SPECIAL PRAYER REQUEST
Dear Friends,
Tomorrow, we at long last begin our journey from Tennessee to Palacios, Texas, right on the coast of Matagorda Bay, on the Gulf of Mexico. We are planting ourselves midway between all but two of our grandchildren so that we can become “professional grandparents”. We plan to do everything we can to spoil them all rotten and then send them home to their parents, like all good grandparents should! For the time being, we will be living in our 38-foot motor home until we find a place to buy or a piece of property to buy where we can build our “dream cottage”. We figure we’ll probably be in the motor home for about a year. At some point, we may “upgrade” for size – and get either a motor home with slides or a fifth wheel. The longest we’ve stayed in the motor home has been three weeks, and we were very happy… but those narrow walls could begin to close in after a while. We’ll just have to wait and see.
At any rate, we ask for your prayers for a safe journey. We are going to take our time – probably taking three days to get there. At our request, we’ve been given the “primo” spot in the RV park… we can have our morning coffee sitting outside our door, overlooking the Bay which will be about 15 feet away! The park will be pretty well deserted except for the occasional weekend visitors, so there will be plenty of peace and quiet… something we long for after the past year of trial… after trial… after trial. Hopefully, we will be able to concentrate on serving you better through the ministry, and also seeing the ministry grow. We look forward for many opportunities that we know Jesus has in store for us. Being close to our grandchildren and being able to serve the Lord in the way that we want to have become the greatest desires of our hearts.
Please keep us in prayer for the trip, and for a wonderful year to come.
God bless you all,
J.R. & Bonnie
PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW ADDRESS:
Dogwood Ministries, Inc.
100 Margerum Blvd.
Palacios,TX 77465
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JESUS - A DIVINE AFTERTHOUGHT? - Galatians 3:6-25
Galatians 3:6-25
About four thousand years ago, God made a promise to Abraham. Around five hundred years later, He gave the Law to Israel through Moses. About fifteen hundred years after that, God sent His Son to redeem the world. Was Jesus a “Divine afterthought”? Did God finally "throw in the towel" after realizing that man could never live up to the requirements of the Law? After watching Israel fail again and again, not to mention the individual failures of all the people, did God finally say, "Okay, I have to do something to help these people. I guess I'll have to send my Son, since nothing else has worked."
No! From the moment the world was formed, the plan for the redemption of our souls was laid in place. It's revealed time and again in scripture, beginning in Genesis 3:14-15, when God cursed the serpent. And here, in this part of his letter to the Galatians, Paul addresses another time when God spoke His promise of a Redeemer – this time to Abraham.
The Jews believed that they were the promised "seed" of Abraham (Genesis 12:7; 13:15; 24:7). However, here, in verse 16, Paul shows the Galatians that God said "seed", not "seeds"… ONE "seed"… Jesus would be the One who would bless the world – “all nations", not just the Jews.
God also promised Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky (Genesis 15:5), but there aren't that many Jews, are there? Again, God was not referring just to Israel, or just to the Jews. God was speaking of "the children of the promise” – every person whose "faith is accredited as righteousness"… every person whose faith lies in Jesus Christ alone for salvation is a "child of the promise” – a descendant of Abraham.
So, was Jesus a "divine afterthought"? No! His redemptive sacrifice was the very means by which Abraham knew he would be saved two thousand years before Jesus was born! Abraham KNEW that a Redeemer would come (John 8:56). God told Abraham that there would be a Redeemer, and Abraham believed God – and his faith in Jesus' sacrifice that would happen two thousand years in his future saved him… not right at that moment, because until Jesus actually was crucified, no one was saved. However, there were thousands of people who – like Abraham – had faith in the coming Messiah, and awaited Jesus’ sacrifice in a “holding place” beyond the tomb, knowing the day would come when He would break them free from that holding place and welcome them to heaven.
The point? God didn't make a "big bang" and throw the world into motion, then sit back and "roll with the punches", doing what He had to do in reaction to the things that mankind did. Rather, He set His plan in motion with the very first part of creation that He spoke into existence. He made the promise to Abraham – a promise that includes all who believe in Jesus. He gave the Law to Moses, to show the world what sin is, and to reveal to each of us how impossible it is for us to achieve perfection. Then He sent His Son to be the final sacrifice – pouring out His grace on us… we who are incapable of keeping the whole Law… so that we might have the ugliness of our imperfection covered by His perfect shed blood and spend eternity with Him.
©2012 Dogwood Ministries, Inc.
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