Month: December 2016

God Always Enables Us To Do Good Works: Weekly Word Of Encouragement

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 “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.”  (II Cor. 9:8) God will provide what we need so that we can do good works. From the context we see that God isn’t just “able” but He is also willing if we trust and submit to Him. And it is important that we understand that God provides for us in order that we can do good works, not just for ourselves. Presumably, that is the desire of our heart. So the good news is that God will fulfill our desire to do good works (a desire that He gave us) by supplying us with what we need. In other words, when we abide in Christ we will always be able to do good works. Sometimes we may feel like we don’t Continue Reading →

rewards

Should We Be Motivated By Heavenly Rewards?

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When we think about our blessings in heaven we usually think about the immense pleasure of just being in God’s presence and enjoying his love. We may not think so much about the rewards God will give because that seems too self-focused. Moreover, how much good is a reward compared to being directly in God’s presence with Jesus? In Bernard of Clairvaux’s (b. 1090 – d. 1153) famous work On Loving God he says that “God is not loved without reward, although he should be loved without regard for one” (Sec. 6.17). Bernard rates loving God for the rewards as only the second of four levels of loving God. And yet scripture repeatedly uses rewards to motivate us to be Christlike. God assures us in Ephesians 6:7-8 that we should do “service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, Continue Reading →