What have you done with the good news?

Be Still . . .
Devotionals for Daily Living

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free,
(Luke 4:18 (NIV))

Do you like good news?

I have never met anyone who didn’t like good news. I have met some people whose definition of good news was not the same as mine. With that said, what do you consider to be good news? Is your definition that same as what the early church considered good news? I am sure you know this, but perhaps you, like myself, need a refreshing of your memory every now and them. The word Gospel means good news. When you read the Gospel, you are reading the good news of Jesus Christ. In this particular passage, we are reading the Gospel according to Luke. Even though Luke did not walk with Jesus when He was on the earth, Luke made it his mission to compile accurate accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus. Luke didn’t know Jesus, yet he believed the good news when he heard it. He believed that Jesus was and is the Son of God and that He is the Messiah. He believed that Jesus was crucified, dead and buried, and on the third day He arose from the grave. He believed that Jesus ascended into heaven and that He is preparing a place for those who call upon His name as Lord and Savior.

Luke loved the good news so much that he not only believed it, but he recorded it so that it could be shared with others. He took the good news and made it possible for generations of people to know the good news as well.

What have you done with the good news?

Copyright 1998 – 2017 Dennis J. Smock
Daily Living Ministries, Inc.
http://www.dailylivingministries.org
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Now for the good news!

Be Still . . .
Devotionals for Daily Living ^©

The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; it is he who will save us.
(Isaiah 33:22 (NIV))

Our deeds cannot save us. Our good works cannot save us. We cannot do anything to rectify us to what God created us to be. We have failed miserably in our sin. We have fallen far short of guiltless in the eyes of our judge, who is the One who created the laws. We cannot escape the punishment for our judge knows the laws that we have broken intimately. He also knows us in all of our sinful nature. We have been judged and found guilty. We have been condemned by our sinful nature and have been sentenced to eternal separation from God.

Now for the good news!

Even though we have been found guilty by the One who made the laws, He has had compassion upon us and has given us a means to escape the sentence that we face for our sins. God knew that we would need a savior. He knew that we would need someone to intercede for us because we could not do it on our own. That is why he sent His only Son, Jesus, to be an atoning sacrifice.

Even though Isaiah was written long before Jesus came to the earth to fulfill this prophesy, we had the promise! We knew that it would come to fruition. Every promise that God has ever made has come to pass. Some people say that God has not kept all of His promises because some of them have not happened, yet. But that is only their interpretation. They do not choose to believe the record of God’s promises.

What do you believe?

Copyright 1998 – 2014 Dennis J. Smock
Daily Living Ministries, Inc.
http://www.dailylivingministries.org
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