Greg Laurie Daily Devotion - Sept. 29, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Without Condition
Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:5–6)
There are a lot of people who think they should keep the Ten Commandments because they are under the impression that God will punish them if they don’t. But the fact is that God loves us, and we should keep His commandments because we are aware of this.
We need to know that God accepts us as we are. We don’t have to do anything to earn His approval. We don’t have to do anything to merit His love. In spite of our shortcomings and in spite of our sins, God loves us.
Some people come from homes in which their fathers never expressed love or showed any affection toward them. Therefore, they take that image of their earthly fathers and place it on their Heavenly Father. They spend the rest of their lives trying to earn the approval of God, who already has given His approval to them.
He loves us just as we are. Of course, He doesn’t want to leave us that way. He wants to change us so that we become more like Christ. Even then, God loves us when we do well, and He loves us when we fail.
Realizing this should cause us to want to love Him. As 1 John 4:19 says, “We love Him because He first loved us.” So instead of wanting to keep God’s commandments to earn His love, we should want to keep them because of His love for us. We should want to keep His commandments because we know they are right. It all comes down to our motives.
Copyright © 2008 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New King James Version, copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
For more relevant and biblical teaching from Pastor Greg Laurie, go to www.harvest.org.
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-Greg Laurie
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