However far you are from God today, whatever the ways in which you may have sinned against him if you look at the gift of God’s Son and believe in him, you will see and know that the Father loves you.

Jesus is the most costly gift that God could ever give.

Conversely, if Jesus returned to earth today, it would be a day of reckoning for the unbeliever. C.S. Lewis, in The Case For Christianity, wrote, “for this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.”

So if we really have a heartfelt trust in Jesus, God gives us eternal life (which after death means heaven) as a free gift. You can’t earn a gift. It’s a gift based on the kindness of the giver – the grace of God.

The Bible is an armory of heavenly weapons, a laboratory of infallible medicines, a mine of exhaustless wealth. It is a guidebook for every road, a chart for every sea, a medicine for every malady, and a balm for every wound.

To God’s people, we pledge to value others and treat others as he would, bringing the principles of heaven down to earth as we seek to live out God’s kingdom and its righteous character and gracious compassion in our world, now (Matthew 6:10, 33).

We need to Make the most of every opportunity.  As St. Paul says in Colossians, “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

Listen folks maybe we need to as David who took himself by the collar and shook himself in Psalm 42:5-6 and said, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation, and my God.”

Jesus came for our joy.

The cross of repentance is a reminder that it only takes an instant for the human heart to be softened and a soul to turn toward Christ.

We are branches connected to Him, drawing that life from Him as branches draw the necessary nutrients to survive and flourish.

At first glance, we may assume that branches bear fruit, but in another sense, it’s really the vine that makes it all happen.

Like broken bread and poured out wine, if God breaks you one of these days God can use you. God took a little lad’s lunch and broke it and fed the multitudes.