It’s Friday night, and I’m thoroughly exhausted ~~ many folks are preparing to go out and some looking forward to an enjoyable outing … me, I want so badly to crawl into bed and just melt right into that pillow! Challenging week … How about you, Girlfriend?
As I take inventory of my behavior and thoughts, and I blush at the enumerable times that I royally blew it this week, I praise God for loving me and forgiving me ~~ each and every time. He knew I was going to blow it each time and yet He still chose me.
Luke 7:36-38, 48 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat. When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them. Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”
The same goes for this woman who recognized her Savior when she came into His Presence. She was brought to a place in her memory where she had lived a life of sinful pleasures ~~ and I’m sure it all played out like a movie, one scene at a time ~~ her heart was broken as she entered into the company of The One Who loved her beyond herself. She was so grateful to know God had forgiven her ugly past that tears of both sorrow and joy came flooding forward ~~ so much that she was able to express her heart by wiping those tears off the feet of Him Who loved her so well with her hair.
I’m certain this precious woman felt the same way ~~ He knew me, and yet He still chose me.
Mark 2:13-17 Then Jesus went out to the lakeshore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Levi got up and followed him. Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers. But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?” When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”
Matthew once associated with people known to be connivers and deceivers ~~ Jesus knew him and his background and chose him.
Acts 9:1-6, 15-16 Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord’s followers. So he went to the high priest. He requested letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, asking for their cooperation in the arrest of any followers of the Way he found there. He wanted to bring them—both men and women—back to Jerusalem in chains. As he was approaching Damascus on this mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?” “Who are you, lord?” Saul asked. And the voice replied, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting! Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” But the Lord said, “Go, for Saul is my chosen instrument to take my message to the Gentiles and to kings, as well as to the people of Israel. And I will show him how much he must suffer for my name’s sake.”
Before he was transformed into the Apostle Paul, Saul was a man determined to crush and destroy anything that resembled Jesus Christ. His personal mission was to annihilate all relations and references and remembrances to The Lord Jesus. Until his meeting with Him on that road to Damascus ~~ then all things changed in an instant, and Paul’s mission then became the mission God had foreordained since the beginning of time.
God knew who we would become before our transformation ~~ He knew the wrong turns we would willingly choose; the bad decisions we consciously would make; the bad company that we would select and befriend and melt into. God knew exactly how long it would take for us to repent and run into His Arms of Grace.
And He still chose us. Always leaves me speechless on my knees.
Girlfriend, wherever you are in your Journey with God ~~ maybe you’re finding yourself climbing out of a pit reaching up to touch bottom ~~ maybe it’s for the hundredth time ~~ take heart, that your Savior is the Author of Infinity, and He is willing to go with you into the hundred-and-one time because He has called you.
Doesn’t that just warm your heart and revive your spirit? It certainly does for me!
Philippians 3:12-13 I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead,
Forgetting the past and looking forward ~~ only God could make that possible.
I’m IN, are you?
May you rest assured that you have a hope in your Creator ~~ no matter what may have occurred, no matter how far back or how recent, He has called you ~~ He knew you and chose you long ago. It’s a done deal ~~ so get moving!
I love you to Heaven and Back, Girlfriend ~~
LindaRJohnson
T2T Visionary
Titus Two 