Redemption

What do you do when you fail spiritually? What do you do when you give-in to that temptation? What do you do when you've screwed up big time? Our naturally tendency is to run and hide from God. But if you are going to recover from this failure, if you are going to get up when you fall, then you need to accept God’s undeserved love. 

There is nothing that you can do to deserve His love. In the midst of your sin and failures God extends His love to you. This isn’t God turning a blind eye, or simply winking at sin. This is a radical, crazy love. God’s love for you is just flat out undeserved.

Isn’t that different from human love? We love each other - if; we love each other - because; we love each other - when. The world loves conditionally, and if our standards for love are not met, then our love grows cold. It's not that way with God; He loves us regardless, and He demonstrated this by paying the ultimate price to offer us the opportunity of a relationship with Him. When we fail it's important to remember that we were bought with a price. 

Jesus would come and live and die and buy us back – redeem us from slavery to sin and death. It’s a picture of God’s love for us.

We've all fallen, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23 He’s saying that all of us have missed God’s mark in our lives. We become slaves of sin and the things of sin in our lives, the Bible describes this as bondage to sin. 

If you read the next verse in Romans it reads, “and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” Rom. 3:24 God presented Jesus as a sacrifice for us. We were in a position of sin and death, then Jesus came as the one who would redeem. He came as one who gave His life and literally paid the price for our redemption to buy us back.

God is a just God. Sin had to be punished. He couldn’t just forget all the things that had happened. God was willing to put the punishment for sin on the shoulders of Jesus so that the mercy and free grace could be delivered to us.


Do you know what you do with God’s love? You receive it. You don’t earn it. You can’t achieve it. You can’t accomplish it. You don’t keep score. You receive it. You begin to live as one who has been bought by a price. It means you hold your head up a little higher. You can even kick your shoulders back a little bit. Why? Because you were bought with a price. It means you stop telling yourself that you are worthless and you’re meaningless and you’re awful and God hates you - because He doesn’t. Because you were bought with a price.

God loves you undeservedly, so much so that He paid the ultimate price to have a relationship with you. When you fall, be sure to return to the One who redeemed you.

Beautiful Things

Have you checked out Nathan Harris' slide show that he created for The Branches Community Church last Sunday (July 8, 2012)? The congregation was encouraged to take photos revealing the beauty in God's creation. Nathan compiled the images and made a great slide show.

Remembering the Lord

Love takes time and attention otherwise it can drift in our lives. When you first become a follower of Jesus Christ it’s so exciting and it’s new; you feel like you have this new lease on life. It’s awesome and it’s thrilling but then as time goes on – if you don’t cultivate and nurture that relationship you can begin to drift in your relationship.


Check this out, God said of His people, "When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me."Hosea 13:6


“They forgot me.” They forgot God – the one who made it all. The one who provided their every need. Aren’t we capable of that? We are all capable of drifting. I’m capable of forgetting.

When we forget God it’s not like we wake up and choose to do it. I think it’s often subtle and slow. It kind of works like this: you get real busy in life; you have work responsibilities; you’re consumed with hobbies, work, and maybe family issues.

Over a period of time your church attendance gets more sporadic. You hit church here and there and then maybe you stop going completely. Your prayer life is almost non-existent. You used to pray more often when it was all fresh and new. Then maybe we get to a place where we stop hanging out with other believers outside of church.

Over time we just remove God from the place that He used to be in our heart and lives and we insert... ourselves. We’re number one. We think about ourselves constantly. We’re the ones we primarily serve and are consumed with. God gets moved to the side and put up on the shelf. Oh sure, we still believe He exists, and we might even take Him off the shelf if we have an urgent need in our lives. But for the most part He is out of the equation. Slowly, imperceptibly, we have forgotten God.

It happened to the Israelites thousands of years ago. It can happen to us if we are not careful. Those words, “… they forgot me.” echo in the lives of millions even today. Relationships take time and if we don't nurture them we drift. We have to remember God in all that we do.

Substitues don't Satisfy

Substitutes just don’t satisfy like the real thing. You can get substitutes in every area of your life. For instance, when it comes to food you can go out and get all kinds of substitute foods... imitation crabmeat, sugar substitutes, bacon bits. Bacon bits aren't bacon, if you read the label it reads more like a chemistry experiment. Bacon bits - bad; real bacon - good.

Substitutes are not the real thing. You can eat that stuff all day long if you want but it doesn’t match up to the real thing. People will try to find substitutes in their life and put them in the place of God. Money is a substitute many people put in the place of God. Money is a wonderful tool, but it’s a horrible god to worship. Some will substitute a person in the place where only God should be. Others will try to fill the void in their lives with addictive things like drugs or excessive alcohol. In the end all of these are an unnatural, or artificial, replacement for the real thing... God.

Substitutes that we put in our lives that take the place of God just don’t satisfy us or Him.

Isaiah 45:22, ""Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other."

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