Thursday, August 4, 2016

The First Step

Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. 
Colossians 1:12 (NKJV)

With every journey or trip that we make and with everything that we do there is a start, there is a first step.  If we don't take the first step, we will never get started and if we try right away to take the second step instead of the first step we will have problems or be unsuccessful in what we are trying to do.  If we count to 10 we have to start with the number 1, if we want to recite the alphabet we have to start with the letter "a".  How we begin our journey and how we start the things we do will have a direct influence on the rest of the journey and the complete work we are doing.

It is wonderful to read in the Bible about all of the things that God has done for us through Jesus, about how God has great plans for our future, and how God will always lead us in triumph.  But, the first step in all of those areas is not what God has done but how we view ourselves in relation to those different things.  For many people the first and biggest step in living a life filled with the best that God has is to believe that this is really something that is available to them.  Over the years I have talked to many people who were familiar with what the Bible says but who thought that for some reason they don't qualify.

The first tactic the devil will try to use against us is to keep us ignorant of what the Bible says.  If the devil fails to keep us from discovering the truth, then his next tactic is to make us think that somehow we do not qualify or are not good enough for what God has.  But, the things that God has for us are not based on who we are and what we have done but who God is and what Jesus has done.  Our first step in living the God kind of life that Jesus came to bring us is to realize that everything God has said is available to us through faith because of Jesus; Jesus qualified us to receive the blessings of God.

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