‘If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out.’ -Galatians 6:1

One of the biggest issues I’ve seen among believers is about how to respond when one of their own sins. I think that most want to do the right thing, but don’t know how. When a person sins, especially the ‘big sins’, they create a mess. Continuing in the sin often seems easier than coming clean because more often than not, a person is abandoned in their mess as soon as the sin is exposed.

This leaves the fallen under a tremendous amount of suffering. The weight of their sin and it’s effects are crushing. Though it may be tempting to tell them that they deserve it, that is not what the cross stands for. The cross is something completely undeserved and universally available. It goes beyond the one who didn’t know better, because it’s a categorical phenomenon to those who absolutely did know better. The greater the sin, the greater the gift of grace. Grace is relentless and it never loses simply because it won long before any of us were in the picture.

Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived. -Galatians 6:2-3

It appears that believers are put under a new law (the old ‘law’) and are required to perform accordingly.

Life is hard enough as it is. People don’t need any extra pressure to keep up with the standards put on the so-called code of Christian living. Most of us are doing well to have the faith that God loves us even when we aren’t very lovable. It’s hard to believe that God can forgive the selfishness that hazes our view. We’re not supposed to exhaust our ability to do good, we’re just supposed to not let our faith fail.

So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. -Galatians 6:9

If you’re to the point that you can say you’ve got perfect faith in God and now just need to focus on your level of holiness, then you’re further from the truth than you’ve probably ever been. Perfect faith does not exist because of the continuous faith evolution that occurs in a growing Christians life. If you’ve stopped growing, evolving, then you’re dead.

If people know this already, then why do they still respond so ungraciously when fellow believers fall down? It’s as though the understanding of Truth dissolves when you’re not hearing it.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like. -James 1:22-24

We’re not supposed to add to the trouble of human lives by imposing rules. The law is written on their hearts by no doing of their own.

They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong. -Romans 2:15

If someone (unless you’re 12 and it’s your mother) tries to apply their personal rules for Christian conduct to you, then you must reflect on their identity somehow. They’re not trying to improve you, they’re trying to boost themselves.

These people who are attempting to force the ways of circumcision on you have only one motive: They want an easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by a faith that shares Christ’s suffering and death. All their talk about the law is gas. They themselves don’t keep the law! And they are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. That is contemptible! -Galatians 6:12-13

Shake out of those cold fingers trying to tie you down like a sacrificial lamb. You are on your own journey. Be free in your God discovery expedition. Write music when the Truth sings and learn from the tumbles. You start out like a drunk college student with the wet diploma, but you gain maturity in the times that sober. Forget about what people think of you, just love God, be real and keep notes.

Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. -Galatians 6:15

Loosen up your girdle’s and start learning the stuff that matters. It takes a lot of bravery to walk around without your makeup, but the scripture spells it out for you. There are no more secrets, the freedom is found in the believing. When you stop straining and start seeing that you can’t perfect what you couldn’t begin, then you have to return to the simple faith to see the truth that sets you free.

Can’t you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do—submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life! -Galatains 6:16

inspired by Galatians 6

I learned the rules and followed them. I even made up a few of my own. There was a span of about a year when I only listened to Christian music just to see what it felt like to not recognize any of the secular songs on the radio. I wanted to be around my friends, both Christian and non-Christian, and be able to say I don’t know what song they’re talking about. It wasn’t pride, I was after, it was purity. Dig deeper… I wanted people to be proud of my purity so I could shrug it off and say ‘that’s just what God does.’

I wanted to be innocent, blameless. I wanted to be pure, white as snow. I was a single mom with a tattoo on my ankle. I had some making up to do.

After nine years as a Christian and six years of marriage, I ruined my entire life with an affair. I thought I had, also, ruined my relationship with Jesus.

Only the blackest of nights know the torment of a lamb caught in the thick of dark. Evil is not gentle. Forget about getting up, that’s not a possibility. I just wanted death to come quickly.

When you read Galatians chapter three, flip it to find the grace. Galatians is talking to the religious superheroes who are trying to please God with moral achievement and rule following heroics. If that’s how you please God, then I had no hope. Take my story and listen to the words of Paul as he talks me down from my gallows.

Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. -Galatians 3:1

I knew what I was doing. I know right from wrong. Nobody tricked me, nobody held a gun to my head. I made my bed, I’ll die in it. Good people don’t do bad things. Godly people don’t do ungodly things.

How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? -Galatians 3:2

I became a Christian because I was at the end of myself. I didn’t start it, but I could learn the ropes and be good at it. My sin messed all that up.

Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? -Galatians 3:3-4

I had heard these scriptures for years and never ‘heard’ them like I did in the aftermath of my sin. I was giving up on me, but God wasn’t. He opened my eyes so that I would know the truth He practically spoon fed me. There is no way I can deny the Truth and if it’s actually the truth, then there is no way I can die in my sin. I can’t. Do you understand? Sometimes I just want to talk to someone smarter than me who knows what I’m saying. I want to look someone dead in the eyes and say this stuff and see them get it.

I was so confused back then. How can so many Christians read this same Bible and not see what I’m seeing? I would start to trust their blindness more than I would trust the scriptures I was reading and then Paul’s voice would echo through my brain and give me a headache.

The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way. The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you. -Galatians 3:11

Morality suddenly looked like a cheap knockoff. What? What is this business of God ‘arranging’ things for us and we’re supposed to embrace it? If looks can knock the wind out of you, every character in the Bible was looking me dead in the eye….waiting for me to ‘get it.’ Oh, the trembling…. Story after story was just these people looking me dead in the eye… no words… just a slight raise of the eyebrows. A slight nod of the head.

‘Does she see it now?’

Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for. -Galatians 3:23-24

What? I was so hurt and confused and …..used. I felt used. But, didn’t I say He could use me? I couldn’t breathe. My knees buckled.

‘She’s getting it.’

But now you have arrived at your destination: By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe—Christ’s life, the fulfillment of God’s original promise. -Galatians 25:27

The gallows I stood on may have been built for me, but someone else went under the hood before I knew it was mine. The only thing I have left to do is live out the rest of my life and offer it as worship for the One who felt my trap door fall out beneath Him. The fall, the snap, the pain. He did this before I knew I needed it. I couldn’t stop Him, but I sure as heck won’t say it wasn’t for me. The hood He wore… it was embroidered with my name.

This post was inspired by Galatians 3. Galatians 4 is on the way…

How can God gift us with ‘perfect’ and we remain clearly imperfect? How can a holy God not require or, at least, be pleased with our efforts to be as blameless as Jesus?

Your faith eliminates your fear. Faith in the completed work of Jesus eliminates the fear that your shortcomings have anything to say about you. When you ‘get it’ don’t back down from the revelation of the truth just because it goes against the traditional religious grain.

While we were in conference we were infiltrated by spies pretending to be Christians, who slipped in to find out just how free true Christians are. Their ulterior motive was to reduce us to their brand of servitude. We didn’t give them the time of day. We were determined to preserve the truth of the Message for you. -Galatians 2:4-5

Churchy people, the one’s who are all about religion with no concept of Gospel, will watch you and wait for you to trip up. These are the people who think that your sin is evidence that you are not a Christian. If you believe that your sin affects your relationship with God, then they’ll jump in and try to show you how to avoid failure (reduce you to their brand of servitude). ‘Standing firm in your faith’ is not ‘refusing to sin’. Standing firm in your faith is refusing to believe in the power of your sin. When I say, ‘Don’t back down from the faith.’ I mean, ‘Don’t believe them when they say you’re ruined.’ Keep the faith in what Jesus did because what you do (or don’t do) can’t take that away from you. Preserve the truth of the Gospel.

As for those who were considered important in the church, their reputation doesn’t concern me. God isn’t impressed with mere appearances, and neither am I. -Galatians 2:6

No one has an edge on God. People can look important because of where they stand, how they throw their weight around or how much they talk. Are you content to just ‘be’ without trying to perform and move up in the religious clique? Church’s have cliques. It’s like High School all over again. Only this time, what makes you cool is your religion. How religious you are is what makes you popular.

Who sits closest to the pastor or his wife? Who’s got an ‘in’ with the ‘cool’ youth pastor? The people who are performing their way into acceptance are absolutely suffocating the people they’re trying to impress. They’re elbowing out freedom. They’re shrouding the truth of the Gospel with their elaborate religious super-hero capes.

Earlier, before certain persons had come from James, Peter regularly ate with the non-Jews. But when that conservative group came from Jerusalem, he cautiously pulled back and put as much distance as he could manage between himself and his non-Jewish friends. That’s how fearful he was of the conservative Jewish clique that’s been pushing the old system of circumcision. -Galatians 2:11-12

We do this. We care so much about appearing right that we cancel ourselves out. We confuse the people we’re leading and our hypocrisy causes others to join in the charade.

If I was “trying to be good,” I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a charlatan. -Galatians 2:18

Stop trying to be what only Jesus can make you. You have been set free from the responsibility to make it by your own sweat. Your efforts only demean your faith. This is the hardest thing for people to grasp. This is the thing I get emailed about more than anything else. But, luckily, I’m just a messenger. The scripture is clear. I write it how I see it.

My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that. -Galatians 2:20

We have to remember that following a set of rules and making sure you keep up appearances is evidence that you have no faith in what Jesus did. You are making a lie out of the Gospel. If the only way to the Father is through Jesus, then why are you trying to get an edge any other way? Make sure your life isn’t on a spin that tries to dumb down the finished work of Jesus. If you could do this yourself, then how can you be aware of your need for Him? That’s a scary place to be, because those people are so proud of themselves. It’s like they’re shining their ‘crowns’ in their imaginations.

Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily. -Galatians 2:21

This post was inspired by Galatians 2. Galatians 3 is on the way….

be yourself

]]> http://www.graceisforsinners.com/god/social-chameleon/feed/ 9 http://www.graceisforsinners.com/life/look-around/ http://www.graceisforsinners.com/life/look-around/#comments Mon, 26 Oct 2009 05:40:49 +0000 Serena Woods http://www.graceisforsinners.com/?p=1066 When you set people free, you may as well give them a poisonous injection of paranoia. A crippling fear of failure. The rules you shackle yourself to are a ceiling, floor and walls. Routine is a box where you don’t have to think or try because it’s all contained and packaged. ‘Faith’ is in religion, ‘hope’ is in the payoff and ‘love’ is a detached sentiment.

When the simplicity of the Gospel is embraced, power is shifted and control becomes slippery. The little god in man suffers when Jesus comes to play. We all have a ’self’ that resists the power shift and scrambles to find a way to retain importance. ‘Self’ discovers a way to maintain an element of power under the clever guise of holy sanctity.

Many wear a trademarked Jesus on their chest but don’t have Him in their heart. They give Him their devotion, but not their trust. They dedicate their lives to His service, but don’t let Him serve them.

Peter persisted, “You’re not going to wash my feet—ever!”

Jesus said, “If I don’t wash you, you can’t be part of what I’m doing.” -John 13:8

You can claim Him all day, do things in His name and give Him all the credit, but still not have a clue who He is. Worse? When you’re a stranger to grace, He doesn’t have a clue who you are.

“You’ll protest, ‘But we’ve known you all our lives!’ only to be interrupted with his abrupt, ‘Your kind of knowing can hardly be called knowing. You don’t know the first thing about me.’ That’s when you’ll find yourselves out in the cold, strangers to grace. -Luke 13:26-28

The Gospel has caused problems from the start. You’re taking self-salvation away from people. You’re telling them that even though they set the curve in morality, they are no better than the one on the other end of the spectrum. People don’t like that. They never have. Converts turn into reverts when they get bored or start craving a physical rush. Not ‘reverts’ to immorality. ‘Reverts’ to the do-it-yourself rocket-ship to Heaven.

Sometimes the messenger talks too much, sometimes the listener half-listens. Misunderstandings and perversions have been an issue since the beginning. The message isn’t the problem. The ‘living’ is where we mess it up. We start to interject our own understandings and turn them into formulas. Formulas, traditions and routines become our gospel. Our religion and the way we practice become our god.

The church in Galatians was an example of a current problem. Actually, all of the churches Paul wrote are examples of current problems. There is nothing new under the sun and humanity repeats itself over and over and over.

So, here we are….

I can’t believe your fickleness—how easily you have turned traitor to him who called you by the grace of Christ by embracing a variant message! It is not a minor variation, you know; it is completely other, an alien message, a no-message, a lie about God. Those who are provoking this agitation among you are turning the Message of Christ on its head. -Galatians 1:6-7

What is the variant message? Salvation or salvation maintenance by adhering to the Law and not trusting in Jesus. You can recognize this variant message when you hear, ‘Yes, Jesus died for our sins, but we still have to….’ It’s the ‘Yes, Jesus, but…’ that you have to watch for. When you say ‘but’ then everything you said before it is cancelled out. The variant message is one that cancels out Jesus.

Anything that attempts to cancel, nullify or dumb-down the finished work of Jesus is deadly poison. If you are saved through faith and you pervert your faith with a polluted bottle of gospel bearing the fancy ‘Truth’ label, then you are crossing yourself out. ‘Yes, Jesus, but…’ double-talk vomited by religious con-artists and if you don’t read the Bible for yourself, then you are a prime target to be taken by the grotesque misrepresentation of the Gospel.

It’s more common than you may think. The vast majority of people don’t know that they’ve been taken for a spin and are perpetuating it by their lack of Biblical knowledge and always rambling mouth. Sometimes I wonder if going to church does more damage to some than it helps. If you have an organization doing all the work for you, then how are you going to know when they modify the truth?

The life you see and touch is not the reality. The life that continues after your physical death is real life. Spiritual happenings put the physical life in perspective. What sort of conversations happen when someone suddenly dies or when someone is born? Your perspective shifts to eternity and you get it for a minute. Then you go back outside. The physical life is full of spiritual sedatives and supplements. What are you ingesting?

‘What would you say to a person who you were trying to convert to Christianity? You’d tell him that the requirement for salvation is to believe that Jesus is the son of the one true God and you’d probably quote John 3:16. Have you ever noticed that witnessing tracks are small pieces of paper explaining that Jesus paid the price for their sin and that by believing that simple truth they are ‘in’? What a contrast to the millions of book pages that tell them how to maintain that salvation.’ -’Grace Is For Sinners’

Those who are provoking this agitation among you are turning the Message of Christ on its head. Let me be blunt: If one of us—even if an angel from heaven!—were to preach something other than what we preached originally, let him be cursed. I said it once; I’ll say it again: If anyone, regardless of reputation or credentials, preaches something other than what you received originally, let him be cursed. -Galatians 1:7-9

It’s time to think about where you are and where you’re getting your information. Were you taught a perversion and are you perpetuating the lie? The only place ‘but’ takes in the Gospel, is the place of submission to Jesus. ‘Yes, I have sinned, but Jesus…’ Nothing cancels Jesus out.

This post was inspired by Galatians 1. Galatians 2 is on it’s way….