His Gospel Grace

 BY TULLIAN TCHIVIDJIAN

 In response to my Washington Post op-ed last Thursday, one commenter wrote: “Moralism in the church was a huge problem 7-10 years ago, but I honestly feel that the pendulum has swung in the other extreme full force, to a fault on the other side.” This is a pretty common objection that those of us who are committed to decrying moralism and legalism hear. The thinking goes precisely the way the commenter suggests: “Legalism and moralism is NOT the problem today; licentiousness is.”

On the surface, this seems to make a lot of sense. Just look around. One could argue that our country has never been more licentious and morally lax than it is now. Is preaching the gospel of grace what we really need? Or, to put it another way, is preaching the gospel of grace really the means by which God rescues the lawless, the unethical, and the disobedient? There are at least three huge assumptions in this common line of thinking that need to be addressed.

Legalism and Lawlessness as Two Opposite Extremes?

The whole “pendulum swing” argument is one I know well. Not only because I hear it all the time but also because I used to make the same argument. What I’ve discovered, however, is that there is one big problem with this (simplistic) argument: it fails to realize that since Genesis 3, legalism (self-salvation) has always been our biggest problem. And this problem does not shift to something else when the cultural mood shifts–it just takes one of two different forms.

Spend any time in the American church, and you’ll hear legalism and lawlessness presented as two ditches on either side of the Gospel that we must avoid. Legalism, they say, happens when you focus too much on law or rules, and lawlessness when you focus too much on grace. Therefore, in order to maintain spiritual equilibrium, you have to “balance” law and grace. If you start getting too much law, you need to balance it with grace. If you start getting too much grace, you need to balance it with law. This “balanced” way of framing the issue has kept people from really understanding the Gospel of grace in all of its radical depth and beauty.

It is more theologically accurate to say that the one primary enemy of the Gospel—legalism—comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (you could call this “front-door legalism”). Other people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (you could call this “back-door legalism”). In other words, there are two “laws” that we typically choose from: the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I keep the rules,” or the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I break the rules.” Either way, you’re still trying to save yourself—which means both are legalistic, because both are self-salvation projects. “Make a rule” or “break a rule” really belong to the same passion for autonomy (self-rule). We want to remain in control of our lives and our destinies, so the only choice is whether we will conquer the mountain by asceticism or by license. So it would be a mistake to identify the “two cliffs” as being legalism and lawlessness. What some call license is just another form of legalism. And there’s always and only been one solution to our self-salvation projects: God’s salvation project in Christ.

Can the Law make us Lawful?

What is the ultimate solution to lawlessness? The assumption is that championing ethics will make us more ethical; that preaching obedience will make us more obedient; that focusing on the law will make us more lawful. But is that the way it works?

I completely understand how natural it is to conclude that, given our restraint-free cultural context, preachers in our day should be very wary of talking about grace at all. That’s the last thing lawless people need to hear, is it not? Surely they’ll take advantage of it and get worse, not better. After all, it would seem logical to me that the only way to “save” licentious people is to intensify our exhortations to behave. Therefore, what we desperately need is a renewed focus on ethics, duty, behavior, and so on. I mean, surely God doesn’t think that the saving solution for the immoral and rebellious is his free grace? That doesn’t make sense. It seems backwards, counter-intuitive.

Matt Richard describes well how naturally we take it upon ourselves to reign the gospel in when we fear too much of it will result in lawlessness:

I have found that as Christians we many times attribute “lawlessness” to the preaching of the Gospel. Somewhere in our thinking we rationalize that if the Gospel is presented as “too free, too unconditional or that Jesus fulfills the law for us” that the result will be lax morality, loose living and lawlessness. It’s as if we believe that the freeing message of the Gospel actually produces, encourages and grants people a license to sin. Because of this rationalization we find ourselves strapping, holding and attaching restrictions to the Gospel so that we might prevent or limit lawlessness. In other words, the Gospel is placed into bondage due to our rationalization and reaction to lawlessness.

The truth is, that lawlessness and moral laxity happen, not when we hear too much grace, but when we hear too little of it. In One Way Love, I share the following letter I received from a man I’ve never met. He wrote:

Over the last couple of years, we have really been struggling with the preaching in our church as it has been very law laden and moralistic. After listening, I feel condemned with no power to overcome my lack of ability to obey. Over the last several months, I have found myself very spiritually depressed, to the point where I had no desire to even attend church. Pastors are so concerned about somehow preaching “too much grace” (as if that is possible), because they wrongly believe that type of preaching leads to antinomianism or licentiousness. But, I can testify that the opposite is actually true. I believe preaching only the law and giving little to no gospel actually leads to lawless living. When mainly law is preached, it leads to the realization that I can’t follow it, so I might as well quit trying. At least, that’s what has happened to me.

The ironic thing about legalism is that it not only doesn’t make people work harder, it makes them give up. Moralism doesn’t produce morality; rather, it produces immorality. It is no coincidence, for example, that the straight-laced Leave It to Beaver generation preceded the free-love movement of the 1960s. We live in a country where the state most known for its wholesomeness and frugality, Utah, also leads the country in rates of pornography consumption and antidepressant prescriptions. We make a big mistake when we conclude that the law is the answer to bad behavior. In fact, the law alone stirs up more of such behavior. People get worse, not better, when you simply lay down the law. This isn’t to say the Spirit doesn’t use both God’s law and God’s gospel in our lives and for our good. But the law and the gospel do very different things.

As I mention here, Paul makes it clear in Romans 7 that the law endorses the need for change but is powerless to enact change—that’s not part of its job description. It points to righteousness but can’t produce it. It shows us what godliness is, but it cannot make us godly. The law can inform us of our sin but it cannot transform the sinner. We can tell people all day long about what they need to be doing and the ways they’re falling short (and that’s important to keep them seeing their need for Jesus). But simply telling people what they need to do doesn’t have the power to make them want to do it. I can appeal to a thousand different biblical reasons why someone should start doing what God wants and stop doing what he doesn’t want—heaven, hell, consequences, and so on. Butsimply telling people they need to change can’t change them; giving people reasons to do the right and avoid the wrong, doesn’t do it. Grace and grace alone has the power to inspire what the law demands.

I’ve pointed out before, in Romans 6:1-4 the Apostle Paul answers antinomianism (lawlessness) not with law but with more gospel! I imagine it would have been tempting for Paul (as it often is with us when dealing with licentious people) to put the brakes on grace and give the law in this passage, but instead he gives more grace—grace upon grace. Paul knows that licentious people aren’t those who believe the gospel of God’s free grace too much, but too little. “The ultimate antidote to antinomianism”, writes Mike Horton, “isnot more imperatives, but the realization that the gospel swallows the tyranny as well as the guilt of sin.”

The fact is, that the only way licentious people begin to “delight in the law of the Lord” is when they get a taste of God’s radical, no-strings attached, one-way love.

The Focus has Clearly Shifted

The third and final point I want to make regarding the idea that what we really need in our culture of lawlessness is a renewed focus on ethics, is that it reveals the biggest problem with a lot of messaging inside the church: we’ve concluded that the focus of the Christian faith is the life of the Christian. Therefore, our messaging has shifted from Christ and him crucified to humanity and it improved.

Ever since the fall of man in Genesis 3, we’ve been obsessed with ourselves. Add to that fire the fuel of the Enlightenment’s mantra, “Progress is inevitable”, and the “manifest destiny” DNA that has marked our country since its inception, and it’s no surprise that our man-centered culture of narcissism has seeped into the church. Whether it takes the crass form of “health, wealth, and prosperity” or the more theologically sophisticated form of an obsession with “sanctification” and “holiness”, the bottom line is, we have concluded that this whole thing is about our transformation, not Christ’s substitution. Or, to put it more accurately, Christ’s substitution is a means to an end–the end being, our transformation. I can hear the objections now: “It’s not either/or, Tullian, it’s both/and.” I’m not saying it’s “either/or” but I’m also saying that it’s not “both/and.” It’s primary/secondary, cause/effect. Those distinctions matter. A lot!

Yes, the gospel does transforms us. But transformation does not happen when we make transformation the warp and woof of our message. But that’s exactly what’s happened. Whether it’s “how to have a good marriage”, or “how to be more missional”, or “how to practice godliness more effectively”, people hear more about what they need to do than what Jesus has already done. We’ve taken our eyes off of Christ, “the author and finisher of our faith”, to focus on ourselves. Plain and simple. When the gospel of free grace is preached without “buts and brakes” and people inside the church start crying out that the deeper need of the hour is a renewed focus on ethics, it’s nothing more than a “pietistic” mask for our seeming inescapable addiction to personal progress.

In his book Paul: An Outline of His Theology, famed Dutch Theologian Herman Ridderbos (1909-2007) summarizes the shift which took place following Calvin and Luther. It was a sizable but subtle shift which turned the focus of the Christian faith from Christ’s external accomplishment to our internal transformation:

While in Calvin and Luther all the emphasis fell on the redemptive event that took place with Christ’s death and resurrection, later under the influence of pietism, mysticism and moralism, the emphasis shifted to the individual appropriation of the salvation given in Christ and to it’s mystical and moral effect in the life of the believer. Accordingly, in the history of the interpretation of the epistles of Paul the center of gravity shifted more and more from the forensic to the pneumatic and ethical aspects of his preaching, and there arose an entirely different conception of the structures that lay at the foundation of Paul’s preaching.

Donald Bloesch made a similar observation when he wrote, “Among the Evangelicals, it is not the justification of the ungodly (which formed the basic motif in the Reformation) but the sanctification of the righteous that is given the most attention.”

With this shift came a renewed focus on the internal life of the individual. The subjective question, “How am I doing?” became a more dominant feature than the objective question, “What did Jesus do?” As a result, generations of Christians were taught that Christianity was primarily a life-style; that the essence of our faith centered on “how to live”; that real Christianity was demonstrated in the moral change that took place inside those who had a “personal relationship with Jesus.” Our ongoing performance for Jesus, therefore, not Jesus’ finished performance for us, became the focus of sermons, books, and conferences. What I need to do and who I need to become, became the end game.

Conclusion

The late Robert Capon once memorably wrote:

The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace—bottle after bottle of pure distilate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel—after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started.

It has been roughly five hundred years since the Reformation. And looking at the church today (reading comments, blogs, tweets, books, and listening to objections and sermons) it is obvious that we are overdue for another one. Indeed, what a terrible irony it is that the very pack of people that God has unconditionally saved and continues to sustain by His free grace are the same ones who push back most violently against it: “Yes grace, but…”, “stop peddling cheap grace”, “God’s agape is not sloppy.” Far too many professing Christians sound like ungrateful children who can’t stop biting the hand that feeds them.

It is high time for the church to honor its Founder by embracing sola gratia anew, to reignite the beacon of hope for the hopeless and point all of us bedraggled performancists back to the freedom and rest of the Cross. To leave our ifs, ands, or buts behind and get back to proclaiming the only message that matters—and the only message we have—the Word about God’s one-way love for sinners. It is time for us to abandon, once and for all, our play-it-safe religion and get drunk on grace. Two-hundred-proof, unflinching grace. It’s shocking and scary, unnatural and undomesticated, but it is also the only thing that can set us free and light the church—and the world—on fire.

BY TULLIAN TCHIVIDJIAN

re-posted from: liberate.org/2013/10/23/church-we-have-a-problem/

– by Tullian Tchividjian

I love the introduction to Sally Lloyd-Jones’ Jesus Storybook Bible. A piece of it goes like this:

Other people think the Bible is a book of heroes, showing you people you should copy. The Bible does have some heroes in it, but…most of the people in the Bible aren’t heroes at all. They make some big mistakes (sometimes on purpose). They get afraid and run away. At times they are downright mean. No, the Bible isn’t a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne – everything – to rescue the one he loves.

She’s right. I think that most people, when they read the Bible (and especially when they read the Old Testament), read it as a catalog of heroes (on the one hand) and cautionary tales (on the other). For instance, don’t be like Cain — he killed his brother in a fit of jealousy – but do be like David: God asked him to do something crazy, and he had the faith to follow through.

Since Genesis 3 we have been addicted to setting our sights on something, someone, smaller than Jesus. Why? It’s not that there aren’t things about certain people in the Bible that aren’t admirable. Of course there are. We quickly forget, however, that whatever we see in them that is commendable is a reflection of the gift of righteousness they’ve received from God-it is nothing about them in and of itself.

Running counter to this idea of Bible-as-hero-catalog, I find that the best news in the Bible is that God incessantly comes to the down-trodden, broken, and non-heroic characters. It’s good news because it means he comes to people like me — and like you.

Our impulse to protect Bible characters and make them the “end” of the story happens almost universally with the story of Noah.

Noah is often presented to us as the first character in the Bible really worthy of emulation. Adam? Sinner. Eve? Sinner. Cain? Big sinner! But Noah? Finally, someone we can set our sights on, someone we can shape our lives after, right? This is why so many Sunday School lessons handle the story of Noah like this: “Remember, you can believe what God says! Just like Noah! You too can stand up to unrighteousness and wickedness in our world like Noah did. Don’t be like the bad people who mocked Noah. Be like Noah.”

I understand why many would read this account in this way. After all, doesn’t the Bible say that Noah “was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God” (Genesis 6:9)? Pretty incontrovertible, right?

Not so fast.

Let’s take a closer look. You can’t understand verse 9 properly unless you understand its context. Here’s the whole section, verses 5-7:

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

Now that’s a little different, isn’t it? Look at all the superlatives: every inclination, only evil, all the time! That kind of language doesn’t leave a lot of room for exceptions…and “exception” is just the way Noah has always been described to me. “Well,” I hear, “Everyone was sinful except Noah. He was able to be a righteous man in a sinful world…it’s what we’re all called to be.” But that’s not at all what God says! He says, simply and bluntly, that he “will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created.” No exceptions. No exclusions.

So what happens? How do we get from verse 7 (“I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created…for I regret that I have made them.”) to verse 9 (“Noah was a righteous man.”)? We get from here to there – from sin to righteousness — by the glory of verse 8, which highlights the glory of God’s initiating grace.

“But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord” (Genesis 6:8).

Some read this and make it sound like God is scouring the earth to find someone—anyone—who is righteous. And then one day, while searching high and low, God sees Noah and breathes a Divine sigh of relief. “Phew…there’s at least one.” But that’s not what it says.

“Favor” here is the same word that is translated elsewhere as “grace.” In other words, as is the case with all of us who know God, it was God who found us—we didn’t find God. We are where we are today, not because we found grace, but because grace found us. In his book Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis recounts his own conversion with these memorable words:

You must picture me alone in my room, night after night, feeling the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had come upon me. In the fall term of 1929 I gave in and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most reluctant convert in all England. Modern people cheerfully talk about the search for God. To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat.

It took the grace of God to move Noah from the ranks of the all-encompassing unrighteous onto the rolls of the redeemed. Pay special attention to the order of things: 1) Noah is a sinner, 2) God’s grace comes to Noah, and 3) Noah is righteous. Noah’s righteousness is not a precondition for his receiving favor (though we are wired to read it this way)…his righteousness is a result of his having already received favor!

The Gospel is not a story of God meeting sinners half-way, of God desperately hoping to find that one righteous man on whom he can bestow his favor. The news is so much better than that. The Gospel is that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Sinners like Noah, like you, and like me are recipients of a descending, one-way love that changes everything, breathes new life into dead people, and has the power to carry us from unrighteousness to righteousness without an ounce of help.

So, even in the story of Noah, we see that the Bible is a not a record of the blessed good, but rather the blessed bad. The Bible is not a witness to the best people making it up to God; it’s a witness to God making it down to the worst people. Far from being a book full of moral heroes whom we are commanded to emulate, what we discover is that the so-called heroes in the Bible are not really heroes at all. They fall and fail; they make huge mistakes; they get afraid; they’re selfish, deceptive, egotistical, and unreliable. The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness.

Yes, God is the hero of every story—even the story of Noah.

re-posted from his blog

“And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long shalt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.” 1 Kings 18:21

In 1969 Dr. Dean Kenyon, then professor of biology at San Francisco State University, published a book that left him recognized as one of the leading evolutionary scientists. His book, Biological Predestination, tried to explain how simple living things could, over millions of years, become more complex, and finally evolve into human beings.

When Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith, a biochemist with a world-wide reputation and a creationist, wrote his book, The Creation of Life, he carefully showed what was scientifically wrong with Dr. Kenyon’s evolutionary explanation. One day, one of Dr. Kenyon’s students gave him a copy of Dr. Wilder-Smith’s book.

After reading Wilder-Smith’s scientific arguments, Dr. Kenyon said, “I found myself hard-pressed to come up with a counter-rebuttal.” This was a turning point in Dr. Kenyon’s personal search, as he learned that “it is possible to have a rational alternative explanation of the past.” Dr. Kenyon came to believe that creation better supported all the scientific facts. He eventually became an international spokesman for creationism.

Too many people stand before the truth in silence, hoping they won’t have to give up their own ideas. May God make all of us as honest with the truth as Dr. Kenyon!

Prayer:

To be honest, dear Lord, there are indeed times when Your truth shakes some of my pet ideas, too. I pray that You would grant me Your Holy Spirit so that I may always receive Your truth with thanksgiving, even when I must change my thinking. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

re-posted from Creation Moments

Great help for of our marriages here!

Christian author Shaunti Feldhahn writes about 12 habits that most couples embrace that make their marriages happy and successful in her new book, The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages. Contrary to popular belief, Feldhahn discovered that highly happy couples put into practice seemingly negative habits like going to bed angry and not looking to their marriage for happiness, among others…

Continue reading: www.christianpost.com/news/interview-author-shares-surprising-secrets-that-make-or-break-marriages-113352/

original posting: Jan 25

Good morning, dear Family and Friends.  I got this email from Dr. Leaf and want to share it with you – I have attached it for you.

Have you studied Dr. Leaf’s work yet?  Her work is quite awesome amazing.  Friends and family know me as a basically positive and cheerful person, a result of knowing Christ for sure, yet my husband Tom recently commented that I am “brighter and lighter.” I know this is the result of my using Dr. Leaf’s work.

This research has been confirmed and studied by many other neuroscientists.  Dr. Leaf’s work can be immediately used in a immediate and simple way.  You just state the truth to yourself, within or aloud, replacing dark thoughts and you begin to remove physical toxic axon trees from your brain.   The result is an increase of health in all your body’s systems.

Understanding that there is such a enormous connection between our thoughts and shaping our brain physically and healthily, is a huge and strengthening motivation to ongoingly and quickly replace dark thoughts with healthy and true ones.

Research shows that when we allow toxic thoughts of discouragement, irritation, frustration, negative self talk, depression, bitterness, anger, judgmentalism (i.e condemning someone – it is not condemning to recognize a behavior as destructive, for such recognition itself is essential to our health as well), hate, disrespect, or discouragement to remain unchallenged, these thoughts then take on a literal physical axon form in our brains, and begin a destructive process in us.

Failing to speak the truth to ourselves within 24 to 72 hours works havoc in our emotions, and bodies, destroying our healthy functioning and abilities, and debilitating our capacity to function healthily, messes up our capacity to make good choices and distorts our perspectives of reality in a destructive ways for us.  Her research shows that speaking the truth in this way will begin to restore our brains and health within 3 days.

A healthy response is simple.  We remove these dark thoughts by replacing them soon as we recognize them with healthy thoughts of their correlate truth, like “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faith”  – hmm, heard those before?

It is so NOT complicated – but it is necessary, if you are interested in not sabotaging your own good health and life well-being, and so enjoy a good, joyous future.

Neuroscience research shows that we can even remove stuck patterns of behavior that such toxic axons in our brain cause when we receive such negative thoughts without replacing them, patterns like bursts of anger; over all negativity and pessimism (which all fields of science are now recognizing as one of the most hurtful patterns of all); paranoia; depression; criticalness; fear; anxiety;  bad relational interactions; destructive competitiveness and discouragement.  Dr. Leaf’s research shows that such ingrained patterns can removed through a single one minute-process, used just 2 to 7 times throughout your day, over 21 days.   Her latest book, Switch On My Brain, tells about this process.  Dr. Leaf is giving much help through her work to both secular and faith people and audiences all over the world.

I attach a very short 13 point sum up of Dr. Leaf’s first book for you, Who Switched Off My Brain.  These simple points are some ways her research has found to keep our brains and bodies healthy as well.  Reviewing this 13 point list semi-regularly will make a difference for us!   I made a copy of this list just this morning and am going to put it on next month’s page of my wall calendar, and do this monthly, so I can see it and be reminded of these points. I encourage you to consider doing this also.

Dr. Leaf shares about this all along her latest findings, in her new TV show that just started January  7.  You can watch Dr. Leaf’s second episode online at the link below in her email, and her first episode too.  I just checked my TV channel listing…here in NY on Dish’s TBN channel, # 260.   You can record it to watch at the best time for you.  Check with the listing of your own TV carrier in your area.  You can also email Dr. Leaf to get the time of her show in your own area at  mac@drleaf.com  See drleaf.com/about/dr-leafs-research/

With love & prayers for many blessings on your day and much health in your New Year!
– Lynn (Jan. 17th)

Document: 13 Steps

The other day Camilla and I were watching a movie called Silver Linings Playbook. At the end of the film I wanted to hug every character in it and give them a copy of The Power of Right Believing by Joseph Prince. I say that because everyone in the movie was broken or damaged in some way. Some had suffered loss, others had been unfairly treated, but nearly all of them were experiencing emotional pain or were in some way afflicted by a mental disorder….

A re-post from the blog of Paul Ellis:  Continue reading

“For the Eyes of the Lord run to and from throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him.” 2 Chronicles 16:9

In the New Covenant God says He has given us a new heart – “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statues, and you shall keep My judgments, and do them.” Ezekiel 36:26:27KJ

“According to the grace of God which is given to me, I have laid the Foundation.  But let every man take heed how he builds upon it.  For no other foundation can any man lay that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.   Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay stubble; every man’s work shall be made manifest…if any man’s work endures, he shall receive a reward.  If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.” 1 Corinthians 3:10-12, 14-15

How can there be differences of reward when God has said it shall all be of grace?  When Zechariah saw the vision of the finished temple that pointed to our life and abiding place in Christ, the Lord said that it would come forth with the shoutings and cries of “It was all of Grace!” Zechariah 4:7   It is not what we build but how we build that God is speaking about here.  We don’t earn something by doing something for God, but we end with results that endure because of building God’s Way.  There is only one Foundation and that is Christ.  How we build once we are in Him is what results in work that will last for eternity.  When we build with “silver and gold” (these metals always  speak of God’s  Life) it results in “reward.”  This parallels how Jesus describes the work we are to do in John 6:29 -when the people asked Him what they should “do” to do the “works of God,” He answered them , “This is to do the works of God – believe in the One He has sent.”

When we trust Christ to be the Life, our new Heart and Spirit within us because of  our union with Him, the work that comes from this is then God’s own work being done through us and by Him, and so it has eternal and lasting results. There will then be “reward” just because only His work can last, for His work is to cause others to be born into His same Spirit.  This very birthing of new lives in the One True Life will be our “reward” which will be part of our joy forever, for these are born into Eternal Life Himself!

If we build with wood and hay, our doing our own kind of works for God, instead of building with the material of gold and silver, (again, these being His works that come through us as we walk by trusting Him to be our new Heart, Life, Power and Strength),  such work can not  last, as it will not result in His  kind of fruit.  Enduring fruit must come from the Enduring Vine.  If we have only “our” works, then, though we shall still be saved, we have still have Life forever in Him, it shall be as “through fire” as when a  person makes it through a house fire but loses all their possessions in the process.
-L. A.

“He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30

).

What if the one thing we most needed was weakness, and to decrease in our 
wrong kind of self estimations, so that we could really live? What if the 
one call we have is to this decrease, where it is all less and less about 
us, and all about Him, and others in Him? What if every moment in our life 
which is full of frustration and trial and sorrow, is but to bring us to 
this one place consciously, a place called the Cross-Life, where Jesus is 
Lord, and Life, and Love, and we His humbled vessels? What if His call to 
this humility is really just our call to become in understanding, just what 
He has already made us in fact to be, by His Finished work of that Eternal 
Power of the Cross called Love?

 What if this Place of the Cross is the only place where we can experience 
being utterly emptied out of all but this one Power of Love? What if upon 
seeing this in truth, we are then finally able to receive Love as the one 
true fact about our days, and so able to walk out, and in, this one Power 
point of our existence, the Place where we can receive meekly this minute 
this now-engrafted Word–Love? What if we were then able to understand that 
this is the Power we have been born into by that which we have called The 
Cross? What if we then began to rest deeply in such powerful Love, having at 
last received Him as all this with joy, and so could begin to walk in Him 
and glory in Him alone, this Wondrous and Amazing One?

 What if, at the end of it all, when all the irritations and upsets and 
sadnesses and traumas are unveiled before us, we find that we had actually 
been–ever since that first moment of our new birth into Him–we had been 
all along in this One Place of all and utter Power? And what if then we 
finally understand that it was and is all about this, the Cross-Life 
Himself, Love’s Power and Reign Supreme called the Everlasting Son Eternal, 
Jesus, the Christ?

 What then?

Why, I think then I’d laugh and run and sing for joy! Why not 
start now? Will you join me? I hear we’ve both been issued an invitation…

“I determined to know nothing among you save Christ, and Him crucified…” (1 Cor. 2:2).



”For the preaching of the Cross is to them that perish, foolishness; but unto us who are saved, it is the Power of God” (1 Cor 1:18).

“But God forbid I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal 6:14).

“A certain man made a great supper, and invited many, and sent at supper 
 time to say to them who were invited, ‘Come! for all things are now ready!” (Luke 14:16, 17).

– Lynn Alford

Something to consider…

“How the push to be ‘radical’ and ‘missional’ discourages ordinary people in ordinary places from doing ordinary things to the glory of God….”

Is Paul’s urging to live quietly, mind your own affairs, and work with your hands (1 Thessalonians 4:11) only for losers? Do you feel that you’re wasting your gifts if you “settle” into an ordinary job, get married early and start a family, or live in a small town or suburb? Acton Institute Power Blogger Anthony Bradley has some provocative thoughts on the “new legalism.” —Marvin Olasky

Dear friends,

I am moving my web site to WordPress.com. Your comments and suggestions are welcome. 🙂