LA Story – The Story of Us
We started to live together, as a ‘normal’ worldly couple would do if they had a chance and no one to stop them from doing it. We began our relationship like this but because of my spiritual background and the tremendous love and respect I felt for her, I decided that if my love was real, I couldn’t let her finish as the bad weed of the scripture, burning in the eternal fire . . . (Matthew 13:36-43).” This is part of an email that we recently received as a response to the official International Churches of Christ website at www.icoc.org. It was written by a brother who fell away from the Lord and his church, but who is asking how he could come back and be restored. It makes my day when good news such as this comes across my desk, and it frequently does. Of the people who leave the church, about 10% eventually come back. But why do so many brothers and sisters who embraced God and accepted his grace, get drawn back into the world by Satan? I believe that a large part of the reason is that they stop being thankful for all that God has given them.
Our theme scripture cited above says, “. . . let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably. . . .” I believe that we need to discover the power of thankfulness as God’s people. As I prepared to lead a devotional for a group of men, I looked at many verses in the Bible that talk about giving thanks and being thankful. I learned that being thankful is much, much more than just a nice
thing to do. It is a channel through which God works to overcome the power of Satan in our lives.