Overflow!

My meditations today have been full of GRACE!  Do you ever let your sin keep you from moving on?  It can be easy not to receive, in full, the grace that God offers when we repent.  Sometimes just plain yuck comes out of my mouth!  As I was reading Luke 6 this morning, which is packed with grace and truth, I came across verse 45.  It says, " out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks." If yuck is coming out, then yuck must be renting space in my heart!  It doesn't matter if I only say it to the wall!  Just makes me want to sing "Create in my a new heart O God, and renew a right Spirit within me,"  taken from Psalm 51:10.

I had repented to the Lord yesterday for speaking negative.  Life comes from speaking truth, grace, and  forgiveness, and who we are in Christ.  Ephesians 1 says that in Christ we are loved, blessed, redeemed, forgiven, chosen, accepted, and adopted!  Romans 8 says that the "mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace!"  But this morning I was still not receiving God's forgiveness, just carrying the weight of my sin.  Actually repenting over and over for the same sin, instead of receiving the grace that is offered through the cross.  That is the mind of the flesh!
  

He paid the penalty, He forgives with undeserving grace, mercy and love!  He says in Isaiah 44:22 "I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you."  This verse paints a beautiful picture to my soul!  Can you see it?  The morning mist leaves as the sun rises...

There is a beautiful song by Kristene Mueller called Mercy that captures this verse and all of these ramblings of my brain!  I have to share it:


God wants our hearts more than anything.  He is not looking for our accomplishments, our good deeds, our efforts to clean our selves up!  He offers GRACE, free GRACE, MERCY, free MERCY!  When we get that settled, our hearts are ready to fill up and over flow with beauty and not yuck!  Filling up on His Word is when all these things fall into place in my heart.  We need God's Word, DAILY!

When He has our heart, then we are free to praise and adore Him and be filled up so much with His love that is spills over to others!  Kristene captures this beautifully as well in her song Praise The Lord:


Psalm 118:17 says, "I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the LORD has done."  Let's just go there right now!  If you are holding on to sin, living in condemnation, let's go to the cross, repent, rest in His forgiveness, and get on with praise!  I will never be able to perform my way into a relationship with Jesus.  He has already pursued me with HIS LIFE!  What a relief!  

Don't waste another minute looking back, just do what's next.  A friend of mine recently told me that her husband coached many teams over the years, and he always said that to his players,  "Don't look back, just do the next play."  This is AMAZING GRACE! We don't have to do the next play on our own strength!
I long to be in heaven, but for now I humbly ask for the grace to run the race for His glory.  I end with this last beautiful song by Kristene, Homeward Bound, I have really enjoyed her music today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-86J8l8c5bc

Until then, my prayer is that I will be able to say one day 2 Timothy 4:7 "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."

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