grace – Page 2 – goodchristianfiction

This Debt I Owe

Posted on November 15, 2014 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

I have a confession to make. Despite knowing that vengeance belongs to God, I love a good movie where the hero systematically eradicates all the villians. Even in a story like Eastwood’s Unforgiven, I’m glad to see him take out his enemies because, even though Eastwood has given them every chance to back off, they just won’t give up. Eastwood may have ultimately lost a bit more of his soul in shooting it out with the bad guys, but as a movie-goer, I am really glad the bad guys bit the dust.

How different are the realities of a world where people live according to the belief that God has the only right to vengeance. In our modern age, I’m not sure how many of those communities actually exist, but in the pages of my Bible, I find a history of God’s people asking for guidance in dealing with their enemies and giving full credit to God for any victories that they attain. When the Israelites are on top of their faithfulness with God, no force in the world can beat them. Vengeance is God’s.

I’ve been reading the Psalms this week. In David’s Psalms, he repeatedly acknowledges his own sinful state and how little he deserves God’s help. But, David also acknowledges how he can do nothing without God, how great God is all the time, how willing David is to accept God’s will, whatever that may be. For David, whatever happens is the will of God, and God is good all the time–even when what God decides to do makes David hurt.

When you read that attitude coming from a man who lives under the weight of sin, you understand more and more just how much David had a heart like God’s. What I mean is this: in David’s time, there was no such thing as grace. In order to renew one’s relationship with God, you had to perpetually offer blood sacrifices to make right what you inevitably had done wrong in the sight of God. Even as David pours his heart out to God in the Psalms, he knows that the only man on earth that can most closely speak to the Maker is the High Priest one day each year when the Holy of Holies is entered after much sacrifice and even more sacrifices are made in the very presence of God. During that ceremony, tradition holds that the people would tie a rope to the High Priest in which to drag him back out of the Holy of Holies in case God did not find favor with him.

Because Christ died for our sins once and for all, we Christians in this modern world are living every day, truly, in a state of grace that it can be so easy to take for granted. David, who was persecuted by Saul, lived a life of war, lost children, and had children rebel against him, could always remember that God is good and worthy of praise. David knew he himself had no right to be proud, even though he was a great king in the eyes of men, because he only ruled by the will of God. David knew that at any minute he could die in a state of sin that separated him from the God he loved so much.

You and I have been given the gift of starting each day and ending it in relationship with God. The Holy Spirit dwells in us at the point that we accept Christ as our Savior. We owe such a debt to Christ for His sacrifice, and yet He presents it to us as a gift, lovingly given. We do nothing to earn our salvation except to accept that gift and submit to Christ’s will.

If David, living under the threat of unforgiven sin, could devote so much of himself in praising his God for the love and protection and mercy God gave him, how much more should we who have been given the gift of relationship with our God be daily loving, praising, believing, and submitting to His will? Even though we cannot earn our salvation, do we not owe so much more of a debt to our God that He was willing to die for us, once and for all?

Make no mistake, Christianity does not equal inaction. As James puts it, “faith without works is a dead faith.” Reading the Psalms of David reminds us of the debt we all owe to our loving God, who gave His whole self for us.

Thank You, Jesus, for the indwelling of the Spirit that allows me to know that when I cry out to You, You always hear me. And so often, You are my one and only source of comfort. My job is learning to lean into this awesome debt I lovingly owe.

Our God is truly an awesome God.

Christian Living, Faith

Why Don’t I Learn?

Posted on October 18, 2014 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

As I’ve mentioned recently, my Bible reading currently finds me in the cycle of stories of the Old Testament, where God’s people love Him, forget Him, mock Him, and turn back to Him again in waves of joy and grief that often leave me wanting to scream at my Bible as I might yell at the television set–“What do you think you’re doing? How can you be so stupid that you would worship a man-made idol or other people’s gods when you have a history of covenant with the one and only God?”

But, I usually remind myself how easy it is to armchair quarterback history. A perspective from thousands of years in the future, after all, can easily see where others stumble, especially since my perspective includes knowledge of the New Covenant, which was completed when Christ came and sacrificed Himself for us.

Before Christ, the closest any individual came to God was through the High Priest, who was allowed to cleanse himself and enter the Holy of Holies, the most sacred place in the Temple, the place where God dwelled, only once each year in order to offer sacrifices that would give the people a way to forgiveness from God. When Christ died on the Cross, that curtain that separated the rest of the people from that Holy of Holies literally split in two! From that moment on, those who ask Jesus to be their Savior have entrance into the Holy of Holies through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which means that we can call on God anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

But, since human nature really never changes, how often do we also cycle through loving God, forgetting Him, and even mocking Him before we remember just how special the gift of Grace and Salvation are and return to Him again?

Modern culture likes to concentrate on a kind of non-religion where everyone can feel good about him/herself so long as we give everybody enough room to believe whatever they want, and we don’t get in anybody else’s way.

Even though Christ loves all of us so much that He died so that we all would have the chance to choose everlasting life with Him, He did not negate following God’s commands:

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices–mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law–justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. (Matthew 23:23)

There is no way to God the Father except through our belief in Christ the Son. Christ commanded that we love God first, with everything that is in us, and to love others as we want ourselves to be loved. Between these two commands, He covered every other rule laid out for human behavior in the Holy Word.

Yet, despite the simplicity of God’s plan for our salvation, don’t we manage to make everything so very complicated? We judge when we should be silent. We offer disapproval when we should be extending a helping hand. We let ourselves off the hook when we should be listening to the voice of conscience that tells us we just messed up. We hold onto our pride when we should submit to God’s ultimate power over us.

Despite the many downs in the history of the Jews, theirs is the ultimate victory in human history because it is through them that God chose to make Himself known to the rest of us. I feel sorry for those who stubbornly refuse to believe that God is because, in the end, they miss out on the pinnacle-moments of knowing a loving Creator.

Through his many psalms, David, the man after God’s own heart, expresses as well as anyone the joy of knowing, truly knowing, God’s love for us:

The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge, my savior; you save me from violence. I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies. (2 Samuel 22:2-4)

Like intersecting circles in a graph, we humans may have different perspectives about the world, but the one thing that should center us is coming back to our true center, which is Christ.

So, even though I want to chastise the people in the stories I read in the Old Testament, I know that I, too, am constantly on a path of winding toward and away from God, even though I have Jesus in my heart. The main lesson I have to learn is to keep going on my knees and asking God to keep guiding me and bringing me back to center.

Christian Living

Get a Life: Get Your God Perspective

Posted on September 28, 2014 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

How many times have you ended a day thinking, boy, am I lucky God didn’t give me what I deserved to get today?

How many more times do we go through a day thinking, when is God going to give so and so what he/she deserves?

The key to a full, happy, fulfilling life isn’t a 60-inch television and a Mercedes in your driveway. Ask a Syrian Christian who has watched his baby slaughtered for refusing to deny Christ (if internet reports are indeed correct), or a single mom working three jobs to put not even enough food on the table, and they’ll tell you truthfully the value of material things.

The key to a full, happy, fulfilling life isn’t making sure that everyone around you is following the rules you’ve been taught or that you’ve decided were the right ones along the way. Just like commercials can lead us to pick up a package of cereal at the grocery store, we can too easily be led to believe that purple is red and right and wrong have middle ground in this capital-driven culture where we are bombarded with information always. Information distractions make it easy to point the finger at others’ wrong-doing, while we give ourselves a pass.

The key to a full, happy, fulfilling life IS knowing the word of God and concentrating on standing in the truth of that word, regardless of what the rest of the world is doing. When we stand in that truth, we know that we don’t deserve anything, especially not the love that God showed by offering His Son as a sacrifice for our sin. The knowledge of our own guilt should make us treat others more kindly, as fellow children of God. We all have sins we would rather hide. We all are known by God.

A God perspective not only sees through the eyes of love, it knows that God is infinitely patient and desires to have all of us in His Kingdom through our acceptance of Christ as our Savior. A God perspective doesn’t look for the faults in others, but encourages the good in all of us. It looks for ways to be the hands and feet of Christ. It even sees how television and social media might just be equated with Baal worship and Asherah poles if we are not careful.

We can never be too careful. The Jews of the Old Testament thought they were careful. But over and over again, they failed to follow all of God’s instructions, and inevitably, they paid for their failure to maintain the singularity of God as God. Eventually, they even lost the temple where He had dwelled among them.

But God’s patience is persistent. If you read the history chapters of the Old Testament, you see time and time again that God gives people generations to straighten themselves out, but when He hands down a sentence, it is eventually carried out. The wrath of God that is so vividly depicted in the Old Testament may make modern readers cringe and give those who are looking a handy excuse to forget about trying to apply God’s edicts to their lives, but they do so to their own detriment.

Fortunately for us, we have a Saviour who was willing to take the wrath we deserve upon Himself. Because God’s perspective sees us through the loving eyes of Jesus, we don’t get what we really deserve. We get life eternal with the One and Only God.

See the world through that perspective, and nothing will stop you. Walk in God’s truth and know the kind of peace that surpasses understanding. It is a life-long journey to completion, but we are not alone. Keep listening for the Holy Spirit every day. Keep praying to be guided by the Word of God. And be patient.

This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:3-4)

Christian Living

Mostly, the Mighty Fall

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Stop acting so proud and haughty! Hannah prays when she brings the son, Samuel, she had asked God for to dedicate to the temple. Don’t speak with such arrogance! For the LORD is a God who knows what you have done; he will judge your actions. (1 Samuel 2: 3 NLT)

Hannah might have been speaking to her husband’s more prolific wife, Peninnah, who had taunted Hannah for many years because Hannah was barren and Peninnah had several children. But as the rest of 1 Samuel shows, Hannah could as easily be speaking a warning to the very priest she turns her son Samuel over to, Eli.

Now, Eli was a highly respected priest, but his sons were wicked. They mocked God by eating offerings meant to be sacrificed to Him. They seduced the young women who helped at the entrance to the Tabernacle. The people were so horrified, they complained to Eli, who reminded his sons that their sins were against God and should cease, but to no avail.

As Samuel grew to love God and find favor with Him, Eli and his sons grew fat on the takings from a priestly duty they had turned into a mockery. Finally, God confronts Eli with the pronouncement that his family’s actions have actually cost them the heritage of being the branch of the Levi tribe that will serve as High Priest to God.

But I will honor those who honor me, and I will despise those who think lightly of me, the LORD tells Eli. The time is coming when I will put an end to your family, so it will no longer serve as my priests. All the members of your family will die before their time. None will reach old age. You will watch with envy as I pour out prosperity on the people of Israel. But no members of your family will ever live out their days. Those who survive will live in sadness and grief, and their children will die a violent death. And to prove that what I have said will come true, I will cause your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, to die on the same day! (1 Samuel 2: 30-34 NLT)

To underscore how far from God the people were at this time, in fulfilling His promise to Eli, God also allowed the Ark of the Covenant to be taken from the Israelites by the Philistines! Imagine the Israelites being so far removed from God that they would actually go into battle with the Ark without first consulting God about it.

The story of God’s wrath on Eli and Israel’s loss of the Ark of the Covenant is one of those tales from the Bible that a modern world would sooner ignore than remember. For, how often do we fail to honor God in a given day? Do we give more to ourselves than we do to others? Do we use His name in vain or stand mute as others speak untruths about Him? In our consumer-driven society, do we spend more time caring about our smartphones and flat-screen televisions than we spend about doing what is right according to God?

Luckily for all of us, God came to earth in the form of Christ and sacrificed Himself, drinking the cup of wrath we deserve in order to save us. All we have to do is accept that fact, and the grace of God allows us to be filled with His Holy Spirit. We then begin, a new creation, on a journey that can bring light into a dark world.

But as Eli’s story reminds us, the only ONE who is mighty is GOD. The moment we forget to face life’s challenges and daily schedules without first submitting to the will and power of the LORD is the moment we risk learning humility the hard way, by falling.

Christian Living, Faith, Love

God Doesn’t Need To Be Politically Correct

Posted on May 18, 2014 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

When Abraham asked God, Who are you?, the Maker of the Universe answered, Is.

In the prophecy of the final days, He describes Himself: “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev 1:8).

How would you describe yourself? Would you do it by your occupation? Your age? Your physical description? Your personality traits? By the company you keep? By the things you have or have not accomplished during your time on this planet?

God knows how to describe you. As the Creator of everything, He is the only One who can see straight to our true hearts. The Psalmist says it this way: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God” (Ps. 43:5).

In one of the famous lines from the TV classic, The Cosby Show, Bill Cosby tells his television son, Theo, “I brought you into this world, and I’ll take you out.” God could do that. In fact, there are countless examples in the Old Testament where God’s patience wore thin and His vengeance was wrought against a people who had been given every chance to believe and still persisted in worshiping other gods, in sinning, in denying God’s omnipotence. Think Sodom and Gomorrah.

Paul assures us, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Jesus warns us to remove the moat from our own eyes before worrying about the speck in others’ (Matthew 7:3). We are all guilty of something.