Payment Due

“Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin;

and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”

James 1:15

I remember when I was younger I used to see a sign that seems to be very rare anymore.

It would be hung prominently in service establishments.

Places like car repair shops, barber shops and shoe repair shops.

It read:

“Payment Due When Services Rendered”

Obviously it was before the days of easy credit, debit cards and any other ways we may now use to defer payment.

You might say that we now are able to “postpone the pain of payment”.

Sin has consequences which are not always immediate.

The anger that is not confessed and repented of will only escalate.

The lies we tell eventually catch us in their trap.

The lust for ‘things’ can leave us void of a sense of those truly valuable treasures in our life.

Someone once advised; “Keep short books with God”.  

 Don’t allow the consequences of sin to grow in your life.

Instead be quick to bring those failures to God and ask for His forgiveness.

You see, the cross was payment for my sins.

The payment was actually made before I sinned.

  But rather than let the mole hill turn into a mountain we can nip it in the bud!

Sin does indeed have consequences but so does repentance.

What’s God Got Against Sin?

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we

might become the righteousness of God.”

                                                               II Corinthians 5:21

God has an issue with sin.

Why is that?

Do you think you know the answer?

Be careful now, because how you answer may reveal more than you think!

What is it about sin that really gets’ God’s goat (so to speak)?

If I could stop here and survey 100 people how do you think they would answer?

Most likely the top answer would be:

God can’t tolerate sin because He is holy!

O.K. – good answer – but is it the best or even the correct answer?

God is holy!

That is true and there’s no debating that statement.

But God was holy before I sinned and even if you and I ‘sin up a storm’ He remains holy.

My sin doesn’t change that fact.

Does that mean that sin doesn’t matter to God?

Of course it doesn’t.

We all agree that God has an issue with sin.

So what is His issue?

“For God so loved the world…”

God loves you and me.

We cannot even begin to imagine how much He loves us.

When we sin it is less a question of the impact on God as it is the impact on those He loves.

God has an issue with sin because sin impacts you and me.

We make the question of sin all about God; but in His mercy and great love He makes it all about us in the sense that He knows the consequence of sin in the life of someone very special to Him.

That someone is you.

That someone is me.

God didn’t deal with sin by placing us in isolation so He wouldn’t “catch it”!

He sent His Son to be sin for us.

In essence, the Holy God, exposed Himself to our sin and took it upon Himself because of His great love for each of us.  

God had, and has, an issue with sin so He rolled up His sleeves and supplied the solution.  

May we, in gratitude to God, receive His solution. 

Jesus is Coming, Perhaps Today!

“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.”

I Thessalonians 4:16

Growing up in the city of Rochester, New York my family lived, for a time, in my maternal grandparent’s home.

 Two doors down from us was a black family whose dad worked a day job but was also a Pastor

 of a store front church.

 I vividly remember a bumper sticker on their car that declared:

 “JESUS IS COMING PERHAPS TODAY”.

At the time that statement just seemed so foreign to me.

 I used to think to myself: "I wonder what it means, didn’t He already come to earth?”

You see I knew well the story of his life, death, even his resurrection but his return seemed to be a point that was never made with the same importance or perhaps just not the same impact on me.

Fast forward forty or fifty years in my life to a message I heard not too long ago.

The speaker made some comments as part of his bigger message that he felt strongly at the beginning of this year, unlike any other time in his walk with God, that this really could be the year that Jesus returns.

As I considered that point it got me to thinking that we, as believers, so often lose sight of the fact that, as the bumper sticker said so many years ago and as His word tells us so assuredly, Jesus is coming back.

What if it was today?

How would that change your schedule if you knew, at an appointed time, He was returning?

I know we have all been challenged with this thought before.

At least I have.

But maybe it’s time to re-consider the differences it would make in my life and your life if we were to daily consider that this could be the day.

Too often we go off on, what I would label as ‘theological tangent reasons’ to excuse away why it wouldn’t or couldn’t be so.

Let me give you something to consider today.

Take a moment and read I Thessalonians 5:1-11The question for us becomes: If His word is true (and we know it is!) how does it impact my life – or even more specifically – how does it impact my day today?

Suppose today – the day you are reading this article – is the day of His return?

How would your plans change?

What sin that you have been hiding would you turn from and truly repent of?

What promise to pray that you have made countless times in the past to someone would you finally keep? How fervent and urgent would those prayers be if you knew Jesus was returning in just a few hours?

How radically would your priorities shift?

What carried great importance in your life earlier in the day that would now seem so irrelevant?

Self examination is sometimes helpful.

So let’s examine our spiritual lives today in light of this thought:

Jesus is coming; perhaps today!

How “I Can’t” Becomes “I Can”

“I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

Philippians 4:13

Today we ask the same question we asked yesterday –

What do you need to do if you are going to live life through God’s grace?

Another area that we need to guard against in order to be able to live life through God’s grace is unbelief.

Unbelief says: “I can’t” but you can confidently replace the “I can’t” with an “I can”

when you are walking in obedience to God.

The “I can’t” response is one that comes from relying on self.

The “I can…” response is positive because it carries a ‘supernatural addendum’ –

“…do all things through Him who gives me strength.”

My faith does not rest in my capabilities but in His.

He is Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent – just to name a few attributes.

So then with His wisdom, power and presence flowing through me because of Christ; I am more than able to do anything He asks of me.

Consider just a couple of servants who knew what it was to minister through His grace after some initial doubt.

“But Lord, Gideon asked, how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my family.”

Jeremiah questioned: “Ah, Sovereign Lord, I said, “I do not know how to speak;

I am only a child.”

Both of them initially protested based on what they had to offer but

God countered their objections with who He is!

Someone a whole lot smarter than me once said that

“One with God is a majority!”

How true that is when our unbelief is forsaken and we come to understand

 “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.” 

Which ‘R’ You?

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves,

 it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”

Ephesians 2:8-9

As we look at the grace of God this week a question arises –

What do you need to do if you are going to live life through God’s grace?

Over the next couple of days we will look at that question and offer some answers.

Perhaps the greatest enemy of grace is ‘religion’.

His grace flows through me when I maintain a relationship with Him.

If instead, I make it all about my works, my abilities and what I can do; I have moved away from relationship and instead I am cozying up with religion.

In essence, I am cultivating a ‘working’ relationship with religion rather than with my Savior.

Religion is evident when His presence matters far less to me than what I can do.  

Religion robs but relationship with Christ rewards.

Religion steals away grace by replacing it with my efforts.

Relationship instructs and makes evident God’s grace in my life.

The abundant life from God flows through me as I remain in relationship with Christ through His Holy Spirit.

While religion will ‘puff us up in pride’, relationship ‘powers us up in His Spirit’.

Are you looking for more of His presence and grace to flow through your life?

Then guard against religion and instead draw near to God and cultivate that relationship that craves His presence more than anything else!

So Which ‘R’ You – Religion or Relationship?

An “Entitlement” Grace

“Why should any living man complain

    when punished for his sins?

Lamentations 3:39

 

Today’s blog title is, of course, an oxymoron.

And, despite the comic I read this week which humorously presented it as such, an oxymoron is not a very stupid ox!

It is a figure of speech in which contradictory terms are combined.

We are not entitled to God’s grace.

That is to say it is not a right or a claim we can demand.

 While it might seem like Christianity 101; allow me to remind you of

Romans 3:23 and 6:23 below:

 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We deserve death, not grace.

You, me and everyone else on the planet.

I think we sometimes forget how marvelous His grace is and we can subtly

begin to cop an attitude that grace is “owed” to us.

That is not a wise place to be.

Grace is a free gift from God to us that we, of course, do not deserve.

I can, and should, do good works as a believer.

But when we begin to lose sight of the fact that those good works are a fruit of God’s grace in us and instead we begin to take credit for our salvation or, at a minimum, consider redemption a “joint effort” between the work of the cross and my works; it’s time to re-visit those verses in Romans and re-visit the work of grace wrought in Christ.

Entitlement is a ‘hot topic’ in some circles but never let it be so for believers.

My sin “entitled” me to an eternity in hell without God.

His wonderful grace paid the price to rescue me!   

Grace So Amazing

“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”

   II Corinthians 9:8

What is grace?

Grace can be defined as God’s supernatural enabling for me to be and do all that He asks of me. It is God’s desire to lavish you in His grace so that your life is fulfilled.

That fulfilled life we all desire is only fully realized through His grace.

Works won’t lead you there.

Religion won’t lead you there.

Pedigree or purse strings can’t take you there.

His grace will.

Some men and woman live their whole life looking for fulfillment,

but pride keeps them from admitting it is His grace and not their works.

Don’t allow the many traps to keep you from receiving and growing in the grace of God.

The Bible is filled with the stories of men and woman who knew that enabling power.

Joseph, Moses, Gideon and Daniel to name just a few.

That same grace is still available for me and you too!

Don’t turn away from the abounding grace.

Open your heart wide and make a place.

God’s grace for willing vessels fills; 

Into lives you touch, it spills!