When we don’t fully receive the gift of grace we will try to earn what was given freely and force others to do it as well. I used to live this way, holding unrealistic expectations on myself and on those around me. However my life changed dramatically when I embraced grace. There are three things that I learned about grace that I want to share with you. We must: 1. Receive grace from God, 2. Give ourselves grace and 3. Extend grace to others. This is the first key to forgiveness.

Find the devotional here: https://www.thryve.church/blog/2020/11/02/give-grace

Just a week ago we talked about forgiving daily and, for some of us, forgiving is a hard thing to do. Forgiveness can seem difficult if you don't have a heart of repentance. It's through the regular practice of repentance and receiving the forgiveness of God that we are better positioned to be able to offer forgiveness to others. For the person who says they have trouble forgiving, I would question the depth and frequency of their repentance. Because anyone that engages God through repentance, they know what it feels like to be forgiven - even when you, yourself, feel you don't deserve it. I, for one, know that I've done much in my past that I don't believe deserves forgiveness but I'm so thankful that God is faithful and just - He keeps his promise to forgive me.
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It's through a life committed to the rhythm of repentance and regularly receiving the gift of forgiveness, that we are empowered to forgive others. This is how we represent Christ: by freely offering to others what was freely offered to us — forgiveness. We will discuss this in further detail in our message this Sunday titled, The Rhythm of Forgiveness.
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Find today's devotional here: https://thryve.church/blog/2020/10/30/repentance-restores-relationship

"This week’s theme for our devotion is The Rhythm of Repentance. So far we’ve talked about repentance being the secret sauce to our success, more than an apology and leads to a heart change. Now that we’ve talked about our part, I want to take time to express to you God’s part. Today we’re going to focus on God’s response. What is God’s response to repentance? We find this in 1 John 1:9 (NLT) where it says "But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” You see, when we repent, we are met with God’s response. His response is His faithfulness. Faithfulness is His rhythm. We gain access to rhythm of God’s faithfulness through the act of repentance."

Find today's devotional here: https://thryve.church/blog/2020/10/29/god-s-response

"Much of the time, we are busy trying to uphold an appearance or reputation that we’ve created for ourselves so we settle for the look of repentance rather than the essence of repentance. We settle for what looks like repentance rather than the true meat of repentance. In other words, I believe we’ve developed an affinity for appearance and have lost a value for authenticity. God is letting us know in this text that He’s not concerned with what people look at, He’s not looking at what you see on the outside, but He’s most concerned with the heart. Jeremiah says that “The heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9). The only one that really knows what’s going on in the heart is God and He searches the heart."

Find the entire devotional here: https://thryve.church/blog/2020/10/28/a-heart-change

"Repentance is more than an apology, it’s the turning of the heart back to God. We must understand this isn't just an occasional turn or casual motion, but it should be a permanent (perpetual) posture of the heart. In James 4:7 it says “So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” The mistake I made was I worked hard on my efforts to resist the devil but gave little to no effort in submitting to God. As you would expect, this resulted in failure time and time again. I thought repentance was about how I failed to resist, so there I was saying I’m sorry, over and over again because of how I failed to resist the devil, whereas repentance is really about how I failed to submit to God. Life is not a game about how well you can apologize or how good you can avoid falling, instead repentance is a lifestyle of submission and surrender."

Find the devotional here: https://thryve.church/blog/2020/10/27/more-than-an-apology

"...so many of us can’t forgive because we feel that people need to pay for our forgiveness, we want them to feel remorse, we want their repentance to sound right but none of that is what Jesus said... He said “if they repent, forgive them.” But He didn’t stop there, but made it a point to say "Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.” In other words Jesus makes it clear that forgiveness is an act we should perform regularly and without limitation. We are required to extend the same grace that God has extended to us."

Find today's devotional here: https://thryve.church/blog/2020/10/23/forgive-daily

Today I want to encourage you to worship daily. You see, if prayer is the air we breathe and the word is the food we eat then worship is the water we drink. Last night, in Bible Study, we discovered that God is ready and waiting on our prayers. Today, I want you to know that He’s looking for your worship.

Find today's devotional here: https://thryve.church/blog/2020/10/22/worship-daily

We are spiritual beings housed in fleshly bodies. Therefore, we need the spiritual more than the physical. God's word is food to our spirits, it sustains us. It's where we find our identity, our healing, our peace, our comfort, our direction, our hope - yes, all of this and more is found in the word of God. Studying the word of God is the second spiritual fundamental that produces fruit in our lives.

Find today's devotion and prayer here: https://thryve.church/blog/2020/10/21/study-daily