Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Friends in Christ

Friends in Christ are not only friends now but friends for eternity - therefore our getting to know and delighting in one another starts now but will continue on and on... for time upon time.

---
Grace and Peace
Ollie
Mar 2011

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Love as a Grace-Gift

The very act of being able to love someone in a special way is in itself a grace gift from God.


---
Grace and Peace
Ollie
Mar 2011

Saturday, February 26, 2011

ALL Grace for ALL Sufficiency in ALL things at ALL times

And God is able to make ALL grace abound to you, so that having ALL sufficiency in ALL things at ALL times, you may abound in every good work - 2 Cor 9:8 (ESV)

---
Grace and Peace
Ollie
Feb 2011

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

We cannot find God without God

....We cannot find God without God. We cannot reach God without God. We cannot satisfy God without God - which is another way of saying that our seeking will always fall short unless God's grace initiates the search and unless God's call draws us to him and completes the search.

If the chasm is to be bridged, God must bridge it. If we are to desire the highest good, the highest good must come down and draw us so that it may become a reality we desire. From this perspective there is no merit in either seeking or finding. ALL IS GRACE. The secret of seeking is not in our human ascent to God, but in God's descent to us. We start out searching, but we end up being discovered. We think we are looking for something; we realize we are found by Someone. As in Francis Thompson's famous picture, "the hound of heaven" has tracked us down. what brings us home is not our discovery of the way home but the call of the Father who has been waiting there for us all along, whose presence there makes home home.

- Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (emphasis mine)

---
Grace and Peace
Ollie
Feb 2011

Monday, February 21, 2011

Every Text in Scripture a road to Christ

"Don’t you know, young man, that from every town and every village and every hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London? So from every text of Scripture there is a road to Christ. And my dear brother, your business is, when you get to a text, to say, now, what is the road to Christ? I have never found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it, and if ever I do find one, I will go over hedge and ditch but I would get at my Master, for the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savor of Christ in it."
- Lectures to my Students, Charles Spurgeon

HT: CH

---
Grace and Peace
Ollie
Feb 2011

Thursday, February 10, 2011

A Prayer to be REAL

Creator and Redeemer God,

Help me to be in reality before thee
as in appearance I am before men,
to be religious before I profess religion,
to leave the world before I enter the church,
to set my affections on things above,
to shun forbidden follies and vanities,
to be a dispenser as well as partaker of grace,
to be prepared to bear evil as well as to do good.
O God, make me worthy of this calling,
that the name of Jesus may be glorified in me and I in him.
- The Valley of Vision

----
Grace and Peace
Ollie
Feb 2011