Friday: Further Thought – Grace, Love, and Fellowship
Daily Lesson for Friday 25th of September 2026
Further Thought:
Read Ellen G. White, “ ‘Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled,’ ” Pages 662–680, in The Desire of Ages.
Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com
“The grace of Jesus Christ alone can change the heart of stone to a heart of flesh, and make it alive unto God. . . . Men have no power to justify the soul, to sanctify the heart. Moral disease cannot be healed save through the power of the great Physician. The highest gift of heaven, even the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, is alone able to redeem the lost.”—Ellen G. White, in The Signs of the Times, May 2, 1892.
“ ‘God is love.’ 1 John 4:16. His nature, His law, is love. It ever has been; it ever will be. ‘The high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity,’ whose ‘ways are everlasting,’ changeth not. With Him ‘is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.’ Isaiah 57:15; Habakkuk 3:6; James 1:17. Every manifestation of creative power is an expression of infinite love. The sovereignty of God involves fullness of blessing to all created beings. . . . The history of the great conflict between good and evil, from the time it first began in heaven to the final overthrow of rebellion and the total eradication of sin, is also a demonstration of God’s unchanging love.”—Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 33.
“We need to realize that the Holy Spirit . . . is as much a person as God is a person. . . . The Holy Spirit has a personality, else He could not bear witness to our spirits and with our spirits that we are the children of God. He must also be a divine person, else He could not search out the secrets which lie hidden in the mind of God.”—Ellen G. White, The Faith I Live By, p. 52.
“There are three living persons of the heavenly trio; in the name of these three great powers—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—those who receive Christ by living faith are baptized, and these powers will cooperate with the obedient subjects of heaven in their efforts to live the new life in Christ.”—Ellen G. White, Evangelism, p. 615.
Discussion Questions
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I have made the point before that given a big enough flock of Galahs (Australia’s talkative pink and grey show-off cockatoos), and enough time, I could teach them to recite the New Testament. Imagine that: a whole flock of Galahs descending on a town screeching and chattering the Gospel. The point is of course, Galah’s for all their intelligence, would not understand a word they were saying. It would simply be parrot noise.
At the end of this week of study, some of us may have ended up with more knowledge about God, but that knowledge may be just spiritual parrot noise. James makes a telling statement:
My question for us is: How are going to use the knowledge we have expressed this week? Are we just show-off, spiritual Galah’s, looking good, sounding right, but just making parrot noises?
A well-known Christian song is entitled “Amazing Grace.” What is amazing about the grace of Jesus?
I have touched on this in Thursday’s post from the Book of John quoting Christ in John 15:4-10. To me these words of Christ are just one aspect depicting His Amazing Grace as given by God the Father. Since God can allow a sinner like me to allow Him to edge me on to sanctification abiding in Him all along the way, that is amazing grace.
If you look at yourself and find Christ abiding in you. That is amazing grace. 2 Corinthians 13:5. Let’s also see what the Easy To Read Version(ERV) says:
[5] Look closely at yourselves. Test yourselves to see if you are living . Don’t you realize that Christ Jesus is in you? Of course, if you fail the test, he is not in you.
In my opinion if someone said, “Are you talking to me.” Paul would have said, “if the Shoe fits wear it if not take it off.”
We will be spending time on the gift of prophecy starting this Sabbath afternoon. 1 Corinthians 13:2.
Fellowship in Christ is more than attending church meetings, participating in programmes, or having our names on the membership roll. We can attend every church service, board meeting, Bible study, and social event and still fail to experience the life of God together. True fellowship is sharing life in Christ—walking with one another, carrying each other’s burdens, praying together, encouraging one another, serving with humility, and growing together in faith. The early church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42), and their fellowship was expressed through genuine care and sharing of life (Acts 2:44–47). Paul reminds believers that we are “members one of another” (Romans 12:5), and calls us to “encourage one another and build each other up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). Therefore, fellowship is not simply being together in the same building; it is belonging to one another in Christ, where the love of God is experienced, burdens are shared, lives are transformed, and the body of Christ becomes a living community rather than merely a gathering of people.
If we are ever learning but never applying what we have learned we are merely wasting our time. Some Christians act as if salvation is by knowledge. If that were true then Satan and his angels would be saved. Knowledge has to be converted into experience and mixed with faith. It doesn’t do us any good to merely know about God. The demons know about God. We need to experientially know him.
The most amazing thing about grace is that we even have a chance to be saved in spite of all that we have done to be lost. Ephesians 2:8-10 sums it up fairly well. We aren’t saved by knowledge but by grace through faith. Not by works, but to good works.
I thank God for the three persons He has shown Himself to me and to all. In this diversity, there is perfect union. If we are connected to the Godhead, though very different, we should also feel the ties that unite us all. The more we are open to love, the more we accept God’s unfailing connection with Creation.
God is love, He never condemned sinners but want them to turn from their wicked way and received salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ.