have poured into me. Reveal to me all the wonderful grace and unlimited power that you have provided.”

Through the new birth I am complete in Christ, and my hunger is only for more revelation of what I already have in Christ

Grace Nuggets - Ephesians 2 v 19

Ephesians 2 v 19 - So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family.

Because of Christ’s reconciling work of the cross, I have a new position in Christ. I am a fellow citizen of heaven with all of God’s children. I am part of the same household of God and I am now part of God’s building. This is because I am united by new birth into Christ I am now inseparably part of God.

Jesus was raised was back to life and made perfect by his very own blood. The bible says he is the first fruit and the first born among many brothers. That means that just as he was raised and made perfect, so too am I when I believed in Him I was “raised and made perfect. Perfectly righteous, perfectly born-again, perfectly set apart unto him, perfectly right with God, perfectly permanently and eternally saved.

God never intended for me to be righteous of myself but, by faith, to enter into the rest of being made his righteousness. That is why when Jesus walked the earth he fulfilled the six day covenant on my behalf. He fulfilled the law for me. He did the work. And once fulfilled he said, “It is finished.” And then laid his head to rest.

He sweated drops of blood from his brow to break the curse. His body was lashed open for my healing and bled for my forgiveness. The punishment that was on him was for my peace. He became sin so I could become his righteousness. He took my poverty so I could receive his riches. His death was my victory. He is my perfect and complete salvation. I cannot add anything to it but simply believe it and rest in it.

Grace Nuggets - Prune The Vine

Put the energy into the main stem rather than the side shoots.” Was the advice from Monty Don in Gardners World last week as he advised all interested grape growers on how to get the best crop from your vine.

Unknowing to Monty his wisdom with grape growing had a far more life effecting relevance.  Our life source is Jesus Christ; he was the word before time, the bread of life, the purest wine of the vine.  Our strength; our life comes from our union into Him. In Him we have the fullness of God flowing inside of us.

When we put our interests, our desires in side shoots, into other things than Christ, we slowly ooze away our recognition of his grace. The greatest strength we can have is to prune the side shoots and give strength to the stem. Christ lives inside of us, His power is inside of us, and the more we focus on Him the more we let Him work through us.

Grace Nuggets - Christ The First Born

“Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son,  and I told you, “Let my son go, so he may worship me.” But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.’” – Exodus 4  22-23

Here in Exodus 4 as Moses is returning to Egypt he is given a preview of the future.  A glimpse into the heart of Pharaoh, into the Pharaoh’s stubborn refusal to believe in the goodness of God and the heartbreaking rebellion that comes from his self-righteousness.

The firstborn son is chosen to be taken out of captivity and to be released from the oppression of Egypt.  The salvation of Israel (God’s son) will be the death of Pharaoh’s son. Egypt’s oppression will be destroyed when God’s son is set free.

Christ is the first born of the New Covenant, by his sacrifice all men from all nations now have the choice to leave the oppression, slavery and work of Egypt and come into the Promised Land of Rest.  Everything that oppression brings: -  tyranny, pain, captivity, torment, disease, imprisonment,  poverty, depression has died with Christ at the cross and we have free access to all His inheritance by grace :- liberty, joy, health,  freedom,  happiness, a sound mind, fulfillment, union.

Moses could see Christ; he looked beyond the circumstances and looked into the eyes of God’s firstborn son. He looked to the day when grace and goodness hung on a tree and into a new day when captivity would end and liberty would begin.

Grace Nuggets - Christ Soaks Up Human Effort.

So David, the elders of Israel, and the captains over thousands went to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord from the house of Obed-Edom with joy. And so it was, when God helped the Levites who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, that they offered seven bulls and seven rams. David was clothed with a robe of fine linen, as were all the Levites who bore the ark, the singers, and Chenaniah the music master with the singers. David also wore a linen ephod. Thus all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the horn, with trumpets and with cymbals, making music with stringed instruments and harps.

I  Chronicles 15 : 25-28

The linen ephod soaked up the sweat of human effort.  David’s joy, excitement and dancing was an overflow of his heart. The presence of God manifest in the Ark of The Covenant was the Glory of God dwelling in Israel, the blessings of God at the heart of the nation.

Here is Christ, shadowed in the Ark of The Covenant.  We come into his presence through the finished work of Christ. Christ soaks up all our human effort, our works and self-righteousness and nails the Old Covenant to the cross and his blood destroys it.

We are free to dance, sing, enjoy God in an exuberant relationship of intimacy with the divine. We don’t have to wear a linen ephod to soak up our sweat because Christ took all our self effort and set us free at the cross.  We can revel in his grace, bask in his light, drench ourselves in his love and drip with his grace.  

His grace is a waterfall of his presence and an infinite ocean of his blessing, freely given and showered into us.

Grace Nuggets - Christ At The Center

They shall have linen turbans on their heads, and linen undergarments around their waists. They shall not bind themselves with anything that causes sweat. – Ezekiel 44:18

The Old Covenant was a shadow, a representation of what was coming in the New Covenant.  It was a Covenant of fading glory, of effort, of works, of pleasing God by keeping rules. But even then it still had Christ at the center of the Covenant.  The shadows were there to show that the free gift of righteousness through Christ is the heart of God for mankind.

The priest’s were instructed to cover their heads with linen. Linen is the material of the New Covenant, for it absorbs the sweat of human effort. The human power of the mind may be awesome, understanding and knowledge can be rewarding but ultimately it is to be covered in the finished work of Christ at the cross. The linen turban soaked up sweat by human effort, the only way to please God is to trust in His grace.

We need to be mesmerized by the cross, we need to see everything through the lense of the finished work and we need to live in the permanent and ever increasing glory of the New Covenant.

Christ is the word of God, the Bible is his love letter to us, so let us read his word through the kaleidoscope of grace and the magnifying glass of Christ.

Grace Nuggets - We Lack No Good Thing

Even strong young lions sometimes go hungry, but those who trust in the LORD will lack no good thing. – Palm 34:10

The New Covenant is a feast of the harvest, of choicest produce, of the goodness of God.

It is not a place of lack,

 it is not a city of famine besieged by a hostile army,

 it is not sun scorched desert,

 it is not a dried up well,

it is not a place of hunger,

it is not a place of thirst.

It is a place

flowing with milk and honey,

a place with abundant provision,

a city who light shines throughout the earth,  

an overflow of finest wines,

an excess of baskets of bread and fish,

 poured out finest perfume,

extravagant  precious gems,

overflowing rivers of finest gold,

 streams of healing,

 If we are to hunger after anything it is to desire all we have in Christ through grace. To fill ourselves up with the provision of the Promised Land and the live in the palace of God as sons of the King.

Grace Nuggets - Blossoming

The gospel is not a message of postponement; it is not a note of delay. The gospel is the Good News of all that Christ accomplished for us at the cross.  When Jesus cried out ‘It Is Finished!” he meant exactly what He cried, “It Is Finished!”

New life, power, right living, good marriages, healthy children, liberation from poverty, health to our bones, peace in our hearts, a spring in our step and clear skies of freedom are all our inheritance. All these things are available to us, right here, right now, today.

The great news is that Christ is ever present. united within of us; we have inside us now the petals of a beautiful flower that is waiting to open up and flourish in the sunlight of God’s wonderful grace. When He returns we will experience the transforming power in its fullness, we will become the full beautiful flower of creation. Until that final day, we are letting the flower inside slowly thrive and every moment of every day we are blossoming into all that His wonder grace has provided.

Grace Nuggets - Christ Has Perfected Us.

“Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.”  - Colossians 1:22

Christ has perfected us in Him with His faith. But, it does not manifest in exactly the same way for all people.  Every individual is unique with a past and influences that plague our minds and the way we think. Each of us in our own way is catching the revelation that we are perfect in Christ. Time does not fix us.  We are not changing; we are not in a time-process of becoming holy.  We are holy; the only process we are in is the process of discovering how holy we’ve become when we were made new.

Paul Oakley writes in his song , “For your power at work in me is changing me.”  But it is not about me changing, because my old man (old self) is dead, and now I am alive in Christ.  I have an exchanged life; I exchanged my old life for a new life in Him.  I am now being transformed by the renewing of my mind into my new life, and even then it is not about me and the time it takes, it is all about Christ and His transformation that has already happened to me.

Grace Nuggets- Nor His Ox Nor His Ass

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.” – Exodus 20 v 17

We were made to covet, there is something placed in the depths of man that needs to covet. Our hearts have a capacity to long for the unreachable, touch the untouchable, discover the undiscovered. God knew this, He created us this way and the decision that faces us every day, is what will we covet?

Here in the last of the 10 commandments is the catch all, the one put there so that if you by your determination and your effort you could keep the previous 9, this one would sink your self-righteous effort and point you to a savior.

The Old Covenant is a covenant of denial, of works, it tells you want you cannot do and what you have to do. It is a Covenant of judgment, of flesh, of separation, of do not’s and do’s.

 “But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.” – 1 Corinthians 12 v 31.

The New Covenant is a covenant of acceptance, of union, of joy, of grace, of desire. Everyone who comes into Christ is reconciled to God eternally, once and forever. The finished work of Christ ends all work, and now we are free to desire all that God has for us in Christ. We can now covet the bountiful, wonderful, overflowing gifts and grace of God. Coveting all that God has given and provided for us is to receive and live in the victory of the cross.

Covet all we have in the promised land of the New Covenant and leave the obsolete denial mentality of the Old Covenant far behind in wilderness.

Grace Nuggets - The Fullness of Him

“And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” - Ephesians 2 15-22

Christ reigns in the heart of every believer. We are His dwelling place on earth, His image, His ambassadors to a mixed up, confused, unbelieving world. Every one of us has the same faith as Christ, has the same power as Christ, has the same courage as Christ, we have become united into Christ. Each believer is God’s expression of grace, love, mercy and compassion to those lost and in need. We need to recognize Christ in each of us and be beacons of God’s goodness’s and compassion, setting the captive free, healing the sick, calming the storms of life, feeding those that are hungry and refreshing those that thirst.