Sunflower Faith

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Big day.

It’s not often you get to dress up for a night on the town and after painstaking making sure everything is put on just right, you walk by the mirror and see to your horror, maybe a stain on the outfit you might have missed, or the smudge of makeup that you didn’t notice or happen while you were busy getting ready.

Or maybe you didn’t walk by the mirror at all and at lunch, while  laughing,  a friend points out that there’s food stuck in your teeth all this time and you had just waved and smiled to someone else.

Awkward…. embarrassing…can we just hide under the table now….

Or…..It’s like looking at someone’s year book picture and finding hard to believe that

How many of us think of the same about caterpillars.

I mean really…we’re talking about caterpillars and great that they will be a butterfly one day, but what we see now is something creepy and crawly and just don’t let it get on me……not really a reflection of the beauty that the caterpillar will become and for us, its all we see in the immediate and often decide on…not what it can be, but what it is now.

Yet….in a way…God’s grace does that with us….He takes something that to many seem unusable and filtering that person through Jesus, creates a new child of God so what we see, isn’t us anymore but Him.

¹⁷ The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Lord’s Spirit is, there is freedom. ¹⁸ All of us are looking with unveiled faces at the glory of the Lord as if we were looking in a mirror. We are being transformed into that same image from one degree of glory to the next degree of glory. This comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17-18, Common English Bible)

Like the song, Amazing Grace, God’s grace is something that completely transforms us, convicts us, challenges us to grow, to be strengthen and to be

 ⁹ Don’t be misled by the many strange teachings out there. It’s a good thing for the heart to be strengthened by grace rather than by food. Food doesn’t help those who live in this context. (Hebrews 13:9, Common English Bible)

The Pharisees made the mistake when it came to trying to figure out what they thought grace was about.

“The healthiest people are the people who are aware of where they fall short and instead of being defensive, they are able to say, “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Grace is a difficult concept for us to understand because it is so unlike the way we human beings operate. Our most magnanimous acts are often colored by some selfish motive. Via The God of All Grace by Richard L. Strauss

The Pharisees tried hard to be holy, to keep the law, but their motivation was to impress others. Jesus called them “white-washed tombs.” They appeared fine on the outside, but inside they were dead and their hearts were bitter toward Jesus. For example, they went to the extreme to enforce the law “to do no work on the Sabbath.” When Jesus, out of compassion healed someone on the Sabbath they criticized Him for it. from, “How God Changes Us” by Ney Baily

Transforming grace…the grace that gets down to the roots of our lives and work from the inside out… is noticeable to all and we don’t have to dress to impress, talk to impress, or do anything to impress….God alone is all that is needed and to Him….all the glory because when people look and see…they will see…Him.

Not just the holidays, but everyday, there are those who are lost….feeling unloved….unworthy….broken…hurt….rejected…in need of knowing they matter….and they do matter (and should matter) to us, because they all…we all…all of us…matter to our Father in Heaven that, “¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life. (John 3:16, Common English Bible)“.

What do you think of, when you think of the world, billions and billions of people and each and every one matters to our Father in Heaven and as His ambassadors, its about Him…not us….but Him.

And the grace that He gives us freely, ”

⁷ God has given his grace to each one of us measured out by the gift that is given by Christ. (Ephesians 4:7, Common English Bible), is a life transforming grace that once it takes root in our lives like a seed to viable soil, grows, enriches, deepens and blossoms into a life that should reflect Him and His grace.

 ¹³ Those who are planted in the house of the LORD
Shall flourish in the courts of our God.
¹⁴ They shall still bear fruit in old age;
They shall be fresh and flourishing, (Psalm 92:13-14, New King James Version)

Let God’s grace take root in your life and flourish…let it transform you and experience the life transformation that can be given freely and forever, in and through our Father in Heaven.

The only thing God requires from us is that we take our eyes off of ourselves and fix them upon him, the author and perfecter of our faith.-The Transformation Process“

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