Hello First Family!

Today’s devotional comes again from the pen of Dr. Jason Harrison, our Discipleship Pastor and Academy Headmaster. Enjoy!

Today’s Code Word: Gift        

We typically define a gift as, “a thing given willingly to someone without payment”.  In our modern culture, we may feel that we deserve “gifts” from the world due to our high performance, or even just for being “awesome”.  Those two concepts are in essence a form of payment.  The world will more often than not, comply with this concept – payment for earned giftedness.  Fortunately for us, this is not how God operates. 

God gives gifts to us that we cannot, and did not, earn.  God can gift us with blessings of health, performance skills, finances, and even the greatest gift of all, His Son who died for man’s sin on the cross.  The fact that we cannot earn these items, makes them all the more valuable, but also, all the more accessible to anyone who recognizes their innate sinfulness just as they recognize Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

Isaiah 64:6 (ESV), “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”

I am so thankful to serve the living God who clearly states that salvation is an absolutely free gift, that no one can earn through deed or action, fully available to anyone who will accept His free gift by faith alone.

See ya tomorrow on our Journey to the Cross.

Rev. Dr. Jason Harrison