Do You See God As Worthy?

Do You See God As Worthy?

By Eden Kroeger

 

 

I have a confession. I forget that my God is beautiful, holy, majestic, marvelous, glorious, righteous, sovereign, just, exalted, and beyond my ability to comprehend. I lose my wonder and forget to stand in awe. Worse yet, I sometimes realize I don’t have much of a need to stand in awe. I may choose to, but I don’t find myself speechless. I’ve minimized the greatness of my God and made this life about myself. It grieves me when I consider how far I’ve drifted from sitting at His feet.

 

“Come magnify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name together” (Psalms 34:3).

Magnify Him. Make much of Him. Recognize Him. Focus on Him. Worship Him.

 

To do this requires stillness, surrender, peace, and patience. It takes reorienting my life so that a big God can fit in my busy world. It means considering who He is apart from me. It involves looking at life through a lens of wonder.

My prayers often revolve around my needs, wants, fears, and dreams. I relate His character to my life, but it still centers on my life. I apply His promises to my current circumstances. I fit Him into my situation.

 

I keep myself on the throne and treat God as my very capable servant.  

 

Yes, I trust Him. Yes, I need Him. Yes, He’s saved me. Yes, He’s important. Yes, He’s able. But no, it’s not always all about Him.

 

“Come MAGNIFY the Lord…”

Will you join me in repenting of selfishness?  Will you join me in confessing pride. Will you join me at the feet of our KING? Will you rest with me in the arms of MIGHTY God? Will you join me in stillness with our gaze fixed on the One who is worthy of our awe? Will you join me in a new song of selfless praise and speechless wonder? Will you join me in considering the greatness of our God and exalting Him with our lives.

Together, may we see Him with increasing awe and wonder and be humbled and emboldened by His heart. The Lord is at hand! It is well, my friends, because He is God. Stepping down from the thrones of our lives, we sing holy, holy, holy, worthy, worthy, worthy, glory, glory, glory- He is EXALTED!

 

This fall, STELLO Ministries will be focusing on this theme. Many of our previous semesters focus on our needs and God’s ability to meet them. This semester, we will focus on God’s person and simply worship Him. It won’t be about us, but it will leave us changed. He is worthy! Do you see it?

What Does it Mean to be an "Heir of Grace"?

           Everyone has sinned. Everyone has fallen short of the glory of God. Everyone has missed the mark. This shouldn’t be shocking to you. We only have to look around, or turn on the news to see that something is wrong in this world. Ever since the fall of man, when sin entered the world, we have been faced with two choices; to follow God, or to follow our own sinful desires. Despite all of this, God still desires to be with us. It’s a crazy revelation that we sometimes can’t wrap our minds around. It is nonetheless true. God enjoys you. He loves you. Even when you ignore God, and turn away from Him, He still wants to be with you and pour His blessings out on you.

            Imagine this- you’re a criminal. You’ve murdered and stolen and lied. They drag you into court in chains and you listen to the accuser listing off all your trespasses. You’re sentenced to eternal death. Before anyone can lay a finger on you, the Man you’ve wronged walks in. He declares that He will take your place and take on the full wrath of the Judge because He loves you. Even though you’re a criminal who has spat in His face more times than you could count, He wants to be with you. So they take Him, a blameless innocent, and kill Him for your crimes. But He won’t stay in the grave. Spoiler: He defeats death. He rises again in glory! And here’s the best part: if we accept His free gift of grace and mercy, we can not only be with Him forever, but we actually get to inherit the kingdom of God. The Father makes us co-heirs with Christ. Now that we’ve accepted His grace, we are adopted into the family of God. We become heirs to everything God has in store for us. No longer are we bound to sin. Instead, we’re sons and daughters of the King of Kings. That’s what it means to be co-heirs with Christ.

 

                                                                Anonymous



What Does it Mean to be an "Heir of Grace" ?

Romans 8:16-17

¹⁶ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷ and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

………………………………..

What does it mean to be an “Heir of Grace”?  I’m suffering from extreme writers block right now…… It’s pretty sad, especially since this paper is due to be blogged tomorrow. Please Jesus, help me write this paper! What does it mean to be a co-heir with you? What does being a child of the One True King entail? Maybe this amazing gift can be summed up in a simple phrase. “With great power, comes great responsibility.” Hold the eye rolls, readers! I think Uncle Ben’s words can be tied in pretty well with Jesus’s gift of sonship (or daughtership *cough) to us.

When Jesus brought us up from our little pits of sin, not only did He save us from the just punishment we deserved, but He also made us royalty! But being an heir of something does not mean skipping through the daisy fields. Meaning, “With great power, comes great responsibility.” As royalty we are called to “Seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God”. Being sons and daughters of our King means we need to fight for what’s right, love people, and serve and glorify Jesus. This is our responsibly. Note the words fight, and love. Used in the proper context, these are some of the hardest things we’ll face in life! Just because we inherit the kingdom of God, does not mean this present life will always be easy.

Do not despair! With our present “…….great power and great responsibility,” in hand, we must never stop looking ahead to the place Jesus has prepared for us! Look forward, “Heirs of Grace”. You we’re called to live out “great power, and great responsibility.”

Foundling

What Does it Mean to be an "Heir of Grace"?

While I was doing my research of what people thought being a joint-heir with Christ was, I ran across this article.  It was written by Dr. Jack Arnold in March 2000.  He explained it like this: 

“’And joint-heirs with Christ’ The Christian is a joint heir of the Father with the person of Jesus Christ. Christ is the Father’s Son, and to Christ God has bequeathed everything because Christ is the only rightful heir to the Father’s estate. But the Christian is in spiritual union with Christ because of the new birth and is therefore a joint-heir to the inheritance.If two brothers inherited an estate as equal heirs, then the estate would be divided into two equal parts and each would be given the same amount. But if the two are made joint-heirs, then both of them have equal rights to the total inheritance. They both look at the total inheritance as theirs. As joint-heirs with Christ, the total inheritance of Christ is the inheritance of every believer”.

I think this explains it pretty well.  It shows that Christ is the rightful heir. However, because Christ died for us, we are new creations and are now joint with Him.  Christ is King and if we accept Him into our lives we can become His heirs. 

StarrrGirly