Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Today I am home in America. I had a wonderful time with family in our Thanksgiving holiday. I have been blessed to be in the forest and I’m in search of my harvest of blessing for my new year. It is great experiencing God’s presence and also looking for the benefits of living in what He has given to us in our world. In everything we are called to live with Him and experience Him. Mercy is God’s testimony of love in our lives, and His grace is the testimony of the power of His love working in our lives. When we were disconnected from God, we lived our lives with self-seeking motives, desires, and agendas. We lived our lives as sinners. God’s presence in our lives empowers us to practice a right relationship with God and with one another. The law was a standard of control to our sinful ways, but grace is God’s true answer to change.
Romans 6:15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! 16 Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? 17 But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. 18 And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. 19 I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.
Without the presence of God in our lives we become prisoners to the external things of our world. Our disconnection from God led to the bondage of being connected to other things. Jesus came to reconnect us to our life-source. We were slaves to sin and that was a testimony of the bondage of being controlled by created masters. Those masters held us in captivity by the carnal, self-seeking ways of our hearts. No law, not even the law of God, could free us from such slavery. Only the power of God’s love could free us and bring liberty to our hearts. God’s mercy freed us from obedience to the law. God’s grace empowers us to be obedient to God’s voice – a relationship with God from within. Mercy freed us from the penalty of being a law breaker, but God’s grace empowers us to be holy as our Father in heaven is holy. The unmerited favor of God’s presence in our lives changes our thoughts, reasonings, imaginations, emotions, and desires from within. This is God’s grace working within and it grants us a passion of love that we cannot deny.
Romans 6:20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Law produced death but grace produces life. The fruit of law was death. The fruit of grace is life. It is not merely a discipline of our flesh. It is an internal change in our hearts and minds. Our Father is holy and His Spirit within us causes us to become holy also. We cannot do religious acts to become holy. We must embrace a connection with Holy Spirit within our hearts. When we respond to, and cultivate, a relationship with God in our hearts we become like our heavenly Father in increasing ways. Embracing a relationship with God will make us holy. The testimony of grace is a growing relationship with God in our hearts. His salvation is not just a salvation of going to heaven when we die. It is a salvation of our souls. It is a salvation of our lives that empowers us to live as sons and daughters of God in this world. When we embrace the Light, we become testimonies of that light to our world. The light of Christ within us is the source of who we are as children of God.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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Our Ministry Information Is:
House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
Bellingham, WA 98225-1728
