A Thought For The Day

I attended an Igniter Lunch at Evantell yesterday and heard Dr. Stanley Toussaint from Dallas Theological Seminary give a talk. As usual, Dr. Toussaint was on top of his game, and deep into the Word. Some of the thoughts he conveyed:

• The Cross is 3 dimensional: up and down, across and out
• When you think of the Cross, the about sin, God and people
• When you think of sin, think about our redemption; we are bought by the Lord, it is permanent We are never back out on the market to be bought again.
• When you think of God, think of propitiation; God is satisfied by what Jesus was done
• When you think of people, think of reconciliation; we need to turn back to God. It is one way, God never turned from us

He summed it up nicely in what I like to think of as a thought for the day:

• Sin is paid for
• God is satisfied
• All that is left is for people to turn to God in faith

He also gave what I thought was a great point from his first year of seminary. If someone has trouble accepting that Jesus died for all of their sins, past, present and future because how could He die for our future sins; ask them how many of their sins had they committed before Jesus died on the cross. Great way to think of the sufficiency of His sacrifice, the atonement is still working 2000 years later.

Dr.Toussaint packed a lot into a short talk, so glad I went.

Whence The Need For Redemption?

Yesterday's My Utmost For His Highest has stuck with me today. Here are a few snippets:

The gospel of God creates the sense of need for the gospel...The majority of people think of themselves as being completely moral, and have no sense of need for the gospel...But God cannot give until a man asks. It is not that He wants to withhold something from us, but that is the plan He has established for the way of redemption. Through our asking, God puts His process in motion...But once Jesus Christ is "lifted up," the Spirit of God creates an awareness of the need for Him...

We ask for redemption on faith, He clearly places the need for it on our hearts and delivers it to us as a most gracious God. We do not even know the depths of our need until He has delivered the gift of our salvation. How amazing is that?

We wonder why a world can turn its back on Jesus after what He has done through His death and resurrection. But yet, we who have accepted Him did not truly know how unredeemed we were until we did. We accepted the need for redemption in faith before He proved it to us in fact.

Would anything but divine love make our God show such mercy and understanding?

I do not think so.