Love God Greatly

If God can recognize somebody with Rahab’s background and still make her useful, He can still turn you around and make you useful for the kingdom of God and for the advancement of what God is doing in history.- Tony Evans

 Rahab was a pagan, a Canaanite, a prostitute…a woman with a past.

I’d venture to say, she is the most unlikely woman to be included in Jesus’s genealogy listed in Matthew 1.

Friends, are you seeing this pattern… again and again? God is showing us through our Lord, Jesus Christ’s genealogy, that He uses broken women.

Women who are not perfect.

Women who don’t have it all together.

Women who are stained with shame.

Women who have reputations.

He chose them to be a part of His lineage just like He chooses you to be a part of this amazing story He is writing through our lives…for His glory!

I’m so excited that God, in His amazing mercy, included Rahab in Jesus’s genealogy. Why? Because we need this story…we need her story. As women who fall short of His glory daily, we need to be reminded God can do an amazing work through each and everyone of us if we allow Him to.

We need to be reminded that God can do an amazing work through OUR lives.

Rahab was a woman who made very poor decisions in her past.

Rahab was an outcast.

Yet, Rahab became a woman who had an amazing amount of faith and she put her faith into action! She placed God above her devotion to her people, her country and even her life!

Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men, “I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that, as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father’s house, and give me a sure sign that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.” And the men said to her, “Our life for yours even to death! If you do not tell this business of ours, then when the LORD gives us the land we will deal kindly and faithfully with you.” Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was built into the city wall, so that she lived in the wall. And she said to them, “Go into the hills, or the pursuers will encounter you, and hide there three days until the pursuers have returned. Then afterward you may go your way.”- Joshua 2:8-16

Through her faith in God, Rahab didn’t let her past define who she could become in her future.

With God, our past becomes an amazing opportunity to show how He redeems those who turn to Him. Because of our pasts, we can bring glory to the amazing reality of the power of God and His ability to change lives.

Rahab was a woman with a past, but with God’s help, she became a woman with an unimaginable fairy tale ending.

Remember the two spies Rahab hid? Well she ends up marrying one of them…Salmon and together they have Boaz.

“As the result of her marriage to Salmon, one of the two spies whom she had saved, who “paid back the life he owed her by a love that was honorable and true,” Rahab became an ancestress in the royal line from which Jesus came as the Savior of lost souls. “Poor Rahab, the muddy, the defiled, became the fountainhead of the River of the Water of Life which flowed out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” Her name became sanctified and ennobled, and is worthy of inclusion among many saints.”- Bible Gateway- All the Women of the Bible- Rahab- Chapter 2

If God can change the life of Rahab the prostitute…He can change your life too.

{The Road to Christmas} this road of grace…God paved the way using men and women’s lives we can relate to so we see no one is out of His reach…we all need this amazing road of grace that leads to that tiny baby in a manger, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Let’s Talk:

What are some steps you can take to help you embrace who you are in Christ and move beyond the label of your past? Write down 2 Corinthians 5:17, you are a new creation in Christ. The old is gone, the new has come. Take time to embrace who you are now in Christ Jesus and move forward in your faith. Today I invite you to share your stories of how God has changed you and help give hope to those who may be struggling today.

 

Love God Greatly!

Angela- Love God Greatly

 

 

 

 

PS: Just so you know….we are crazy thankful for you!!!

Angela Perritt

Angela Perritt

Angela Perritt is the founder and director of LoveGodGreatly.com, a nonprofit online Bible study ministry reaching thousands of women in over two hundred countries around the world with God’s Word through their translated Bible studies. She and her husband live in Dallas, Texas with their three daughters. Angela is passionate about God’s Word and believes one woman in God’s Word can change a family, community and ultimately a nation. Her greatest joy is to encourage her children and others to love God greatly with their lives one day at a time. You can connect with her on Instagram.

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