The (Social Distanced) FUN Collides with The Gospel
A 19,000 square foot gym for a Mommy and Me class, with maybe 15 people in it?
Oh yeah baby!
Count us in!!
We’re breaking out of this joint and having some good old fashioned girl FUN!
We got a solid hour and a half of running and playing and smiling and laughing. Just as it should be—our regular normal—especially for the babes.
And since Bub’s too old for Mommy and Me, he did dude stuff with his friends—and gracious, what a blessing for our boy. To finally have some immature testosterone present in his life, thank goodness for him!
On another note, this is the beautiful and most lovely hand of my Grandma. She suffered a stroke the other day, but thankfully, our Papa was there to seek immediate help for her—ultimately aiding incredibly in her recovery. Yesterday, she was transferred to a rehabilitation facility, where my grandfather met her with a grand surprise. The two of them have been married over 40 years, and for some time now, they’ve been talking about getting new rings for each other. And so, while she remained in the ICU and because he wasn’t able to come to her side due to Covid restrictions (don’t get me started...I’ve held my tongue kindly this long already), he took my sister to shop for her hand. This is the ring he chose; the prettiest, most perfect treasure for his bride. My heart could explode as he surprised her with both his presence and his present.
On another note, this is the beautiful and most lovely hand of my Grandma. She suffered a stroke the other day, but thankfully, our Papa was there to seek immediate help for her—ultimately aiding incredibly in her recovery. Yesterday, she was transferred to a rehabilitation facility, where my grandfather met her with a grand surprise. The two of them have been married over 40 years, and for some time now, they’ve been talking about getting new rings for each other. And so, while she remained in the ICU and because he wasn’t able to come to her side due to Covid restrictions (don’t get me started...I’ve held my tongue kindly this long already), he took my sister to shop for her hand. This is the ring he chose; the prettiest, most perfect treasure for his bride. My heart could explode as he surprised her with both his presence and his present.
WE LOVE YOU, NANA!!!!!!!!!!!!.
You’re doing SO great and we can’t wait to bring you home to Papa, new sheets, Crazy Cat Tiger, Charley, Marlins baseball, and a huge, fat piece of chocolate!!
I know you know: we’re praying for you—for your heart and for your recovery. What a blessing it is for me to wake up each day with the knowledge that today exists because God is graciously bringing salvation—through Christ’s shed blood on the cross—unto His people.
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
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6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8)
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For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
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9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. (Romans 10:9-10)
God created you. He created me. Each one of us, though we may suppress it, know in the most intimate chambers of our being, that we are in fact, not some random-chanced, evolved-something-from-nothing, unspecified blob of tiny particles, without actual purpose or reason. The precision and intricacy and intimacy and morality of life demands a Creator. And that Creator God created it all, culminating in His most prized creation: man. For His own glory and delight, He made us, each totally specific and unique. His creation was perfect. Until it wasn’t. The Bible says that wanting to become like God, man (human) rebelled against his Creator and into His perfect creation, sin entered. We are ALL sinners. Each one of us. From Adam and Eve all the way up until now, every single one of us has rebelled against God in sin. The Bible says that because of our sin, we are separated from God—God, in His holiness, cannot be in the presence of sin—and deserving of an eternity apart from Him in a literal place of torment called Hell. This is the justifiable payment for our sins. BUT, because of His great love for us, He offered us a way of reconciliation to Himself through His Son. Jesus wasn’t just some good man who lived a great life, was kind, loved people and died. No. Jesus was the necessary and perfect, spotless, sinless sacrifice, who undeservedly bore our own sins upon Himself, taking on the wrath of the Father that we deserved and transferring to those who submit to him as Lord, His own righteousness. When God looks at a person who has believed in the finished work of Christ on the cross, He sees the spotless righteousness of Jesus and to those, He offers eternal life in Heaven. This is only made possible because on the cross, God saw the sin of those who would believe laid upon Jesus. However, to those who are still in their sin, not having trusted in Christ nor turned their life to Him, the Bible says that there is none good—not even one—and that apart from Jesus, their sin separates them eternally from God in Hell.
To prove His deity, to prove the validity of all He claimed, on the third day after He died as a totally innocent and perfect man in the place of unrighteous sinners, that same DEAD MAN Jesus, was raised literally back to life. This, to the Believer, gives us ultimate hope and trust in the promises of God.
The call to repentance and faith in Jesus is urgent because each of us are keenly aware of the brevity of this life. Our years here on this Earth matter. Ultimately, they have implications on an eternal scale. And so, two choices remain for those apart from faith in Christ. You can either remain defiant in your sin OR you can repent and believe in the saving power of the Gospel, submitting your life to Him and the commands He’s given us in the Bible, of which are not burdensome to those who believe. And I would submit to you: the Bible says that since nobody is good (we are all sinful) that good works or being a “good person” does not make you right with God. Being a good person does not get you into Heaven nor does it right your wrongs; that is not what the Bible says, though it is a very common and often-practiced belief. Only by faith in Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross and resurrection can someone be made right with God, be saved, be a Christian, be made new, and go to Heaven. You cannot do enough good to repay all the bad. One sin separates us from God. And one Savior reunites us. This is not my truth. This is God’s truth. And I would like to make the distinction because this was the false belief that I had nearly all my life before understanding what the Bible actually says about Heaven and Hell.
And so, if nothing else, I would urge you, my friends, my family—anyone reading this—to at least consider what you know about life, to consider the hopelessness and the fear and the dissatisfaction and the yearning that constantly grip you, and to consider that there isn’t something far greater for you in this life...and the next.
I love you.
I care for you.
I’m praying for you.
Please know at any time, you may text, call, or email Adam or I. We’re here and available and would love nothing more than to talk to you about what the Bible says about God and what the Bible says about you and I.
All my love,
Kendall
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conleyadam61@gmail.com
kconley72@live.com
You can visit this link to pursue more of the things I’ve written, if it would at all help in further understanding :)
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