Tag Archives: Romans 16

Daily grace…. a constant miracle!

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The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.

(Rom 16.20)

With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfil every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

(2Thess 1.11-12)

The end of all things is near. Therefore, be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms…. So that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.

All of you, clothe yourselves with humility towards one another, because,

”God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Be self -controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

(1 Pet 4.7-11: 5.5-11)

It’s been one of those days, you know, when my good intentions go out the window, and I lose all self-respect as my worst habits and weaknesses take hold – yet again! And when that happens, the accuser of our souls, the enemy of our Lord Jesus, is right at my shoulder and ready to drag me down into all sorts of misery and inward-looking torments… And at this point, even though nothing very bad has happened, and no one else is suffering for my failures, yet still I need to recognise that I am in danger from an enemy, and that I have a choice over what happens next!

Peter exhorts his readers to humble themselves, casting their anxiety upon God in full expectation that His care for them is sufficient to deal with whatever the issues may be. Does this apply in my own private messes too? Indeed, I believe that it does! I have this window, this moment in which to recognise my danger, and to humble myself before God – to admit that I have messed up again, and that I cannot make anything good of my days without God’s aid and strength. AND I admit that I need his transforming Spirit’s work in my heart and mind to continue – so that I learn to be more self-controlled, and able to resist my own weaknesses better next time!

Above all, I remember and cling to grace – because it is there that my hope lies. I can face my own failures, repetitive and pathetic as they are, because God’s grace is sufficient to deal with them over and over again. Indeed, my Saviour delights to exchange his beauty and peace and righteousness for my daily messes – it is his desire to give, and my immeasurable privilege to receive. I exchange guilt for grace; remorseful self-reproach for humble praise and thanksgiving; I turn from myself, to look upon my Saviour, and hope is restored because he remains faithful, ever living to intercede for me and to keep me close to my Father. How marvellous is this daily miracle?! How much we have cause to rejoice as believers in this sustaining flow of hope, peace and love, which we receive in Jesus Christ.

Surely, this has to be part of the reason that almost all the letters included in our New Testament end with the prayer that the readers might know and receive grace? It is as necessary to us every day as is our daily bread, as the air we breathe. Grace not only – as John Newton’s great hymn puts it – “taught my heart to fear, and … my fears relieved”, but it will also “lead me home.” The key to faithful and persevering Christian living, is depending on grace, not on our own graft. Thus we are free every day to serve, to love and live in fellowship with our Lord, and to the praise of his name – just as Paul prayed for the Thessalonian church.

O Father, how good it is to know grace! What freedom you have brought us into as we receive all your riches through Christ, and are delivered from the tyranny of sin and death, to know joy and peace and hope in you.

Let me depend daily upon grace; rejecting the temptation to rest upon my own efforts, and standing firm when the enemy of my soul would tempt me to despair over my failures. Let me stand proudly and resist him, claiming the grace of my Lord Jesus as my protection now and always! In his name I pray this, Amen.

a prayer upon parting

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However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has give me – the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace… Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

(Acts 20.24&32)

Peace to the brothers and sister, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with undying love.

(Eph 6.23, 24)

Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known…by the command of the eternal God, so that all ..might come to the obedience that comes from faith – to the only wise God be glory for ever through Jesus Christ! Amen

(Rom 16.25-27)

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

(1 Thess 5.16-24)

Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

(Heb 13.20&21)

And so it has come to farewell… the time has dragged, then raced, and all at once the day is here and we are at the parting of the ways. But how wonderful to know that as children of God, we never say goodbye for ever, only farewell, only ’till we meet again!’

It is a good, but humbling lesson, learning over again that other people do not depend upon us for their thriving in life. Our presence in this community has – we trust – been a blessing and a means by which God has worked to build his kingdom, to break down prejudices and to show his love to others. But once we are gone, that work will continue, and we hope it will grow and bear fruit in lives transformed and a growing church! We are entirely at the Lord’s command, and it is by his Spirit that the work is done; we give all the glory to him for the fruit which is produced and give thanks for the privilege of labouring in his name. We also confess to him the mistakes we have made, and pray that they will not hinder his work but prove an opportunity for grace to abound.

The apostle Paul knew all about saying goodbye to his fellow believers, to people with whom he had laboured and suffered, grieved and rejoiced. His prayers for those people are rich in inspiration for us as we have to commit one another to God and walk down different paths. They remind us of what really matters, and of where our true confidence and strength must lie – in Christ, through whom God has given us all things, by whom we now live, and who alone can meet all our needs in this life. It is God’s will that we might live to glorify him and serve him, so surely we can trust him to make this possible, no matter what our circumstances may be?!

We each have a choice when God asks us to let go of a precious gift – either to release it with thankfulness for all that it brought and a prayer that we might have grace to do without it; or to resent God’s command, to let bitterness and self-pity have their way with us and blind us to God’s love, to the possibility of new gifts which are different, and to the reality of his command to trust him in all things to do what is good and right.

Heavenly Father, I worship you today and confess again your sovereignty. All that I have is of you, to give or to take away according to your good purposes in my life and those of others. I thank you for all the joy which this place and community have brought me over these seven years, and pray that I will release the gift back to you with a humble and hopeful spirit. May your work here be strengthened as your people depend on you and step out in faith; may the memory of our time together be an encouragement not a source of regret. May I step out in faith to the future you have assuredly prepared for me, although I do not yet know what it is. Keep my loss free from the infection of bitterness and self-pity; keep me thankful, humble and hopeful, and above all keep me faithfully loving to you, through our Lord Jesus, in whose name all your children are saved. Amen.

What’s in a name..?

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For this is what the Lord says: “To the eunuchs who …Choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant – to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off. And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, and to worship him…these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.

(Isa 56.4-7)

The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out…I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me – just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life for the sheep.

(Jn 10.3,14&15)

Greet Priscilla and Acquila..my dear friend Epenetus..Mary, Andronicus and Junias, Ampliatus, Urbanus and Stachys..Apelles, the household of Aristobulus, Herodion, the household of Narcissus, Tryphena and Tryphosa, Persis, Rufus and his mother, Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas and Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas…

(Rom 16.3-15)

Peace to you. The friends here send their greetings. Greet the friends there by name.

(3Jn.14)

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven.

(Heb 12.22&23)

I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no-one will take your crown. Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he leave it. I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on him my new name..

(Rev 3.11&12)

Deep down in our spirits, we know that each one of us matters; uniquely, eternally, matters. Our very existence has significance, and we strive to honour and respect the memory of those who have gone, as if the act of forgetting somehow wipes them out forever, and makes them of no account. This came home to me most recently at the sombre and moving memorial on the site of the twin towers in New York, where the names of those who died are recorded – not on some inaccessible wall or behind screens, but on plinths where they can be read and touched.

Each name represents a person made to reflect God’s character in the world; represents so many experiences, hopes and achievements – and above all a person for whom the world was made. We do well to remember that the terror and destruction of that day – and of so many other dark days in human history, like the Holocaust, the genocides of Africa and the Balkans, the purges of Stalin, Mao Tse tung and the Khmer Rouge, the great world wars and the invisible and forgotten conflicts that drag on today – all of these happened to ordinary people like us. In remembering, we express our own fear of being forgotten, swept away like dust with nothing to show we had ever lived.

Memorials are a cry against annihilation; a plea for it not to be true that after we die, there is nothing!

The bible teaches very clearly that the spirit in us is speaking a truth – that we are made for more than a few years of mortal life, and that our lives do have eternal significance. We have an inheritance – literally a place with our name on it – in the new heaven and earth which God is unfolding. No one can take that from us, no matter how short, troubled and apparently insignificant our mortal lives may be.

The shepherd king knows each of his sheep by name – he knows the very number of hairs upon our heads, and every detail of every day appointed for us to live. We matter to him, to the Lord of the universe, to the sovereign over every power and authority and the judge who will at last see righteousness rule over all things. He notices our little struggles and also our little victories; and he appreciates all that we seek to do in his name and for his glory. Even if our names are not recorded in some list of thanks by an apostle, we can be sure that our shepherd sees and values our labours, and we can truly rejoice because our names are written indelibly in heaven.

And there is this promise of a new name, to be given when at last we embark upon our new life with the redeemed in the perfection and joyous freedom of resurrection bodies and complete fellowship with Christ – a name which will maintain both our unique identities but also clearly show that we belong utterly to him.

I rejoice, O Lord, to know that my name is written in your book of life; and I praise you that one day, I will receive the new name which will proclaim to all the congregation of your people that I am your beloved, perfect and accepted, come into my inheritance and at peace!