saved by grace

Good evening friends,
Tomorrow, we'll be welcoming some new members in worship, which is always a highlight. Please come share your support. Our reading this evening is a reflection on one of the most important ideas in our faith: God saves us, not us. There is nothing we can do to make God love us; nothing we can do to earn our salvation. God already loves us and saves us from sin. We come to know that through faith, through trusting God. When we trust God we feel the assurance that we are loved and that the ruler and judge of creation is love, so everything will be alright. That's especially important to remember in our world, where rockets and bombs fall on innocent children tonight and people will go to bed hungry because we are too selfish to share. God saves us, and in the end love will win.

God bless,
Sam

Ephesians 2:1-10

You were dead through the trespasses and sins ²in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. ³All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. 

⁴But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us ⁵even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— ⁶and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— ⁹not the result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.