Daily Bible Verses for 5/6/2017
Daily Verse(s)
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Reading Notes
Did you know that God knew you and me before the foundations of the world were put in place? That God knew us before eternity began and that God had planned to save us through the blood of Christ, before we were ever born? Moreover, did you know that it is God’s will and His desire that all people would spend eternity with Him in Heaven, through our faith in Christ Jesus our Lord! Dear child of God, the Lord has been waiting for us! Waiting for this moment when the work of sanctification begun in us by the Holy Spirit because of our faith in Christ, should produce a heart in love with the Lord and thereby produce actions in you and me, which glorify God, because of our salvation. Our good works do not save us from Hell! To think that way is to have it all backwards. To think that way is to be man centered and not God centered! To think that way is to live in honor of ourselves and not in honor of God. When the opposite is really true. In other words, it’s the supernatural joy and love we have because of our salvation, which produces works pleasing to God. It’s because of God’s work of spiritual growth in us, which started at the moment of our salvation. A work carried out by the Holy Spirit, a process of spiritual growth, which we call “sanctification.”
And it’s the result of our sanctification, that there are works found in us, which are pleasing to God. Why are they pleasing to God? Because they are the byproduct of our salvation, a byproduct of our joy and love for the Lord. And here is the truly amazing part, all of this is because of what God has done for us, because of what God has freely given to us by grace alone! Therefore, they are by no means the effort by which we earned salvation. Grace is a free gift from God, it cannot be earned. The Lord’s immensely rich love for us, has turned us from enemies of God, to children of God adopted into the family of God because of our faith in the blood of Christ. And not only children, but also joint-heirs with Christ in the kingdom of God. And it’s this very same salvation, which in turn brought the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And it’s His work of sanctification in us, as a result of our salvation, which in turn brought about all good works in us. Works, which are the byproduct of our love for Jesus and others. A love we express through the helping of others. Dear believer, a heart dead in trespasses and sins is just that dead! Dead to God, dead to love, dead to any type of good works and dead to any possibility of saving itself. It was the work of God, through the blood of Christ that resurrected us to a new life, in turn giving us a new heart of flesh by which we can glorify and worship God because of our love for Him.