“I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” Phil. 1:6
Gracious Father, our salvation is a work we didn’t begin and you alone can finish. We never could have morally reformed our way out of sin, or religiously earned our way into your love. From beginning to end, our salvation is completely by your grace. We contributed nothing but our spiritual deadness and sin, and you provided everything through Jesus’ finished work and the power of your Spirit.
The “legal” status, peace, and freedom that are ours as your children have no parallels, and they cannot be measured. Father, I stress “legal,” because they are actual—not based on anything in us, but everything you declare to be true about us. Until the Day you finish making us like Jesus (which, hallelujah, this verse affirms is gonna happen), we look to you to make all these “legal rights” our personal delights. Humbly and boldly, we ask you to connect our heads and hearts in 2024. Along with Gospel informed minds, grant us Spirit inflamed hearts.
Make the truth of the Gospel intellectually clear, intriguing, and compelling to us. Make the goodness of the Gospel experientially more real and satisfying than anything else in the entire cosmos. Make the beauty of the Gospel—(which is Jesus, himself)—breath-taking, overwhelming, and whole-heart capturing. So much so, that repeating Paul’s words, “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil1:21), won’t be quoting a great verse, but declaring our greatest joy. Make it so, Father. So Very Amen.