#gracealone

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” - Romans 15:13

Paul's prayer for the Christians in Rome found in this verse is often used in churches today as a closing benediction. It is a powerful statement about what God can do in the heart and mind of every Christian.

Paul makes this request of the God of hope, another beautiful name for God. He is the only lasting source of hope we have for meaning in this life, and for a life beyond death. Paul asks that the God of hope fill these believers with all joy and peace "in believing" or as they trust in Him. In other words, Paul is not asking God to simply dump joy and peace into their hearts without cause. He is asking that as these believers trust in God, their faith will bring joy and peace to their hearts. In other words, help them to keep believing so that they can experience joy and peace.

Finally, Paul asks that they might have this joy and peace in believing so that they may abound with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul is asking God to give them more than just regular human hopefulness. He is asking for supernatural, Holy Spirit-powered hopefulness.

What a fantastic prayer to ask God for others or for ourselves. What more could we wish for other believers than to be filled with joy and peace and abounding in hope?

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“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” - Jeremiah 29:13

The preceding verse of our verse today is a very popular verse. This is usually used or wished every time someone who is close to us celebrates their birthday. However, people usually just look at that verse and ignore everything else. Meaning, people only read the promise, and do not read what is after. We have to understand that indeed God has given us a lot of promise and blessings. However, we always claim that we cannot find God, yet we have to understand that He is always there. He never walked away from us, He stayed faithful and He stayed protecting us. 

Now, let us understand that the fault is not with God, but it is with us. We cannot find Him because we are not seeking Him, we are not seeking Him with all our hearts. It might be so easy to receive a blessing especially if God promised to prosper us, however, we expect it to be magically given to us. We expect that it will just fall down from the sky. So, that is the wrong part. God is not our personal genie, He is our God and yes, He is a promise keeper. However, we must understand that we should seek Him. How can we find Him tho? We have to know that our verse has given us this answer. If we seek Him with all our hearts, we will find Him. 

Seeking God is not just through learning stuff about Him from our grandparents or parents, seeking God means having a close relationship with Him. It’s establishing that deep relationship with Him through the Word. We will never find God in the quotes we post, or in one or two verses we read online. The only way we will find God is through His Word, and if we seek Him through it with all our hearts. Therefore, we should remember that God did not leave us or walked away from us. If we cannot find Him, then maybe we are not seeking Him. Let us therefore search for Him with all our hearts, and build a personal relationship with Him through reading His Word day and night.

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“Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children” - Ephesians 5:1

One great skill we humans have is the art of imitating. Actually, we are so good with imitating that most of the time we find ourselves fake or we will just then realize that we are not ourselves anymore. Everything we see that we think is good and nice, we always try to imitate it. If one woman has a better sense of fashion than you, then in some way, you imitate it. A lot of people also claim that they are not imitators and they have their own styles, but even if we admit it or not, we love to imitate. Now, the problem here is that even if how good we can imitate, we always don’t want to imitate God’s example. 

Instead of using this skill for the greater good, we just don’t want or can’t imitate God’s example. Our verse today is just a reminder for us that we must follow or other translations would use, “imitate” so that we will really have the right understanding of what God really wants us to do. He wants us to imitate His example for we are His children. So, the problem is, no matter how much we imitate other people, if we cannot imitate God’s example, we will never be good or righteous. In other words, we are so easy and fast to imitate others, but we don’t want to imitate God because we know that in our worldly mind, we will never enjoy life. 

However, this mindset is very wrong. Before completely imitating God, we have to check if we have the attitude or capability to do so. The reason why it is so easy to imitate worldly things is that, by nature, we are sinful and bound to worldly satisfaction. So, in order to imitate God, our nature should change– we have to change. If we are of the world, that’s why we can imitate the world, then we have to be of God so that we will be able to imitate Him. That is why the last part of our verse today is highlighting how we are children of God. If we are children of God, then we can follow and imitate God’s example. 

Therefore, in order to do this, we have to accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. We have to understand that only through Him, we will become children of God. As we become His children, we will then have the strength to follow Him and imitate His example who is Christ our Lord. We can only be called His children through Christ, and we must follow and imitate His life as we live as children of God. Thus, it is Christ alone, and only through Him we can be saved, we can be children of God, and we can have eternal life. Amen and amen.

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“The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” - Psalm 18:2

David was known to be a man after own God’s heart, with our verse today, we will understand his relationship with God. He described God in a lot of ways which shows how deep was his relationship with God. Now, we all know that David was a fighter, and with his description of God, we can see that he was a fighter, and in every battle he faced, he fought with God. He declared that the Lord our God is his rock, his fortress, and his deliverer. So, we know that whenever he fought his battles, he saw God as his shield, as his victory, as his refuge, as his strength, and even as his stronghold when times are awful. 

Aso, as we reflect on this verse,  we will then realize that we ought to be like David. We must be like David who sees God as his everything. We should not just see God as our God of convenience. We should not just approach God or acknowledge Him when we need Him, or when it is our convenient time to approach Him. Instead, we must see God as our God and Lord of our lives. So, we must not just approach Him when we need Him or when we have time to remember Him. We must always see Him as our God who is always there for us, and we must always depend on Him. 

Therefore, we should always keep in mind that as children of God, we depend on Him. We must not try to be so independent because we know that we are nothing without Him. Let us always understand that everything we do, we must always do it for the glory of God. As we fight everyday’s battle, let’s fight it with God. May we always be like David who is a man after own God’s heart. We must always remember to make Him as our rock, our fortress, our strength for we need Him, and indeed we get our strength from Him. Thus, let us always depend on God and get the strength that we need from Him.

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“Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” - 1 John 3:18

Following his application in verse 17, John summarizes the need for Christians to act on love, not just think about it. It is important to communicate love through our words, but we must also do so through our actions. Jesus gave a similar warning to the Pharisees in Matthew 15:4–9. Just as truly saving faith will produce good works (James 2:17–19), truly loving another person will produce loving actions. This verse once again uses the Greek root word agape, meaning a selfless, sacrificial love.

Jesus not only spoke about love, He provided powerful actions to match His teachings. John 13 offers a clear example in which Jesus washed the feet of His disciples to teach them to serve one another in humility. His death on the cross offered the most powerful evidence of love "in deed and in truth." He endured suffering, ridicule, and death from those who should have recognized Him as the Messiah. Yet His actions also included His resurrection, offering love in action that changed the course of history.

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