Tag Archives: Grace

Feb 3 2012

Go!

Galatians 5:13 tells us to not let our freedom give us a license to fulfill our sinful nature, but to use it to serve one another in love. Radical grace, when received, should be met with a radical response!

You are free to leave everything that God saved you from, but even more, you are free to fulfill His purpose. If you are struggling with sin, God’s grace is there to forgive, but don’t let it stop there! Jesus told the woman who was caught in adultery “I forgive you, GO and sin no more.” It’s hard to “sin no more” if you aren’t “GO-ing.”

When you are busy serving someone in love, how will you have time to sin (the opposite of serving in love – taking and striving in selfishness)?

You don’t have to have a seminary degree or a churchy title to love someone. Buy a homeless person a meal, offer to clean a widow’s home, leave some groceries on a family’s doorstep who lost their job or is a single parent who is struggling. Jesus said what He did and greater shall you do.  Start with His compassion – the greatest work He did!

Jan 9 2012

Embrace God’s Grace

Here are some points to remember and declare over your life from the message at The Refuge Sunday morning:

Text

Eph 2: 8 God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.

His Grace is greater than my past

2 Cor 5:17 anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

Eph 2:13 …but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead,

You don’t have to worry about your past, it’s under the blood of Jesus Christ.  Under His blood your past doesn’t define your future.

Faith is what propels you to your future – Hebrews 11:1 – Faith is the evidence of Things not seen!

You stay in your past through condemnation.

His Grace is greater than my pain

2 Cor 12:7-10 7 even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.

8 Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. 9 Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. 10 That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

His grace is sufficient in weakness! Your heart may be broken, body wrecked with pain, and His grace is there to carry you through.

The grace of God can carry you through the most painful times of your life.

When you are mindful of His grace, those that cause you pain are met with the forgiveness and grace working in your life. When this is in place, We forget about our right to judge those who hurt us, and are encouraged by His grace that none of us deserve!

His Grace is greater than my performance

Romans 7:21 I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. 22 I love God’s law with all my heart. 23 But there is another power[e] within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. 24 Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?25 Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.

Paul, just like you and I fought between what we have every good thing we have intention to do, and the sinful nature that drives us to do the opposite.  Thank GOD, the answer is in Christ! His Grace is not affected by your performance.  Performance has no bearing on how much grace He has for you!  No matter how well, or how poorly you perform, His grace is given FREELY.

Next week we will talk about our Response to His Grace.

Oct 25 2011

My Halloween Costume

This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them all.  But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners. Then others will realize that they, too, can believe in him and receive eternal life… Paul the Apostle, from his 1st letter to Timothy

When I am talking about Jesus and share what it means to follow Him, I get a form of this statement back: “The church is full of hypocrites.”

Hypocrisy is defined by Websters as this: A pretense of virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.

I struggle with my answer, but in reality it shouldn’t be such a struggle.  I heard a preacher friend say this: “Yes, there are hypocrites in the church.  Do you go to Wal-Mart? Be careful there are hypocrites there too! Don’t go to work either, because you will find hypocrites there, too!”

Nobody wakes up in the morning wanting to be a hypocrite.  I, for one, don’t want to be one.  However many times I find myself as hypocritical as the next guy.  Letting others think I don’t have lustful thoughts, when I might struggle with this is hypocritical.  Letting others think I have a great prayer life, when I fight to have one just like you might be is hypocritical.

You see, it’s called a mask. A hypocritical Halloween costume. So many of us are masters of disguise, and we aren’t really good at it!  (think Edgar, the roach-alien in Men in Black).

There are costumes in the pulpits, the pew, on Facebook and at home.  We all want everyone around us to think we have things together that we actually do not.  Your pastor doesn’t have it all together, probably had a fight with his wife where he was unloving and overbearing just like most other men before he preached that masterpiece of a sermon.  Your Sunday School teacher may have fought thoughts of suicide Saturday night.  The long-standing deacon who seems to be an upright pillar could be fighting back a desire to drink or may have found himself in the bar this week.  I could go on, but you get the picture.

You know, Paul the Apostle, who God trusted and inspired to write most of the New Testament, in his writing seems to have this mask thing licked.  He talks about himself being the chief of sinners in 1 Timothy. He openly tells about his struggle with sin in Romans 7 and how he constantly has to fight it. His thorn in the flesh, although we don’t read what it was, required God’s grace to get Him through daily. I have never read any of Paul’s writings and had the thought that he was perfect. I understand he had a lot of knowledge and teaching skill,  I read that he knew how to fight against his sin-nature, but I read so much of Paul affirming he is a sinner saved by grace!  An imperfect man seeking to walk upright before God, yes. Hypocrite, no. Disguise, no – and God used him mightily.

You and I are royal screw-ups.  Unless we have a glorified body and are in Heaven (I don’t have any visitor counts from Heaven, so that’s not you), we all have something in our lives that we don’t have right.  We may not do the “big taboo sins” that everyone claims they don’t do, but we are no different from those who do by the way we treat people, the ideology of how we think we are right when Jesus would beg to differ, and what hideous thoughts we REALLY think.  The difference between a Christ follower and a sinner is simply that the Christian is saved by grace and is working out his salvation with fear and trembling.  Take the mask off.  Let others see that Christ is working in you, and never claim you are righteous in something you are not.

Oh, and don’t worry about those who come out with their pointing fingers of condemnation when you do take your mask off.  Just picture them as Edgar the roach from Men in Black and pray for them.