It Ain't Easy Being A Legalist...

Presented to you purely, uhm, for theological training purposes -yeah, that's it - "The Legalist's Victory Song." Listen carefully to the words. (Please remember to pray for this poor sister who is married to "a sot."

The Nectar of Heaven

Ingredients:
2 Family Size Tea Bags
1 Gallon Water
2 Cups White Sugar
Place the tea bags in a small simmering pan containing about two cups of water. Bring to a boil.
Steep for ten minutes then pour tea concentrate into gallon pitcher.
While liquid is still very hot, add two cups of sugar. Stir.
Fill gallon pitcher with water and stir.
Serve over ice.

On behalf of everybody who grew up in the southern United States, I proudly present to you the recipe for Sweet Tea. I have found as I travel that in many parts of the United States and especially abroad, people have been culturally deprived of this delight all of their lives. Try asking a waitress in Pittsburgh for sweet tea. She points at the sugar on the table and then looks at you like you must be blind or something. It’s sad, she just doesn’t get it. As I write these words, I am in Canada. In the spirit of good international relations, we won’t even talk about the tea in restaurants here. Have you ever watched a person drink Earl Grey tea over a few pieces of ice with no sugar? It’s not a pretty sight. And Mexico? The tea there brings to mind the age old question, “How can a loving God allow such suffering?” Since this is the beverage that will probably be served at the Marriage Feast of the Lamb, we would all be well advised to learn to enjoy it now! In Georgia, we think of it as the nectar of heaven.

Seriously, why have I shared the recipe for sweet tea with you? Well, putting aside the obvious culinary mission of mercy, it actually illustrates very clearly some truths about what happens in a person’s life when grace rules. God’s recipe for transforming us by His grace given in Christ has some striking similarities to the recipe at the top of this page.

The first step in making sweet tea is to turn up the heat so that the water will boil. The sugar and tea won’t permeate the water unless it is very hot. This is the same way that God works in a person when He is preparing to make something wonderful of his life. Have you ever noticed how much more receptive you are to God when the heat is turned up high in your life? When we are in hot water, we usually get in the receiving mode fast! If you have ever asked God to use your life, don’t be surprised when trouble comes. God may turn up the heat in our circumstances to prepare us to experience His life. The glory of having Jesus expressing His life through us requires that we pass through the fire. It’s not pleasant while it is happening, but when the process is complete the finished product is quite a treat!

The Apostle Peter said:

“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share in the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing; so that also at the revelation of His glory, you may rejoice with exultation” (1 Peter 4:12-13).

The fire may be hot, but don’t despair in your troubles. God often orchestrates the events of our lives to bring us to the end of confidence in our own ability so that He may readily complete His recipe for godliness within us. “The revelation of His glory” that Peter mentions is not a reference to heaven, but to the discovery of the sweet truth of our union with Christ. However, it is impossible to make sweet tea without hot water.

Unlike cold tea, hot tea and sugar are totally compatible with each other. In fact, the sugar quickly dissolves when stirred into the hot tea. Once the sugar has dissolved into the water, the very nature of the liquid is changed. The tea and sugar can never be separated again. Their distinct elements have merged together in such a way that they are now one new entity. This isn’t the case with iced tea. It is impossible to get sugar to dissolve into tea once it has been served over ice. No matter how much you stir it, the two just won’t mix.

When God prepares to manifest the sweet presence of His Life within us, He uses heat to cause us to be compatible with Him permeating our being. He will often stir things in our lives when He turns up the heat. Then we don’t resist like we would when we are spiritually cold. Once he places His Life into us, our very nature is changed. Just as the sugar and tea have become one, we have been united with Him and can never again be separated from Him. 1Corinthians 6:17 says, “But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” There is no longer m life and Christ’s life. Jesus has come into us and changed our very nature so that one may say quite literally that Christ is my life.

I was teaching this truth in a Grace Walk Conference once and a man whose field of study was chemistry said, “It is a fact that tea has its own distinct chemical composition and sugar has its own unique chemical composition, but when you put the two together in the way you have described, a totally new chemical composition is created which is neither tea or sugar.” Do you know what it is called? Sweet tea!

The Bible says, “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). When we received Christ, we gained a brand new identity. When have you ever heard someone refer to tea as “water with tea and sugar in it”? It’s nature has been changed, therefore it is identified by its new identity — sweet tea.

Once the sugar has been placed into the tea, the pitcher must be filled with water, then the tea is ready to be shared with others. Water is a type of the Holy Spirit in the Bible. The Bible says that the treasure of the life of Jesus is contained in the earthen vessels of our bodies. (2 Corinthians 4:7) Yet we must be filled with the Holy Spirit if people are going to be attracted to Christ within us. (Ephesians 5:18) To be filled with the Holy Spirit means nothing less than Jesus Christ consuming our total being and expressing His life through us.

It is the Holy Spirit who dwells within our spirit. That same Spirit is the very spirit of Jesus. Since He has come to us, our nature is changed. We now possess the nature of God. By the death and resurrection of Jesus, God works in this world to create a new race of people who possess His nature. 2 Peter 1:4 says that through the Spirit of Christ we have “become partakers of the divine nature.” Our new nature is a

I enjoy sweet tea, but I don’t like tea with sugar in it. Some may ask, “Isn’t it the same thing?” Not at all. When I’m traveling, I sometimes order iced tea and put sugar in it, but the tea never gets sweet enough for my taste. I sometimes have a glass of iced tea on the table with a half inch of sugar settled at the bottom of the glass. That is tea with sugar, but it’s not sweet tea. It is only when the sugar has dissolved in the tea that it receives a sweet nature.

Some Christians think in terms of Christ being in their life. However, when we were saved, Jesus didn’t simply come into our life. He has so filled our being that the Bible teaches that Christ is our life. The very essence of our being has been changed through this supernatural union with Him

If I held up a glass and declared it to be full of sweet tea, someone might argue that it isn’t the tea which is sweet, but it’s the sugar in the tea that is sweet. I would disagree. The sugar has so diffused its life into the tea that the nature of the tea has changed. Yes, the tea is sweet. And you are righteous!

(This article was an excerpt from my book, Grace Rules. Click the link for more information about the book.)

Disqualified by Sin?

There are people who have committed sins that have caused them to think that somehow they’ve struck out, and God can never take their life and use it for His glory. They have believed the lie that you can commit sins so serious and so wrong that God will, as they say, set you aside and not ever be able to work through your life again. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The message of grace is that God can redeem you and take the circumstances of your life, no matter what you might have done, and he can redeem your choices and turn things around and use you for his glory.

I used to say, "You can’t unscramble eggs," but the truth is, we serve a God who can unscramble eggs. For that matter, He seems to like scrambled eggs if that means using lives that have come to brokenness and are now yielded completely to Him. There’s nothing you’ve ever done, or nothing you ever could do, that would keep God from pouring out His blessings on you and allowing His life to flow through you. The idea that you can commit sins that would disqualify you from being used by God is a lie that will keep you in bondage as long as you believe it.

Consider Hebrews 11, and examine the people that are mentioned there. God mentioned people like Noah. Noah was a man who had no sooner come off the ark until he got falling down drunk. Or look at Moses. Exodus 2 tells how he killed a man. Samson and David are on this list, even though they both committed adultery and their sin is remembered until this day. In Hebrews 11:31, the Bible mentions Rahab the harlot. By God's grace, she was used by the Lord to protect his people in Israel. The fact is that there’s no sin that you can commit that is so terrible that God cannot turn things around and work through you to influence others.

Look back over your past and think about the very worst thing you’ve ever done...
Now take that in your mind, carry it to the cross and lay it down at the foot of the cross, and then, visually -- in your own thinking, walk away and leave it there. The idea that you can commit sins that will disqualify you from seeing your Father work through your life is unnecessarily crippling because it just isn't true.

If I were to ask you who was the greatest Christian who ever lived, whose name comes to mind? I suspect many would say the Apostle Paul. The apostle Paul had been a murderer, and yet the Lord used him to write two-thirds of the New Testament.

You might think, “Well, my sins were committed after I became a Christian." Okay, then you're in good company. Remember Simon Peter? He denied Jesus at his crucifixion and ran out in shame and guilt. It seems reasonable to imagine that he probably wondered if the Lord would ever be able to work through his life again.

When Jesus was raised from the dead and he spoke to the ladies, He said “Go tell the disciples and Peter that I’m alive.” He specifically mentioned him by name. I think the reason he mentioned Peter by name is because he wanted to let him know, "you’ve not done something so terrible that I can’t use your life." It was in fact, Peter on the day of Pentecost, who preached that great Pentecostal message.

Hebrews 11 - read it. Look at those giants of faith mentioned there. Don’t just read their names in chapter 11, but go back and look in the Old Testament, and the history of those people and see some of the sins they committed. I think there’s a subliminal message in Hebrews chapter 11 that says to you and me, "No matter what you’ve done, no matter how low you’ve gone, no matter how far from God’s plan for your life you think you might have drifted, God has redeemed you, and He will take all the circumstances of your life, and He will use your life for his glory."

Whatever you might have done, God has forgiven you and your life can now glorify Him. It's called the gospel of grace for a reason. Put your past behind you, believe it, get up and live the Life He has given you.

Grace As A Doctrine

Sometimes as I've traveled, people have said to me, "Our church is focusing on grace this year." When I'm told that, I can't but find myself thinking, "What did you focus on last year? What will you focus on next year?" I've even heard some say that grace is a very important doctrine and how important it is that we understand it.

These kinds of statements sound good on the surface, but they completely miss the point of grace. Grace is not an important doctrine. In fact, grace is a Person. His name is Jesus Christ. He is Grace personified. When we talk about grace, we're talking about Him.

Grace is the essence of our very lives in Christ. Grace is the foundation of who God the Father is to us through His Son, Jesus Christ. To say that grace is an important doctrine puts it in a categorical list of other doctrines, which undermines its value and meaning. Grace is not to be put in a list of doctrinal teachings. It is the fountainhead from which every doctrine of the Bible flows.

To suggest that grace is an important doctrine is like saying that breathing is an important part of my life. That would be an understatement of ridiculous proportions. Breathing is not an important part of my life. When Paul said, “For me to live is Christ,” he might as well have said, “For me to live is grace.” They are the same. John said that Jesus came “full of grace.” (See John 1:14) It’s who He is.

Yes, grace is as much a part of our lives as is breathing. It is the core and essence of the gospel. In Acts 20:24, Paul showed that grace is the gospel. “I do not consider my life of any account, as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God.” Note how the gospel is inseparably joined to grace here.

The word gospel means “hilariously good news.” What is this good news that Paul said he had been entrusted to share with those around him? It was the good news of the grace of God. Once we wander away from grace in what we proclaim, we've left the gospel. We might be telling the truth, but we've left the gospel. We might be helping people to some degree, but we've left the gospel. The gospel is the message of grace. It's the only thing that has the power to transform lives. Paul described it as "the power of God unto salvation."

Let's not think we flatter grace when we call it an important doctrine. It's more than that. It's everything.

From Must To Trust

Aspects of Spirit filled living which flow naturally from the lifestyle of one walking in grace become a millstone around the neck of one ensnared by legalism. I have often used Bible study and prayer as examples because they tend to be primary targets of legalism. It takes what God intended to bring us real pleasure and turns it into nothing more than a religious performance.

We aren’t doing God any favors by reading the Bible, praying, or anything else we may do in an effort to please Him. It goes without saying that each are an integral part of authentic faith, but once these grace gifts have been baptized into the stagnant waters of dead religion, they lose all life. They no longer have legitimate meaning, neither to the believer nor God.

Bible study no longer is a joy, it’s a job. Prayer is no longer a romantic conversation. It becomes a “quiet time” which we must observe like the misbehaving child who is sent to his room for a “time out.”

Driven religious fervor becomes a one night stand repeated over and over and over again. There may be a shallow gratification in one night stands, but nobody would ever mistake it for genuine intimacy. God offers us much more than that. He wants us to experience Him and all of His gifts as a natural part of the soothing rhythms of grace. However, to know that kind of intimacy, we must stop our religious hyperventilating, calm down, stop and smell the roses. God doesn’t need for you to break the three minute mile for Him. He just wants you to enjoy Him, knowing that everything else in your life will flow out of that.

Jesus didn’t come to help us be religious superstars. Far from it, He came to deliver us from empty religion, even orthodox, time honored religion. Jesus came to bring us into intimacy with God through Himself. In His earthly days, as in our day, those most offended by Him have been the religionists who have built their reputation around keeping their golden idols polished to a brighter shine than anybody else in town.

The idols are their own particular rules of the road that must be observed as we speed down the highway they call “Christian living.” Their display case is filled with the specific idols which most easily fit their own personality and temperament and they judge everybody else by whether or not they live up to their own personal standards. People are incidental. What matters is how you are behaving.

Even Jesus wasn’t a good churchman by the standards of the religionists of His day. He didn’t live up to what they thought He ought to be. To them, He had no convictions. He appeared to compromise the purity and integrity of their values by doing things like healing people on the Sabbath, by eating with the crooks (Publicans) and party-animals (sinners) of His day. He was a friend of the hookers and homeless. He didn’t separate Himself far enough from the riffraff, as every good churchman knew one should do. Consequently, He lost His testimony with the Pharisees, an incidental matter which didn’t seem to bother him at all. Jesus cared more about relationships than reputation. He still does.

A legitimate Christian lifestyle gently flows like water along a riverbank, refreshing all who happen to stumble upon our banks. It isn’t a flash flood of activity that honors God. He doesn’t lead us that way, but instead He has chosen to make “[us] lie down in green pastures. He leads [us] beside the still waters [where] He restores [our] soul” (Psalm 23).

God loves you so much that He wants to deliver you from the misery of the musts into the triumph of trust. You have nothing to prove by a frantic pace. It isn’t possible to hear the still, small voice whisper when you are running at breakneck speed. God invites you to stop and rest.

(This article is an excerpt from my book, A Divine Invitation

Is It A Sin To Be Depressed?

Some Christians think that victory in Christ means we are to always feel good, emotionally. Some even go so far as to say that it’s a sin to be depressed. These people make an unbiblical, inaccurate connection between their emotional feelings and spiritual victory in their lives. That is a disjointed connection. The dots just won't connect.

The truth is that you can be very low emotionally and still be strong spiritually. I used to think that it was a sin to be depressed emotionally until I studied the subject in the Bible and saw what the Scripture has to say about the matter. I found that there were many great saints of God who were depressed. The Bible in no way indicates that it was a sin. Depression is a sense of heaviness in the soul. Emotions reside in the soul, as do the mind and will.

Depression can be caused by a lot of things. There can be physiological reasons for depression. It could be because of a hormonal imbalance. It could be because of some sort of imbalance in the chemicals in the brain. There are circumstantial reasons why people can be depressed. If you’ve lost a loved one through death or suffered another type of great loss, depression can be a normal reaction to that kind of thing. There are different reasons why people would be depressed. Anxiety in our emotions is a normal part of the human experience, and sometimes people ask me, “Is it right or wrong for me to be depressed about this or that”? I usually respond to them by saying, “I’d rather not cast my answer in terms of right and wrong, but I’ll simply say this – its human, it’s natural that you would feel that way.”

Consider the biblical character, Job, when he was going through his great trials. Here's what the Scripture says about his situation in Job 23:1-9:

His hand (God’s hand) is heavy despite my groaning. Oh that I knew where I might find him, I’d come to his seat and present my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. I’d learn the words that he’d answer and perceive what he’s say to me. Would he contend with me by the greatness of his power? No surely he’d pay attention to me. There the upright would reason with him and I would be delivered forever from my judge. Behold I go forward, but he’s not there. And backward, but I cannot perceive him. When he acts on the left hand I cannot behold him. He turns on the right and I cannot see him.

Again and again in the book of Job, he expressed his negative emotions. He said things like “I wish I’d never been born” and “life makes no sense”. These nine verses in Job 23 are a very articulate and strong declaration of his emotional depression but listen to what he says in verse 10: “But he knows the way that I take and when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” There’s his declaration of faith. He was honest about his feelings but was also clear about his faith in God.

Don’t be judgmental of other people who are emotionally depressed, and don’t judge yourself for it if you go through it either. The idea that it’s a sin to be emotionally depressed is wrong. It is a part of the human experience. We choose what we do with the emotional reactions that we have in life and, make no mistake about it, we can have joy (which is different from happiness) in the midst of depression. If you believe that it's a sin anytime you experience depression, you'll set yourself up for self condemnation. On the other hand, if you believe that Christ is your peace and your joy in every situation of life, you will increasingly see that He will guide you step by step and embrace you even in the midst of your depression.

The People God Uses

For twenty-nine years after I trusted Christ, I prayed for the Lord to make me stronger. It seemed like the right thing to do and many Christians pray that way now. The reality of the matter though is that most of us are too strong already. In fact, many pride themselves on their resolute determination to live "the Christian life." It's really good news when we realize that God is not looking for us to become stronger. Your Father wants you to recognize your weakness, because it’s when we come to the end of confidence in our own strength, and we see our weakness, that we’re at the place where Christ can take our lives and express himself through us.

Look at the subject in your own Bible. In 1 Corinthians 1:27, the Scripture tells us that God has chosen the weak, not the strong. Culture suggests that we need to be stronger but the biblical fact is that we are to unashamedly embrace our weakness.

In 2 Corinthians 12:9, the Apostle Paul says that God told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." In view of that fact, Paul went on to say, "Most gladly therefore I would rather boast about my weakness, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”

God said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient." He doesn’t need your strength or mine. The idea that we should pray for God to make us stronger simply is not Biblical. We need to embrace our weakness and realize that the Lord delights in using weak people who are willing to admit that we don’t have what it takes to live a lifestyle that honors him. When we yield ourselves, weakness and all, into his hands, His strength, then, is activated through our lives, and it is the life of Christ that is seen, and His life that is expressed, and not our own willpower and sheer determination.

You may see other Christians who seem to have it all together and seem to be very strong. Let me assure you that you don't know what's going on in their own minds and lives. Trust me, if they think that they're strong and have it all together, they are arrogant. Those most used by Him are those who know that apart from Him they can do nothing. So if you see yourself as weak, you're exactly the kind of person through whom Jesus will express His life. In fact, He is looking for people like you - people who know they don't stand a chance apart from His divine enablement.

Can We Go Too Far With Grace?

Those who are afraid of the message of the grace walk have sometimes suggested that you can go too far with grace. It is from out of that unfounded fear that this lie finds expression. It is important to remember that grace involves God expressing His unconditional love and favor toward us; independent of anything we ever do or don’t do. Grace is personified in Jesus. So to say that you can go too far with grace is like saying that you can go too far with Jesus. It simply isn’t possible.

Some people are afraid that if you teach the pure grace of God, people might be encouraged to go out and commit sins. That kind of fear shows a lack of clear understanding about what grace does in a person’s life. It certainly doesn’t encourage sin!

The idea that you can go too far with grace is an irrational fear. When a believer sins, he is acting in a disgraceful way by contradicting the very essence of the grace of God which is in him. Grace empowers us to honor our Father through our actions, not dishonor Him. It is possible to pervert grace so that it stops being grace, but it isn’t possible to go too far with it.

Paul explained it this way in Romans 5:17: “Much more, those who received the abundance of grace, and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. He said that if we’re going to reign in life, there needs to be an abundance of grace, which provides the gift of righteousness. The result will be that we reign in life.

The word “abundance” in that verse suggests an overflow. It doesn’t mean filling something to the top. It means filling it beyond the top, so that it spills over. Paul said that is what has happened to the Christian. We have received an overflow of grace.

Go too far with grace? There’s no way. The fact is that most Christians haven’t gone far enough in their understanding of it. We need an overflow of grace, especially in the modern church. Especially in the lives of Christians today who’ve been ambushed by legalism. As much as we say we don’t want to live under the law, we’re scared to death of the grace of God.

We need to boldly proclaim God’s grace to the church world -- not only to the unbelieving but to the church world. We need to proclaim the grace of God because the fact is that, even if you could go too far with grace, which you can’t, I’ve not been in a church yet where there was even a remote possibility of going too far with the grace of God.

Go too far with grace? Not a chance. We need an abundance of grace in the legalistic barrenness of the modern church. It’s only when we jump in over our heads, into the river of God’s grace, and we experience that abundance, that we know the victory that is ours in Jesus Christ.

Befriending Unbelievers

I've often heard it said and even used to say myself that we should befriend unbelievers in order to win them to Christ. That seems like it would be a noble reason to love people, doesn’t it? So that we can win them to Christ. But the truth is, that’s not a good reason for loving or befriending people. We befriend people, we love people because that’s our nature. It's who we are. To befriend a person who’s not a Christian and to love that person simply for the purpose of leading them to faith in Jesus Christ means that you have developed a relationship with them with an ulterior motive.

Don’t misunderstand, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to see people come to trust Christ, but we are to love people and befriend them, not for a hidden agenda, but because Christ lives in us, and he simply loves people. He loves them if they are believers or if they aren’t believers. In fact, he loves them even if they are never going to become believers.

There’s a story in the New Testament, in Mark, where Jesus met a rich young ruler. He came to him and said “What do I need to do to inherit eternal life, good master?” And Jesus says: “Well, what you need to do is to sell everything that you have, and give it to the poor.” The reason that he told him that, was because this guy thought he was a great keeper of the law, and Jesus said ‘let’s raise the bar and let the law reveal your sin’, which that’s what law does. And the man was unwilling to do that, he went away very sad, but there’s an interesting verse in Mark 10:21 that reveals the heart of Jesus. “Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him”.

Now here’s an important question: Do you think Jesus knew from the beginning that that man was not going to turn to him and follow him? Of course he did. And yet with that full knowledge of how this man was going to respond, the Bible says Jesus looked at him and felt love for him.

Let’s just love people. The truth is, if you befriend somebody just for the purpose of bringing them to Christ, people sense when there’s an ulterior motive. They tend to know when we have an underlying hidden agenda that we’re not telling them. So let’s lay that aside, and let’s just love others because Christ is in us, and God is love, and it’s our nature to love, and when we love them the way that He does - unconditionally, then, don’t be surprised, if you don’t find these unbelievers being attracted to the Christ in you, and wanting you to give them more information about what it means to follow Him. And ultimately they’ll come to know the Lord anyway.

But the idea that we need to befriend unbelievers in order to win them to Christ is deceptive and far removed from Agape. We befriend unbelievers and love them because we can do no less, because Christ is our life, he loves them, so we love them too.

I'm Not Going To Pray For Revival

Everywhere I go I hear Christians talking about how much we need a revival. Call me crazy if you want, but I don't agree. I seen revival. I've been in authentic revivals and I can tell you one thing about them that is always true: They come and go. They don't last.

When I was a boy, we would have "revival services" in the church twice a year. I must say that it was often a good experience. In fact, I'll be the first to admit that when we experience revival it brings a renewed zeal and enthusiasm within us. It is encouraging and it’s very uplifting. That has always been true of revivals in the Bible, but there's a glaring reality in the pages of the New Testament. Revival is never mentioned. Not once. In this new covenant, we’re capable of much more than revival. Revival is a solidly Old Testament, old covenant concept.

What we need is a revelation. That's what Paul prayed would happen to the New Covenant believers he loved. He said, "I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints" (Ephesians 1:18) That's revelation, not revival.

Revivals fade away, but when we get a revelation of who Christ really is in us and who we are in Him - when it is revealed to us just how much He really loves us and just how big His grace toward us really is, that will never grow old, it will never fade away. That's exactly what the New Testament teaches. In 2 Corinthians 3:7-11, Paul is comparing the New Covenant with the Old Covenant, and here’s what he said:

If the ministry of death in letters written on stones came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses, because of the glory of his face, fading as it was, how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to even be with more glory? For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. For indeed what had glory in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it. For if that which fades away was with glory, much more, that which remains is in glory.


Paul was comparing the glory of the Old Covenant with the glory of the New Covenant. He said there’s no doubt when Moses encountered God on Mount Sinai, he was so revived by the experience that his face radiated, but the problem was it immediately began to fade away. In fact, he was so embarrassed about how fast it left him that he put a veil over his face because he couldn’t hold on to it. Paul said, that old covenant experience did have a measure of glory, but nothing compared to the glory that we understand in the New Covenant. There might be positive aspects to an old-fashioned (or to be more accurate, "Old Testament") revival, but why settle for that? We have the potential to receive New Covenant revelation!

When we receive this revelation of grace, this revelation of who we are in Christ, that revelation comes with a New Covenant glory that never fades away. It will never wear off and it won’t need to be repeated. I remember when I first began to understand the grace walk in 1990. I wondered if I'd cool down on this subject like I had with many other subjects that had excited me over the years. But I haven't. In fact, I'm more excited about God's grace today than I've ever been!

So the idea that we need a revival may sound good, but it is not true. What we need is a revelation of the grace of God of who we are in Jesus Christ. We need a revelation of His grace so that we know that we have received forgiveness for a lifetime. We need a revelation of the fact that nothing we will ever do could cause God to love us any more or any less than He does at this moment. To summarize, we need a revelation of grace! When we get that revelation, that is a wonderful glory that far exceeds revival. And best of all, it's a glory that will never wear off.

You Can't Disappoint God

When I was a legalistic preacher, I'd often speak of God's attitude toward us as if He were disappointed because we kept blowing it when it comes to the matter of sinning. I set out what I presented as His expectations about our behavior and went on to show how we let Him down when we failed to live up to those divine expectations.

My whole approach to the matter was wrongheaded. To suggest that God is ever disappointed in us is one of the guilt and shame techniques that the enemy uses against us to keep us wallowing in self-condemnation. And sadly, this view is often taught in churches everywhere. But the truth of the Scripture is this – it is impossible for you to disappoint God. You can’t disappoint Him. God is disappointed in you when you do wrong? It's simply not possible.

Why? The answer rests in the meaning of disappointment. Think about it for a moment. Disappointment is the result of an unfulfilled expectation. To be disappointed means that a person expects that an outcome will be one thing, when in fact it turns out in a different way. So the idea, then, that God would be disappointed means that God does not know everything. He thought we'd do one thing and then we went and did another!

No, that won't ever happen. God doesn't expect anything. He knows everything in advance with 100% certainty. What could possibly disappoint God? Nothing you've ever done or will do catches Him by surprise.

To suggest that sins disappoint God is to fail to appreciate His full work at the cross. I remind you that when Jesus absorbed your sins into himself on the cross, He saw clearly, every sin you would ever commit, He saw all your sins of omission and commission, He knew exactly what you would do. He saw them and dealt with them - all of them. God knows everything you’re going to do in your lifetime and He has taken care of it at the cross. We might be disappointed in ourselves, but God can never be disappointed in us.

God expects nothing of you because He realizes that you’re incapable of doing anything on your own. The scripture says no flesh will glory in his sight. Flesh is that self sufficient determination we reach down into, to try to do the things that glorify God. It’s living out of our own dogged determination. God doesn’t expect anything to come of that and we set ourselves up for failure when we do. It's pure, undiluted legalism to think that you can overcome temptation to sin by your own resolve. In fact, Jesus said 'apart from me you can do nothing.'

Just because I say God is not disappointed in you when you do wrong, doesn’t mean that he’s okay with it when we sin. Your Father loves you and hates to see you hurt yourself, which is what sin always does. The reality is, though, that it’s not God that punishes us for our sins, it’s our sins that punish us for our sins. Our own sins punish us. There are still consequences, afterall.

It’s the consequence of our own choices, but we certainly don’t disappoint God. He loves you and He adores you and expects nothing of you. That's why He wants you to depend on Him as your strength in the face of temptation. If you think this reality will cause people to want to go out and sin, you're missing the core meaning of grace. God's grace teaches us who we are and then motivates and enables us to live like righteous children of God. But, when we do otherwise, it never catches Him off guard. He's already there to pick us up when we fall.

Does Teaching Grace Lead To a Careless Lifestyle?

I do grow weary at times of having to answer the paranoid legalists who are so afraid that teaching pure and undiluted grace may lead people to think it's okay to sin. The strange thing is that when I ask them if that's what the teaching causes them to want to do, they always say it doesn't. It's not themselves they're worried about. It's these other pitiful, weak Christians who might misunderstand and be led astray. After all, they don't have the maturity to know how to handle the truth so we'd better keep our teaching about grace in balance with a generous serving of warnings about the dangers and evils of sinning.

It’s the old give-‘em-an-inch-and-they’ll-take-a-mile syndrome. Some are afraid that if you truly embrace the grace of God, it’s going to cause you to go out and live a lifestyle of sin. Their reasoning is that if you tell people that their sins are all forgiven and that they’re under God’s grace, they won’t be motivated to live a godly lifestyle. They question what will prevent them from going out and misbehaving. They completely underestimate the presence of the indwelling Christ who is in us! They miss the point that it is the Holy Spirit who has taken up residence in us. He can be trusted! He is quite capable of leading people into righteous behavior without all our warnings to them.

God’s grace is not a license to sin. Those who say that the teaching of pure grace sounds that way reveal their weak understanding of the topic. That's what they said about Paul too. In fact, that's what they say about anybody and everybody who has the gall to preach grace without watering it down with a little legalism.

God’s grace is the divine enablement by the life of Christ in us, for us to be all that we’ve been called to be and all that we’ve been called to do. Grace won’t cause you to go out and sin. To the contrary, it will empower, enable, and motivate you to live a godly lifestyle. Titus 2: 11–12 explains, “For the grace of God appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in this present age.”

The Bible says that the grace of God teaches us; it instructs us. What is the focus of that instruction? It instructs us in denying ungodliness, and it teaches us how to live sensibly, righteously and godly in this present age. Apparently, Paul wasn’t afraid that grace was going to cause people’s lives to run amuck. He saw grace as the antidote to ungodly behavior.

Let’s ground our thinking in what the Bible says and not in irrational fears that somebody might abuse grace if that is what they are taught. Rest assured – the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ will not become a motivator for sin. His grace will inspire, instruct and invigorate you to walk in a way that is fitting with who you are in Him! In an effort to calm the nerves of jittery legalists, I'm not going to water down the gospel by warning people about how they better avoid sinning. The gospel is good news and nothing but good news. When people get that, behavior will take care of itself.

Stop Trying To Stop Sinning

Building on yesterday's blog topic about sin consciousness, let's consider this whole issue of how we are to relate to sins. The primary project for most Christians in the modern church is to reduce the number or frequency of sins in their lives. It's a sin management program that they devote themselves to with great zeal and sincere commitment.

It all sounds so good on the surface. That's the subtlety with legalism. It sounds right to the religious ear despite the fact that it contradicts and ignores what the Bible teaches. It sounds so right to some that to become Godly requires that we work hard to change our bad behaviors and replace them with good ones. To them it's all about diminishing the number of sins that we commit and increasing the number of good things that we do. But Godliness doesn’t come from that. Godliness is not the absence of sin.

The truth is this, the reason you’re godly is because the Spirit of God lives in you. The Holy Spirit came into you. Jesus said, "it’s necessary for me to go away, so that the Holy Spirit can come." And when the Holy Spirit came into you, He said: “I’ll never leave you, or forsake you.” Since the Holy Spirit came into your spirit, and your spirit is the core of your identity (and it is), then you are holy, you are Godly, because God’s Spirit is inside you. It doesn’t have to do with resisting sin, or giving into sin. The truth is, you’re just as Godly whether you sin, or don’t sin. Your identity isn't established by what you do. It is established by what He has done!

That fact scares the legalists, because it causes them to think “If you tell people that, they’ll go out and sin!” No,to the contrary. When we understand who we are, and we know that we’ve been made godly through Jesus Christ, that activates – becomes a catalyst within us - to not want to go out and live a sinful lifestyle. Religious rules are to sins what gasoline is to a fire. (See Romans 7:5) Jesus, on the other hand, is our Fire Extinguisher.

The idea that if we resist sin, we become more Godly, that is a lie that will cause you to take your eyes off of Jesus Christ, and put them on your temptation. Remember, the Scripture says if you set your mind on the things of the flesh you’ll reap the things of the flesh.

The truth is, we need to put our eyes on Jesus Christ, and know that we are already Godly in Him, and when we understand that, and we rest in Him and in the reality of our own righteousness in Him, then the godliness which is ours in Christ, will be reflected through our lifestyle and our actions, and the sins of our life will simply fall away because we’re so consumed and obsessed with Jesus. Stop trying to stop sinning and start trusting in the One who has dealt with your sins in totality! You're not evil. You are holy. Deal with it :)

Sin Consciousness

There is an obsession with sin management in the modern church world that I think may fit under the category of "Idolatry." Some Christians talk and think more about sins than they do Jesus Christ Himself. "But don't we need to focus on overcoming our sins?" some may ask.

The Bible says that Jesus came to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. That's the reality we need to lock in on in life! Sin doesn't intimidate God. He defeated it, once and for all, on the cross. So why should we spend our time making sin the object of our attention? When He took all of our sin into Himself and said “it is finished”, that’s exactly what he meant. Now we are to focus on Jesus Christ, not ourselves, not our sins. We’re to focus on Jesus Christ. The Bible says if you set your mind on the things of the flesh, you will reap the things of the flesh. So if we want to walk in victory over sins, we don’t do that by focusing on the temptation to sin, we focus instead on Jesus.

In Colossians 3, Paul said “If you are risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

As we focus upon Jesus Christ, we will find that the attraction toward that temptation that has us in its grip, will become weaker and weaker. The Bible says that Jesus Christ is our strength. I think of the old song that I sang growing up as a teenager that said “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.”

The perfect sacrifice for sin has been given and the Bible says that because of that we can now live without sin-consciousness. (See Hebrews 10:1-2) Now we live with the consciousness of Christ, our Righteousness!

Should We Really Do Everything Jesus Said?

Is it really true that we should do everything Jesus said? I've provoked criticism of my teaching at times when I've said that the answer to that question is, "no." There is a new movement of those who call themselves “red letter Christians”, who say: “I’m living by the red letters in the New Testament.” That refers to the Bibles that have the words of Jesus written in red. “I’m doing what Jesus said.” Well, the truth is, we need to consider how to rightly divide the Word. Jesus Christ said a lot of things at times, when He was not speaking to us. Remember that Jesus lived under the Old Covenant. The New Covenant didn't become effective until His own death.

I’m not minimizing the words of Jesus, His words are very important. In fact, His words are so important that we need to properly understand them. And we do that by examining to whom He was speaking, when He was speaking, and what He was saying.

I'll say it again a second time for emphasis: Jesus ministered under the Old Covenant, so he said a lot of things to those people, that once He had died on the cross and been raised from the dead, what He told them became obsolete in terms of your life. "Now," you might say: “wait a minute, you've gone too far! You are saying we don’t have to do everything Jesus said!" Well, do you really believe you should do everything Jesus said?

What about in Matthew 5 when Jesus said that if you look upon a person with lust in your heart, you should pluck your eye out? Any man reading this, if you really believe you should do everything Jesus said, you better get busy and start digging at your sockets right now. What about when Jesus said, “if you are tempted to steal, chop your hand off”? What about when he told the rich young ruler, to sell everything that he had and give it to the poor?

Somebody will protest, "Don't be ridiculous! Of course, He didn't mean that we take that literally!" My response would be, "Okay, then we are in agreement that we aren't to do everything Jesus said. It's just a question now of what words he spoke apply to us and which don't."

Those who say you should do everything that Jesus said, conveniently pick and choose the things they want to do, while ignoring and explaining other things away. How about when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, and said: “as I have done this to you, so you should do this to each other”. Have you washed other Christians’ feet? If we are going to stand doggedly and determinedly on a certain point like this, then let’s practice it, let’s be consistent about it.

For instance, take the words of Jesus in what is commonly known as "the Lord's prayer." He said to pray, saying "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." He goes on to say a few verses later that you won't be forgiven by God unless you forgive others. Now, wait a minute. Was He talking to you at that moment? He was not. That was spoken before the cross -- before the New Covenant began.

Every passage that deals with forgiveness after the cross teaches that we forgive others, but not so that we will get forgiveness. We forgive others because we have been forgiven and it's now our nature to forgive. For instance, Ephesians 4:32 say, "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." Under the Old Covenant, people forgave or else. Now, under the New Covenant, we forgive because we have been forgiven.

It is a misunderstanding to suggest that we should do everything that Jesus said. What we should do is understand what Jesus said and what it meant, when it was said, and take his words seriously enough to rightly divide the word of truth and to apply his words in the way they were intended to be applied. If you believe that you should do everything that Jesus said, you are going to experience a lot of self condemnation in your life because I know you are not going to do everything he said, like plucking out your eye, selling all you have and giving it to the poor, or washing other Christian’s feet. So let’s rightly divide the Word and take the words of Jesus seriously enough that we examine them in light of the New Covenant.

Offending Weaker Brothers

I've often heard the teaching that, as Christians, we shouldn’t do anything that might offend somebody. While there is a biblical truth about being an offense that we need to understand, it's also the case that many Christians have been put into bondage by faulty teaching about the passage in the New Testament which speaks about not being a stumbling block for weaker brothers. Some have misrepresented that text and suggested that if anything that you might do could potentially be offensive to somebody else, then you ought not to do it. That’s not at all what the Bible teaches.

The Scripture does teach that we are to relate to each other on the basis of love. Loving people in the most effective way - that is the key. There is no disputing the fact that the Scripture says that if we have a weaker brother in our lives, who does not understand our freedom in Christ, then because of our love for that brother, we might be wise to be cautious and careful in our behaviors, so as not to offend the person. That’s an act of love, it’s an act of grace toward a weaker brother - someone who’s not strong in grace.

On the other hand, I think the verse has sometimes been taken to the extreme and taught to mean that if somebody is not going to like something that you do, then you ought not do it. The truth is, to approach the Scripture from that viewpoint, will cause you to go into bondage, because there will be many things in your life that somebody believes you shouldn’t do.

If you look across the body of Christ, there’s a diverse body of opinion about different things within the church world. Christians differ about music, movies, dress, alcohol, women in ministry, styles of worship . . . the list goes on and on. Some parts of the Body of Christ get into issues like where we should shop. For instance, I spoke to somebody the other day, who said that they believe that Christians ought not shop at WalMart, because this Christian believed they practice unfair labor practices. That is a conviction that they have. Well, does that mean that I should never shop at WalMart, for fear of offending that person?

The bottom line is this: To say that you shouldn’t do anything that might offend someone isn't true. You need to relate to every person in love, but recognize that Jesus Himself sometimes offended religious people by the things he chose to do. He healed on the Sabbath. In fact, He said and did many things they didn’t like. So we relate to people from a heart of love, but we don’t allow ourselves to be controlled by public opinion. The Holy Spirit will show us the balance between the two if we truly love people and ask Him to guide us.

The Christian Life Is NOT "All Of Him And None Of Me"

I've been working on a manuscript for a book based on the 101 Lies Taught In Church videos that I posted on YouTube two years ago. Some of these lies seem true at first glance. Here’s one that sounds like an expression of genuine humility. “The Christian life is all of Christ and none of me.” A person who would make this statement could almost sound noble, like a super-spiritual person. In fact, it almost has a ring of humility to it - but it’s still a lie.

Your Christian life is not all of Him and none of you. Think about it this way: When Jesus came into this world in human form, was it all of God and none of Him? No, to the contrary, it was all of God and all of Him. Jesus and His Father were in complete union so that He was 100% man and 100% deity at the same time.

Theologians call it the hypostatic union — meaning, that Jesus was not 50 percent man, and 50 percent God, he was 100 percent God, and 100 percent man. He was the God-man. So Jesus might have said as a man, “it’s all of God, and all of me.” Today, in the same way, you and I have come into union with God through Jesus Christ.

In the first chapter of Genesis, we see God created everything in the universe. His assessment of each aspect of creation is to see that it was “good.” Then, having finished, "God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good."Genesis 1:31

Anything God makes is good, and that includes everything about us before the Fall. Our minds, our souls, our bodies, and our individual personalities, all are good. A biblical view of man must maintain this perspective. In the first century, Paul warned Timothy about false teachers who would forbid believers from participating in good things God created — things like eating certain foods, or entering into marriage — out of a false understanding of spirituality:

"For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer."1 Timothy 4:4-5

The same is true in regard to our individual humanity. God hasn’t created us to be nonentities. That’s the goal of many Eastern religions, such as Buddhism. The goal there is to be cured of the illusion that you are a distinct individual. Buddhists want to be lost again in the “universal consciousness,” the “All,” like a cup of wine being poured back into the vat. That’s “salvation” from the Eastern point of view. This point of view is, in fact, the exact opposite of the Bible’s.

1 Corinthians 6:17, says,"But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him."

Yes, we desire to be united with Christ, but that does not mean personal annihilation. In fact, not only do you not cease to exist as a person, you actually become more of an individual than ever before! God likes different individuals. That’s why He made so many of us.

The Bible’s message is not “Christ instead of your life,” or just “Christ in your life” that gives you your identity. It is Christ as your life. So it is all of Him in us, but it’s also all of us in Him. There’s a oneness there. There’s a union.

If you believe that “it’s all Christ and none of you,” you are likely to become passive in your Christian walk. You could say, “Well, I’m only a conduit and I just wait for Him to do it through me. He does it all and I do nothing.” That perspective fails to recognize the union believers share with Christ.

We are co-laborers together with God. We put our neck in the same yoke with Jesus. He said “take my yoke upon you.” Together, as co-laborers with God and empowered by Him, we move forward. We act in a way that it is our personalities and our physical bodies through which He acts. It is your will in your mind that He activates, but He does it through you. Not “instead of you.”

Dead Men Are Free From Sin

Imagine Leo overdosing on cocaine and dying. They take his body to the funeral home and prepare it for burial. A few hours before the funeral starts, one of his drug buddies comes into the parlor where they have Leo’s corpse laid out. Nobody else is in the room, so his buddy walks over to the casket and leans over. “Hey, Leo,” he says. “We’re alone right now, man. I’ve got some good stuff here in my pocket.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small bag with cocaine in it. “Look man, it’s pure. Take a snort,” he says, while putting the bag under Leo’s nose. “What’s your problem, man? Here, I’ll put a little on my finger for you to taste. You’ll see, it’s good stuff.”

Do you know what Leo is doing all the time this is going on? Just lying there. If Leo could speak at that moment, do you know what he would say? “Hey, stupid! I’m dead! Can’t you see that?” Dead men don’t want cocaine, even if they loved it before.

The Bible clearly teaches that a part of our inheritance is that we have died to sin. You can sin if you choose, but when you understand your new identity you will discover that you don’t want to live in sin anymore. You died to all that. Now you are alive unto God. He motivates your desires and interests. You finally have power over sin!

Before Jesus died and dealt with your old sin nature, you had no power to overcome sin. You sinned because you had no choice. It was your nature to do so. Now things have changed. You have a new nature — His! Because His life is within you, He will enable you to overcome sin as you depend on Him. Remember that the person you used to be, who loved to sin, has died (Romans 6:1-6). You were placed on the cross in Jesus Christ and crucified there with Him. Not only did he die, but you died too so that your life now consists of Christ in you (Galatians 2:20). “For he who has died is freed from sin” (Romans 6:7).

To experience power over sin, simply rest in the sufficiency of Jesus Christ at every moment and continually affirm that you are dead to sin. Whether you feel it or not, “consider yourself to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). Just act like it’s true, because it is! When you depend on Jesus and act in faith, you will see for yourself that you are dead to sin. "Sin shall no longer have dominion over you for you are not under law but under grace!"

Does Your Church Sing Hymns or Choruses?

An old farmer went to the city one weekend and attended the big city church. He came home and his wife asked him how it was. "Well," said the farmer. "It was good. They did something different,however.They sang praise choruses instead of hymns."

"Praise choruses?" asked the wife. "What are those?"

"Oh,they're okay. They're sort of like hymns, only different," said the farmer.

"Well, what's the difference?" asked the wife.

The farmer said, "Well, it's like this - if I were to say to you, 'Martha, the cows are in the corn,' well that would be a hymn. If, on the other hand, I were to say to you, 'Martha, Martha, Martha, Oh, Martha, MARTHA, MARTHA, the cows, the big cows, the brown cows, the black cows, the white cows, the black and white cows, the COWS, COWS, COWS are in the corn, are in the corn, are in the corn, in the CORN, CORN, CORN, COOOOORRRRRNNNNN,' then, if I were to repeat the whole thing two or three times, well that would be a praise chorus."

As luck would have it, the exact same Sunday a young, new Christian from the city church attended the small town church. He came home and his wife asked him how it was.
"Well," said the young man, "It was good. They did something different, however. They sang hymns instead of regular songs."

"Hymns?"asked the wife. "What are those?"

"They're okay. They're sort of like regular songs, only different," said the young man.

"Well, what's the difference?" asked the wife.

The young man said, "Well it's like this: If I were to say to you, 'Martha, the cows are in the corn,' well that would be a regular song. If on the other hand, I were to say to you,

Oh Martha, dear Martha, hear thou my cry,
Inclinest thine ear to the words of my mouth.
Turn thou thy whole wondrous ear by and by,
To the righteous, glorious truth.

For the way of the animals who can explain,
There in their heads is no shadow of sense,
Hearkenest they in God's sun or his rain,
Unless from the mild, tempting corn they are fenced.

Yea, those cows in glad bovine, rebellious delight,
Have broke free their shackles, their warm pens eschewed.
Then goaded by minions of darkness and night,
They all my mild sweet corn chewed.

So look to that bright shining day by and by,
Where all foul corruptions of earth are reborn.
Where no vicious animal makes my soul cry,
And I no longer see those foul cows in the corn.

Then, if I were to do only verses one, three and four, and change keys on the last verse, well that would be a hymn."