No secrets from God
"Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." (Matthew 6:4)
We so often live our lives as if God is not real. What if we lived our lives fully believing that He is real! He is God, all knowing, all seeing. How different would our life, our relationships, our business dealings, and ultimately our wellbeing, joy, peace and fulfilment be if we did?
Here is something helpful to keep in mind every day from Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: “Throughout the whole of this day, everything I do, and say, and think, and imagine, is going to be done under the eye of God. He is going to be with me; He sees everything; He knows everything.”
This should help us think twice at least about how we live, how we relate, how we communicate, how we make our decisions. There is no such thing as keeping anything secret, private or confidential. Those thoughts, words, deeds, motivations, lies, deceits, anger, all the supposedly secret emails, texts, social media communications.
There are no secrets, and we are simply pretending if we think we can keep things secret from God. This should help us realize the dire reality of our situation. We are fully exposed to examination by God. If we are honest with ourselves this is terrifying.
All the blackness in our heart, all the true ugliness God sees in us every day is called sin. God is just and therefore cannot just overlook our sin, it needs to be dealt with justly. God tells us in the Bible that the wages of sin, the just consequences of sin, is death. Our sin deserves nothing less than the death penalty.
Yes, God is love, He is merciful and compassionate, but He is completely just too. What then can we do? How could we avoid our just sentence? We can do nothing on our own, but thankfully God can do something and He has.
Only God could bring about perfect justice and perfect mercy. Only God Himself could step in and pay the price due to rescue us from our sentence, to redeem us and pay the perfect sacrificial penalty for our sin.
Our three in one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit (something theologians call the "Trinity"), out of abundant love, perfectly satisfies His own justice by taking the punishment for our sins upon Himself.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16). God Himself stepped in as a substitute to die the death we deserve on the cross, so that we could be set free for all eternity.
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:23)
Photo and reflection by Craig Manners
"Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." (Matthew 6:4)
We so often live our lives as if God is not real. What if we lived our lives fully believing that He is real! He is God, all knowing, all seeing. How different would our life, our relationships, our business dealings, and ultimately our wellbeing, joy, peace and fulfilment be if we did?
Here is something helpful to keep in mind every day from Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: “Throughout the whole of this day, everything I do, and say, and think, and imagine, is going to be done under the eye of God. He is going to be with me; He sees everything; He knows everything.”
This should help us think twice at least about how we live, how we relate, how we communicate, how we make our decisions. There is no such thing as keeping anything secret, private or confidential. Those thoughts, words, deeds, motivations, lies, deceits, anger, all the supposedly secret emails, texts, social media communications.
There are no secrets, and we are simply pretending if we think we can keep things secret from God. This should help us realize the dire reality of our situation. We are fully exposed to examination by God. If we are honest with ourselves this is terrifying.
All the blackness in our heart, all the true ugliness God sees in us every day is called sin. God is just and therefore cannot just overlook our sin, it needs to be dealt with justly. God tells us in the Bible that the wages of sin, the just consequences of sin, is death. Our sin deserves nothing less than the death penalty.
Yes, God is love, He is merciful and compassionate, but He is completely just too. What then can we do? How could we avoid our just sentence? We can do nothing on our own, but thankfully God can do something and He has.
Only God could bring about perfect justice and perfect mercy. Only God Himself could step in and pay the price due to rescue us from our sentence, to redeem us and pay the perfect sacrificial penalty for our sin.
Our three in one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit (something theologians call the "Trinity"), out of abundant love, perfectly satisfies His own justice by taking the punishment for our sins upon Himself.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16). God Himself stepped in as a substitute to die the death we deserve on the cross, so that we could be set free for all eternity.
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:23)
Photo and reflection by Craig Manners
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