Unhindered Praise

A friend who had a recent encounter with Jesus Christ and surrendered her life to Him, grabbed me by the arm and looked like she was about to explode with excitement.  She breathlessly said, "God has moved into my life and rocked my world."  She was blown away by a God who wanted her!  Who came for her!

Seeing the wonder and amazement of a new believer wakes me up to the amazing grace in my life.  How often I fail to remember what Christ did for me through His death and resurrection.  There have been seasons where forgetting and familiarity with the Gospel produced complacency, pretending and performing.  I could quickly flex my God knowledge but lacked Godly affections.  I could spend time debating the truth while not living it and celebrating Jesus.

"I tell you the truth,

unless you change and become like little

children, you will never enter the

kingdom of heaven." (Mat. 18:3)

Just like my newly born again friend,  I want to live in unashamed adoration of Jesus Christ and in constant awe of the Gospel.  I never want to get over  Jesus!  He is the only answer to hopelessness. Jesus is  the only One who  can give a new heart and transform a life from death to new life in Christ.
                                     

"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, 

He is a new creation, the old

has gone, the new has come."

 (2Cor 5:17)



My prayer is this new year brings a heart changed by the Gospel every day. I want my heart broken by what breaks God's heart, knowing that is not an easy place to live. In some ways it was easier to live oblivious to my sin, the lost around me and numb to the stories of hopelessness.  Easier, but empty and dead to the supernatural presence of God and fulfillment that only He can give.  I want to live right there in the brokenness surrounded by His presence and love recklessly because He loved me.  I pray that this year brings followers of Christ in unending awe of the cross.  That we hunger for Him with an insatiable appetite and become a grateful people overflowing with unhindered praise and consumed by His majesty.  

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirt within me.

cast me not away from Your prescence, and take not Your Holy Spirit

from me.  Restore to me the joy of Your Salvation, and uphold me

with a willing spirit.  Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,

and sinners will return to You.  Deliver me from bloodguiltiness,

O God, O God of my salviation, and my tongue will sing aloud of

Your rightousness.  O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare

Your praise. For You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; 

You will not be pleased with a burnt offering.  The sacrifices

 of God are a broken spirti; a broken and contrite heart,

O God, You will not despise." (Psalm 51:10-17)







                                           



 .