August 2, 2008 Come

Come

'Come in your dishabille. I mean, come to your heavenly Father in all your sin and sinfulness. Come to Jesus just as you are, leprous, filthy, naked, neither fit to live nor fit to die. Come, you that are the very sweepings of creation; come, though you hardly dare to hope for anything but death. Come though despair is brooding over you, pressing upon your bosom like a horrible nightmare. Come and ask the Lord to justify another ungodly one. Why should he not? Come along with you; for the great mercy of God is meant for such as you are. I put it in the language of the text and I cannot put it more strongly; the Lord God himself takes to himself the gracious title, "Him that justifieth the ungodly.' He makes just and causes to be treated as just, those who by nature are ungodly. Is not that a wonderful word for you? Reader, do not rise from your seat till you have well considered this matter.' ____ All of Grace, C. H. Spurgeon

Romans 4: 4 Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. 5 However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. 6 David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: 7 "Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. 8 Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him." NIV

As long as I remember who I am in perspective to who He is, I am able to see. Once 'me' begins to rise up and I forget where I came from, I am blinded. If I remember that He is high and lifted up and that my lifetime is like a ladder, one step at a time until I am completely with Him; I started at the bottom, I have the perspective I need to keep. As long as I remember I can fall off the ladder and be on the bottom again; as long as I am keeping my eyes on Who is at the top of the ladder, but never thinking that I am higher up, that the bottom is always there, as the top, my perspective is somewhere in the middle and I can see both; on the Lord above and where I came from.

He justifies us. It is by grace that we are saved; not by works.

If I hang on for my 'life', in the middle of the ladder, I am in the right place and will not boast from the perspective of my previous step.

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.

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Two today..I like these both.

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Video & Song
'Grace' Michael W. Smith
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRXDsbRQNlA&feature=related