Freedom

I often wonder whether we Christians enjoy our relationship with God. Whilst this may sound a tad absurd it's actually an important question to ask ourselves.

Do I enjoy my relationship with God?

Or better still, who is God to me?

Is He someone I feel obliged to worship and obey for fear of the consequences of not doing so?

Or 

Is He someone I worship and obey so that I can have a good life - to be blessed.

Thankfully God's Grace covers all things, so either way is okay.

But are either of the above reasons healthy?

In other words do we feel free, or shackled by a never-ending fear of failure, in our quest for God to be at peace with us?

The dictionary says that freedom is 'the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.'

Do we feel free with God?  Or are we more or less imprisoned in our fear of disobeying God's commandments / laws, and thereby incurring His wrath?

I hazard a guess to say that many of us are living in 'fear' of what might happen if we disobey God's commandments. In other words our constant efforts / works to attain righteousness have actually placed us in a surreal state of imprisonment. 

We are imprisoned by our fears of what might or might not happen if we fall short of God's righteousness / commandments.

I won't keep you too long this morning. Indeed I've realised that just as it took Jesus to open my eyes in order to fully understand Grace it will be the same for you. 

I have being hearing the message of grace for many years; read a number of books on it. I had even written about it several times. But my eyes only opened properly in July, this year. Until July, though I liked the sound of the message, and although I loved to write about it, I wasn't really living it. I simply couldn't fully flow with the notion that Christ has done everything to attain my righteousness. The common sense, or better still, the pride in me refused to accept that no works / effort was required from my side.

So no matter how eloquently I write, unless Jesus says it's time for you to understand, ain't nothing gonna happen. But believe me, That time will come sooner rather than later. And I can't wait till it does; to see that big beaming smile on your face - That smile that says 'hey, I can't believe how much God loves me - how wonderfully loved and blessed I am - how amazingly righteous I am.'

There is nothing more powerful than the realisation of your perfect Righteousness through Jesus Christ. The moment you accept that Christ makes you righteous, the fears, condemnation, and guilt instantly begin to fall by the wayside. 

Trust me, it will definitely happen. 

But until then I'm going to play my part, and simply point out some verses in the bible to you.

Let's look at two verses this morning.

1. 'Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and saught to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.'

Romans 10 vs 8

In other words, like I did for many years, rather than accept that Christ makes me righteous - that He has already done everything to make me righteous - many of us simply cannot fathom being in Right Standing With God without our own works/ efforts.

Christ makes you righteous. Not your works/ efforts.

2. 'Did you receive the spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?'

Galatians 3 vs 3

Grace and works do not go together. If they did, then grace (Unmerited Favour) wouldn't really be grace, and Christ needn't have come in the first place.

Grace, through our acceptance of Jesus as our Lord and Saviour is what has ALREADY attained our Righteousness; not our works / efforts.

Ask Jesus to give you a deeper understanding of grace this morning. 

There is no greater blessing, no greater power, and no greater joy than the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

IT AIN'T ABOUT YOU

Let's begin today with a text from the bible.

' We have been saying that Abraham's faith was credited to him as Righteousness. Under what circumstance was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised or before? It was not after but before.'

Romans 4 vs 9 and 10

In other words God credited Abraham with righteousness before he did any 'works'. In the same manner, you and I were 'Justified' and forever put in 'Right Standing Before God' before we did any 'works'. 

All we had to do was believe Jesus died for us, and accept Him as our Lord and Saviour.

But the very notion of not have to do any 'works' not only seems absurd to most of us,  but positively irresponsible. 

Let's not forget - Jesus says that 'even if we look at another person lustfully we have committed a sin.'

God's standards are incredibly high. So high in-fact that anyone who believes that he or she can attain them via 'self effort' is actually the one who is absurd in his or her thinking. 

IT AIN'T POSSIBLE PEOPLE!!

This is why Jesus did all the work for us. So that we can stop worrying about whether or not we have done enough. 

We can never do enough. 

And because we know this, and yet refuse to fully accept the gift of grace, we continuously live in anxiety,  fear, condemnation, shame, and of-course guilt. 

Our own self efforts and will-power can only do so much, and can only go on for certain amounts of time / periods. At some point we inevitably get tired or have a moment of weakness and fall / fail. 

To make matters worse, because we have made it all about 'ME ME ME' we have become so self conscious, as a result of our constant 'sin consciousness' that we're rarely able to think about the welfare of others. 

In other words we desire piousness at all costs; even at the cost of love /compassion for others. 

Furthermore this constant self effort for piety leads to a ludicrous degree of hypocrisy, as a result of those very sins we're so desperately trying to avoid being done in secret.

In order for thorough and permanent change to happen with-in us, the transformation must begin from the inside (grace), and not from the outside (our works).

For us to be able to feel for others, as against a constant focus on 'self', the change must come from the inside - Grace. 

It is grace that transforms our hearts and mindsets. No matter how much we try to obey God's commands with our own works and 'self' efforts', all we're really doing is pushing our naturally selfish desires further down the pit. But that doesn't mean that those desires have gone. They're just buried beneath the rubble of 'self effort'. At some point in time, during a moment of weakness those desires will surface again. 

But with grace working from within, those desires stop being so desirable, and eventually vanish.

Grace has far greater power than our own efforts.

Grace is far more powerful than the law and sin (those two always work together). 

Remember my previous article? - Is The Notion of Pre-Marital Sex Outdated?'

Of-course it flipping well isn't. 

Of-course it's better to wait until you're married. 

But despite us knowing this, and doing our utmost to keep to it, many have failed over and over again. 

Our 'self efforts' didn't get us very far. 

With grace, and the internal transformation that comes with it, we can begin to think much less of 'me me me' in terms of 'I must do this and I mustn't do that', and more of 'what is best for the other person'.

By letting go and allowing Grace to change us from within, we are able to think less of 'self' and more of the well-being of others.

It is by accepting the unconditional love of God that we are freed of 'self' and able to love others.

Grace isn't a free pass to do whatever we want to do. 

It is a huge 'enabler' to do what God wants us to do.

It enables us to think with common sense. The apostle Paul said that 'Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.' 

In other words, yes, with grace we can all do whatever we want to do, whenever we want to do it, in the knowledge of God's unconditional love; however the reality is that because we are sure of God's unconditional love we actually begin to think less of that particular sin; for through grace it begins to have less and less power and influence over us- until it eventually disappears alltogether.

Grace is like an incinerator. It scorches those desires out of sight. 

So by focusing less on 'I must not fornicate/ have sex before marriage', how about telling yourself the following truth; that no matter what, God has forgiven you of all sins for all your life, He loves you unconditionally, and you are perfectly in Right Standing With God at all times because of what Jesus has already done for you. 

By so doing you are removing the onus from what You can do, to what Christ has already done. Then as grace begins it's wonderful work in you, you will find that those desires / temptations no longer have any power over you.

The end result?

You are then able to make selfless as well as common sense decisions with regards to pre-marital sex.

Like - 

'Bearing in mind that this person really likes me and I don't particularly like him /her, is it fair on him / her for us to have sex?'

'What if she gets pregnant? Would that be fair on her/ him? Worse still, is it fair on the child that may come as a result of our actions?'

'Do we really want to spend the rest of our lives together?'

With Grace God blesses us first, whether we deserve it or not; and by so doing enables us to naturally do what is good and right through love.