JANUARY 12, 2023

   “Our worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God's grace.” 

― Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace

GENESIS 29-30

31When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. 32Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben,^b for she said, “It is because the Lord has seen my misery.(29:31-32)

MATTHEW 10:1-23

1Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.

2These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

JOURNAL 

Again God's intervention in the lives of normal, flawed people confounds the ideas behind the usual ideas of religion...ie...be a good person and good things will happen. While there is evidence of this happening in scripture, there is just as much evidence, really more, that blessings are not a result of righteous actions but rather a righteous God. 

This has so many parallels in our lives. We all have had times when unfortunate things happned to us that we did not deserve. Just as well we have all had fortune shine on our lives when it could be reasoned that it was also undeserved. Thinking about the time period and location in which we were born is a level of grace that cannot be explained. We are all so blessed and too often it's easy to forget that...

8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

EPHESIANS 2:8-10