“Jesus Does His Best Work in the Darkness” ~ Toni Collier

³ So Jesus told them this story: ⁴ “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it? ⁵ And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders. ⁶ When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ ⁷ In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away! Luke 15:3-7 NLT

I had never thought of this parable as an example of Grace in pursuit of me, and yet, that is exactly what we learn here. GOD wants us to know that His Love for us transcends beyond anything and every sinful, embarrassing and awful moment of our lives. It may sound wacky and crazy, that a holy GOD would chase after sinful people, but He does ~ because He is Love.

Sometimes we just need to hit the pause button on all the activity and the busyness of life and our demanding schedules. Quite honestly, I’m the first one in line to admit guilt in this arena. I’m a planner, do-er, producer, woman in motion to get ‘it’ done (whatever ‘it’ is for the day) ~ my goal is to check all the boxes. And that can be a very risky place to be. There’s the danger of running around so much that I miss out on the truly important and noteworthy things that GOD wants me to take notice of.

Grace says I don’t have to meet a quota, hit the right levels of a performance metric, achieve the perfect score, measure up to a defined criteria to be loved and accepted. Grace says it’s already available because of Love.

Sounds preposterous and incredible. It’s not supposed to make human sense. We’re talking about GOD Whose thoughts and ways are waaaay out there, Girlfriend. We could never wrap our finite minds around His plans ~ that’s where faith gets us through to keep reaching up for Him and trusting that while we don’t deserve it and certainly will never understand it, He’s got us covered.

Grab your favorite hot drink and sit for this brief moment and I assure you will be blessed and thankful that you did.

I love you to Heaven and Back, Girlfriend ~

LindaRJohnson, TitusTwo Visionary

*Thank you to Toni Collier | TBN Better Together TV for this.