Do You Know God’s Sustaining Grace and Love Never Rests?

Jesus spoke and the paralytic of 38 years, walked carrying the bed he had been lying on. He had not called to Jesus. It had been no act of faith on his part; because, he did not even know who had spoken to him. This was an act of grace and mercy that Jesus chose him. Jesus did seek him out again in the temple to heal his heart of sin as well; but, the first healing of the body had been just that to heal the body only. A random act of grace which displayed the healing power of Jesus as the Great Physician. All of this performed on the Sabbath day. Why? Jesus knew what the response of the religious leaders would be. What truth about God’s Glory was Jesus placing on display in performing healings on the Sabbath?

In the beginning, when Jesus beside His Father created the heavens and earth; they rested on the 7^th day. Not from fatigue. They paused and looked out at the beauty of the creation they had just completed. It was a magnificent, perfect sinless creation. They paused to rejoice in its beauty. A display of their own love, glory, and joy. Oh, yes; they knew that sin would enter the world and with sin they would not rest again until once more a new earth would be created with perfect beauty. Man’s selfish hearts would wreak havoc on their creation. Patiently, God would work. Preparing a way for man’s salvation. Providing enough sustaining grace so that the world would not be totally destroyed until that final day of judgement to come. (Deuteronomy 32). Every beautiful sunrise is a display of God’s sustaining Grace. God has not rested a single day from His Labor of Sustaining Grace so that we might have the chance to become His Adopted Children. [bctt tweet=”Every act of kindness, love, or mercy we have known is from God’s Hand of grace reaching out to us.”]

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IS THE WAY JESUS PRAYS ACTUALLY VALUABLE FOR ME?

What can I learn from studying the prayer life of Jesus? After all, Christ being the True Son of God and part of the Tri-unity of God; why did He need to pray? He was perfect righteousness; what about the way He prays is of value to the prayer life of someone like me with all my frailties?

Jesus Christ, as Son of God has existed from eternity past as part of the God-head made up of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For anyone struggling with that concept, let me place that in its simplest of terms. Mankind was created in the image of God—body, soul and spirit. So, God is three distinct being (body, soul, and spirit) within one. That truth I will not belabor here. I did in a 2014 series titled, “The Good Pleasure of God’s Will”. Particularly, I addressed this in detail in (Part 2)  of that series

WHY DID CHRIST NEED TO PRAY?

When Christ came to earth in human form, He stepped outside of His immediate presence with His Father and the Holy Spirit. Though He was eternally a part of God-the perfect echoing of God’s essence; He was in human flesh tempted as we are. (Hebrews 4:15).

© Yongsung Kim/Licensed from GoodSalt.com

[bctt tweet=”In His human form, it was not that Christ was incapable of sin, He chose to remain sinless”]so that He would be able to redeem you and me. Had He ever chosen to disobey the Father’s commands, He could not pay the price for our sin. The burden of obedience lay very heavily upon His heart. Yet, the human body that He lived in had desires, temptations, hungers, and trials like you and I face. It was in this human state that the perfect righteous of Christ was proven. It was during Christ’s earthly journey that His obedience to the Father’s will was tested and fully manifested as perfect obedience. Because of His perfect obedience, He was able to pay the penalty for mankind’s sin. “¹⁴ For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10). If Christ, God’s only begotten son needed to pray; how much more we the adopted children?

We need to look both at the times that Christ prayed and the types of prayers so that we might gain insight into our own prayer lives.

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