Good morning and a most blessed Thursday to you.

I would like to share with you a devotion that I read yesterday out of this book "New Morning Mercies." It's a devotional book by Paul David Tripp, and his writing for May 29th is so beautiful that, as soon as I read it, I thought, "I just have to share this with you," and so that's exactly what we're going to do.

So, he begins by writing, "Grace frees you from the dissatisfying claustrophobia of your individualism to enjoy the fulfilling freedom of loving and serving God." What does he mean by that? Let's find out. He writes, "Individualism is not freedom, it's bondage. Living for yourself is not liberty, it is a self-imposed prison. Doing what you want to do, when you want to do it, and how you want to do it has never been the good life. It never leads to anything good. Making up your own rules and following your own paths leads to disaster. God calls you to himself and commands you to follow him so that, by grace, he may free you from you."

In calling you to obedience, God is not robbing you of liberty but is leading you to the only place where liberty can be found. To understand this, you must look at life from the vantage point of creation and the fall into sin. As Creator, God designed you to live a dependent life. You were built for a life of loving, worshipful dependency and obedience. You and I just don't have the power and wisdom we would need to live an independent existence. To try to live life completely independent of God is like trying to drive a beautiful boat down a superhighway. That boat is a wonderful creation loaded with amazing design details, but it was not built to run on a hard surface. If you were to try to run it on land, you will destroy the boat, and you will go nowhere fast.

The entrance of sin into the world and into our hearts teaches us that we were not hardwired for independence. It also complicated things. The fall made us all a danger to ourselves because of the sin in us. We think bad things, we desire bad things, we're attracted to bad things, and we choose bad things, and we are blind to much of this going on inside of ourselves. So, not only do we need God's presence and his wisdom to guide and protect us, but we also need his grace to rescue us.

The doctrines of creation and the fall drive us to conclude that living for ourselves, that is, working to independently rule our own little worlds, can never work. Life is only ever found when we put ourselves in the hand of our creator and cast ourselves upon his amazing grace. An honest look at how you were put together by the Creator and at what sin did to you destroys any confidence you have in your ability to make it on your own and drives you to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. It really is true that individualism is a delusion, that joyful submission is the good life, and that Jesus alone is able to transport you from one to the other. If you find more joy in serving God than yourself, you know that grace has entered your door because only grace has the power to rescue you from you.

Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for rescuing us, rescuing us from the sin of this world, rescuing us from the devil, and rescuing us from our own sinful selves. We ask that today you would give us the courage to live for serving you, to live for serving our neighbor, and to live leaning into your perfect and Good Will. Lord, we know that when we falter, when we do succumb to temptation, when we do indeed sin, we know that you, out of your loving and gracious glory, will forgive us, and that you will continue to call us to yourself and draw us closer to you. Lord, thank you for creating us to not live independently. Thank you for creating us to live dependent upon you and to live in the freedom that we have as your children. Lord, bless this day for everyone here, and give us that beautiful word of Salvation in you and you alone, keep it upon our lips, that we may share it with all those that we meet, so they too may come to know the good and glorious Freedom that they can have and live in in you. Lord, we lift this to you in the blessed and holy name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Have an amazing rest of your week. I'm so looking forward to this next upcoming week where we get to dive in with Vacation Bible School (VBS). Make sure that your kids, your grandkids, your neighbors, or even yourself know about it and can come and celebrate the God that we have -- the God who loves you, the God who forgives you, and the God who has called you his own. I look forward to seeing you and worshiping with you soon. God bless.

Pastor Malinak