Newness of Life

The Isreallites were constantly urged to remember all that God had done for them. I have been on a remembering journey lately. Tonight the Lord’s peace descended over me and I felt him leading me back to a particular memory. As I basked in the peace that filled me, I began to recall something that happened shortly after I had arrived at Regent University. It had been over a year since I had made the turn and come back to the Lord, but I was completely unable to feel his presence or sense his nearness. My heart and spirit felt dead and lifeless. At Regent, I would constantly talk to my new friends about how I used to be very close to the Lord. I had been searching for that closeness with the Lord for over a year, only to feel a great chasm that could not be crossed. I was constantly looking back at what I had lost. Eventually a very real fear began to seize my heart. What if I had gone to far? What if I was an "apostate?" since I had "tasted of the heavenly gift" o...

(from journal entry 9/8/10) “Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” Sometimes God may grant us the grace to be crushed under the weight and unmatched beauty of His love, and when we perceive it, we are torn asunder, but it is not a destructive tearing that shatters us.  There is a tearing that binds, a crushing that builds. Jesus came to bind up the broken hearted. Indeed, it is a crushing that fills us with the sweetness of his love and makes us totally whole. The sinful woman was crushed by that love, but Simon the Pharisee was not. He was too impressed with his own righteousness.  Simon was a religious man. He observed the law and kept all of the religious traditions-but he was blind to the truth that he too was a sinner in need of God's grace. Sitting in the presence of the Messiah who was to take away the sins of the world, his heart was stone ...