Hello my friend Dr. Brad Miller here with the Daily Bible Refresh.

This is your daily reading of the Bible from a progressive point of view.

In a bit I will read the New Testament lessons selected from the Revised Common Lectionary for this very day.

The reading is understandable.

I use the Message version Relatable.

Please listen to the points to ponder and applicable with action steps you can take.

We pray and are done in less than 10 minutes.

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Here's today's reading.

Reading today from Ephesians 2:1 10 from the Message He Tore down the Wall it wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin.

You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live.

You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief and then exhaled disobedience.

We all did it.

All of us doing what we felt like doing when we felt like doing it.

All of us in the same boat.

It's a wonderful God didn't lose his temper and do away with a whole lot of us.

Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us and took our sin dead lives and made us alive in Christ.

He did all this on his own with no help from us.

Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

Now God has us where he wants us with all the time in the world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus, saving us all his idea and all his work.

All we do is trust him enough to let him do it.

It's God's gift from TARS from start to finish.

We don't play the major role.

If we did, he'd probably go on around bragging that we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing.

No, we neither make nor save ourselves.

God does both the making and the saving.

He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do.

Work we'd better be doing.

Well, my friend, that concludes the reading.

And so I'm really glad you took a little time to spend with me today on this passage.

It's a really good one.

If you ever felt like you've had to earn your way into God's good graces, then this reading today is going to feel like someone just kind of opened the window, brought some fresh air into the room.

So let's go.

Two things to discover about today's reading.

First, says here that all of us are in the same boat.

And I think that little phrase is one of the most quietly radical things Paul ever says.

Before he gets.

Before he gets the good news of grace, he levels the playing field completely.

Everybody was in the same mess.

Not some people worse than others, not a ranking system of sinners, all of us in the same boat.

And a progressive faith that takes this seriously because it dismantles one of religion's most toxic habits.

That's the sorting of people into who's acceptable and who's not.

When you really absorb the idea that every single person was in the same boat, it becomes very hard to look down on anyone.

It becomes impossible to say, well, at least I'm not like them.

And my wife and I love to travel, and we hike in wooded parks quite a bit.

One of the most humbling things about being on the trail is that the mountain hike doesn't care about your resume.

It doesn't care anything about your abilities or anything like that.

Rain falls on every hiker the same way gravity works on everybody equally.

We're all on the same trail, dealing with the same terrain.

That's what Paul is saying here.

Before grace showed up, we were all mired in the same stagnant water.

So the next time you're tempted to judge somebody else's mess, maybe we should remember we were sitting on our own second point to ponder.

Saving is all his idea and all his work.

This might be one of the more liberating sentences in the entire letter of Paul.

We didn't come up with all this.

We didn't earn it.

We didn't perform our way into it.

Grace was God's idea from the start, and God did the heavy lifting from start to finish.

Now, here's why this matters so much, because a lot of us grew up in church cultures where salvation was kind of like a transaction.

If you believe the right thing, say the right prayers, behave the right way, then God will love you.

But Paul flips that around completely.

God loves us while we're still stuck in the muck.

And the embrace comes first, then the transformation follows.

Every week on my cancer related podcast, I talk with people who are wrestling with whether they're enough, strong enough, faithful enough, positive enough.

And the answer from this passage is stunning.

You were never supposed to be enough on your own.

That was never the arrangement.

God does both the making and the saving.

Your job is to trust enough to let it happen.

After 34 years of marriage and raising three adult kids who are now living amazing lives on their own, I could tell you one of the best things in my life weren't things I manufactured.

There were things I received and participated in.

That's the rhythm that Paul is describing here.

Grace arrives first, then we get to join into the work.

So that's the ending.

Don't miss it.

We're created to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do.

Grace doesn't make us passive.

It sets us free to actually do something meaningful without the exhausting burden of trying to prove ourselves worthy.

We get to be a part of that, of that energy.

So here's your action step for today.

Somewhere you're going to be tempted to earn love from God.

You're going to be from a co worker, family member for yourself.

And when that moment comes, I want you to pause and say quietly, even if it's just in your own head, I don't have to earn this.

Let that sink in.

Not as a reason to do nothing, but as a foundation to do everything from a place of freedom instead of fear.

Grace got here before you did.

Rest in that for even just a few seconds.

When you come back and have a prayer here in just a minute.

Didn't want you to know that.

We have a great resource for you.

We're over at our website, Voice of God Daily.

It's called the ABC 123 Bible Study Method.

Let's pray God.

A lot of us are tired.

We're tired of performing, tired of trying to.

To be enough.

Tired of the voice in our heads that says we haven't done enough to deserve your love.

And then we read something like this, and it's almost too good to believe that saving was your idea, that you embraced us in the middle of our mess, that you did the heavy lifting and you are, and you're not done showering kindness on us.

Help us to actually receive that today, not just as theology, but as the truest thing about our lives.

Then, from that place of being loved and free, help us join in your good work.

Not to prove anything, but because we've been set loose to live with purpose, remind us that we're all on the same boat, God.

Every single one of us.

Keep us humble, keep us grateful, and keep us moving toward the work you prepared for us.

Amen.

My friend, I am delighted you chose to join me for today's reading.

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My name is Dr. Brad Miller and I'll be right here tomorrow with your Daily Bible Refresh.

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Remember, God's loyal love doesn't run out.

His merciful love hasn't dried up, it's created new.

Every morning.