Have you ever read a verse you’ve seen a hundred times… and suddenly it hits you in a completely new way?
It happened to me this week, and it reminded me how alive Scripture really is.
I’d love to hear if you’ve had a moment like that lately where a familiar passage spoke into your life in a way you didn’t expect.
What was the verse, and what made it feel fresh or different this time?
This happens to me a lot, almost constantly
but recently was
Matthew 5:28 “But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart”
So recently I have heard in my little groups and had it enter my mind the relationship that God wishes us to have with Him. Which is more than servitude, more than friendship, yes, even it is a marriage relationship. That we are dedicated unto our Lord much like a faithful wife is dedicated to her Husband.
Many people relate this verse to their actual wives, but we can also relate it unto the First commandment. “You shall have no other gods before me”
Looking at it this way we understand it a bit more, that looking upon another way of life, which may be living after/for the pleasures of the flesh, or for our sensual desires, and wanting/lusting after such things is actually committing adultery against God. That our heart is led away in such a thing.
The Idolatry we see today is most commonly self-Idolatry, and it is a very subtle thing as most are doing so without realizing it, but by simply holding their own will and desires over everything else.
Yes the Word is very alive and it is absolutely beautiful!
May your peace and your blessings be multiplied,
Sincerely,
G
There have been many times where certain things finally “clicked” in place even though I had read the same Scripture perhaps dozens, or even hundreds of times before.
One example that comes to mind is Ephesians 2:8, I had always been taught and believed that salvation is by grace through faith; but it wasn’t until I was in my 20’s when it clicked that even this “through faith” is included in the “this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God”. Paul isn’t crediting us with faith, so that we can boast in our own work of believing; he is in fact denying any credit to ourselves, even of this faith through which God, by His grace, saves us; for even “through faith” is God’s gift. And it was a very happy moment when I discovered that this understanding of the passage is very ancient, the great commentators of the patristic age all the way to the time of the Protestant Reformation all confessed this too: That “by grace you are saved, through faith” is the work and gift of God which we cannot take credit for; and therefore "Ephesians 2:9’s “not of works so that no one may boast” becomes amplified. This establishes a powerful foundation, also for Ephesians 2:10, that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for the works prepared for us to walk in–for God has saved us and kept us, granted faith to our hearts as pure gift, in order that being new in Christ by the power work of God we might walk and live according to what has been given to us as a gift. This gift of God is what opens us up to living and doing what we should be living and doing as a people who belong to God in Jesus.
I come empty-handed, with only sin, but God fills me with the riches of His abundance, even the faith to trust and believe, and now believing and trusting, with the Holy Spirit alive in me–again God’s gift–I might live and walk by the Spirit, live and walk in Christ, live and walk as a child of the Father’s mercy.