gathering

Dear Gathering Leadership Team,
I hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving. If you are anything like me, you may have an easier time beating yourself up than receiving forgiveness.

Isn't it hard to resist the temptation to atone for sin ourselves rather than to receive the grace of God.
I believe the key to getting 'unstuck' in so many of the ruts we find ourselves in is to re-discover how long and high and wide and deep is God's love for us

In Christ.

Here is a quote to remind you:

And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

--1 Corinthians 6:11

I do not know all of the Savior's reasons for choosing the woman at the well. I know that His revelation of Himself to her constituted an everlasting rebuke to human self-righteousness. I know that every smug woman who walks down the street in pride and status ought to be ashamed of herself. I know that every self-righteous man who looks into his mirror each morning to shave what he believes to be an honest face ought to be ashamed of himself....

Jesus was able to see potential in the woman at the well that we could never have sensed. What a gracious thing for us that Jesus Christ never thinks about what we have been! He always thinks about what we are going to be. You and I are slaves to time and space and records and reputations and publicity and the past-all that we call the case history. Jesus Christ cares absolutely nothing about anyone's moral case history. He forgives it and starts from there as though the person had been born one minute before.

AW Tozer, Faith Beyond Reason, 103-104.