What Wondorous Love

Recently I was listening to the Steve Petitt Team's song O Wonderous Love, and man it really hit me just how great God's love really is. Think about it a completely holy God, free from all sin, loving me enough to pardon all my sin, and not only that, but making me His own son. Adopting someone, but for the blood of Christ that is covered in the one thing that He cannot abide. O truely what wonderous love. Not only did He choose to love me, but He continues to do so, no matter what I do, what a truely humbling thought. I can never run from God's love. In Psalm 23:6 it says that His love pursues us, the idea being that of a hunting dog chasing after its prey. He loves me enough to chase after me, even after he has already paid for my life. Its not that He is chasing me as an ecscaped slave to return him to service, but it is a chase that is motivated out of love to see His child be next to Him once again. God's love will not let me go, what a wondrous thought, no matter how far I stray in attempt to replace the God with vain and empty pleasures of the very sin He has forgiven me of, His love will always be there calling me back to His side. Patiently He will call and lovingly wait for me, His erring child, to return. There is nothing that can now condemn me, not in heaven nor on earth, for Christ love has wonderously covered all my sin. O how I betray that love!! O how great my sin is, one who has been forgiven so much and one who has benefited so much from Go's endless love and yet I give it such little value. My ever changing fancies are put in front of my unchanging God, o how little I esteem the love of God. O God, change my heart!! Let me truely say with the songwriter "Sin with its follies I gladly resign!" What are you doing about God's boundless love? Have you accepted the forgiveness He offers for your sins? If you have, how do you repay the God that loves you so? Let His love drive you to His face and to His side!

Glory in God's Gift

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Galations 6:14

To Glory in the cross, what does it mean? To glory, my first thought is taking great pride in something and then living your life in a way that everyone knows that that one thing means more than life to you. I often think about my last name, Stover. Its always been something we glory in, something we take pride in and even something we are willing to fight for. Come to think of it the only time I almost got in a fight was over the Stover name. I take so much pride in it that i even dont mind people that i know calling me by my last name. Yet do I treat Christ sacrifice for me the same way? Do I claim it in a public way? Am I really willing to defend it? Is it the first thing people see when they meet me? Or have a given Christ honor in my life to something else? Do I care when people at work say "O well he is a christian"? So often i dont take that as the compliment that it ought to be to me. I care more about my earthly family name than I do for the name of my Savior and Lord. My focus ought to be that of II Corinthians 10:17 But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. Forget the accomplishments, the awards, the praise of men, but instead let Christ's purchase of my soul mean everything to me.

A Ready Residence of Refuge

First off, my apologies to any of you who check this. My laptop has been down for a while now, so I was not able to post anything up here. Anyway, onto better things. As the second half of the semester gets going, I have found myself seemingly overwhelmed with work, whether it be ministry, homework, or just regular work. I'm not the kinda guy who gets stressed out about stuff like that, but after awhile it just seems to pile up, and the grades start to fall as the work piles up. This past couple of days has seemed crazier than the rest. Yesterday, I was supposed to play in piano studio, have my lesson, turn in two projects for one class, and write a paper for another. Talk about a busy day. Praise God for His kindness and mercy though! Someone shared a verse with me a couple of weeks ago, Nahum 1:7. "The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and He knoweth them that trust in Him." God has really been placing all these things in my life just to show me how that in and of myself there is no way that I can accomplish all that I need to. That's not how He designed the christian life to be. I am reminded of what I wrote in a previous post, about the light bulbs, without the power of the Spirit I can do nothing. While it would seem that God has called me to do impossible things, all I need to do is trust in Him with simple obedience. He truly is a strong tower, one the the storms of life will bash against and the enemy will assault, but it will stand. Why do we not avail ourselves of our trustworthy God? Honestly, which makes more sense: worrying about everything that God has put on our plates, or just trusting Him and realizing that He knows best and will take are of everything in His own way. Think of it like this, if there were a siege on a city and you were working out in the field, and you saw the advancing army, would you not run to the tower of defense? I would, yet so often in my life, I think that I can fight off the endless assault by myself, when Right behind my stands a tower ready to provide protection and defense. That sure doesn't make alot of sense does it? I thank God for the crazy exceedingly busy part of the year that I now find myself in. It truly drives me to my knees and shows me my need to trust God and to live in the power of His spirit. He stands ready to provide, ready to strengthen, ready to comfort, ready to protect. Will you take advantage of that and simply step inside the door of the tower?

Psalm 32:1-5

1 Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
2 Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.
3 When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.
4 For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.
5 I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah.

Wow, so my brother had asked me to preach on this passage for the junior high group up at my home church, and what a blessing it was! How often do I forget how happy i should be about my salvation!! Honestly, what could make a person happier? God no longer "charges" me sin against me, and my sin is covered under the blood of my savior!!! No game, victory, or circumstance could ever mean so much, or bring so much joy! The second half of this passage had just as important message. Why should I let my sin destroy that happiness? I know i have been in the exact same place as the psalmist. Refusing to admit my sin, or refusing to get it right and how that hesitance and rebellion ruins the joy that I ought to have! God's hand truly seems heavy when His conviction begins its work, but what a glorious work it does! It is that same conviction an pressure that brings me to me knees, it brings me to say "I will confess" and God truly is faithful and just to forgive my sin (1 John 1:9) No longer does the hand of God seem to bear down, but instead now I am lifted up it. The joy is restored and the fellowship restored!! O what a wondrous thing!

Infected Wounds

Ok here is something that God has just been subtly slamming into my head. On sunday, I was playing soccer and managed to give myself a nasty road rash on my right shin. Not a big deal, right? I mean Ive had plenty of road rashes in my life, being a Stover and all, so I just casually looked at my leg, shrugged and kept on playing. Couple of hours went by and I still didnt go wash it out, or even bother wiping the grass away from it. So lo and behold by the time I got home and decided to take care of it, it had become infected. By monday, it was the nastiest looking road rash I have ever had. So now instead of just slapping a band aid on it in the morning, I get to spend my evenings scrubbing out my leg, which isnt exactly a painless situation. So what does this have to do with spiritual things??? So often in my life I notice little spiritual problems, you know, things like skipping out on devos, wrong attitudes, getting annoyed easily and the like. Sometimes i just shrug them off, after all, arent they such trivial things? So often I just keep ignoring them, even when I do them over and over. Thats just like ignoring the cut on my leg, and sure enough soon those "little" things spread and soon become the norm. Think about it, how many times has "O, I really need the extra sleep, so I will do longer devos tomorrow", turned into not doing them at all. God has really been working on me to take care of these "spiritual road rashes" as soon as they happen. If not they just fester and grow. In Eph 4:27 we are told not to give place or give a foothold in our lives to Satan. So often, those little "road rashes" are just that. A small little place in my life that Satan can get ahold of and start infecting. In the physical sense, infections can have some pretty damaging results, think of gangrene for a moment. Pretty nasty thought isnt it? But yet I fear that often we as Christians, myself including, just dont care about stopping "spiritual infections" soon enough, and it ends up having that type of devastating impact on our spiritual lives. I mentioned earlier that now I get to scrub out my leg and how painful it is, but yet it is completely needed. Once I let those little wounds get infected, now God has to "scrub" out my life and sometimes its alot more painful than it would have been if I had just stopped and taken care of the problem as soon as I noticed it. Sometimes it feels like God's conviction can be like pouring hydrogen peroxide onto a cut, it stings and burns but the end result is purification. So what are you doing about those "spiritual road rashes" in your life?