I wish to encourage you this morning with the privilege we have of not only being recipients of God’s grace, but of sharing that very same grace with others.

In our Lord’s kindness and wisdom, He has enabled every believer in Jesus Christ with a persoanlly tailored giftedness unique to each of us. His ingenious creativity is so woeful, that we are usually unaware of the intrinsic nature of His grace giftedness implanted within our characters. We simply think that we are doing what we want, yet, the Lord observes that we are doing and expressing His character through His implanted grace grift, crafted and customised precisely to deliver His grace via our words and behaviour.

Now, the wonder of it all, is that while we think we are going about our daily activities, the Lord is accomplishing His foreknown will through our behaviour as Spirit filled believers. We become, by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the administers of Christ’s grace into the lives of those we rub shoulders with. Therefore, as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace… (1 Peter 4:10).

Today, realise that …God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work (2 Corinthians 9:8).

Let us live Christ, and enjoy the opportunities that today brings of being a child of the risen Lord Jesus Christ, for His glory and our joy.

I wish to encourage you all to place the loving mercy of our Lord in the forefront of your thinking as you enter this new day. As the writer of Lamentations rightly explains, in the midst of all that life throws at us, we choose to ”call to mind” the character of God. Regardless of what lays ahead of you today, your soul is safe! Your hope is grounded in the very eternal nature of our sovereign God who loves you with an everlasting, inseparable love, which intertwines His mercy with the activities and events of the day that lays before you.

Lam. 3:21-25 (ESV)  But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: (22) The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; (23) they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  (24)  “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”  (25)  The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

Enter today beloved assured of our Saviours merciful truth in you. Lean upon His provision, in spite of what you may be feeling, for He will sustain your soul. Carry each other to our King in prayer, knowing that He can accomplish what we can only dream of. We walk by faith for His glory and each other’s blessing through faith in Christ.

I wish to encourage you all with what the apostle Paul recognised as a vital element of walking in the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is for us to …make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification (Romans 14:19). Three useful observations which I pray will assist you this week:

1. Walking with Christ and serving others with a genuine view to growing in unity will take your every effort. There are no shortcuts and no room for selfishness or laziness.
2. Growing Godliness is progressive. As we choose to do what leads to the benefit of others, one Christ pleasing act will lead to another, and to another, and so on.
3. One of Christ’s is  peace and mutual edification. A personal spiritual thermometer is; does the way I speak and act toward others actually build peace into their lives and constructively develop mutual edification in your relationship with that person? This should be especially true in our marriages then with others.

May the Lord enable us by His Spirit, feed us by His Word, and fulfil His will in our lives as surely as He fulfils His will in Heaven.

I want to encourage you all to walk faithful for Jesus Christ today. During the course of today’s events the enemy will try to dilute your belief in Jesus Christ, to distract you from putting Christ first in your decision making processes, and to politely neglect your fellow believer.

We are well aware of Satan’s schemes (2Co. 2:11) to distract us from Christ and to simply blend us into the crowd of worldliness, to find groups of people that will invite you to simply fit in comfortably without any of those stresses caused by pursuing a life of obedience to Jesus as Lord.

Gal. 5:14   The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”
Gal. 6:2     Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.

Today I ask that the Lord would allow you to see those opportunities that He has prearranged for your life. Opportunities to live the love of Christ by carrying someone’s burden in some way that the recipient would recognise that it is Jesus Christ intervening in their lives.

Live Christ Beloved, be uncompromising in His love and faithful to His truth!