As God prepares our hearts for the message this week, I have a challenge for us. Allow God to search your heart: In what ways have you believed that you may deserve grace or think you have earned it? Remember, that is not grace. You cannot earn it and we all do not deserve it! Also, do you believe that you should be given grace when someone else shouldn’t? Or do you believe the other person’s sin is too far beyond God’s grace?
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” -Ephesians 2:8
Peter was stretched and challenged in his thinking. He was raised knowing that the Jews were God’s chosen people. But when Jesus came, the veil was torn and all humankind was now called to the heart of God!
“And as he talked with him, he went in and found many persons gathered. And he said to them, ‘You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection. I ask then why you sent for me.’” -Acts 10:27-29
Allow God to break down the walls and barriers of prejudice in your heart. None of us deserve His grace and salvation. If we can really let this sink in, imagine how we may look at others differently - to see them as God sees them!
“See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!” -1 John 3:1
No matter what we have done, or “they” have done, nothing can separate us from the love of God! No sin is too far beyond God’s grace and forgiveness.
“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” -Romans 8:38-39
In Him,
Katie Karlson