ETERNAL EQUATION

Have you thanked Him?

Have you praised Him?

Have you made it your priority to agree and cooperate with Him today?

Have you taken that deep breath and listened for what He has for you today?

1 Timothy 2:1 (The Message)

^1-3The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know.

I picked up an old friend and one of his family members early yesterday for a trip to the REFUGE. My friend, in his 50’s, has struggled mightily in life and was looking for a new start. The REFUGE is a great place to turn the page and begin writing a new chapter that is for certain, yet it is something that he said on the drive up that caught my attention.

To paraphrase; my friend felt like he needed the REFUGE in order to start “doing”the right things to avoid going to hell. He was genuinely and deeply concerned that all of his mistakes, times in jail, and months of probation had tipped the scales so far against him that only some time “on the right side” of things would get him “back in” to the heaven equation with GOD.

Before he could finish, I had to stop him and remind him that GOD isn’t about performance; that grace is a gift and can’t be earned; that while we all sin, CHRIST has taken that sin and erased it at the cross.

Romans 3:23-26

All have sinned and are not good enough to share God’s divine greatness. They are made right with God by his grace. This is a free gift. They are made right with God by being made free from sin through Jesus Christ. God gave Jesus as a way to forgive people’s sins through their faith in him. God can forgive them because the blood sacrifice of Jesus pays for their sins.

Sadly though we live in a performance based society.

Train harder become a better athlete. Work harder move up the corporate ladder. Practice makes perfect!

Yet those idioms have no place in GOD’s framework.

We can’t do enough, practice enough, share enough, pray enough, sing enough, or “do anything” enough to earn our way into heaven. But we sure try don’t we? Just like my friend we get think GOD is a quid pro quo GOD.

“If I DO this good thing, then I will get a chip on my side of the ledger and then creep closer to heaven.”

That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

As I shared with my friend, GOD loved us and accepted us when we (and he) were at our worst!

ROMANS 5:8

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

This is TRULY amazing! GOD is not interested in our “performances”. GOD accepts us as we are now.

I mean RIGHT NOW; even if you woke up on the wrong side of the bed, even if you were like my friend yesterday still groggy from a night with his friends “Bud” and “Weiser”.

Thanks to Jesus Christ, we own a full measure of God's grace. The Father does not say, "When you clean up your life, I'll accept you." Instead GOD says, “I’ve accepted you, my SON has already cleaned you up.”

Grace plus performance is not a workable formula in God's math. If accepting Christ required achieving some lofty standard of behavior on our own, we would all wear ourselves out in the attempt.

And when we lose sight of GOD’s amazing grace and unconditional love for us we are doomed to the constant uncertainty that my friend was dealing with yesterday. We will, like he was, get caught up in the world's vain cycle of constant effort and activity as an attempt to earn the Lord's freedom, acceptance and eternity.

Therefore we must never forget freedom and eternal life are rooted in GOD’s freely given acceptance of us.

Ephesians 2:8-9

…God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving.

Our job is to accept it and live a life that honors that gift!

So can you thank Him for His grace today that eliminates our performance from the eternal equation?

I think I will!

I love you all…

Freedom Church

G

Pastor GDelaney