Victory NOW!

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:57 RSV

Notice that this verse is put in the present tense. It is not past, who gave us the victory. It is Thanks be to God who keeps on giving us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. I do not know anything that means more to me as a Christian than the fact that every day I can lay hold of the grace of Jesus Christ. He is not a distant Savior who lived twenty centuries ago. He is alive, and I meet him every day. When I find myself having failed, faltered, and sinned, I come again and receive from him the cleansing that he has won for me on Calvary. My sins are washed away anew. I am forgiven once again and given a clean slate to start over again from that moment. This gives me new power to say, No! to all the evil, afflictions, and pressures of my life. I know that that evil is put away; it will never come back to haunt me; I will not have to face it at the judgment seat of God. I can turn instead to try to make up, in as many ways as I can, to others for the hurt I have done, and to help others find the way of release and deliverance out of heartbreak and sorrow and guilt and fear.

When you go to work, do not see it as simply a way by which you earn your living. Work has been given to you as an opportunity for you to have a ministry in which you witness, you demonstrate a changed life, a heart at peace, the radiant joy of fellowship with a living Lord on your face, and love pouring out of your heart to those who, like you, have struggled and lost frequently in the rat race of life. That is what God sends us out to do as Christians. He has given us a work, not that we might make notable achievements in which we make a name for ourselves. What God looks for is, how are we behaving towards others? How do we show a loving spirit, a gracious, forgiving attitude, a willingness to return good for evil, an ability to speak a word of release to those who are prisoners of their own habits, to set free those who are oppressed by wrong, hateful attitudes, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to open the eyes of the blind? This is the work of the Lord. This is why God gives us contact with others. This is why God has given us our work.

Father, hear the voice of any who cry out to you from sin-governed lives. Grant to them the gift of a risen Lord, and the grace to be changed from the inside out. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.