Thoughts for the Day

If you want to come to the end of your life with no regrets, you stay on the ladder. You stay focused on where you're going. You stay faithful to who you are. You stay firm in what you believe. And I'll guarantee you this, by the grace and mercy of God, I don't care what life throws at you, at the end you will still be standing. -- Pastor Merritt

   

Genesis 28:1–2

And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan-aram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother’s father; and take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother’s brother.

Abraham sent a servant to find a bride for his son, Isaac. Isaac, however, sent his son Jacob to find his own bride. So too, Paul would write, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12–13).

Your salvation is going to be worked out or exercised a little bit differently than the salvation of the person sitting next to you or of the generation that went before you. Oh, we’re all saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. But it’s all going to work out a little bit differently in each of us.

This allows me to give freedom to people whose salvation is being worked out a little differently than mine might be. We can give each other lots of space because, within the parameters of grace and faith, God deals with each of us uniquely.