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Friday Morning Special 04/19/2014

GOD LOVES SINNERS SUCH AS YOU AND ME
By Pastor Mike Cunningham

On this Good Friday, I encourage each of you folks to make the time and seriously ponder the following.

Isaiah 52:13-15 (TLB)
13 See, my Servant shall prosper; he shall be highly exalted.
14 Yet many shall be amazed when they see him—yes, even far-off foreign nations and their kings; they shall stand dumbfounded, speechless in his presence. For they shall see and understand what they had not been told before.
15 They shall see my Servant beaten and bloodied, so disfigured one would scarcely know it was a person standing there. So shall he cleanse many nations.

Isaiah 53:1-7 (MSG)
1 Who believes what we’ve heard and seen? Who would have thought GOD’s saving power would look like this?
2 The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look.
3 He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
4 But the fact is, it was our pains he carried— our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures.
5 But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed.
6 We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And GOD has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him.
7 He was beaten, he was tortured, but he didn’t say a word. Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered and like a sheep being sheared, he took it all in silence.

John 3:16-21 (TLB)
16 For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that anyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
17 God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.
18 “There is no eternal doom awaiting those who trust him to save them. But those who don’t trust him have already been tried and condemned for not believing in the only Son of God.
19 Their sentence is based on this fact: that the Light from heaven came into the world, but they loved the darkness more than the Light, for their deeds were evil.
20 They hated the heavenly Light because they wanted to sin in the darkness. They stayed away from that Light for fear their sins would be exposed and they would be punished.
21 But those doing right come gladly to the Light to let everyone see that they are doing what God wants them to.”

1 Peter 2:21-25 (MSG)
21 This is the kind of life you’ve been invited into, the kind of life Christ lived. He suffered everything that came his way so you would know that it could be done, and also know how to do it, step-by-step.
22 He never did one thing wrong, Not once said anything amiss.
23 They called him every name in the book and he said nothing back. He suffered in silence, content to let God set things right.
24 He used his servant body to carry our sins to the Cross so we could be rid of sin, free to live the right way. His wounds became your healing.
25 You were lost sheep with no idea who you were or where you were going. Now you’re named and kept for good by the Shepherd of your souls.

As I looked at my image in the mirror on this Good Friday morning, I asked myself this question, “Do I really love Jesus as much as I should and as much as I could?” I’m ashamed to admit that the answer was no.

Prayer: I’m sorry, Jesus! Please forgive me, and, regardless of what you may cause me to suffer in your furnace of affliction, help me to resist and overcome every temptation to sin against you by not loving you with all of my mind, and all of my heart, and all of my strength, and, regardless of how unlikeable some of them may be, help me to love each of my neighbors as much as I do myself. I’m asking this in your name. Amen.

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April 18, 2014 Posted by Categories: Friday Morning Special Tagged with:
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