My Favorite Parable
22 NovThere was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father,
“Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.”
So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any.
That brought him to his senses. He said,
“All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.”
He got right up and went home to his father. When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech:
“Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.”
But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants,
“Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here–given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time.”
Lk 15:11-24, Message Bible
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The One Nail
18 DecI sometimes wonder that you do not get tired of my preaching, because I do nothing but hammer away on this one nail. With me it is, year after year, ‘None but Jesus!’ Oh, you great saints, if you have outgrown the need of a sinner’s trust in the Lord Jesus, you have outgrown your sins, but you have also outgrown your grace, and your saintship has ruined you!
The Shore of Grace
13 DecAll ships that land at the shore of grace weigh anchor from the port of sin… God didn’t overlook your sins, lest he endorse them. He didn’t punish you, lest he destroy you. He instead found a way to punish the sin and preserve the sinner. Jesus took your punishment. And God gave you credit for Jesus’ perfection… As long as the cross is God’s gift to the world, it will touch you but not change you. Precious as it is to proclaim, “Christ died for the world,” even sweeter it is to whisper, “Christ died for me.”
Grace: More Than We Deserve, Better Than We Imagine, Thomas Nelson, 2012, 35-6.
Behind Every Door
11 DecI had grown up with a heavy emphasis on finding God’s will. I was taught that God has a perfect will and a permissive will… Needless to say, this view of God’s will paralyzes those who adhere to it…
In discovering God’s will is Christ in me and Christ through me, I could see that God was behind every door, even the door of sin. I’m not saying sinning is OK or that God wants us to sin. Of course not! What I mean is that whether or not I choose a particular door in life, God will always be there. He will always be there because he’s in me. He’s not just with me, but He’s in me. So wherever I go, there He is!
The Naked Gospel, Zondervan, 2009 , 210-1