Day 274: The One He Left the 99 to Find

Luke 15:3-7

So he told them this parable: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’  Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

This is one of my favorite stories in the bible. This story is followed up by a lost coin and the prodigal son. I love these stories so much because I can relate. I don’t like losing things, even if I have a thousand more, I will tear my room apart looking for that one, because it’s just as important to me as the other thousand, and when one is lost, I have to find it. There’s no other choice. I think that’s what Jesus was getting at here, when He told this story. When He talked about leaving the hundred sheep to find the one that had strayed away. Now many would ask, why would you do that seeing you have ninety-nine more. Count the one as loss and move on. I mean it seems to make logical sense to look at the ninety-nine and be satisfied even if one is missing. I mean you still have ninety-nine sheep, but not to Jesus, ninety-nine wasn’t the same as one hundred. Jesus had a different understanding of this story. Jesus didn’t come to leave any man behind, we see that in verse 7 when He says, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

Jesus came to save those who are sinners, not those who were already saved. He could have spent His time with those who were already saved and living a righteous life, but what would that have done? Jesus was willing to come down and search for the lost hearts, the lost souls and bring them back. Jesus loves us all the same, but when He came He came seeking those who needed salvation, healing, freedom. That meant He has to leave the sheep that never left Him in order to go after the ones that strayed, because He loves us that much. He came for His lost children, and rejoiced when they repented. It’s almost as if Jesus came and said, ‘I need to go find my lost children. I need to go find the one that has strayed away and tried to go on without me. I cannot let them die, knowing they need me.’ He came with the intention of finding those who were lost. Jesus says even though we willingly turn away from Him, He’s still gonna come find us to bring us back. Even though we walk away, He’s always there to bring us back. Jesus knows that we cannot survive without Him, if we could He would have stayed on that throne in heaven.

When we put it in perspective we must come to the realization that we are that one. We are the one He left the ninety-nine to find. At one point in our lives we were the sheep that strayed, and Jesus came and found us. I don’t know if this is true for you but God never left me get too far when I strayed away from Him. He came and found me. He didn’t let me walk away and count it lost, because He loves me. He cares enough to come and find us even when people think we can be replaced. See the thing about God is, we cannot be replaced in His heart. If we could, do you think Jesus would leave the ninety-nine to find us. We are so special to Him that He had to come and find us. We have to understand that we as God’s people as His children, when we come into this life we complete the body of Christ. We cannot have parts of the body leaving and walking away and never being found. He will come and find us. Sometimes He will wait for us to return like the father of the prodigal son. He’s waiting with open arms to bring us back into His house, and throws a party when we return.

All this to say, we are so important to God. He loves us so much. He loves us so much that instead of replacing us, which He can do if He wanted, He leaves the ninety-nine to find us. To God we are worth it, to God we were worth sending His son.

Response/Prayer Time

Take the  time to respond to what what we discussed today in whatever way you feel led. Allow that to guide your prayer today. Take the time to thank God that He is so loving, caring, and gracious. Thank Him for salvation and repentance. If you are someone who needs to repent now is the time to do it. If you have not accepted Christ into your life and you want to, now is the time to do it.  

If that’s you, if you want to make that decision today, pray this prayer with me.

“Jesus I declare that you are my Lord and Saviour who died for my sins and was raised three days later. I repent of my sins and I give my life to you. I believe in my heart that you are the true living God. Thank you for saving me. In Jesus name, Amen.”

If you made the choice to follow Christ, rededicate, or to submit your life to Him fully, Go to Romans 10:9-10, If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! If you made the decision to follow Christ today, congratulations! Please do not hesitate to reach out (to me or anyone else) and get plugged into a church. Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 275!

Day 271: All You Know

1 John 3:20

in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.

Psalms 139:1-6

O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away. You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord.

You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!

Hebrews 13:8

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

2 Timothy 2:13

If we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.

Romans 8:38

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.

Have you ever found something out about someone and it changed the way you saw, viewed, or acted towards that person? I mean sometimes our knowledge of things or people allow us to ostracize them. Whatever it may be. Maybe it’s a friends who we found out did something we deem really bad. Maybe it’s  significant other you found out cheated on you or cheated on a previous partner, that’s going to drastically change how you see that person. It’s going to change how you feel towards that person and how you move on with that person, if you decide to. What about love, have we ever loved someone less because of what we know about them? I think we can all agree to this and say that their are certain people in our lives that we have to love from a distance. There are certain people who we don’t let close to us anymore because they’ve done us wrong and showed their true colors far too many times. I can name a few off the top of my head, I’m just being honest. Now what if God loved  us and treated us the way we treat other people based on what we know about them?

God know so much about us, yet He still loves us. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows the ins and outs of our hearts and thoughts, He knows what we’re going to do before we even do it. He knows our thoughts. He knows how many strands of hair is on our head. He knows it all. He is all knowing. He knows when our hearts are not pure, or when we a being hypocritical. He knows when we are lying, and deceiving, others may not but He does. He knows every little thing about us, down to the tiniest detail. He sees through the masks and the facades. Yet His love for us never changes. He loves us no matter what. He continues to love us even when we refuse to love Him. He loves us, even when we don’t love ourselves. God’s love towards us never changes. Even with all He knows. God you know everything about me, my past, my present, the things I’ve done that I’m not proud of. Yet you still love me. It almost raises the question how? How can you still love me even when I slammed the door in your face, when I walked away from you, when I hurt your children. How can you still love me? I imagine God will say something along the lines of, “I still love you, you are still my child, my greatest creation. Nothing can stop me from  loving you.” When I think about that it’s mind blowing to think that the one person who has every right to hate me. The person who could walk away from me. Ther person who could isolate me and treat me different because of who I am, what I’ve done, and who I was, that’s the one person who doesn’t.

All this to say, nothing can separate us from God’s love. In the midst of everything we do in our lives, and every place we’ve been; from the highest moments to the lowest, His love never changes. His love stays the same.

Response/Prayer Time

Take the time to respond to what we discussed today. Take in God’s love, and understand that the person who knows everything about you and would be justified in hating us and treating us how we act, doesn’t. Instead He loves us. Talk to God about it, thank Him for His love and respond to Him in whatever way you feel led.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 272!    

Day 269: All Loss for One Gain

Philippians 3:7-8

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

Paul was on to something in these scriptures, he saying something along the lines of, ‘nothing compares to having Christ in my life’. Everything I had, everything I have gained, I would count it all lost just to have Christ in my life. I would lose it all, if it meant I would gain you. I would rather lose everything before I lose you. This almost seems like our response to God leaving the ninety-nine to find the one that wandered away. Christ gave up everything, His throne, His life, so that we may live. This concludes that life is so much greater than what we gain or lose here on earth. There is a greater purpose, a mystery to it all. That mystery is Christ. How great it is to gain everything through Christ, even when we’ve lost everything in the world.

How many of us can say that we are willing to lose everything for the sake of Christ? If we had too or if we were given the choice. I’m not telling you to go and give up everything you have, what I’m saying is that if we had to, if we lost everything it will have been worth it, just to gain Christ. Just so we can have a relationship with Him, and experience the love and freedom He has given us. I believe that this is what Paul was saying. He’s saying none of it matters if I don’t have Christ. I will rip up my credentials, and give up all my earthly possessions because truly if I do not have Christ, what do I have? I have nothing.

I remember when my sister and I were sixteen, it seemed like our world came crashing down. My mom, my sister, my brother, and I fell on very hard times. We lost everything. From our house to our car. We put everything we owned into storage and then we lost that. Everything we owned, thousands of dollars worth of stuff, heirlooms, everything! All we had were the bags of clothes we needed and the clothes on our backs. We were living in a motel at the time. As someone who grew up very sheltered and spoiled, I found myself at the lowest point of my life. I thought we couldn’t get any worse. But it was in these moments that Christ found me. I would love to say, I found Him but I wasn’t looking for Him, if I’m being honest. It was when I had nothing that Christ gave me everything and I don’t mean materialistic stuff. I mean He showed me that there was a reason to live beyond what was tangible. He showed me that I had a greater purpose, He gave me life when I was dying. Everything I could need or ask for He gave it to me. I found it all in Him, all the answers I needed, all the healing, all the grace, everything was and is in Him. Going through all of this sucked, it was very hard, but if Christ didn’t find me, if He didn’t meet me where I was I would not have made it through. Going through much more than just losing everything I was dealing with some dark emotional, and mental issues at the time, and battled with suicide. Even went as far as planning my suicide, multiple times, but He never allowed me to carry out the plan. If He hadn’t found me, where would I be? I would have died at my own hands. So yes, I lost everything but it was all worth it just to gain Christ. I would not go back and change anything because through it all I receive my salvation and an eternal relationship with my heavenly Father. I might have lost everything, but in reality I truly gained everything.

-Dyamond

All this to say, sometimes we have to lose everything to gain Christ. Maybe not on that grand of a scale but we must come to realization that all of this can vanish at any moment. We must not put our faith in what is disposable. This doesn’t mean that we dismiss everything that is tangible, or things that are disposable, but our faith, our lives, our devotion belongs to Christ. When we put Him first, everything else will fall into place. The biggest lesson I learned from that experience is, I can live without these worldly possessions, tangible, and even sometimes intangible things that make up my life here on Earth, but I cannot live without Christ. I cannot do it.  At the end of the day, none of this can save us, whatever ‘this’ is. It cannot save us and it cannot give us peace or life. We have to get to a point where we hold tightly to God, so that when other things fall away we will still be standing because of our firm grasp on God. We will not be shaken or moved. Even when we have everything we ever wanted we will still have a solid foundation in Christ. Because like I said before if we are not living in Christ, are we really living?

Response/ Prayer Time

How do you respond to what we discussed today? Are you truly living? Maybe you’ve had a similar experience, maybe not, but respond however you feel led today and let that guide your prayer. Have a conversation with God, just you and Him.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 270!

Day 112: The Way He Loves Us

If we ever wanted to know what the love of God looks like, we can always refer to the book of Hosea. God used Hosea and his marriage to Gomer as a perfect example of how He loves us, even in our mess.

Hosea 1:2

When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute,  so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and worshiping other gods.”

God gives Hosea specific instructions, He tells Him to go and marry a prostitute. You read right, God told Him to marry a prostitute. Someone He knew could not be faithful. Someone who would run off with other men, and sell her body to them, even though she had a husband at home that would not make her pay for it. She had someone at home who would love her for everything she is and not use her for everything she has. But the twist in this, is that Gomer represents Israel, and Hosea represents Him. How Israel turned to other gods so often, and could not remain faithful. But God has always been there, He does not stop loving them. And to take that a bit further, we are Gomer, we are the ones that cannot stay faithful.

Hosea was in for a world of pain and heartbreak when he married Gomer. He was marrying someone who could not love Him in the way he loved her. She was too occupied with her life, too occupied with the lifestyle she was leading before she met Hosea. Hosea had to deal with the fact that His wife was not only out there sleeping with other men but she was somewhere sleeping with other men, for money. Hosea knew that she was worth so much more, but Gomer didn’t know her worth. That must have been heartbreaking. I wonder how he felt, having to go get his wife from those forbidden places where she was being used by so many different men.

This is what we do to God when we choose to sin, when we choose to be unfaithful or live a life outside of His will. We are allowing our spirit to be used and corrupted by so many different things and God has to come and clean us off every time. He does it because His love for us is so strong. God loves us so much and that will never change, but can we imagine how heartbroken He is when we decide to turn away from Him. We may not be a prostitute, like Gomer, but we all have our form of prostitution. When we knowingly engage in sin, we are being unfaithful to God. When we walk away from Him and His word, we are breaking His heart. God knows our worth in the same way Hosea knew Gomer’s worth. How heartbreaking it must be for Him to watch us throw away our potential, and walk around as if we are worthless.

Hosea 3: 1-2

Then the Lord said to me, “Go and love your wife again, even though she commits adultery with another lover. This will illustrate that the Lord still loves Israel, even though the people have turned to other gods and love to worship them.” So I bought her back for fifteen pieces of silver and five bushels of barley and a measure of wine.

The most beautiful part about it all is that God can be angry at us, but He will always look at us and say, “But I love you.” He loves us so much.

God tells Hosea to go love His unfaithful wife. Go find her eventhough she is committing adultery with another man, love her. God doesn’t say leave her, He says love her. And it will be a symbol of how he stills loves israel even though they have turned to different gods. God is not into giving up on His people, even when we deserve to be left out in the desert. He says I will never leave you but I will forever love you.

Hosea then goes and buys his own wife. He goes down to the place where a man of God should not have been. Hosea was a prophet, and the place where Gomer was, was not a place a prophet should be. He had to go to some pretty low and dirty place to get his wife back, and not only that, he had to pay for her. His own wife, he had to pay for to release her from the hands of the men who only wanted her for sex.

God did the same thing for us, when we are in the unclean and dirty places. He will walk that path to find us and bring us home. Not only will He do that but He was and is willing to pay the price to cut the ties. He paid the price so that we would not be bound by where we once were. God sent His son, He sent Jesus down into these places of sin so that we could be delivered. Jesus came and found us, and paid the highest price for our soul, His life, He gave his life for us.

John 3:16

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, so that whoever believes in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life.

God loves us so much that He sent His son in pursuit of our hearts. The very hearts that turned away from Him, He came seeking them. Jesus walked in places the religious people refused to go, but one of His own was in that dark place. Hosea went down to that place because his wife was down there and He  had to go get her. Jesus ate with sinners, and walked into the homes of sinners, but there was a soul that needed to be saved.

Reflection

1. Can you recall a time in your life where you have been like Gomer?

Prayer Time

Allow you answer to the above question guide your prayer. Take to time today to reflect on the passages today, and read through the full chapters. If there is anything in you that is causing you to turn away from God, bring it to Him. Confess, and repent and allow God to give you a new heart. Talk to God today, whatever it may be talk to Him. this is between you and God, no one else, let Him work on you.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening. Share this with someone, and be sure to come back tomorrow for Day 113!