Tag Archives: grace

Chapter 16: Choose Christ

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Chapter 16: Choose Christ

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  John 3:16-17 ESV

God is always coming towards us, inviting us, wooing us, offering us himself to live by.  In our natural state we are against God’s ways.  In our humanness we would rather hate than love, condemn than receive.

For instance, our fallen human nature would rather put others down than lift them up.  We tell lies where there should be truth and we are jealous where there might be contentment and peace. When we see wrong we condemn instead of giving grace, and we are often demanding with each other rather than living with each other in understanding ways.

We are told, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” Galatians 5:22 ESV, and in this it is obvious to see that we need The Spirit of the living God, we need the help of our Lord Jesus Christ if we are to obtain these things in lasting measure.

Whether we have known Jesus Christ a long time or are only just coming to know Him, we can all agree that none of us can manufacture or live these ways of The Spirit of God on our own.  These things, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, are beyond our own efforts and ability.

Thankfully we are reminded that “God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,” 1 Thessalonians 5:9 ESV 

God has not destined us for wrath – that is the enemies work, yet sometimes we get the condemner and God mixed up. Sometimes in our Christian zeal we take on a spirit of condemnation, of contempt, and of impatience with the lives of others, yet this way, we must remember, is a mark of the enemy and not of our God.

We forget that while “the wages of sin is death, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23 ESV

While sin extracts death, (it always has and it always will), when we carry the mark of God upon our lives we live unto life and not unto death.  We want to live in this free gift of God for the alternative is a sin-state that is turned away from the God who IS life.  God does not punish us for our sins because sin is in fact the punishment. God’s heart, rather, is always for our good.

“For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live.” Ezekiel 18:32 ESV

While sin, agreement with Satan and not with God, sets our life up for difficulty, disease, despair, danger, and the like, God in his great compassion and love saw our immense difficulty, that we were stuck in these never-ending agreements with Satan and death, and He stepped in to do something about it.

“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8 ESV

By sending His son Jesus Christ, God made a way for us to turn from our allegiance to sin and to establish new agreements unto God.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”  Ephesians 2:8-9 ESV

The question comes down to belief.  Do we believe that Jesus Christ died on a cross and then rose the third day? Do we believe that sin has been taken care of by Jesus? Have we allowed His grace to penetrate our hearts and minds and lives?

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”  Isaiah 55:6-7 ESV

The work and blood of Jesus Christ is a covering that we choose to come under.  When we choose Christ we come into the compassion of God, we come into pardon.  A free gift to each and every one of us when we enter into the blood of Jesus Christ, we accept his work done on our behalf.

“Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.  Do you believe this?”  John 11:25-26 ESV

We respond, “Yes Jesus, I realize that I am a sinner.  There are many parts of my life and being that I cannot make right on my own.  My heart and life reveals striving and self effort, a life apart from your grace, but today I choose to agree with you Jesus and with your work done for me.  I enter into your compassion and pardon. I receive you into my life.  I receive your life on my behalf.” 

And we are then told, 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.  He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.  For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.”  John 5:24-26 ESV

What is profound in all of this is that God never tells us to work for our salvation.  We are never instructed to make right our lives, to prove up, to become worthy, to work harder.  Never. In fact, just the opposite.

It is when we are trying to work for our salvation, when we put trust in our own good works, when we feel justified in our habits, it is these times that we have in fact missed the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.”  Galatians 5:4 ESV

For those of us in the ministry of our Lord we must abide, we must remain in the grace of our Lord.  We came to Christ in grace, we must remain in grace. In zeal for what is right and wrong and for what is good and bad we can loose sight of our own sinfulness. 

The Pharisees, the church leaders at the time of Christ, had become experts in the law of the Lord, in habits of cleanness, in rituals of worship and scripture and more, but Christ called them whitewashed tombs, Matthew 23:27; they looked good on the outside but were filthy on the inside.  They demanded that people act as perfect as they and this is what Jesus said,

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.” Matthew 23:13 ESV

The Kingdom of God is not about how good we are, it is about the goodness of God.

The Kingdom of God is ours only as we recall our impoverished state before the Lord and enter into the saving work of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The Pharisees, the church leaders, refused to enter into the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and in this they missed out on the Kingdom of God.

The gospel message is not just for all those ‘out there’, it is for us, each of us.  Every day gives us new opportunity and fresh experience of walking in Christ, of taking him on in our lives, of wearing his manner through our manner.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”  2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT

Application

In Canada I do a lot of healing prayer with individuals.  One of the things that the Holy Spirit leads people to is to confess and renounce an idolatry of good.  Let me explain: 

When Adam and Eve sinned they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Ever since we have believed that it has been the knowledge of evil that has destroyed us, but we rarely consider that they also ate of the the knowledge of good and that this has destroyed us as well. 

Because, you see, when we are focussed on good we have taken our focus off of God.  When we try to be good we are in fact focussed on ourselves. 

The Bible is very clear that only God is good.  Even Jesus did not claim to be good, “‘Why do you call me good?’ Jesus asked. ‘Only God is truly good’.”  Mark 10:18 NLT 

Before Adam and Eve sinned they had unhindered devotion toward God.  We are told that after sin they became self-conscious.  This means that before sin they were innocent of a focus on self, their focus was on God. But after sin their focus became themselves and their focus was turned away from God. 

This is what happened to our relationship with good. Before sin we were not aware of good or bad, right or wrong, we were only aware of God.  But after sin we became aware of good and bad, and since that time we have been serving good rather than God. 

Think about it, how often are you trying to get people to be good? How many times have you admonished your children to be good? Consider the many messages from our pulpits that are condemning those who are not good and applauding those who manage to behave in a good way. 

Now, does this mean that we aren’t to be good.  Of course not.  But quite frankly, our only goodness comes as we allow the Lord Jesus Christ to inhabit our lives and his powerful grace to transform us from the inside out.  Anything less than this is self effort unto goodness. 

If this is making sense to you, if the Holy Spirit is convicting you of a focus on good rather than a focus on God, then today you can pray through to have this stronghold broken in your life. 

I call a focus on good a stronghold, and an idolatry even, because we have for centuries within our world focussed on being good and of trying to be right with God in our own efforts.  This itself is sin.  We must put down our own goodness and our focus on that and come back into relationship with Jesus where he becomes our goodness and where we are freed to focus on God. 

Prayer

If this is for you, then you can pray something like this: 

“God, I come today in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ.  I recognize that I have been focussed on good rather than focussed on you. I see now that this is it’s own kind of idolatry.  I have been trusting in my own goodness rather than trusting Jesus to be my goodness.  I am sorry Lord. 

Today in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ I renounce a stronghold and an idolatry of goodness in my life; I say no more!  Today I reach back into my past to where this focus on goodness first took root and I pull it up, leaving nothing behind. I unwind the chains of goodness from around my being, heart, mind, body, soul, and I declare every link of those chains severed in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ.  

To all assignments, curses, and authority of the enemy that have been around and through my life because of this stronghold, today I say no more!  And I cancel all the things of the enemy that have been connected to this idolatry of good, and I send each thing to the place where the true Lord Jesus Christ chooses to send them. 

In place of this idolatry of good I receive back from my Lord Jesus Christ and unhindered ability to focus on God. 

I choose a simple love of my Lord from this day on. And I trust the power of the Holy Spirit to transform me and to change me from the inside out into the glorious image of God. 

I take this work of the Spirit in my life and I declare it sealed in the name and the blood of my Lord Jesus Christ. 

I declare myself wrapped in the love of the Father, covered in the name and the blood of my Lord Jesus Christ, and breathed through with the breathe of my Holy Spirit. 

I give 100% of all glory and all thanks and honour and praise to you Lord.  Amen and amen.”

Summary – choose christ

God pursues us.  John 3:16-17

God loves life.  Ezekiel 18:32

Life is in Jesus.  Romans 5:8

Keep turned toward Jesus.  Isaiah 55:6-7

Do not try to keep the law.  Galatians 5:4

Rest in the work of Christ.  Matthew 11: 28-30

Grace Says

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Some years ago now the Lord entered me into a vision. I was standing on the threshold of the universe and before me was the vast expanse of eternity with the entire thing packed down running over with grace; a heady, sweet, thick fragrance of our Lord. And I was given a dipper and given the privilege of dipping of this grace and distributing it all around the world. Dipping and pouring out grace here, dipping and pouring out grace there, again and again and again.

In the time since I’ve come to learn that grace is the awareness and deep knowledge that God is big enough for every single thing in our lives. Meaning, there is nothing beyond his grace, nothing beyond his compassion, nothing beyond his knowing and understanding.

Now, grace is not a pardon or a pass per se, its not a concession and it carries no grief or guilt. It demands no reckoning for the reckoning has already been done in the work of Jesus Christ. It is complete and free for the taking.

Grace is a mighty, active, alive, vibrant, work of our Lord that does not just relieve us from sin but changes the entire way we see and do life.

Where before we may have been fearful, pinched in our expectations, narrow in our thinking, grace introduces us to the expansive thought, perspective and heart of our God.

“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.” Isaiah 1:18

The entire first chapter of Isaiah is a litany of the abhorrent attitudes and useless sacrifices of the people. They were not a changed people. Sure they continued making sacrifices and bringing burnt offerings but they did not enter into the transformation of the Lord.

And as the Lord lays this disastrous way of being out for them, nearly right smack in the middle is this verse, “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” 

God in active, passionate investment of his very self has taken care of the problem. The only thing we must do, is admit we need the help, that we need him.

Continuing to bring our sacrifices and our burnt offerings proves we do not yet know our Lord. For our Lord is grace.

Continuing to try to make things right, to prove up, to do better next time, proves we do not yet know our Lord.

For our Lord is grace.

Grace says, “Stop trying so hard. Repent yes, and then rest in my work done for you. I’ve taken care of the divide between us. Put down every single thing that you hold between yourself and me. Put down your shame. Put down your self hatreds. Put down your guilt. Put down your disqualifications. I have made it right, I have made us right. Enter into me.”

Capturing God’s Heart – Rules for Living – Volume 31

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It is easy to want rules for living. Something that tells us “do this” and “don’t do that” removes us from the need to walk in true relationship with God. If we can just figure out what he wants then we simply have to follow a to-do list.

But the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the work of The Kingdom is much more than what we are doing or not doing. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is about relationship, about nuance, about principles for living (not rules), and about our manner of being woven throughout everything.

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The Gift of Hope

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calendar 7In my readings this past month I came across a comment from decades ago, stating that the poor and the outcast “have no right to hope.”

It was a shocking statement to read. Really? Who believes this?

It was a bird’s eye view into another time and way of thinking. But even as I read it I could see that this same thinking just might be a large part of the undercurrent that keeps modern poverty and slavery alive.

Do we have this same thinking as an undercurrent of our thinking. Does it have impact on our justice and aid work. Do we believe that those less fortunate ‘deserve’ what they get.

A few years back I wrote a blog post about grace experienced and passed out. I relayed a situation that was less than ideal and how the grace of God broke in and pressed down.

And some of the responses were so angry. One woman responded with, “If only I had experienced that grace.” Another could hardly stomach the grace, for she had slogged through her own failures, thank-you very much.

It seems that grace makes us angry. If we have not known it we certainly don’t want to give it. And once we’ve spent years trying to fix our lives, make everything right, slogged through our ‘lot in life’ we certainly don’t want to see someone get off scot-free.

Grace, the hope of God, does this.

It covers over. It breaks through. Regardless of class or past or present or circumstance God delights to pour in and make things new.

Thus the anger. Thus the rage. The sense of justice thwarted. How dare ‘they’ hope.

For some time now the impact of Capturing Courage has eluded me a bit. I’ve been working to understand the core gift that we are giving out to those in rural third-world countries. I think it is hope.

And I’ve come to conviction and conclusion. Everyone deserves to hope. Everyone is entitled to grace. Because God said so.

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11

Capturing God’s Heart – Repentance – Volume 28

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There is a time for celebration and rejoicing and for worshiping God, and then there is a time for mourning and grieving and laying bare our deeds before the Lord.

Consider what James says,

“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” James 4:8-10

Admitting that we have done wrong is one of the most freeing experiences. Repentance is deep intimacy with The Father.

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