Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a YouTube video of images and lyrics from Laura Story singing her song … Grace Abounds … poignantly singing of how our God provides His grace to bring us, as wayward lambs, back to Himself.
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Highlight Verse[s]: Luke 15:3-4 [NLT] … 3 So Jesus told them this story: 4 “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it?
… Jesus IS that Good Shepherd, relentlessly pursing the lost with His love and saving grace.
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Highlight Passage [context]: Luke 15:1-7 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… Jesus relates the parable of the lost sheep telling of a Father God whose love is relentless in pursing His children.
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Reference Passage : … Isaiah 53:6 [NIV] … 6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on Him the sins of us all.
… We are like the sheep in God’s pasture. Some go astray; but God has given us the Good Shepherd to lead us bring His saved ones back to the flock.
Reference Passage : … Matthew 11:28-30 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… Jesus invites anyone who is burdened by life to come to Him for rest and assistance.
Reference Passage : … Romans 8:35-39 [NIV] … USE THIS LINK …
… God, thru Paul, shows us that NOTHING can separate us from God’s love … NOTHING!!!
Reference Passage : … 2 Corinthians 12:9 [NIV] … 9 Each time He said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.”
… Jesus promised Paul, as He promises us, to provide us with His strength when we feel weakened and far away from our Lord.
My Devotional Journal: Today's ODB author, Xochitl Dixon, uses a personal story to illustrate how our Heavenly Father will relentlessly pursue the lost to bring them back into His flock. The ODB author wrote … After I turned nineteen, and years before I owned a pager or a cell phone, I moved more than seven hundred miles away from my mom. One morning, I left early to run errands, forgetting our scheduled call. Later that night, two policemen came to my door. Mom had been worried because I’d never missed one of our chats. After calling repeatedly and getting a busy signal, she reached out to the authorities and insisted they check on me. One of the police officers turned to me and said, “It’s a blessing to know love won’t stop looking for you.”
Jesus, being one with the Heavenly Father, is like that parent in the ODB story, isn’t He? In His picture of the “Good Shepherd,” He will go after even one wayward lamb to bring him back into the flock [see photo], just as He did me over 3 decades ago when I had strayed far from him in my atheism and habitual sexual sin. But His relentless love/grace finally overwhelmed me and I responded to His pursuit to take me into His flock … FOREVER!!
As Laura Story sings in the linked song, God’s love and grace certainly abound when we, those lost sheep, wander away and need it the most. And He will be relentless to come after us when we’ve strayed from His flock [see Is. 53:6 and Luke 15:4].
It’s so much easier, dear one, to just follow Him back to the flock.
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My THANKFULNESS: … Oh Abba Father, … thank You, Lord, … for Your ever-pursuing love and grace which come after us when we stray from You.
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My Prayer Today: Oh Abba Father, … King Jesus, … I pray, Lord, that all reading here can, and will, join me, and come back to our Good Shepherd if we’ve strayed from Him. … Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled “Our Daily Bread,” distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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