2019 Diamonds part 3

The perfect grace of God comes into play in our imperfect relationship situations to assist in beautiful ways.

God’s grace is not God’s approval for us to not follow His teachings.

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Great power was exercised to turn you from your previous self to salvation. That power sustains you through life.

You are where God wants you to be and He wants to use you where you are, so open and humble yourself to this call on your life, significantly working through His church, being a prisoner of, for, in and by Christ.

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We need to realise that God’s goodness is not linked to our circumstances. Why? It shakes our faith in God when things go wrong, as our happiness sometimes becomes proof that God is good, as He moves bad things away from us.

Inner voyages of self-discovery result in a haze, with our thinking distorted instead of clarified, because, if you look inward long enough, you will find yourself to be unreliable as your inner compass needle keeps swinging to a new north as you change and contradict yourself over time. “The heart is deceitful above all else.” The heart seeks that it thinks will make it happiest, and this changes all the time as the thing sought is found to be less than fully satisfying ad infinitum.

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Wisdom is the capacity to understand life from God’s perspective and, because of this, to live well in this world. We thus need to ask God to give us His vision of life this side of heaven.

Wisdom helps us live in fullness of life.

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Work with (not against) the grains of wisdom woven into the fabric of the universe to see the gains of intentional living; the wisdom in scripture will guide you.

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As you put your hope and trust in wealth instead of in God, you will be disappointed because money eventually runs out or is diminished or lost and is not enough for changed lifestyles and circumstances.

Don’t attach your significance to your address: make God your identity and substance.

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We might think that we drive our cars, but, if we choose to follow God properly, the reality is that we are actually in the trailer that is towed behind the car that is being driven by God.

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Only God can exalt and uplift us; we cannot do it ourselves, and so we shouldn’t strive for our own glory, but rather trust that God will raise us up.

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God invites us all to meet His Son. We must bring our whole, real selves; we don’t have to do anything to clean ourselves or make us appear neater, or bring gifts (like the wise men did) or perform any deeds.

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