Constant Grace

Galatians
5:16-26

There are
also many contrasts in the life of Abraham.

By faith he
left his country; in unbelief he stopped short at Haran. By faith he entered
the land; in unbelief he forsook it for Egypt.

By faith he
returned to the land to sojourn; in unbelief he took Hagar to bear a child
rather than waiting on God. By faith he rescued Lot; in unbelief he lied to
Abimelech.

In Abraham
we see the conflict of the two natures. The sin nature was constantly in
conflict with the nature he had received from God.

This
conflict of present-day believers is described in Galatians 5:16,17: "This
I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and
these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that
ye would."

Verses 24
and 25 of this same chapter tell us, "And they that are Christ's have
crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit,
let us also walk in the Spirit."

Like
Abraham, we are frequently inconsistent. But God is calling so He might lead us
through to triumph. The Lord referred to Himself as the God of Abraham, not
because Abraham was always consistent, but because he allowed God to bring him
through to victory.

God did not
abandon His man, and in His mercy He will not abandon us. Grace is always at
hand.

"God is able to make all grace
abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things,
may abound to every good work" (2 Cor. 9:8).

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ALL grace abounds towards me...Many times, i'm like Abraham too. My faith goes up and down like a ship wrecked with the winds of storm. And each time my faith goes down, it's simply because i have not stopped long enough in my "weakness" and "sinfulness" to call upon God. By Him, we CAN do all things...and nothing is impossible to those who believe.

John 14:26

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

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God Knows What He is Doing To Us

Ye shall
know that I have not done without cause all that I have done, saith the Lord
God.

EZEKIEL 14:23

JOY is the
lesson set for some,

For others pain best teacher is;

We know not which for us shall come,

But both are Heaven's high ministries.

SUSAN COOLIDGE

THE outward features of our life may not be all
that we should choose them to be; there may be things we wish for that never
come to us; there may be much we wish away that we cannot part from. The
persons with whom we live, the circumstances by which we are surrounded, the
duties we have to perform, the burdens we have to bear, may not only be other
than what we should have selected for ourselves, but may even seem inconsistent
with that formation and discipline of character which we honestly wish to
promote. Knowing us better than we know ourselves, fully understanding how
greatly we are affected by the outward events and conditions of life, He has
ordered them with a view to our entire and final, not only our immediate, happiness;
and whenever we can be safely trusted with pastures that are green, and waters
that are still, in the way of earthly blessing, the Good Shepherd leads us
there.

ANTHONY W. THOROLD

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We may not always know what God is doing...but the we can have confidence that God does. We can't limit God to our own understanding. Although we can't look into the future and understand all that is happening now, that doesn't mean that God can't. But trusting in Him fully is not such an easy task....i know cause I've been there umpteenth times. Which is why monuments were so important to the people in the Old Testament days and to us today as well.

Many times, when God had done a good thing, the people of old used to build some kind of monument to remember it. The common practise was to pile up some rocks, pour some oil on it. Short of doing this in your backyard and be suspected of witchcraft, you can write it in a journal or type it into a blog, like i'm doing now. But the main idea is so that, in the future, we can revisit it and REMEMBER how good and how great our God is and how He delivered us from our own weaknesses and shortsightedness.

Be encouraged, He commands His angels concerning you...

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