Down Payment

-

The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us everything he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. This is just one more reason for us to praise our glorious God. (Ephesians 1:14)

I was reading Ephesians 1 today and I stopped at this passage. The Holy Spirit is God’s guarantee. What could that mean? Interestingly I have read this passage more than a dozen times. I never noticed it before today. I am not sure why. In the spring I was studying Ephesians. I even wrote a few blog posts on it.

The guarantee that is being referred to is like a down payment on a loan. God is using the Holy Spirit to show us a piece of our inheritance. So feeling lead by the Spirit or all of the other ways we experience God here on earth is only a small portion of our true inheritance. What a powerful metaphor!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jillian Michaels - Maximize Your Life

-
I was really excited when I heard Jillian Michaels was coming to Winnipeg.  If you don't know who Jillian Michaels she is the trainer that is known for being on the Biggest Loser.  Jillian's contestants are often the winners of the Biggest Loser (as was the case this year with a contestant who had everything against her in the beginning.)  The reason I like Jillian is not because of her training skills.  It is because she has an ability to get to the heart of a contestant and figure out what it is that is getting in the way of their goals. When she came on stage see was instantly endearing.  She swapped her high heels for flip flops saying that she felt like she had done her duty by coming out in them.  She broke down what she was going to talk about - nutrition, working out, mind.  She was real about the fact that many of the people who came to see her, wanted to know how to lose weight so she spent the first hour talking about it.  The second hour was all about how to meet
Read more

Enough of Too Much

-
Image
This morning I woke up and decided I have had enough.  I am sick of feeling yucky all of the time.  I want to feel better and I know that in order to do that, I need to start making healthier food choices.  I knew this day would come. A few weeks ago I started exercising.  This is generally a first step for me.  Now this morning I decided to face the scale.  I have gained weight -- a lot of weight.  So enough.  It is time to start making better choices and tracking my food again.  Today I started tracking again.  It feels good. Interestingly, I also decided I was sick of getting so many emails from the various companies I have given my email address to for whatever reason.  I unsubscribed from at least ten lists.  Then I cleaned my apartment (okay that’s probably because I have people coming over tomorrow.)  I feel like I can breathe all of a sudden.  Like I have more space.  I used to get about 20 emails a day.  Today I got two and unsubscribed from their lists too. Getting rid of
Read more

Gratitude

-
I have given up on keeping a gratitude journal about 10 times.   I would try.   Stick with coming up with 3 things I was grateful for every day for a month.   Then I would stop.   It never really made me feel better.   The only thing it accomplished was to check off another ‘should’ from my list. Honestly keeping a gratitude journal just gave me a reason to feel bad about myself.   I would think: “Why is it so hard to come up with my three things?’ “How long before I actually feel grateful for this stuff?’ “Why am I so ungrateful for the gifts that God has given me?” “What’s wrong with me?” “I am a bad person.” Okay that is a bit dramatic but I do know that actually trying to keep a gratitude journal and having it fail did make me feel bad.   So I stopped trying years ago.   The issue was that people I respect would say that gratitude is a requirement for living a fulfilled life.   I believed them.   It makes a lot of sense.   It just didn’t work for me. Fast f
Read more