The Spirit put it on my heart to put these thoughts to words. Is it needful that I tell that the Spirit put it on my heart? I believe that it is. It is needful that I tell and you know that what is put here is not from me only. This is not for my glory, but it is for the Glory of God, the Glory of Christ, and the Glory of the Holy Spirit.

Anyone that loses anything for the Gospel’s sake shall have seven to one hundred times returned. In my mind I always believed that if a person, after coming to the knowledge that Jesus is Lord and God is true, ministered the Gospel and lost loved ones or possessions those would be repaid. But the Spirit has told me more. If, while you are still trying to do it for yourself, you lose or give away possessions or loved ones, once you have given your life to Jesus, those will be repaid. Not that it is a debt owed but a gift given.

In my walk, before I confessed Jesus, there were many things that I lost and gave up because of my pride and foolishness. Others I lost because of the pride of the ones lost to me. In the body of Christ, my life is being put back together. Jesus was taught to me, in one form or another, from an early age. At first Jesus was taught to me as one that came to wash away our sins so that we could then be free of sins of the past and start new by obeying law. That from the day we confess Jesus forward we must live without sin ourselves. That was and is not possible.

My life went all kinds of ways and I tried all kinds of things. Jesus was always there saying, “try Me.” The idea that once I was baptized and asked Jesus into my heart, I was to be perfect (without sin) gave me a spirit of hopelessness. I could not be perfect, so I chose to be sinful. If God created me and I could not be perfect, He must have created me to be cast into the fire. But that was just not true.

The basic premise in my life was wrong, but it had been taught to me by those confessing that Jesus was Lord. The error with my life was the absence of God’s Grace. It took my wife to show me grace. At a time when I turned away from her, she held me closer in spirit. She told me that she believed in me and loved me. While I was hurting her, she forgave me. That act of love showed me God’s Grace. The persistence of grace turned my life around.

God does not always strike us down with His fist of iron, but I was taught as a child that He does. God uses the love of others to show us His Love. If we are not too stubborn to hear and feel the message, love will cover a multitude of sins. There was another lesson to be learned; not all that confess Jesus is Lord has the Word of God. If they confess Jesus but do not teach the doctrine of “love one another.” If they confess with their mouth but not from their heart, what have the confessed? If they confess but do not understand grace, how then can they teach the Word? If they had known what it meant that I desire mercy and not sacrifice, then the innocent would not have had to die (see Matthew 12:7).

Turning to God in one’s life – confessing our need for Jesus – asking Jesus into our heart, all these things are the acceptance that we, the mortal, cannot do it ourselves. It was not meant to be that one would be enough on their own. Jesus came from and was of God. We are of God. We do that by being of the One sent. Isaiah said of the Lord, “I, the Lord, am the first; and with the last I am He” (Isaiah 41:4b). Our Lord Jesus was the Word sent when God said “let there be light.” Our Lord Jesus is the One sent, the begotten Son of God. Our Lord Jesus sits at the right hand of our Father and is the Spirit of Christ that dwells with us. He is the first and with the last. Our Lord is with us, from the first to the last. He was with the first man and woman created and will be with the last one born. He was the Spirit that brought salvation in the Old Testament, and was salvation brought to life in the New Testament, and is our salvation to this day and beyond. Jesus is Lord.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Love God and love one another. Confess that you cannot do these things of yourself. Everything that we have, everything that we see, everything we know are gifts from God or gifts of God. When you take a breath in, you receive a gift from God. There is nothing that is not from Him. If that is the premise of our life, we will see that the joy of giving is the joy of living.

Everything received is a gift and everything given is a gift. The company I work for gives their customers a gift in the form of a service or product and the customer gives a gift in the form of a payment. I give the company a gift of my talents and they give me a gift of a paycheck. I give the government the gift of taxes and the church the gift of an offering. It never ends. Nothing is ever taken or owed, but is a gift given and received. It starts with life itself and goes on into eternity. And the step it takes to understand life is to admit that we didn’t do it ourselves. We need God who has always been part of us. Thank You Lord Jesus for the gifts; and thank You Father for the gift of our Lord Jesus.

© 1999, 2017 Tim D. Coulter Sr.