Coffee With The Lord

If you’re like me, there are some days when it just seems like world conditions are spinning out of control.  You’d think humankind was doing its very best to self-destruct!  The leadership crisis internationally is frightening!  It would be easy to panic or despair…Then as a Christian I read the following comforting words in the Bible this morning…

“Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy!  For the Lord, the Most High, is to be feared [reverenced], A GREAT KING OVER ALL THE EARTH… God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.  Sing praises to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King, sing praises!  FOR GOD IS THE KING OF ALL THE EARTH; sing praises with a psalm!  GOD REIGNS OVER THE NATIONS; GOD SITS ON HIS HOLY THRONE…  The shields of the earth belong to God; He is highly exalted!  (From Psalm 47 ESV)

Celebrating my birthday today… But remembering another special day when I was “born again” … My day of “spiritual rebirth” – forgiven of sin, granted eternal life, my life transformed (and transforming – inside out!)  So grateful to my mother for my natural birth… Even more grateful to my Savior for my “new birth!”

Was reminded of that this morning as I read Apostle Paul’s testimony to the power of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 this morning.  The “Gospel” is a wonderful, life-transforming message!  Behind it is the redemptive reality of what Jesus did for us!  I’ve seen the incredible change in people’s lives when they embrace it by faith!

Here’s what Apostle Paul said about it…

“Now I would remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you have taken your stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.  For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to [quite a number of eyewitnesses] …Last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared also to me!  For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.  But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. ¹¹ Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.” (from 1 Corinthians 15:1–11 ESV)

It’s a message… even more than simply a message – the Gospel is a redemptive reality that changes lives!  It transformed (and is transforming) mine!  It’s done the same thing in the lives of countless others down through the centuries!  I’m going to look for opportunities today to share it others!

It’s a well-known story in the Bible – Jesus feeding the five thousand (and that’s just counting the men who were there – not including the women or children who were in attendance that day!). Jesus did it on five loaves of bread and two fish that he blessed and divided among them! Those who were in attendance that day all ate until they were satisfied and after the meal was over they collected twelve baskets full of leftovers. Awesome story! I read it again this morning during “Coffee with the Lord” from Mark 6:30-43.