Grace Archives - My Manna

Stay vertical!

MyManna — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 22:00:20 +0000

“When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23).
Have you ever been wrongfully accused?
Oh, the need to defend and justify becomes so great.
“What will people think if they believe these things are true?” we reason.
Imagine what Jesus thought as they hurled insults and threats upon Him.
The God of the universe had visited planet earth only to be slandered and accused of blasphemy.
Jesus could have done two things in response:
He could have used His power to put the people in their place.
He could have fixed the problem right then.
However-
He chose to respond in a different way.
He chose to “entrust Himself to Him who judges justly.”
It requires great faith to entrust ourselves to God in the midst of personal assault.
However-
If we can do this, we will discover a level of grace and wisdom that will be birthed from this experience that we never thought possible.
We will discover a freedom in God we never knew before.
Whenever we suffer for righteousness without seeking to protect our reputation and rights, we are placing our total faith in the one who can redeem us.
This activates God’s grace in our lives and enables us to experience God’s presence like never before.
Ask God to give you the grace to stay vertical with Him.
Avoid the temptation of responding horizontally each time some event comes into your life that you want to “fix.”
Allow the One who judges justly.
It may be a divine appointment for your growth to another level in grace.
(PA)

The post Stay vertical! appeared first on My Manna.

The Big Picture

MyManna — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 21:00:06 +0000

“Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God” (1 Corinthians 4:5).
There was a man who had four sons.
He wanted them to learn to not judge things too quickly-
So he sent them each on a quest to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away.
He sent-
– his first son in the winter,
-his second in the spring,
-his third in summer and
-his youngest in the fall.
When they had all gone and come back-
– he called them together to describe what they had seen.
The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted.
The second son said no – it was covered with green buds and full of promise.
The third son disagreed, he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen.
The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.
After hearing all his son’s responses, the wise father replied, “Sons, you are all right because you have each seen only one season in the tree’s life. But you cannot judge a tree, or a person, or anything else by only one season. Most things can only be measured at the end, when all the seasons have come to pass”.
Each of us has judged someone or something prematurely.
And we have also probably experienced the pain of being judged that way.
We need to look closely enough and long enough to see the big picture before we rule things out.
God does that for us all the time!
(PR)

The post The Big Picture appeared first on My Manna.

Stay vertical!

MyManna — Thu, 21 May 2015 16:00:35 +0000

The post Stay vertical! appeared first on My Manna.