This is one of my favorite quotes, and I wanted to share it here. It
is from 'Prayer' by Simon Tugwell. My favorite part is where he says,
"Our hope is in His determination to save us, and He will not give in."
That is such a comfort to me!
Jesus the Good Shepherd Who Looks For Us And Finds Us (Simon Tugwell)
"Another
picture that our Lord loves to use is that of the shepherd who goes out
to look for the sheep that is lost (Matthew 18:12). So long as we
imagine that it is we who have to look for God, then we must often lose
heart. But it is the other way about: he is looking for us. And so we
can afford to recognize that very often we are not looking for God; far
from it, we are in full flight from him, in high rebellion against him.
And he knows that and has taken it into account. He has followed us
into our own darkness; there where we thought finally to escape him, we
run straight into his arms.
"So we do not have to erect
a false piety for ourselves, to give us hope of salvation. Our hope is
in his determination to save us. And he will not give in!
"...we
can let ourselves off that desperate question, “Am I in the right
place?” ”Have I done the right thing?” Of course, we must sometimes
acknowledge sins and mistakes and we must try to learn from them; but we
should not foster the kind of worry that leads to despair, God’s
providence means that wherever we have got to, whatever we
have done, that is precisely where the road to Heaven begins. However
many cues we have missed, however many wrong turnings we have taken,
however unnecessarily we may have complicated our journey, the road
still beckons, and the Lord still “waits to be gracious” to us (Isaiah
30:18)."
Simon Tugwell
I
love this quote! It really reminds me of our security in Him and how
He has got this whole salvation thing wrapped up in His perfect work and
faithfulness! His is the initiative, His is the work, His is the
responsibility, and His is the resolve...so we are safe, we are secure,
we are assured that we'll forever be snug and cozily at home with Him!
He will not fail us! We may think we've just fallen too far to ever come up again, yet right in the deepest pit of all we find that God is there with us! We suddenly find that by His grace, the pathway that seemed to be going down is actually going up, and the hellhole turns into heaven! Because HE is there! HE is with us, no matter where we end up, and HE keeps us! He makes the dark places light and the crooked places straight, flattens mountains into plains and turns the storm into calm! No matter what, He makes it all come out for good! Thus, we cannot get lost, because anywhere we go or even run from Him, there He is, holding us, saving us, blessing us, keeping us, carrying us to heaven!! It's like Rob Rufus says, grace is an UP escalator, and no matter how many times we fall on this escalator, it just keeps going UP!
So we can fail and still be safe and secure, for
it's all by His grace that we are fine and well and safe, not by our own
doing or keeping! We are free to be ourselves, admit our weaknesses,
have problems and issues. We are free to take risks, free to try new
things and sometimes not succeed, free to be fallible and free to be
wrong, free to not understand everything, free to even have erroneous
beliefs or doctrines about some things! And free to be human, to be
weak, to be emotional, to be real, to be genuine! For no matter what we
do, where our thoughts and acts take us, what lies or traps we fall in,
what confusion we have, or what lies we believe, He is determined to
save us, He is able and willing to save us, He DOES save us, He HAS
saved us! And therefore we ARE safe, forevermore!
