Ask yourself one question. Do I believe in God’s grace?

Or even more fundamental. Do I believe in grace?

If your answer is yes to either of these questions, then ask this question now.

If I believe in grace then why I am I such a grace-killer?

I know…first reaction to that question is, me? I’m not a grace-killer.

Then why is it that I can’t even leave my home without automatically judging my next door neighbor and that horrendous car that he/she drives?

Why can’t I make it through a day at work without automatically assuming the worst of the guy or girl who works in the cube next to mine?

Why can’t I even accept that my OWN sins are COMPLETELY washed away, and by nothing that I myself have done?

MY sins are washed away by HIS death. It doesn’t even matter that others around me are doing what I do all day long.

It doesn’t matter that I AM THE WORST and yet in God’s eyes the BEST.

BEST because I am RIGHTEOUSNESS in God’s eyes because of the work of Christ.

That’s right, I AM the righteousness.

My sins are not just covered by the blood.

I am MADE righteous by the blood.

*contributed by Austin Gentry*

Are you tired of continuously trying to please God with a sense that no matter what you do, you’re not good enough? Do you dilligently read your Bible, attend Church, and pray; yet, you feel like you’re in the same place you’ve always been and God is still just out of reach, wondering when you’re going to get your act together? Watch the videos below, and if you’re interested, purchase the DVD at http://www.truefaced.com/blog/

Here are two videos from the DVD:
The Room of Good Intentions:

Caterpillars and Butterflies:

If you’re hoping that there will be a cute twist at the end of this note where I explain or excuse those statements away, I’m giving you fair warning that it’s not going to happen.

What does it mean when Paul says in Galatians that “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free”?
In the verses before, he explains that Hagar is a type of the Old Covenant established on Mount Sinai - something that bears forth slaves. Sarah is a type of the New Covenant established in the Jerusalem above - something that bears forth children of promise, born by the power of the Spirit. Hagar represents the result of human effort. Sarah represents the result of God’s effort.

Are you a slave?

One of the clearest and most articulate messages in the Scriptures is that from the time we are born until God does a work in our hearts, we are spiritual slaves to sin. Forced to serve. The nation of Israel is an historical representation of this fact: gestated and developed in Egypt, a slave nation from its inception.

Are you free?

If our spiritual slavery is one of the clearest messages, perhaps the clearest message is that through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection we can be reconciled to God - set free from the opression of sin, free to live in the reality and relationship that God intended for us since before the dawn of creation. The way things were meant to be can now be, because of grace.

Satan misses you

While most of us are all too familiar with the continual struggle against remaining sin in us and the world, there is another tactic that Satan uses on the redeemed. This tactic is meant to cripple us. Make us ineffective. Blind us. Bind us.

The tactic is to get us talking about Christian things, singing Christian songs, doing Christian acts, all the while taking our focus off of Christ and focusing on ourselves and how we compare with each other. We start competing with each other for prizes like ‘Most Humble” or “Who can obey the most commandments.” Unfortunately, in our attempt to win these prizes, we like to disqualify others by pointing out their wrongs. It gets kind of ugly.

Maybe you’ve been that person. Maybe you’ve been hurt by that person. Maybe you’re someone who was interested in Christianity until you walked into a church. Maybe you’re a regular church goer who is sitting there wondering what the point of it all is.

0% Down. Terms and conditions apply*

*While it is true that God has saved you through no effort of your own, what you will soon come to realize as you mature in your Christian walk (read this as “learn more doctrine”) is that someone who is a real Christian will: wear a tie in the church building, read their Bible everyday, conduct proper family worship, attend Sunday School, attend church (morning and evening service), only talk about Christian things on Sunday, quote Bible verses in their prayers, try to speak in tongues, do the rosary, witness to everyone they see, burn copies of The Shack, burn copies of Harry Potter, protest abortion, protest gay marriage, sneer about everything President Obama does, and only watch Fox News.

STOP. It is for freedom that Christ has set you free.

You are no longer under the law. It no longer has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. LOVE.

Free to run

If anyone tries to mandate any duty or rule on you that must be met in order for you to be accepted (by God or them) as a child of God worthy of fellowship, run. RUN as far as you can.
The Pharasees tried to make more rules. Jesus rebuked them with the strongest words of his day. New believers (along with Peter) tried to add Jewish customs to justification (including circumcision). Paul yelled at Peter in front of everyone, and also used some pretty strong language of his own.

Do not let anyone (or yourself) place a yoke of slavery on you again when it comes to the Christian walk - no matter how spiritual they make it. No matter how many verses they use. No matter how many theological terms they make up to make it sound better. Run.

“My grace is sufficient for you.”

The church has a secret. Christians have a secret too.

 If you read my last post, you’ve heard a glimpse of that secret. Grace is the means by which we are justified and made right with God. Grace is also the means by which we continue to live in God’s favor for the rest of our lives - regardless of our sin (including future sins). It sounds nice doesn’t it? That is, until we realize the possible outcomes of this message.

Paul says in Romans 5 that the law (the 10 Commandments, most notably) was added so that sin might increase. But, where sin increases, grace increases even more.

This is starting to sound pretty dangerous. If people catch on to the fact that God will not stop loving them no matter how badly they screw everything up; that if they break each of the commandments multiple times a day (adultery you say? murder you say?), God’s redeeming love will not be cast away from them - chaos will unfold all around us.

Churches usually deal with this secret a couple of ways. One way is to misunderstand the secret and then tell people that it doesn’t matter at all what they do. They shouldn’t feel guilty about their sin, because God loves them anyway. They shouldn’t change any behaviors, because God wants to meet them right where they are and stay with them right where they are. This message starts to abuse grace and we’ll talk about the correct alternative in a little bit.

Another way churches deal with this secret is to be scared of it. Out of this fear (usually of losing control), churches will want to put lots of parameters around this secret, until it fits nicely into this box called “duty.” They emphasize all of the rules in the Bible until the Bible stops being a living breathing Word, and becomes a dry book of do’s and don’ts. What happens? People believe that in order to be a Christian, you have to fit within a specific checklist of behaviors, and if you step outside of those bounds, your salvation should be suspect. So, people sin (as we often do) and they want to hide it (possibly for years), because God must not love them, and the people around them definitely won’t love them either. We kill grace.

Neither of these ways of handling the secret is correct. To find an answer for both “grace abusers” and “grace killers,” Pastor Don pointed us to Romans 6. “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”

If we understand this passage (and others) correctly, we will begin to realize that real Christians still sin, but that we don’t have to stay there - in fact, God put his Spirit in us so that we CAN’T stay there. The focus of our Christian lives should be the cultivation of the Spirit living in us and working through us. God has handled the sin, and will continue to handle the sin - we need to trust him on that. For churches, it’s not our job to beat each other up over how much we fail, but instead to encourage one another to live in the reality of our new identities.

I like the way this sounds for my life. No stress. No heavy burdens. Just living in the freedom of God’s love. But I don’t like the way this sounds for my neighbor. It’s possible that they could hurt me or sin against me? Yes. They can ask for forgiveness and I have to graciously forgive them as God graciously forgives me? Yes. OK, but how many times do I have to do this before I can write them off and give them the boot? “Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven (or seventy times seven) times.”

This grace thing is going to be tough. Living honestly with my struggles in the midst of a community of other believers who have real struggles, in the hope that the Holy Spirit will work through us to make us more like Jesus? Are you willing to try it? Will you take the risk?

By about the third or fourth song during our worship time, people begin to sense that there’s something more going on than just a handful of people lifting their voices in praise. I start to notice that God is communing with us right there through the power of the Holy Spirit. The songs become less about lyrics and melodies, and more about hearts being poured out in prayer to Abba Father. “So what can I say?/what can I do?/ But offer this heart, oh God/ Completely to you.”

 The worship through singing, giving, and Scripture reading usually helps tune our hearts and minds to our heavenly Father in a powerful way. Pastor Don then preaches, and it’s exciting to see him preaching what God has placed on his heart. Currently we’re going through a 14-week series on grace, and you should know it is a very powerful subject. I wish I could describe it to you.

This last message was on our status before God, and how we have been justified because of grace. Pastor Don laid the foundation of what the word “justified” actually means. Many Christian circles (denominations aside) fall into the trap of short-changing grace. We like to emphasize that in our salvation we should bask in grace, because our salvation is a complete gift from God. Once the honeymoon is over however, our emphasis moves to sanctification by works, or “what are you doing for God?”

The reality of justification is this: the grace of God wipes clean your sins - past, present, and future. Not only that, it also ushers you into the full favor of God as your father. You do not have to work for God’s smile, you don’t have to keep looking over your shoulder to see if daddy is still smiling in approval.

I can’t begin to explain everything, but if you can come away with one thing, it should be what Pastor Don said to me after the service. ”The moment Jesus’ death on the cross becomes inadequate before God, is the moment God no longer approves of you.” It will never happen.

I needed this past Sunday.

We all did.

Will I see you there next week? I hope so.

   A benefit of our relationship with God is that the Holy Spirit transforms us into the likeness of Jesus.  Since God’s ways are not our ways, when we become more like his son, we start to do things differently than how we used to do things. A big example of this change is in our relationships with others. 

   When it comes to experiencing relationship with each other, it is a habit of our old nature to only put forth an effort if we’re certain that the amount of love we show will be reciprocated.  As Pastor Don explained, care-giving is a foundational characteristic of authentic relationships. Care-giving follows the example of God’s nature to take the initiative of showing someone else love, without regard to whether or not it will be reciprocated. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

   How do we exhibit true care-giving? We have three action items that will help us to develop authentic relationships with one another. First, we should actively listen to one another without thinking of the point we want to make, but instead seeking to hear the heart of the person who is speaking.  Second, we should try to thoughtfully remember what that person is going through as we live our lives day to day (example: “Susan said her dad was having heart surgery today”). Finally, listening to another person and thoughtfully remembering their situation should result in action-oriented responses (example: sending Susan a card, or offering to sit and pray with her during her father’s surgery).

   A final important piece in care-giving is graciously accepting the love that others offer to us. In our pride, we like to refuse others’ expression of love toward us, but as Paul points out, it is essentially denying our need of relationship with that person. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’”  That’s not the way God intended the body of believers to work.

   When we practice care-giving, which involves loving and being loved, we experience the wholeness that God has intended for us.  We enjoy a level of relationship that is a glimpse of the perfect relationship that exists within the Trinity. When that happens, our satisfaction is guaranteed.

I’m not sure where you’re at in your faith journey, but my guess is that when it comes to talk of community, you are somewhere along a specific line. That line represents the spectrum between never before hearing about community, and hearing about it all the time.

For me, community has been a buzz-word at Cornerstone University for the last four years, and to be honest it’s easy to hear the word and immediately check out.

But during Pastor Don’s message, I found the Holy Spirit searching my heart and revealing things about myself that I knew I had swept under the rug.

As Pastor Don talked about the main barriers to opening oneself to a full community, I had to think about which of them resounded with me the most. The barriers are fear, pride, shame, and laziness. To be honest, I saw each one working within me. In the words of Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz, it’s easy to consider life as a movie starring me. The story is about my daily stresses, and my faith is about me and God.

As I was reminded on Sunday, God created us for relationship so we may know the relationship that naturally exists within the Trinity. Unfortunately, the reality is that community with others can be hard, and -on occasion- painful.

So how do we fight the urge to write off community? How do we get past the barriers of fear, pride, shame, and laziness? What is the alternative to declaring to the world that we are rocks that feel no pain, and islands that never cry?

Pastor Don had two suggestions as we seek to open our hearts wide for others. First, truly listen. He (or she) who has ears to hear, let them hear. As you listen to the struggles or joys of others, it will be easier connect with them, and learn how to share more of yourself.

The second thing you can do (and probably the first thing) is ask yourself, “why don’t I want people to get too close?” A little bit of introspection never hurt anyone, and you might find the Holy Spirit walking alongside you, helping you find the answers.

As you begin to open yourself up through self-disclosure, you will have the opportunity to experience a level of relationship that is far more fulfilling than one with, say, a Wilson brand volleyball.

Some say they would go tell their boss what they really think of him/her.  

Others say they would make amends with all the people they had hurt, or been hurt by, over their lifetime.   

Still, others say they would gather all their loved ones around them, and express how much they care for them. 

It’s a sober thought, to consider one’s impending death. I must admit, I think if I were to have one week left, my first thought would be to orchestrate whatever I could to make my last days worthwhile to me. I would try to experience as much joy for me as possible. Are there that many people who wouldn’t? What did Jesus do with his last week of life?

-         He raised Lazarus from the dead. (John 11)

-         He went to a dinner party in his honor (John 12)

-         He fellowshipped with the one who would betray him and one who would deny him (John 12)

-         He entered Jerusalem to loud applause and praise from a people who would be demanding his death later that week (John 12)

-         He washed his disciples’ feet (John 13)

-         He took time to prepare the disciples for his departure, and promised the pouring out of the Holy Spirit (John 14-16)

-         He prayed for his disciples. He prayed for us. (John 17) 

I think Jesus did pretty much everything I wouldn’t do in my last week. I wouldn’t worry about performing a miracle. I certainly wouldn’t put up with a person or group that I knew would betray me. Even though I’d like to think that I would be eager to help serve others, I think realistically I would be more concerned with whether or not people were serving me.  

 But that’s exactly what Jesus’ passion was. It was a passion to serve and care for the people he would redeem. Jesus had a real and genuine love for his disciples, and you and me. That’s what drove him to the cross. That’s why he died to save us.

As we stop to consider this, in the final week before Resurrection Sunday, I hope it ignites a passion within us to love God, and love each other. To serve each other.  

I don’t know if you’ll be dead in a week, a day, or after your next breath. To be honest, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is this: 

What is your passion?

But then the message turned its focus to the root problem, which is the heart.  Matthew 12 says that out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.  Instantly this had me frustrated.  Not only did I have to fix my tongue again, but also figure out what was deep inside me and fix that as well.  What we think about and dwell on is in our hearts and comes out in the way we speak and represent ourselves.  A bit overwhelming.  As I started to sink downward into my own thoughts the message steadily moved forward.  It reminded me that Christ has placed NEW hearts within us! We are new creatures who are not slaves to the cycles of sin. The Bible calls us to put off the old and put on the new; to renew our mind! Not in our own strength, but through the power of the Holy Spirit that dwells within us!

Those words of hope stopped me in my downward spiral of guilt and self reliance.  We don’t have to sin, and God always makes a way for us to escape temptation.  He “poured out a way” so to speak.  The Holy Spirit is our source of power.   

Did you know that you are a powerful Christian, or do you believe you are weak and destined for failure?  The Bible says that you are strong in Christ and that through the Holy Spirit you can triumph.  How do you access that power?  Through prayer in the renewing of your mind.  Tell yourself daily what God tells you.  Believe you are who He says you are.  A free child of the King.

Believe everything you hear - from God’s Word to your ears.

Contributing writer: Lacey

**Disclaimer: the context of this excerpt is referring to Pi’s decision to convert to Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism all at once. I do not agree with the concept that all roads lead to heaven, and neither does Jesus (see John 14:6).**

While I do not agree with the moral relativism suggested by Pi, I still see a degree of truth to the argument, especially in light of yesterday’s message about showing favoritism by choosing to exclude other denominations within the Christian faith. See if you can recognize the echoes of the apostle James within this excerpt:

“There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if the Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think “Business as usual.” But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.”

“These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defence, not God’s, that the self-righteous should rush.”

“As if this small-mindedness did God any good. To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.”

If I may be so bold, I’m going to add to Curt’s list of self-administered tests. Ask yourself this question: “Over the last week, how many people did I discuss/debate theology and doctrine with? How many people did I offer help to, in the form of emotional comfort, prayer and petition, or material needs?” Discuss.