There’s been an ongoing feud among Christians for a long time. A battle between the holiness camp and the grace camp. The holiness side is preoccupied with your works, the things that you do, your behavior, and a checklist of things that you must accomplish to please a perfectly holy God. And they often sound something like this:
“God is coming back one day! He’s not coming back to give you a big hug! He’s coming back to execute his wrath! You need to fear and tremble before him! The scripture says Be holy for I am holy! Tremble, fear, condemnation! Bwahahahahah!”
So, the holiness camp is completely focused on the wrath of God, and uses fear to promote human works.
Now, the grace side is on the opposite end of the spectrum. The grace camp often completely disregards the judgment and even sometimes the respect worthy of God. On the extreme, the grace side sounds like this:
“Oh, don’t worry! God loves you! The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and everything’s just fine and dandy all the time!”
So which is it? Is God suffering from multiple personality disorder?
As you might expect, neither of these positions tell the whole story, and the truth of God’s character, His nature, and the Gospel message, is far greater! Let’s talk about it!
One of the most common questions that comes up today, is that if God is in control, and He’s so good, and we are so blessed, then what’s going on with the world; why does the world seem to be getting worse?
Some people assume that it’s because humanity is a fallen and sinful creation, sheer ignorance, or the devil and his forces of evil!
Those things are all part of the equation but not the whole answer!
What if I were to tell you that you are playing the most critical role in the state and direction of the world, and you don’t even realize how! In fact, you are the one with all of the power, and your power is being used against you without your knowledge.
Last week, we explored what it means to abide in Christ, and we saw some powerful truths regarding His sacrifice for us and how it changes our position from sin to righteousness, and our nature from sinner to king priest in His kingdom and family.
During that study, something caught my attention which caused me to meditate on it more— specifically in Hebrews 4:10 which refers to ceasing from our own works, as God did from His.
It’s one thing to speak about ceasing from your own work or effort, and spiritually-speaking, we know that we should cease from our effort, though we find it challenging to fully rest in what Christ has accomplished.
I know this challenge quite well, I’ve been there, I’m familiar with the struggle; and so today I want to continue from where we paused last week. As we continue to explore abiding in Christ, with the details given to us in scripture, and I believe that as we study this together today, it will release a burden that has secretly been on the hearts of many who have been finding it difficult to rest in Christ.
Abiding in Christ is something that Jesus mentioned several times and is repeated in various New Testament books. But what exactly does it mean to abide?
To some, abiding is simply attending regular church service. To others, abiding means regular bible study and devotional. And others still haven’t given abiding any consideration at all.
But abiding is is critical for a healthy spiritual Christian life, and the scriptures don’t leave us guessing as to what it means. So today, we will examine what it means to abide in Christ, and how it applies in our daily life.
First Corinthians chapter thirteen is the famous ‘love chapter’ that speaks of love being the principal characteristic of Christian life. For many people the words of the chapter create a desire to conjure up more love for God and others around us.
Yet, as we read the context found in chapter thirteen, and the chapters surrounding it, we can see a different idea emerge. The typical perception focused on mans’ efforts begins to fall away as we see that the writer is more focused on a different subject.
Today we explore what it means to have love, and find a source of strength that we may have never known existed.
Knowing Jesus Christ is the absolute fundamental of the Gospel message. Surprisingly, something so essential as knowing Jesus, is surrounded by a lot of debate, various opinions, and confusion.
For some, knowing Jesus amounts to simply attending a church building, listening to a sermon, and performing other regular Christian rituals. For others, knowing Jesus involves extensive bible reading and study plans.
I understand each of these positions; I’ve lived them for a number of years. As good as gathering together with believers and scripture reading is though, neither captures the essence of knowing Jesus.
What I want to share with you today, is how Jesus describes knowing himself, and how we can truly grow in our relationship with him.
For the previous two weeks, we’ve been examining faith and belief, and we’ve seen some powerful truths regarding what faith and belief are, as well some examples of how to apply faith and belief to our daily lives.
Today we are are going to conclude our mini-series on faith and belief by examine one of the most confusing accounts, of healing in the scriptures— the demon possessed boy, to see what it can teach us about faith and belief, and how Jesus helps us overcome a common barrier of faith.
This article is a re-post from 2016, to fix a broken link elsewhere on the site. […]