Still I Care...

It is strange that after a l l this, I l o v e you. I find that I have compassion and sympathy and hope towards you. I find that even after all of the bruises and all of the wounds and all of the brokenness, I care for you. I pray with all sincerity that the Love of our Lord would find you and bring you to repentance and faith.

I would like to say that this is my doing; that it is I who broke the cycle. I would like to take credit for this change in me, but that would be dishonest. This is the work of the Lord in my life. This is what God has done with me.

Truly I am transformed, for the Old Man hates you and mocks you. He despises you and revels in your misery. But he is put off and killed daily. Christ is put on, and Christ calls you to repentance and faith, and so I echo this message.

We are so dirty and deserving of our just reward, but Christ, and only Christ, makes us clean.

...For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
-Romans 3:20-26

"Blood of Jesus" performed by Phil Wickham

THE Shocking Youth Message given by Paul Washer

If Not for Grace...Headlong Death Charge

If not for the grace of God I would charge head long into my own demise. I would be utterly undone as I lay hold on the wickedness of my heart's desires. If not for the grace of God I would willingly dash my skull against the jagged rocks of my sin. I would bear greater and greater witness against myself; boldy affirming God's judgement against me.

If not for the grace of God, I would proudly stand before Him in arrogance wrongfully demanding my imagined right to enter His rest; handing Him bloody rag after bloody rag as evidence of my empty claim to inheritance.

I would mark my accomplishments, my good deeds, my works of righteousness; and I would be utterly disgusting to Him. I would have nothing to stand upon when He irresistibly bids me welcome into the fullness of the presence of His wrath for all eternity.

If not for the grace of God...

But O, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

Dirty

Before Christ my life was dirty.
I couldn't do anything to be clean
Of all the awful things that would cling to me.
Through the Cross
That filth was at a loss,
For when Christ died and rose for me,
By Grace through Faith,
I was set free
And made perfectly...
Clean.

"The Reality of the Resurrection" by Odd Thomas