God is beautiful ...

The way He blesses us -- spiritually -- in every place under heaven because of our relationship with Him. His blessing is so great that He chose us, Christians, thought us out, made a way for us even before He made the world so that we could be called to Him, could be holy, blameless, with Him in HIS LOVE!

Through Christ, He arranged that each one of us could be adopted as his children, and why? Because He wanted to! Because it pleased Him to ... So we could praise Him, dwell in His grace, be redeemed by that great sacrifice made (not so) long ago ...

And through that redemption, that blood, we're blessed -- forgiven -- made rich because of that blood not to earthly wealth, but to a sanctified wealth: wisdom, kindness, and all the fruit of the Spirit. Because it pleases Him, we have heard and believed (by revelation of God, not understanding of man,) all of His amazing, incomprehensible plan: that Christ WILL save us, that God WILL reign and take this world that we have made so ugly back into His hands, making both heaven and earth into something so beautiful we'll be brought to our knees, in love, in reverence, in respect of our Lord Christ ...

Don't you see how this works?? Right from the beginning, from the time the Lord set apart the Jews to reveal the God of Israel to us, right until now where the whole world can hear the truth, the beautiful truth of the God who saves us from ourselves! So that we can believe in Christ, adopted by Christ, so that we can live in Him through the Spirit of our very own God! Can you comprehend that?? God planned this from the very beginning!

And because we have the Spirit, we know our promise. Our God-given, God-sealed promise that we will inherit the Lord's kingdom. The Lord has purchased us -- He has been planning on this all our life (and possibly all of His...) SO THAT WE COULD PRAISE HIM! Don't you see, this isn't about us??

Oi ... I can't thank you all enough, friends. You are such an encouragement to me, not simply because of your love for me but for your love for God. I praise God for you ...

And I pray to God that He never stop growing you all, doing His amazing work in you, enlightening you to His wisdom, encouraging you in His great hope ... I pray that you see the greatness of your salvation, the amazing spiritual wealth you have as a soul destined by God, for God . . . There's no making sense of this! It is the beautiful work of God, the very result of the work done through Christ when our Lord was risen from the grave and brought up by God Himself into His throne -- conquering everything and rising above all, past, present -- yes, future. No power, no human, no angel, no demon, can overcome the ressurrection of Christ!

EVERYTHING is beneath Him, don't you see?

And we are His body .... We, who are in Christ. Think about this. We are throughout the world. We are the work of God. He works His glory through us! Feeble us -- He works through us!

Why would He choose us?

Lord knows I was such a disobedient fool. We all have been ... We couldn't count our sins against God if we tried, because we lived in it with the rest of Satan's world. Everything we lived for was for our pleasure ...

But now we live for God's pleasure. By God, by HIS mercy, HIS love, HIS beautiful grace -- He chose us even when we were drowning in sin so that He could call on us (and being His sheep, we listened,) bring us up and seat us with Christ. Our sins died on the cross with Him -- we rose with Him to be alive IN HIM! Do you understand this, yet?

What treasure is like Christ? What greater peace, greater wealth, greater anything could we have than to be with Christ?

We've foolishly lived as if anything could justify that gift, like we could somehow work for it ... it's a gift! The beautiful gift, the grace of the God who has made us to be like Christ as we walk WITH Christ ... And that's the trick. We were created to do good, but that's not our doing. It's all God's doing. Don't even try to take credit for it!

We need to be humble about this. We forget so easily who we were, we forget so easily the sinful desires that our worldly hearts drove us to ... Hopeless, fearful, worldly, godless people that we were, but because of the blood of Christ, we've done a 180; we were against Christ, just like "Saul" of Tarsus. And now ...

We can put the worries of the world aside. We're not of that world anymore; we're not against God anymore. Christ has made a peace treaty between us at the cost of His own blood. He's done away with the old Jewish laws that no one could perfectly follow (though they reflected a very dim fraction of the true holiness of God,) and that makes Christ Himself our new law. Everyone, holy and unholy, who is called by God to Christ, is made at peace with Him, is made holy and sanctified by His hands, His Holy Spirit, His fantastic plan. What is more glorious than that?? To be brought from being so low to such a change .... Only God could perform such a miracle!

We are saints! That might sound blasphemous to some ears, but hear me -- if God has truly called you, you are a saint because of God's encounter with you! You've been broken down and rebuilt on Christ - made a part of His holy temple, a member of His beautiful body, so that God's Spirit Himself can dwell within you ...

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So what do you say. Is the Spirit in you? You can't hide God ... He's GOD! If He is in you, it will show through! And though I can't comprehend it, completely, I believe it. This is HIS promise -- Amen !!