God of Amazing Grace,
Your love for humanity is boundless. The scriptures bear witness to Your continued efforts to be in relationship with Your people, even when they continue to drift or run away from You. Sometimes we are not different, O God. The gap between us is widened by our subtle embrace of values and attitudes that are not of You. Forgive us, we pray. You free us and the decisions we make are ours. It is so easy to slip into self-centeredness, possessiveness, and even greed. May we recognize the power of Your Presence with us, the wonder of Your love and the foolishness, by the world’s standards, of Your grace. Today we turn into Your embrace and open our hearts to You. Cleanse us, Loving God, and make us one with You. In Jesus name we pray. AMEN.
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It was a good General Assembly. Now we can’t wait to get home. We should be in Enid this evening.
Please pray for our Church Leader’s Retreat that occurs on Saturday.
The scripture for today is Romans 5:12-21:
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned—sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, just as sin exercised dominion in death, so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Grace and peace,
John McLemore
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