Real Redemption

by Angie Thomas

As I was looking over the study I was overwhelmed with the Lord’s unconditional love for us.  We are so blessed girls, blessed beyond what we could ask or imagine.  Psalm 32:1 says, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” We hear these words and they just pass over our hearts and ears.  We have been given the most incredible gift, a pardon for our heinous sins.  But we don’t see our sin that way.  We feel entitled to our fear and worry.  Our circumstances seem to demand our anxiety or we pass it off as part of our personality.  We excuse our control as being “productive” and our laziness as “needing a break.” And our pride, sadly most of the time we don’t even see it. And unbelief, we just call that being “realistic.” May we cry out to our Father and confess all of these sins that we commit day in and day out that break His heart but never break ours.

Our hearts are so calloused.  I know this is graphic, but it is the image the Lord laid on my heart as I was typing this. Consider a prostitute whose body has been used and abused. She becomes hardened to everything that is wrong about what she is doing. Deep down her heart is breaking and she despises the sin cycles she is caught in but she seems to see no other way out.  She is caught in the lies that life could ever be any different.

Similarly, we have prostituted our hearts to the lies of the culture and the enemy.  We see our sin as just one little white lie, one little romp through our minds with worry and fear, one little rationalization after another.  There is pleasure in the moment for sure, but afterward we are left discouraged, broken, and hurting.  We wonder if life could ever be any different.

There is a reason God dedicated the entire book of Hosea to depicting this analogy of Israel caught prostituting themselves to their sins and idols.  This was God’s charge to Israel, “For their mother has played the whore; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink” (Hosea 2:5). But Hosea shows us the Father heart of God who continues to run after her even though she keeps running back to her sin. “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. …And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:14, 19-20).

Girls, we are the prostitute.  May was see our sin as God does and run to the righteousness, love, mercy, and faithfulness He has provided for us.  May our hearts be broken before Him.  Psalm 51:17 gives us this powerful promise: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Real redemption is waiting.

 

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The Ultimate Yes and Amen

by Angie Thomas

As we talked more about prayer, I was so convicted.  I want to grow in this area. I am still so limited by my unbelief.

I believe we really don’t understand prayer.  I know I don’t. Let’s just say you played the Lottery and you prayed, really prayed hard before the drawing that you would win.  The day of the drawing you sit on the edge of your seat to see if your prayer was answered.  And….you win!! You win the 100 million dollar pay out! Would that change your prayer life going forward?   You would believe that God heard your prayers and loved you.  Isn’t it funny, because in Christ, we have received more than 100 million dollars!  He is the ultimate answer to every prayer.  Ephesians 1:3-4 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” God answered our most desperate prayer in Christ before we ever knew we needed to utter it! Isn’t that amazing?

We have been given Christ’s righteousness and holiness and that is the starting place for our prayers.  Because of Christ’s amazing gift to us, Hebrews 4:16 says, “let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need.” Wow! It is crazy to think we have the privilege to approach the throne of God with confidence. 1 John 5:14-15 confirms this, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”

I love what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:19-20: “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you…was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.” Regardless of how God chooses to answer our prayers in this life, we know the ultimate Yes and Amen have been spoken by God in Christ.  We can pray crazy, passionate prayers to our God, with such trust and confidence that if He did not withhold our salvation, He will never withhold from us any other good or perfect gift.

I will confess that this truth sounds great, but is incredibly difficult to live out.  When it seems like God has withheld something from us that we have prayed for, perhaps for years, it is easy to slip into unbelief and start thinking that He has not heard or does not care.  We have to recognize this wrong thinking and not let it take root. Psalm 77:1 refutes this lie directly: “I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me.”

I have wrestled with these truths for many years. My mom has been in a wheelchair for over 20 years with MS, even though my dad felt God speaking to him clearly a few years after her diagnosis that she would be healed.  Many people (including myself) and others in my parents church have had dreams of my mom walking.  Today, she still sits in a wheelchair crippled by a horrible disease.  However, as I have prayed over and over and wrestled with the Lord about His goodness and faithfulness, I have come to know these truths more clearly than ever.  My faith has grown and not atrophied or died. I believe more firmly than ever that God is good and faithful and loving, even when our prayers have not been answered as we would like.

May we press on to know the Father heart of our God, knowing fully that we have already won more than the Lottery!

 

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A Plan

by Angie Thomas

So, I know a few of you are big U of L Cards fans and were able to watch their unbelievable accomplishments as they clasped the National Title.  There was a lot of celebrating at this house! I found it really interesting that all the way through the NCAA tournament, even after winning their Final Four game, the team choose to not cut down the net as is customary after such a big win.  Their reasoning: they had not achieved their ultimate goal which was to win the National Title.  Sure, they celebrated their victories along the way, but their ultimate goal had not been achieved and so they kept their eyes and focus on the goal at hand.

Sounds pretty similar to Paul in Phillipians 3, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.  Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (vv. 12-14). Paul is encouraging the believers in Phillipi to keep striving to know the Lord and be identified with him. Of anyone who has walked this earth as a human, Paul would have been “justified” in taking a break, in slowing down on his relentless pursuit of the Lord.  But now he says he keeps straining toward what lies ahead, to know Jesus more and more.

When he says he “forgets what lies behind” I always assumed he was talking about the sins and weaknesses in his past that he wanted to forget, but I think Paul is also talking about forgetting all of the “good” things in his life that would lead him to become content with his current spiritual state.  He desperately desired to know more of Christ and to experience more of His love and power.  Let us never assume that because God has done a recent work in our hearts that it is time to relax, take a break and be content with our current spiritual state.  We should absolutely rejoice and celebrate when we see growth in our hearts and lives, but it should never lead us to complacency but rather a deeper hunger to glorify and enjoy Him more perfectly!

I know this week, the Lord gently convicted me that I have not been making my quiet time with him a priorty these last few weeks since our study finished.  There is no one on Tuesday or Thursday that will know if I have not got up to spend time with the Lord.  For me, part of becoming lazy follows not having a plan.  Without a daily study to work on, my daily time with the Lord does not seem as pressing.  Here is my challenge to myself and to each of you in the next few weeks until our next study starts back up.

1. Ask the Lord WHEN He would like to meet with you each morning. Be willing to be obedient to what He shows you. I know you will be blessed beyond measure and ask Him each night as you fall asleep to give you the grace you need to meet Him at that time.

2. Ask the Lord to show you WHAT He would like for you to study and meditate on during that time.  What book or books of the Bible would the Lord have you read through during this time?  May I suggest reading through one of the Gospels or perhaps reading through several Psalms a day.  Plan now. We have about 8 weeks until Fearless starts.  Figure out how many chapters you would need to read each day or each week in order to complete what the Lord is laying on your heart to do.

3. WHO does the Lord want you to be praying for? This is a great time to get your prayer journal organized and lay out specific people, ministries, church leaders, etc. that you can be praying for on a weekly or daily basis.  There is a prayer chart on the back of your memorization verses from this past semester.  This can just help you outline what people you can be praying for on what days.  It is also great to write down Scriptures you can pray for those people.

Here is the Lord’s sweet promise to us as we continue to seek Him, from Hosea 6:3,

Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord;
his going out is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth.”

I love this promise!  His going out is as sure as the dawn. Just as the sun rises every morning to start a new day, our God will be faithful to meet us as we ask for the grace to meet with Him. He will gently nurture and grow our faith. Just as gentle spring showers cause the grass to green, the flowers to bloom, and the trees to bud around us, He will cause His Word, His truth, and His righteousness to grow in our hearts! We can see nature shouting this beautiful truth and we can rest assured He will do the same in our lives. We can count on God’s promises. He makes them and never breaks them!

 

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